June is Bustin' out all Over!

Like the periodic pop of fireworks this week before Independence Day, the flowers in my garden can hardly contain themselves.  The explosion of color is almost audible; its all you can do not to put your hands over your ears to protect them from the impact.  The daylilies and coneflowers are abuzz with visitors: crawling with bees, tickled by Red Admirals and crowned with the occasional Tiger Swallowtail.  Robins bathe and groom themselves in the dripping fountain; cardinals scuffle and chase in the lilac; high above the third floor swallows ride invisible breezes around the chimney. June may be busting out all over in song, but this week before July, the garden is positively volcanic.

I feel like celebrating too!  The calendar page still says June and I've just finished planting the last front porch pots.  I've tucked cannas and fountain grass, coleus and cleome, amid the waving wands of the hemerocallis; I've carved niches for colorful annuals in the rain pounded slabs of soil in the erstwhile vegetable garden of volunteer herbs and left behind tomatoes.  Up close, the back border is still a mess of sprouts and grass, but I have surveyed the handiwork of June in the rest of the yard and now pronounce it good.....and done!  The trailer is out of the driveway; the used pots are stacked by the dirt shed; it is time to contemplate and stroll, water and take pictures, and generally appraise with satisfaction the plant kingdom from the lofty perch of our porch....

Whether June has been dry or sodden, hot or not, the end of mum planting usually coincides with the first of July. Thus does the greenhouse season move seamlessly from the roar of heaters and early mornings and counting pots and filling dirt to the more relaxed routine of walking lines, dewy toes and the background music of the pumps delivering the stream of water through the leaders to each individual plant. When we all say, 'Til February!' and drive off that last day of June to our own gardens or vacations, it is always cause to celebrate.

The calendar page turns on the boys and girls of summer on the baseball diamond.  The half pints finish the rain soaked season with double headers and freezy pops....

...and Aaron hits a home run in his last game..."without any errors", he reports. While most of the county dodges showers, the Tarkio ballfield enjoys a gloriously sunny weekend for the final State Line League tournament.  We bask in the rays and cheer the home town Cubs team onto a second place trophy. 

 For those whose avocation, not vocation, is baseball, June sets the sun on organized baseball and ushers in the season of swimming.  Red Cross swimming lessons has been part and parcel of summer for three decades of our life: from the days of bus rides from Westboro for the young swimmers to shuttling four different grandchildren to three different classes from 9 am to noon.  For many of those years and two full generations of kids, the very same teachers have given weeks of their summer to community and chlorine, coaxing reluctant small fry into the water, persuading them to dip their curly heads into a strange and scary environment, and cheering on the minor victories and accomplishments and progress to independence and self sufficiency in the water.  From swimming corners to  back dives, more reasons to celebrate fun in the sun in July.  

Speaking of July, we got a head start, a sneak preview, a warmup, for fireworks the other night when our local nursing home, Tarkio Rehab and Health Care, set off their annual fireworks display on Friday night.  Such a quintessential small town type of event, the perfect example of unselfish neighborliness for all of us free riders in our backyards.  A perfect appetizer for  both those yearning to purchase the wherewithal for family performances and those desiring the full choreographed son et lumiere of the 4th of July extravaganza.  Like Judy Collins, I've looked at the 4th from "both sides now"....and can truthfully report that the American experience of fireworks and the 4th is both wonderful and appropriate whether it's micro...or super sized.

Our family has split its Independence Days over the years between Millie and Charlie's front yard and the driveway and bin floor of Redbarn in Moniteau county.  For years, we gathered at my folks' farm  for volleyball and pork roast, music and fireworks when the current old folks were middle aged and the current moms and dads were toddlers. Often Annie blew out candles on a patriotically red, white and blue iced birthday cake; why waste a good party when your birthday barely misses the 4th? 

  Last year, we resurrected that tradition, playing audience while Aaron and Lizzie and Matt choreographed the poppers and parachutes and fountains til the dew settled and the smoke settled tight on the grass.  

This summer we have even more reason to party, gathering to measure out sixty years of celebration, dedication and devotion for my mother and father's 60th wedding anniversary. Sixty years is worthy of serious celebration; why not choose July 4th and multi-task the merriment!

