Boyes Hot Springs

Walt and I are fans of the PBS show, Check Please, Bay Area, hosted by wine educator Leslie Sbrocco.  It is a show where three people share their favorite restaurants and all three check out all three restaurants and then appear on the show to discuss them.  We don't watch the show regularly, but catch it when we can.

We wanted to see the show that was aired this past week because it featured the restaurant Don Giovanni, in Napa.  It is Char's favorite wine region restaurant and we had hoped to take Caroline there, but time got away from us.  We remember eating there once and we always enjoy the Check Please crew discussing restaurants where we have eaten. 

(99% of the time even with restaurants that sound really good, we never visit them, so I suppose watching this show is our way of living vicariously.)

Each show features three restaurants and one of the others on the Don Giovanni show was El Molino Central, a little hole in the wall place in Boyes Hot Springs, which the woman who recommended it (and the other panelists) said had the best Mexican food they had ever tasted.

While I marked this as a place I would really like to go should ever find ourselves in the area, it was "Boyes Hot Springs" that mostly interested me.  It's unlikely we will be there any time soon.  The last time I remember being there was in May of 1996, the week David died, when we attended the wedding of our Malaysian "son," Vince, who lived with us for three years.

It was a weird wedding because we were, understandably, all emotional and still in shock.  We were seated at a big table with one other couple.  The table was near the door and every so often one or two of us would leave and go outside, cry, and then come back inside.  At one point all six of us, along with Vince, were standing in a circle all crying.  We finally had to let the poor couple at the table know what was going on.

However, prior to Vince's wedding I don't think I had been there since I was a child.

Boyes Hot Springs was where our family went for three or four years on vacation.  We stayed at Sunnyside Cottages, a collection of six little cottages owned by the Ratto family, where people would come from San Francisco and spend a couple of weeks.  I know that the first year we went was the year I was 6 or 7 because that was the year my mother finally had my Shirley Temple curls cut off.  It was so emotional for her, that she had to leave while it was done and didn't come back until the curls were all gone.

I don't really remember what our cottage looked like, but I do remember that it did not have a refrigerator--it had an ice box and the ice man would come (daily? weekly?) and deliver a big block of ice that we used to keep food cold.  I guess we must have had a kitchen that my mother cooked in, but I don't remember that.

One of my strong memories was a Sunday morning when my mother was getting us ready to go to Mass and dressed my little sister in some frilly dress and let her wander outside while she finished her own dressing.  When she got outside, Karen was sitting on the ground pouring dirt over her head.

My strongest memory is when my mother and a couple of other women went berry picking on the hill across the road and stepped in a hornet's nest.  The other women ran down the hill to the creek but my mother was determined not to lose the berries she had picked and climbed up the hill, hornets following her.  She proudly said that she didn't lose a berry, though she had lots of stings for her effort!  I remember that she had a scarf tied around her head and when she undid the scarf, two hornets few out.

My father built a portable swimming pool to bring to the cottages one year.  It was built of wood, with seats at each end, and had a waterproof tarp tied to the sides, so we could fill it with water and at least cool off by sitting in cool water.

The main attraction of the area was the hot springs.  I remember it as being huge, which may be because I was so young, but the main pool was Olympic size and my father taught me to swim in the shallow end and by the time we stopped going to Boyes Hot Springs, I was shaking in terror at the top of the high dive trying to get the courage to jump off (I used to think of that when I watched my kids diving off the high diving board when they were on the diving team)

There was also a warmer pool, but I don't remember that one well.  However, I do remember the hot spa, with the steam rising off the water, and people sitting around in it enjoying the hot water.  I also remember that the wooden floor always felt a little slimy under my feet.  I didn't spend a lot of time in that pool.

There was a large snack bar area at one end of the Olympic pool and music played all the time.  Whenever I hear a recording of Nat King Cole singing "Mona Lisa," I am immediately drawn back to that snack bar and buying rainbow taffy.

In doing research to write this, I found an article written by the daughter of the folks who built Sunnyside Cottages, talking about her memories of the families who came from San Francisco to spend vacations there.  I couldn't help it.  I sent her an e-mail.  There is nobody in my life who remembers those days now and it was nice to find someone out there who does.

No More Laundry!

