My Most Memorable Thanksgiving

A Rhode Island born and bred girl, I went far away for college in the big wide-open state of Montana.  I knew not a soul within 180 miles of Montana State University in Bozeman.  I didn't have a car, just feet, legs and a bicycle for locomotion.  My second year of college I moved off-campus and shared a basement apartment with a girl I'd never met in my life.  This turned out to be a good choice: Cathy Buck was very welcoming.

When Thanksgiving rolled around, Cathy invited me home with her to Geraldine, Montana.  It was a long ride in a big blue comfortable gas guzzler car.  It was 1977.  The ride itself took almost all day.  I don't remember much about the ride.  I don't recall the food we ate.  What I remember is our arrival at the Buck Ranch.  There was a large arch of a sign over the driveway that proclaimed 'Buck Ranch' at the top of it.  For all intents and purposes, the driveway was a road, about 1/4 to 1/2 mile long, deep in snow.  Cathy looked over at me and quietly said, "Hold on."  We flew over the top of the snow till we got to the house.  Her family welcomed us inside: 5 kids, 2 parents- like mine in number.

I slept in the same room with the 3 sisters and her brothers slept outside in the bunkhouse with the ranch hands.  The next day, Thanksgiving, we must have eaten.  It was grey. It was snowing.  I could see the butte out the kitchen window, an amazing geological outcropping.  After dinner the radio blared "Bad weather, icy conditions- stay home and stay safe."  The phone rang.  Next thing I know we're zooming off to Fort Benton to meet Cathy's cousins.  We played pool, drank beer, and shut down the bar.  Then we played crack the whip on the street in Fort Benton, Montana.

And that, Dear Reader, is my most memorable and wonderful Thanksgiving!

Early One Morning

Early one morning at Sunnyfield Farm in Middletown, Rhode Island, the cows were ready for milking.  Two farm hands were missing.  The other two men milked as many cows as they could.

It was still dark outside and it was autumn cool.  It was many decades ago and one of the farm hands was my step-grandfather, who told my father this story.  Both are gone now, so I am telling you the tale that happened so long ago.

If you tell a person that they cannot do something, they will always find a way.  The era of Prohibition made many men wealthy.  It was all about connections: knowing the able bodies, the empty barns, the source of the liquor, choosing the right boats, time and place for pick-up and delivery.

On an island as Middletown is on, one fellow would call the police, distracting them to the opposite end of the island, while the crime was being committed.  For whatever reason, the ploy did not work out this particular morning.  The delivery was intercepted just before landing at Third Beach boat ramp.

One man evaded the police by jumping out and swimming away in the dark, while the other man, who did not know how to swim, was apprehended and taken away in handcuffs to do time in jail.

The swimmer had not planned on being late for work.  He ran two and a half miles up the road, through the fields,  to Sunnyfield Farms, drenched to the bone, to milk his share of the cows.

It always pays to be able to swim.

RDB

November 17, 2016

Super Moon

The moon is a celebrity tonight.

larger than life,

closer to earth than in most of our lifetimes.

It rises up over Newport Hospital,

then majestically over Mrs. Williams' house,

like a huge honey lollipop in the sky.

We can't quite get our tongues around it

but we devour it with our eyes.

The next morning it's image is front and center,

above the fold of the Daily News.

The night after is even better:  I'm driving.

No, I'm moon-gazing. 

No, I'm driving. 

I'm driving across long narrow bridges spanning the Narragansett Bay,

the still-huge moon shining through transient cloudscape:

Peaking, hiding, beckoning with a half-smile like the Mona Lisa,

all while I've floated across the bridge at a slow steady speed.

Home safe, here is the moon next door, hovering over Mrs. Williams' house again.

RDB

November 15, 2016

Stains are Our Enemy

The laundry became my job at age 8 or 9.

Every other day, before or after school, I would pile clothes for 6 of us into the machine, using Tide, which promised that no stains would remain.

It was the mid-1960s.  Our clothes were all colors: handmade white blouses, a red corduroy jumper, and every color of the rainbow in between.  I never noticed that anything and everything began looking rose-colored.  Nor did anyone else in our house.

I did notice when the blood stain on the knee of my pants did not disappear in the wash.  I re-read the detergent box.  I had clearly followed instructions.  I tried again, washing them a second time.  The pants still sported the ugly stain.

I sat down and wrote a letter to the Tide people, letting them know that their product, which we had used for years for our large family, had failed me.

Several weeks later, when I came home from school, my mother showed me the large box addressed to me, filled with a year's supply of Tide detergent.  I don't remember if they sent an apology.  My mother was flabbergasted at the results of my silent effort.

My life of correspondence had begun!  My father gave me free reign to the postage stamps and my letters remained unedited.

RDB

November 14, 2016

Aunt Marion

Marion Dunlap Hardy

August 1913- August 1991

My Aunt Marion was born 3 years after her brother, Lawrence, in Madison, Wisconsin. 

Her first big achievement took place at age 5  in 1918: she survived a near-fatal case of meningitis.  Her rewards were life and a Schoenhut doll who she sewed clothes for and named Marion.  The doll Marion had a little blue woolen blanket with the initials MD on one corner.  A very sturdy Philadelphia-made doll, it looked like china but was made of unbreakable wood and had working joints. Like my aunt, the doll Marion was a survivor and designed for action.

My Uncle Larry told me that Marion was a tree climber and especially liked scaling a large tree in the city park near their home..  One day, while up in the tree, she made the mistake of looking down and froze.  Her mother, Florence, sent Lawrence out to find her.  Lawrence went home and reported her whereabouts and that it didn't look like she was coming down anytime soon.  Florence made a pan of fudge and sent Lawrence back to the park with it to entice Marion down.  It worked.

I don't really remember meeting my Aunt Marion until I was 8 or 9 years old.  I was dropped off for a few hours while my father taxied my oldest sister to Long Island.   Aunt Marion taught me how to sew, cutting out the material for a little handbag on the large rock in her basement in Stony Creek, Connecticut.  It was summertime and hot.  The cellar was delightfully cool.  My cousin Stephen spent a lot of time down there, too, on projects and reading Tolkien.  Stephen took me out sailing that day to the Thimble islands. 

A couple of years later, my father drove us from our home in Rhode Island to Marion's in Stony Creek, Connecticut for lunch.  I was guilty of tailing my aunt's every move: kitchen to dining room, dining room to kitchen, and so forth.  Everything about her fascinated me: from the green Dippitty-Doo hair gel in the bathroom to the Baked Alaska she mentioned during the meal.  I had never heard of a state going into the oven.

The next year, 1969, my aunt and her husband, my Uncle Edward, moved to Cambridge, England so Edward could take a new position.  Marion and I developed a steady blue air mail correspondence.  I visited 3 times.  She came back 3 times.  She traveled the world with Uncle Edward to places other people did not go back then:  Addis Ababa, Russia, Africa.  Edward was an important person in a tight-knit ecclesiastical world.  He knew 13 languages.  He helped Desmond Tutu learn one of them. 

And now I will tell you, that when Marion died in 1991, 10 years after Edward, I became the keeper of Marion the Schoenhut doll,  who will soon be 100 years old:  Marion the observer and chaperone in our home, one shoe on and one shoe off, still wearing the dress that Marion the girl made for her.

Rowena Dunlap Burke

November 8, 2016

Granddaddy Dunlap Poem

He's a pot belly guy,

Hair as white as snow,

His teeth like ivory,

And his blue eyes glow,

His funny sounding laugh,

And his lively booming voice,

And short stubby whiskers,

(And he's good-looking, too!)


-Rowena Dunlap, 1966