Though June has been fraught with worry and weather, decisions and delays, that page is turned and July beckons...count your blessings and enjoy!

In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them.

Aldo Leopold

Adventureland

I can see her now.

Laura and I are having a mid morning snack...maybe an Oreo or a handful of Pretzel Stix, maybe some Koolaid, or perhaps a real treat, a Fizzy, the tablet plopped into cold water in one of those jewel toned aluminum tumblers.  Kid food for the '60s; bright colored, effervescent, and tasting faintly of dissolved metals.  Or perhaps I just imagined that?

But my mother is perched gracefully on a stool at the divider my father built in our suburban home to create a kitchen and a dining room.   In my mind's eye, I picture a plastic tumbler of Pepsi on the counter there, but I don't need my imagination to know she's reading a book.

There were always books.  The folio art books, the German Bible, the volumes of popular fiction by Ernest K. Gann (Fate Is the Hunter) and James Michener, the colorful slip covers of the The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea , all housed on the dining room side of the divider.  The Complete Sherlock Holmes and a hefty volume of Mark Twain were within easy reach on Saturday afternoons whenever my mom popped a big bowl of popcorn.  There was an antique volume on the Great War between two monkish bookends on the bottom shelf of a writing desk in the living room and two volumes of Arnold Toynbee's Study of History.  My father owned Will and Ariel Durant's multi volume Story of Civilization even before the series was completed.  These stately books seemed to me to lend gravity to our suburban existence with their mere presence; Alpha Bits or Sugar Smacks consumed in the same room with the Durants were transformed into brain food.

My parents were the smartest people I knew. I innately realized that this house of books and music was a good place in which to grow up.  And there was no better guide to the wide world of the mind's eye than my mother. It seemed to me that there wasn't a book she hadn't read. My mother was both example and inspiration, leading me down the Book Trail and opening the doors to the old friends she knew and loved and wanted me to meet and love too.

When I see Abbie or Lizzie, Gabe or Aaron, nestled on the couch, oblivious to what anyone else is doing...and even what they should be doing, I am eight years old again on a hot summer's day walking up the narrow sidewalk to the Orland Park Library.  It was a mere four rooms and the cooling effects of the window unit didn't reach much beyond the first room where the librarian waited at her desk to check for our library cards. With the blinds pulled against the hot sun and one light on the ceiling, it was so dim I could barely read the titles on the wall devoted to children's books. Like the grandkids, I read my favorites over and over...all the books by Marguerite Henry and all the books by Walter Farley (yes, there was a horse phase!) I picked out Newberry winners and Nancy Drew mysteries, science fiction by Madeline LÉngle and Ursula LeGuin. Our copies of An Old Fashioned Girl and Eight Cousins had belonged to my mother and were coming unstrung and unglued at home, but, old fashioned girl that I was, I borrowed the sequels to these classics from the library.

As I got older but not old enough for truly adult novels, my mother pointed me to more serious and challenging books she read as a girl....I read my way through thick oilcloth bound volumes of Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard, finally working my way up to the thickest book of them all...The Count of Monte Cristo.  It was short and stout and bound in bright yellow.

I'm still a sucker for the magazine articles that appear seasonally, touting the best summer reads for beach, or travel, novels or history.  My perennial vision of ideal summertime includes a canvas book bag behind the seat of the car and a long week of evenings to browse through.  Convenience makes Amazon the library of choice these days as we anxiously await the summer releases of our favorite thrillers, but Amazon also makes it possible to sample and browse for free, to escape the heat...or the doldrums....just like we did years ago amid the dark and stuffy...and slightly musty...shelves of our small town library.

It's a Jolly Holiday: Father's Day Wishes by Way of Mary Poppins

Oh, it's a jolly holiday with you , Bert

Gentlemen like you are few...

A vanishing breed, that's me...

 Though you're just a diamond in the rough, Bert

Underneath your blood is blue. 

Common knowledge

You'd never think of pressing your advantage.

Forbearance is the hallmark of your creed.

True.

A lady needn't fear when you are near

Your sweet gentility is crystal clear

Oh, its a jolly holiday with you, Bert,

A jolly, jolly holiday with you!