My mother and I spent an hour looking at each other yesterday, with occasional brief conversation about how beautiful her floral arrangements were and who is that strange man in the picture on her dresser (her husband), but really there was absolutely nothing to talk about.  She wants to know what I'm doing that's exciting and, in truth there is nothing on my calendar this week, so I had nothing to tell her.

I'm going to have to get better about making up exciting stories for her, though I did tell her that I have an upcoming radio interview about the summer season in Sacramento and her response to that was "Oh?  Aren't those flowers beautiful?"

I would have suggested that we go for a walk in the garden or something but (a) it was hot out and (b) she was barefoot, so I figured that could be a suggestion for a later, cooler date.

But actually, I am encouraged to see that the move to memory care seems to have been good for her.  With increased contact by the staff, she can't just lie in her bed all day any more and that seems to be a good thing.  She's not exactly a social butterfly, but I she does seem brighter these days.

Her laundry hamper is still missing.  They told me to label it (it's rather unique looking so I'm not sure why it needs to be labeled), but by the time I got back with a Sharpie, it had disappeared and I have not seen it since.  But I also didn't see any dirty laundry lying around.  

When I left her, I met with Jen, who is in charge of memory care (technically it's called "life guidance," which seems a strange euphemism).  She actually acknowledged having received my email (be still my heart) and she asked me if I had been given a copy of the assessment on my mother done by "the other side" before she moved in (no).  She gave me a copy which I read before seeing my mother.  I had a few question about it, so we met after my visit and I found her delightfully forthcoming.  She also gave me the web address for a SurveyMonkey questionnaire about my mother's background and her likes and dislikes.  Presumably this will help them set up some sort of a program for her.

But my big question was about laundry and she told me that the staff does the laundry, so I'm off the hook after 4 years.  I am not sad about that.

I let her know where I have put her supply of Depends and pee pads and mentioned the odd places where I'd found the used ones in her old apartment when we were cleaning up (the oven?).  Jen said she found them stuffed between the mattresses in her new place.

The other interesting thing was that in her old apartment she had necklaces that she laid out on her dresser and kept fiddling with them to make sure they were in a straight line.  When I decided to take her jewelry box home to prevent pilferage, I left a small box and a few things in it and I noticed that box is now opened and two more necklaces are now laid out on top of the dresser.  She doesn't wear them, she just arranges them.  I wish I knew what that was about.

In the evening, I fixed our last Blue Apron meal.  The chicken had been sitting in the freezer for several weeks, since it arrived when Caroline was here and there was not enough for three.  The recipe was for "chicken under a brick" and was apparently an old Italian way of cooking chicken to retain all the juices.  For the "brick," they had me use a pot of water that I periodically pressed down on the chicken as it cooked (foil was over the chicken).  

I found the end result, for this last of the Blue Apron meals, very disappointing.  Though I cooked it the minimum amount suggested, the skin burned and the flesh was very dry.

This compared to Home Chef, which I am loving because the recipes aren't as complicated and they have ingredients you can actually go out and buy for yourself, if you want to recreate the meal.  And so far everything has been very good.  I'm glad I made the switch.

After dinner, we watched two documentaries which I am going to suggest people check out, if you have not already.  One was Carl Reiner's "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast." The 95 year old Reiner gathered a bunch of nonagenarians and centenarians to show how it is possible to stay active and engaged long after retirement. 

The show is delightful, inspiring and depressing all at the same time.  Depressing because these are people without memory impairment and, in fact, they do discuss that all this is possible if you do not have memory impairment.  But he interviewed the likes of Dick VanDyke (still dancing at 90), Betty White (95), Mel Brooks (91), Norman Lear (91), a woman who is running marathons at 100 and many other people who are living happy, productive lives into their 90s and see their involvement in activities that they love as one of the reasons they are still around.  

It's such a fun show and you marvel at what these people are doing with their lives.

The other documentary is no less compelling than Reiner's special, though I suggest watching it some day other than the one on which you watch Reiner's.  It's also an HBO documentary called Cries from Syria, which takes a harrowing look at the humanitarian crisis in Syria and the devastating civil war.  It is not easy to watch but I felt it important to know what we are doing and what the results are in Syria (when our buddy Russia came in to "help" it bombed 22 hospitals and killed many children).  It will leave you shaken, but it will be difficult to be dispassionate about what is happening in that part of the world again.

