Memoir, from just outside the box
Americana Relish Tray
She wrote…
When I was a social worker in Polson, Montana, one of my clients ran a foster home in a spacious lodge on the west shore of Flathead Lake. The foster mom, Ella, cared for six developmentally disabled teenage girls. Ella and her husband also bred and raised Samoyed dogs.
One day, I went out to their property and sat down at the kitchen table with Ella. I had brought the paperwork for the renewal of their foster home license. After a bit of small talk, from out of the blue Ella said that she was making plans for the Rapture. She had arranged for a friend to euthanize all of the dogs. She wanted to know what I would do with the girls. She had concluded that the developmentally disabled girls would not be taken up in the Rapture. I told her that the State of Montana would make sure the girls were taken care of.
My reply…
In a simple twist of synchronicity, from Tom in Ohio, I have just received an article that appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek titled “Caring for Pets Left Behind in the Rapture.” The article, explaining the Rapture, says that “the righteous will be spirited away to a better place.”
Tom noted, “It’s nice to know that there are still brilliant ideas out there. And, isn’t… a better place… one of Christianity's greatest gifts to humanity?”
The 63-year-old man who came up with the idea, caring for domestic animals banned from the Rapture because they have no souls, promises, for a fee and a ten-year contract, “that the pets that are left behind will have homes with warm-hearted, animal-loving atheists.”
I was in Polson on this sunny morning. After breakfast and the morning paper at the bakery, I took a walk. At one point, I looked down the alley. I saw a rough-around-the-edges couple outside the back door of an upholstery business, leaning against the shaded wall, a smoke break, a moment of pensive silence. My inner camera clicked. The eidetic image had that Edward Hopper feel.
This newspaper obituary grabbed my attention…
“On July 23rd, Shad Marks passed away from a tragic gun accident. Shad lived more in his 20 years than most live in 60 years. He loved to ride motorcycles, four-wheelers and anything that gave him the adrenaline rush, but his real passion was bull riding. He had no fear for life or limb. His motto: Live to Ride, Ride to Live.”
That sentiment must run deep in the family blood. A few paragraphs later, I learned that Shad was preceded in death by both his brothers, Brandon and Damon, and his cousins Derek and Dwayne.
And then there was the obituary of Gerald Riker "Skin" Foster (1920-2009). He was born in Littlefork, Minnesota, the fourth of “seven mischievous children.”
He traveled to Montana for the first time at 16, when he and two buddies jumped into a boxcar at Bemidji, then fell asleep. They awoke in Minot, North Dakota, and decided to ride on to Montana where they spent the summer as part of the crew laying the railroad track from Essex to Rexford. On weekends they rode a handcart into Whitefish for loganberry wine.
In 1944 Skin and his Littlefork sweetheart, Edith "Chuckie" Kjemprud, were married in the hospital where Skin was recovering from wounds received in combat on Guam. In 1950 Skin and Chuckie moved to Whitefish, Montana, where Chuckie raised their five children and Skin hauled logs, graded roads and perpetrated mischief at every opportunity. Skin was full of stories, all of them utterly unbelievable, but mostly true.
She wrote…
I’m glad we got started on the various idioms of our parents’ generation, for example, hotsy totsy, woke up on the wrong side of the bed and 23 skidoo. I looked up 23 skidoo, and now I realize that every American idiom has a specific history, some of those histories fraught with complexity. A chapter in the 23 skidoo story involves one of Manhattan’s most iconic structures, the Flatiron Building. It has a distinctive triangular shape, with Fifth Avenue on one side of the triangle, Broadway angling up towards Fifth on the other. The point of the triangle is on 23rd Street. The triangle shape produces swirling winds around the building, winds made more intense because, 10 yards down from the point of the triangle are double-door entrances on either side, one set leading out to Broadway and the other to Fifth Avenue. A wind tunnel effect was created when both doors were open at the same time. The resulting gusts of wind frequently blew up the skirts of women walking by, which attracted male onlookers who, especially when too numerous or too bawdy, were told to move on by the cops on the beat, who chased off the gawkers by yelling, “23 Skidoo!” and “Scram!”
My reply…
To wake up on the wrong side of the bed means that someone is in a notably irritable or unhappy mood, often due to a rough start to the day. The saying originates from the Roman superstition that getting out of bed with your left leg first was unlucky. This belief led to the practice of carefully getting out of bed on the right side to ensure a good day.
Thought Crime
“In all of recorded human history, the book burners have never been the good guys.”
I love this Americana relish tray.