.....from the Disney movie, Mary Poppins

Remember Bert the Chimney Sweep?  How I loved Dick Van Dyke in that role...whimsical, tender, comical, charming. Rub the grime off Bert and you knew he would shine solid gold, eccentricities and all. Even Mary Poppins, she of "practically perfect in every way" favored him with her approval. 

Father's Day is a jolly holiday: traditionally a time for golfing or fishing, or baseball or barbeque, placed on the calendar deep in the heart of June with all the opportunities of the summer's best...and the option to nap in one's recliner if summer presents its worst. Certainly, I wish a full menu of these ordinary pleasures for the fathers I know and love.

But these guys deserve recognition beyond a good steak and an afternoon nap.  We may fall a tad short of "sweet gentility" here in the hinterlands, but scratch under the grime of these fathers and you will find faith and persistence, calluses and self discipline, humor, patience and the willingness to bear any burden for their family, friends, church, and community.  

Work hard; play hard; rest easy.....

"The Story of your Life is...." Your Pickup (with credit to Tom T Hall)

That line comes to me as I peer through the windshield at the 5 foot of white gravel that constitutes the range of my headlights. I drive slowly anyway as the stillness of an summer evening cooling down to dew point holds the road dust near the ground. But I don't increase my speed once I reach the blacktop; the glass prisms on my decade old Dodge are yellowed with the automobile equivalent of cataracts. Its difficult to switch gears without outrunning your night vision, but I guess its just as well that the red pickup and I are neck and neck in terms of age and mileage.

When I meet someone on the road who says 'Well, I've scared the deer away for you'. I laugh. 'Remember what I'm driving! There is no place to put any deer damage on this truck! You want your kids safe on prom night? This is the truck they should be driving." Its no exaggeration. Fourteen years and 300,000 miles of farm roads, hitching, unhitching and pulling a fifth wheel, and Lord knows how many blown out tires on I-80 have given the red pickup the complexion of a demolition derby.

But, as Tom T. Hall notes, the story of your life is in your face. Its written there in little tiny lines. The stories of our life are written in our vehicles, the consequence of the decisions made to "drive it one more year unless something REALLY bad happens..." And the next year's decision, "Well, we never drive it very far anyway; and its certainly not worth anything." Until it becomes almost a source of pride to look at our fleet of rattling old diesel pickups, tallying the miles and forgetting the years.

As a family, we've never really been car people. The car we drove on our honeymoon was a sterling example of American hubris and shoddy design, a baby blue Ford Torino with a minuscule back window and an engine that drank gas and oil in roughly equal quantities. It was the '70s, you know. My parents had a 25 ft. long Plymouth Fury, but while I was at college, it was replaced with a tiny little yellow Toyota. Change was in the wind.

The wind of change for us was the arrival of a baby girl and, shortly thereafter, another baby girl. Your treasured offspring do not ride in noxious Ford Torinos. We were young, we were broke, and we ordered the most stripped down model of the boxy little Ford Fairmont available. We had two car dealers in Tarkio back then, you know. Our concession to comfort was air conditioning; our concession to style was to choose the color red. It had three speed on the column, vinyl bench seats and four doors. We were a family; it was our family car.

That little Ford lasted a long time, given the standards of the day. We drove it six years and 103,000 miles. By the time we traded it, only two doors would open and shut and only the passenger window worked anymore. We drove that car to South Dakota, Colorado, the Grand Canyon, Kitty Hawk, Cooperstown, as well as the country roads of Atchison county. Our kids wore their seat belts, but they were far from the 40 something pounds and inches required by regulation these days.

Blake's pickups were not so long lived. The red and white Ford he and Kevin shared when we married was replaced by a blue Chevy when the Ford ceased to perform any of the functions a vehicle should without human intervention. We borrowed Grandpa's "new" pickup the week before Lee's due date because the roads were so bad and Blake's pickup too unreliable. The blue Chevy perished in the driveway when it overheated and the aluminum engine block splintered.  It was followed by a 1982  two tone gold Ford, the color scheme just as ugly then as it sounds today.  The '80s were bad years for farming as well as pickups; we endured that pickup for eight interminable years and three engines before what was left of the thing became scrap in 1990. 