Curl Up with a Good Book

It was the middle of the afternoon and I had a choice of going to Atria, or just getting in a comfy chair and reading.  I chose reading.  In many question memes that I have answered over the years, I might be asked something like "how often do you read?"  I always answer that there isn't a day when I'm not reading.

But not lately.

The last book I finished was a month ago and I have read almost nothing since then.  No real reason, but it just somehow seems like too self-indulgent to just sit. and read.

Of course it's not self indulgent to sit and watch an NCIS rerun that I've seen a dozen times before.

I've decided that I miss reading and I need to set aside a period of time each day to read.  Somehow this move to memory care makes me feel comfortable taking a day or two off and indulging myself by curling up with a good book.

It's not that what I'm reading right now is gripping.  I saw actor Jeffrey Tambor plugging his new autobiography and checked it out on Amazon awhile ago.  (The book is so new he talks about the Trump presidency in it.)  I did one of those "Look Inside" clips that Amazon offers and read that he was born in San Francisco.  When he said that he grew up on "31st Avenue, which was thirty-one blocks and change from the Pacific Ocean" (which is not true), I decided I wanted to read the whole book.  (In fact, I tweeted Tambor about his error.  He "liked" my tweet, but did not comment)

[There are 42 Avenues to the ocean, which means that 31st avenue is more like 11 blocks, not 31 blocks.]

Anyway, I started reading his book and am enjoying it.  As I said, it's not riveting.  I am not rushing to find out what happens next, but it's a fun book and unlike a lot of autobiographies in that it doesn't fire a straight line from birth to today but bounces around like the whole thing is free association. Also, he is quite erudite and his language draws me in.  I have always been attracted by good writing, and this is good writing.

But my reading was augmented by the fact that I was sitting in front of the (turned off) TV and had my remote controls in hand.  When he started talking about how he got cast for Arrested Development, he was talking about a very popular show, but one I had never seen.  I checked Netflix and discovered that Season 1 is available on Netflix, so I took a break from the book to watch the first few episodes of the show, so I knew more about what he was talking about.

So I spent about 2 hours with Tambor's book and decided that I need to do more of that sort of things.  I hope to set aside an hour (minimum) a day to just read.  I have read only nine books since the first of the year, and that must be a record low for me.  Of course, much of my time, if only mental time, has been centered on getting my mother settled in memory care, but she's settled now and it's time to schedule reading again.  I should do that in the morning, when I know my mother is still asleep and I don't feel the need to rush off to Atria.

(The thing about having a Kindle is that I'm in the middle of about four books now and it would be nice to finish them all!)

The other thing I did yesterday is to check the Compassion bloggers.  A group of six sponsors are on a trip to Kenya to check out Compassion centers and visit their sponsored child(ren).  

 

I periodically get invitations to join one of these groups to visit one of my kids somewhere in the world.  It would be nice to be able to travel to one of these poverty areas and see first hand what life is like and why I continue to sponsor kids.  Especially Kenya, where I sponsor ten kids (technically, I only "sponsor" two of those, but I write to ten, so I think of them all as my sponsored kids).

Photos like this make me wish I could join them

But there are several things which keep me from wanting to go with one of these groups.  A photo like this, taken of the group walking into the 2nd largest slum in the area around Nairobi (over 600,000 people), where they began is one reason.

I have read blog entries from bloggers who have made other trips like this and report walking a mile or two to get to the homes they are visiting, and since I have difficulty staggering from my desk to the refrigerator, I know that I would not be physically able to keep up.

There are other reasons, but that and the cost are the biggies.  But I do like to get a sense of what it is like and the plethora of photos shared on the Compassion page allows me to be there in spirit. 

One blogger wrote, In a political climate where we hear so much about who gets in and who needs to leave and where we draw the line and where we build walls, it’s easy to lose sight of such a simple truth: we belong to each other. And today, as we left the church where we had been welcomed and loved so lavishly and unconditionally, we felt such a sense of belonging with the Maasai.

The stories these bloggers tell make me understand the difference Compassion makes in the lives of so many children and keeps me going as a sponsor.

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing: The Random Questions, Part 683 

1. How old do you look?
Well, I'm 74 and nobody ever believes I'm that old, but I don't know how old they think I look since they often think my mother is in her 70s, and she's 97.  Obviously we come from good genes.

2. Where do you live?
80 miles east of San Francisco, 20 miles west of Sacramento smack dab in the middle of the state.

3. Are you waiting for something?
Not really.  I'm always waiting, not happily, for a call that something has happened to my mother.  Every time the phone rings, that's my first thought

4. What’s one pet peeve of yours that is not common?
The sound of the vacuum cleaner drives me crazy.

5. Do you want/have kids?
We raised five children to adulthood and then buried two of them.  Now we have three living children and two grandchildren.

6. Have you ever thought about converting your religion?
Many years ago, in the midst of the pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church, I gave up going to church in disgust at the duplicity (among other things).  I have not returned.  I don't know if I still think of myself as Catholic or not, but have not investigated other religions.  I think of myself as spiritual, but not religious.

7. Last shocking news you heard?
I haven't checked the news today, so I don't know what terrible thing Trump has done now, but starting to pull out of the Paris Accord was the last shocking news I heard.  But with this president, the shocking news changes from day to day.

8. What was the last thing you drank?
I'm still drinking it - a cup of Peet's French Roast coffee.

9. Who do you most look like in your family?
People tell me I look like my mother, and I can see resemblance, but I can also see resemblance to my father.

10. If you could have something right now, anything, what would it be?
A donut (I missed celebrating National Donut Day yesterday)

11. Where does most of your family live?
We live in Davis, near my mother.  Son Ned and his wife live 15 miles away in Sacramento, Tom and is family live 400 miles away in Santa Barbara, and Jeri and her husband live waaaay across the country, in Boston.

12. Where did you grow up?
I was born and raised in San Francisco (a 3rd generation San Franciscan and proud of it)

13. Where do you want to go on vacation?
Other than going to Santa Barbara for the 4th of July weekend, we have no vacation plans.  I don't want to do another long vacation while my mother is still with us

14. Have you ever had a panic attack?
Not a full blown panic attack, but mini attacks when I'm driving or riding on the freeway.

15. What can’t you wait for?
Autumn and the return of cool weather (and the hot weather hasn't really even hit yet!)

16. When’s the last time you told someone you loved him or her and meant it?
I try to tell my mother that whenever I leave her, because I never know if it's the last time I'll see her or not (yes, I have become fatalistic)

17. Have your parents ever smoked pot?
No.  Nor have I.  I was a child in the age of Reefer Madness and my father instilled such fear in me that I made it through the 60s without ever trying it.

18. Want someone back in your life?
Yes. 

19. What do you order at the bar?
Water.  If I have to order a drink-drink, it's usually a gin and tonic.

20. When was the last time you cried really, really hard?
I can't really remember.  Probably six years ago (see question #18)

21. What are your nicknames?
Other than grandma and mom, none.

22. What is your favorite thing to eat with peanut butter?
A spoon.  Both Walt and I snack on peanut butter right from the jar.

23. Where were you on July 4th, 2008?
Thanks to a daily journal and an index to every entry, I know exactly where I was.  I was in Santa Barbara, watching the hills above Goleta burn.  I was sitting in a house, trying to keep from choking on the smoke.  I knew danger to us was slight, but I still took precautions.

 

24. If you could go forward in time, how far forward would you go?
40 years from now to read history books and see how this time in history is remembered (and to see how horrible it became)

25. If you could go back in time, how far back would you go?
If I could go back in MY time, it would probably be to the early 1980s, when I was working with the Lamplighters and when all of my friends and children were all alive.  1980-86 was a good period for me.

Saturday 9 / Time Goes By so Slowly

Saturday 9: Lazy Bones (1975) (Leon Redbone)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) This song is about a guy who'd rather nap than do his chores. Are there things you should be doing right now, instead of hanging around the blogosphere, answering these questions?
Pick a chore, any chore.  There are always things I should be doing instead of hanging around on the blogosphere and answering questions. 

2) This song mentions a lazy afternoon of fishing. When did you last go fishing?
I was a little kid.  I have no clue how old.  It was the only time (that I can remember) that I ever fished.  We were on my grandfather's boat in Tomales Bay (Inverness) and I was fishing for crab using string and bacon.  I don't remember catching anything.