I could go on.  In a triumph of hope over experience, our love affair with diesels has led to a stubborn refusal to admit that diesel engines and passenger car transmissions are incompatible even after two different cars of different makes in two different decades caught fire and stranded us along I-29.  But our loyalty to Dodge diesel pickups is also sentimental...our aging...and now aged...fleet of grumbling giants would be put out to pasture were they flesh and blood.  When it comes to our pickups, the decades of service take on the gravity of a long business partnership...and its difficult to ditch your partner even if the interior is redolent of mouse and the fabric on the ceiling drifts around your hat like cobwebs.

 Blake and I approach an anniversary with a zero on the end in a couple of years. The tally on the old Dodges is 47 years this summer.  Blake talks about getting a new pickup to drive around, one with paint and satellite radio, doors that seal and an air conditioner that cools. 

One that has a tailgate.

But.. he hasn't done it yet.

Where Time Stands Still

"Baby where's that place where time stands still

I remember like a lover can

But I forget it like a leaver will"

(Mary Chapin Carpenter)

I can answer that question; I've been there. That place where time stands still is way up north, beyond the reach of direct flights or RVs. You must cross the Straits on a ferry and see your luggage arrive on a four wheeled wagon behind a team of shaggy hoofed horses. It might be accompanied by some mulch and a weed whacker....or a 12 pack of Bud Light and 24 rolls of Cottonelle. But once you've pulled up to the entrance of the Grand Hotel, you are subject to the rules and aesthetics and expectations of another time. Let go of the present: it's hurry, it's preoccupations, it's media barrage, it's truncated and compressed timeline. Time lingers; time stops, hesitates, lingers and moves along with reluctance on Mackinac Island.

It is by design, of course. The first horseless carriage arrived on the island, then spluttered and smoked and coughed to such an extent that the Carriage operators complained vociferously. They were either genuinely annoyed on behalf of their animals...or perhaps prescient about the way their island transportation monopoly would be affected by self determination. Either way, they had power at the polls and voted the pesky gasoline monsters off the island, Survivor style.

With automobiles forbidden, the air is ripe with horsy smells and jingling with horsy sounds. Tourists travel to their destinations by the dozen behind blinkered pairs of patient behemoths. Their suitcases and carryons cling together by virtue of shrink wrap or balance precariously on the handlebars of practiced cyclists. Spring is barely come this last day of May. The visitors in shorts and tees appear to be out of sync not just with the seasons, but also with the era; the bellmen are red capped and red caped; the guests are handed actual keys instead of the ubiquitous magnetic entry cards.

  Etiquette is observed at the Grand Hotel. There is HighTea with a harpist performing for those wishing to partake and those curious to observe the ritual. Etiquette is the kind of stodgy old fashioned word appropriate to a place where being seated for the evening meal means walking down a mirrored aisle fit for an audience with the Queen.

Downtown Mackinac has its quota of fudge makers and t shirt stores....frequented by those, no doubt, who failed to add a sweatshirt or fleece to their summer resort wear. But walk the Pontiac trail along the West Bluff and enter the 19th century when well-heeled Midwesterners brought their families north to vacation and rich ones built gingerbread palaces with open porches to catch the summer breezes and glassed sunrooms to turn them away. On this day, the homes are silent save for a couple of guys who might be on perennial painting duty. Fish scales, spool-and-spindle, sun bursts, or festoons require the kind of care and artful makeup of an aging diva. All this for a short summer that left the mansions to face the frigid icy winters after their people deserted the island in October.

There's not much suspense on Mackinac, just the stately rhythm of time passing to the accompaniment of horses' hooves, the wind in the flags, the cries of the gulls and the unrushed greetings of those who meet afoot or on two wheels on the narrow paths. It is a place apart, where past and present coexist, where cell phones work, but courtesy keeps them on buzz, where you expect Patrick Swayze in the ballroom and the sparkle of the evening meal evokes the Titantic.

And yesterday pedaling down 4th Avenue, between the stalls and the bookshops

The sepia tones of a lost afternoon cradled a curio storefront

And inside the air was thick with the past, as the dust settled onto his heart

And here for a moment is every place in the world and ideas are like stars.

(Mary Chapin Carpenter)

Posted with Blogsy