3) The lyrics catch our hero sleeping in both the sun and the shade. Do you have a nice, shady place to nap on your front lawn? Or would we catch you lying in the sun?
You will never catch me lying in the sun.  It drains my energy and I burn easily.  As for a place to nap on our front lawn, it's a minor traffic thoroughfare so even if I would like to lie in the sun, that would definitely not be the place.

4) This week's featured artist, Leon Redbone, is a difficult man to nail down. Over the years he's claimed to be born in Ontario, and Philadelphia, and even Cyprus. Tell us about a time you got caught in a fib.
Nothing comes immediately to mind.

5) Mr. Redbone has said that taking himself too seriously would be "the gentle kiss of death." What's something that you always take seriously and just can't joke about?
Hey, Leon.  Death can be funny!  Heartbreak is nothing to joke about.

6) He has retired from public life, and that includes his Facebook page, which is no longer available. What did you last post to your Facebook page?
I post many things a day.  The last thing I posted before writing this was a link to an article about Trump ditching LGBT Pride Month celebrations.  I added the comment:  "Of course. I think I've reached outrage burnout."

7) Leon always wore dark glasses when he performed. Do your sunglasses have gray, green, brown or rose colored lenses?
They are sunglasses that go over my regular glasses and are tinted kind of a greyish blue, I think.

8) Recently Dick Van Dyke performed this song at a charity benefit, aided by his a capella quartet, The Vantastix. Last year, at age 90, he campaigned for Bernie Sanders. So Mr. Van Dyke is certainly not a "lazy bones." Who's the most active, energetic person in your life?
Granddaughter Brianna (age 9), who has more energy than anybody else I know.  She's the Energizer Bunny.

9) Random question: You're at dinner with friends and someone begins a very long joke with, "Stop me if you've heard this before." You have heard it, many times before. Do you stop him? Or do you just sit through it again?
Hey...my mother has dementia.  I sit through it again and again and again and again and then once again.

PART 2:  TIME GOES BY SO SLOWLY

My mother often comments that time passes too quickly and that you can't slow it down, but I've discovered that time in the memory unit passes by very slowly.  At least if you don't live there full time.

Today Walt and I went to visit her, and shortly before noon, someone came to make sure she was coming to lunch.  We went to the dining room, and no tables were set.  We sat there for about 20 minutes before they finally got silverware and napkins on, eventually a cup of soup, and finally some fish tacos.  This all took about half an hour before we actually started eating.

The parade of residents into the dining room is one of those things that make you wonder if my mother belongs there.  There are people like her (we sat with a woman like that, who appears to be in better shape, until you try to follow her conversation and then realize that she is not) and then there are the people who seem almost catatonic.  There is one table where they always seat four women who need a lot of help, each of whom seems to be in a daze, one whose body is so rigid that she can't right herself if she tips to the side.  She has to be fed and can barely get the food into her mouth.

In the main restaurant, not in the memory unit, lunch usually lasts about 30 minutes.  Lunch today lasted nearly an hour and a half.  But then...what does anybody in the memory unit need to rush for...?

Still trying to get money ironed out.  The $18,000 bill, for example.  Which the bookkeeper assures me is not correct.  But it bothers me that the woman who bills people, who deals with the books, cannot tell me for sure what the fixed rent in the memory unit is without doing a lot of searching through the computer and ultimately had to tell me that she would send me an e-mail and let me know  She also asked if I had an e-mail address.  I said "it's on the e-mail I sent you" (which she appeared not to have read)

Also, the boss lady of the memory unit received my note with about 8 questions, of which she answered one and assured me she was always available for me to ask questions (though since my mother moved in, I have not seen her).  Also, the woman who was in charge when she was in her old apartment seems totally disinterested now that she is in the memory unit, about which she says she knows nothing.

Fortunately these are my frustrations, but time goes by so slowly and I'm sure that in Atria Time all of the questions will be answered.  In the meantime, with increased social interaction, my mother actually seems much better than she used to -- at least she's not spending all her time in her room looking at trees.  That's worth the price of my own frustrations.

Doing it on Compulsion

Have you ever seen the show called Talk Stoop?  It is a show .... if you can call it a "show" ... that has always fascinated me because I can't figure out the whole reason for it.  The host, Cat Greenleaf, sits on the stoop of her house in Brooklyn (apparently it really is her house) with her bull dog Gracie and interviews celebrities.

 

It's an interesting concept, and Gracie makes the show for me, but it's not a show per se, it's about 5 minutes, if that, long.  And what's the point?  You rarely get anything substantive from it and it always leaves you wanting more.  If it has a sponsor I don't know what it is!

Well, it wasn't until I went looking for a photo of Cat and Gracie that I discovered it's a real show when taped  It runs for 15 minutes, not 5, and is broadcast in the top nine American markets.  The interviews last 15-20 minutes, which is longer than most celebrity interviews on talk shows.  According to the stats I saw, it is watched by about approximately 12 million viewers a month.  I wonder how many of those get the abbreviated version that we get here, as a filler during a commercial break for another show.  I did a search locally, and it is not listed here.

I was thinking about the show this evening because one of the celebrities today was a girl who, I think, is a judge on the latest dancing show (I don't watch it so I don't know the title).  She was telling Cat that you don't become a dancer to become rich.  You do it because you have no choice.  You have to dance.  It's a compulsion that you can't really stifle.

I understand that.  It's how I feel about writing. I have always written and from grammar school was carrying on regular correspondence with friends and pen pals. 

(I remember a pen pal fight that a friend of mine and I had about a boy in our class.  She insisted he was her boyfriend. I responded with that he was MY boyfriend, and the letters went back and forth, each "MY" written larger than the one before it.  We never settled the question, but he's gay anyway, so I suppose it didn't matter!)

I was such a bookworm, devouring all the fiction I could get my hands on that it's a shame I never honed any fiction talent.  I just never had a thought in my head about plots.  They say that a real author carries around hundreds of plots, all just waiting to be written.  Ask me to come up with a plot and I can't think of one, let alone hundreds.

But I love to write letters, journals, answers to questions, theater reviews, and, when the paper used to pay for them, feature stories.  When I am feeling nervous or restless, one way I calm myself down is to find something to write.  It's what keeps Funny the World going for more than 17 years now!

It used to be that I hand wrote everything, but after I discovered the joys of typing, I rarely wrote anything any more.  My hands fly over a keyboard so fast they can keep up with what is going on in my head, where it takes longer to write something and I am always editing myself to make things shorter (maybe I should do that with my typing too!). 

Occasionally, doing research for something you are writing leads to very unexpected places.  Tonight, for example, I was struggling with what I was going to write and I came across an article in something called "Chicago Now" which is titled "40 really awful writing prompts."

And they are.  Really awful. "tell the story of a single raspberry that is possessed by the devil," "a man awakens to find all of his socks are gone," "Describe your recent bowel movement, using all your senses." and so on.  I will spare you any attempt to follow any of these prompts, but one of them was so weird that I had to do a google search and I learned more about the wonderful world of nature, specifically duck sex, which I found in in a blog called "Science Blogging."

Female ducks can thank evolution for avoiding becoming impregnated by undesirable but aggressive males endowed with large corkscrew-shaped penises: vaginas with clockwise spirals that thwart oppositely spiraled males. That's right, males are literally screwed.

The research on this evolutionary 'battle of the sexes' at the genitalia level were described in the December 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"In species where forced copulation is common, males have evolved longer penises, but females have coevolved convoluted vaginas with dead-end cul-de-sacs and spirals in the opposite direction of the male penis," said Patricia L.R. Brennan, lead author of the paper and postdoctoral researcher in the Yale Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "This coevolution results from conflict between the sexes over who is going to control fertilization."

I really have nothing to add to this, but aren't you glad I was trying to figure out what to write tonight.  I will go to sleep envisioning duck sperm trying to navigate the maze of a female's vagina.  And I won't look at ducks in quite the same way again.

All About Tip Toe

I finished binge-watching the remaining 6 or 7 episodes of Grace and Frankie today.  Such a good show, for those of you with Netflix who have not watched it.  So glad to hear that it has been renewed for Season 4.

To justify 3+ hours of un-interrupted TV watching I combined it with going through some of those boxes we brought home from my mother's.  There are still oh so many boxes left, but, sadly they are all filled with framed photos and photograph albums that I don't have a clue what I'm going to do with, except add them to all the boxes upstairs filled with more framed photos.  What does one do with framed photos????

But once again, I am going through every slip of paper, every photo album (throwing away the ones that are filled with pictures of people I don't know) and reminiscing.  For example I found a collection of photos taken at our 1982 family reunion where my now-deceased cousin Clancy got drunk and threw EVERYBODY into the motel swimming pool, including the then-72 year old aunt Marie. 

[Aside:  My memory of this free-for-all was being shocked that this old lady would be treated so shamefully...and now I realize she was 2 years younger than I am now!]

We had a Brasilian student with us, his first couple of days of a 3-week stay.  He was the worst student we ever had, but things got off to a very bad start at the reunion when he was tossed in the pool...he didn't want to be there in the first place, but being tossed into the pool was the final insult.  His home stay went downhill from there.

 

But one find in among the "crap" was a book of writings of my aunt Barb, who was a wonderfully witty writer whom I aspire to emulate.  I loved her memories of "Tip Toe," and reprint it here.

Besides our mother, Tip Toe was probably one of the greatest loves in our father's life.  He never really spoke of her in terms of endearment, but one could tell his feelings for her were a bit out of the ordinary.

Our mother took this affair in stride, as she did so many things in life -- but the day came when the "foot" had to be stomped, the voice raised a few decibels and a decision made.

Tip Toe had suffered a stroke of sorts and her legs had become paralyzed.  Dad, in his tender caring ways, wanted to bring her much close to the house to tend to her, but mother stood with one of her "not in my lifetime" decisions.  Father knew better than to belabor the point.

Of course the reasoning behind mom's resentment was that Tip Toe was a pig -- ad beautiful, very large 200 lb sow.

Dad had built a small enclosure for her on one side of the corral facing the barn - one side facing the house and the other two sides facing the mountains to the west.  She was usually in his line of sight no matter where he was as he went about his daily chores.

I was never allowed to go to her "bedroom" but was allowed to stand on the fence and watch as dad practically spoon fed her, rubbed her back and legs, and helped her move to a clean bed of straw every day.

Actually, she never had a name until her illness.  It was her hind legs that had been affected, but she managed to move herself about with the front ones standing on "Tip Toe" and dragging her rear parts behind.

I have no recollection of time as it applies to just how long she lived with her affliction, but the day she left this piggly world will always be a day that I will remember.

Whether our dad finally put her out of her misery or if she died of natural causes has long been in dispute.  Dad never said, and no one ever asked.  It happened one summer morning as six of us children and our mother were sitting at the breakfast table waiting for dad to come in from early chores.  When he finally joined us, one could tell something terrible had happened.  It was the only time in my life that I ever saw my father cry.  "Tip Toe was dead."  With that announcement from him, the crying was unanimous.  Even our mother wiped away a tear.

The next problem before the family was what do we do with a very dead, very large Tip Toe.  Should she be sold for meat, rendered for fat, or should we dig a rave, put up a marker and pray the coyotes would ignore it?  As all of these options were discussed, father was silent.  He didn't eat breakfast that morning, just sipped his coffee in silence.  As we all chattered about the disposition of our favorite pig, dad, in his own quiet way, concluded that he and he alone would take care of her.  He wanted no help and hoped we would understand.

That day there was a quiet in our house that had never been before or since.  We all walked softly, talked quietly, and the squabbling among us was minimal.  We sat in groups of two or three and wondered, and as we wondered there was a great noise of sawing and pounding going on in the lumber shed and we surmised that dad was building a coffin for his beloved Tip Toe and that we were going to have a funeral.

Late in the day, the pounding ceased and a worn and tired father came in to say that he had built a sled of sorts and that Tip Toe would be tied on it.  With the truck, he would pull the sled down the hill and across the valley to an old abandoned mine shaft and there Tip Toe would be deposited in her final resting place.

By early evening, Tip Toe was securely tied to the make shift contraption and my brother Scotty was allowed to help, but was told that he would not be able to go the final mile with them.

The six of us sat on the front porch with our mother and listened for sounds across the valley.  As it grew dark and lights from way over by the mine flickered on and off, we knew our dad was on the way home.

Summer nights on the front porch at the ranch are still one of my favorite memories.  Our mom would usually sing to us.  Sometimes crazy little songs she made up, sometimes the old classics or glorious hymns.  The night TipToe was buried was a night of hymns.