To Absent Friends

My sister Deb died October 9, 2009, after a 3 and ½ year struggle with cancer. There was a weekend-long memorial at the end of that October. Saturday morning my family gathered and drove up to Brattleboro, Vermont in a borrowed van. My sister Pam made sandwiches so we wouldn’t have to stop to eat on the way. We were there to christen the new trail at Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center, made in honor of Deb’s spirit. My old father stayed behind by the woodstove in the lodge with a few ladies, while the rest of us clambered to the top of Heifer Hill, where we took turns sitting on Deb’s new salamander-shaped memorial bench. There were 5 sisters, 2 brothers, 2 mothers and 2 fathers, one husband and son, a multitude of in-laws, and many friends and students of Deb’s. Her sister Sandy made a beautiful seaglass-on-stone totem spelling out DEB. Her sister Vicky left a gorgeous deep red rose bouquet by the bench. It was a bright crisp autumn day. As we hiked down, a fellow employee of Deb’s pointed out Deb’s favorite tree, which she called ‘Grandfather Maple’. It was a huge old storybook tree with an opening just about my size to slither through. I shared many of Deb’s passions. I slithered through Grandfather Maple as did my friends Elizabeth and Eliot.

My family went back to the motel in the late afternoon and either napped, walked, or swam in the pool before we gathered at 6:30 for a family meal at the Putney Inn. Family was about 60 people, including my young nephew Carl and his cousins in full Halloween regalia. By 7 pm there was still no sign of food or drink so I asked the staff hostess how we could accomplish that. She replied that we all had to be seated at our tables before any libations could be served. I found the man with the most commanding presence and voice and asked him to announce that it was time to be seated. My 93 year old father had told me he was very hungry. I think we all were. Alas, 10 more minutes and we were all seated. The wine came and we ordered our meals. We toasted. We talked Robbie Burns. At 9 pm my father leaned over to me and told me that he needed to lie down, he didn’t feel well. Back to the staff hostess I went, to ask if there might be a bed at the Inn. She pointed to a straight-back wing chair in the lobby. All of a sudden a hush had taken over the room and I knew my father was on the floor. Everyone else was standing up. I went over to the concierge, Kelly, and she’d just called 911. Moments later, a slew of burly EMTs lumbered into the lobby. Kelly informed me that the slew of EMTs was her entire family. I thanked her for her family taking care of my family. I heard later that when the EMTs asked my father if he wanted to go to the hospital, that he gave a firm audible NO, and that everyone laughed. He went. I went to the bar. It was a slow night in the bar, only 2 customers and the bartender. Right away the gentleman customer said to me, “You look like you need a drink, what can I get you?” I had a warm brandy and somehow we got back to the Robbie Burns conversation. I asked him if he worked at the Inn and he told me that he took inventory, gesturing over to the well-stocked bar. I toasted my newly learned Robbie Burns toast, “To absent friends.” Then he told me he lived in the library. At first I thought he meant that he spent a lot of time at the library, but no, this man lived in the old library in town, which had been replaced 6 years earlier with a new, bigger version. He said people still came banging on the door, people who were coming back to visit.

After a while Kelly popped in to let me know my sister Hope was looking for me. She had the wheels. First I snagged my father’s London Fog coat and tweed cap from the coat room, and then we headed back to the motel in Brattleboro, where my sister promptly announced that she’d be unable to sleep. We got back in the car and pointed it towards the hospital. When we got to the ER, there was my father, lying down, holding court. My sister Pam took me aside and told me our father had asked the doctor for a prescription for Tucson. I donned his coat and cap and wheeled up to him on the doctor’s stool and said, “Mr. Dunlap, I’m writing you a prescription for Tucson. Let me know if there’s anything else I can take care of for you.” Turns out the only thing that was wrong with my father was he was dehydrated. He’d had nothing to drink all day except a little coffee and red wine, and the Inn had been overheated. So he had an IV for a few hours to replenish his system. My oldest brother and our stepmother tucked him in at the motel about 1 am and when he came to breakfast in the morning, he was like new.

That was a Halloween night I’ll never forget.

Sorghum Cake

Sorghum Cake

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Prepare sour milk by mixing 2 Tbsp vinegar with enough sweet milk to make one cup, or use buttermilk.

Grease 8 x 11 x 3 " baking pan (so says the recipe, however I recall using a 9 x 9" brownie pan and filling it very full).

Mix the following ingredients in a large bowl as if for pie crust. That means throw it all into the bowl, then chop up the shortening very fine with knives in the dry ingredients until shortening is the size of small peas. You can also use a fork or a multi-bladed pie tool. You end up with a mixture which looks like crumbs.

2 cups flour (all-purpose or white whole wheat)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Reserve 1/2 cup of the crumb mixture to sprinkle on top before baking.

To the dry ingredients in the bowl, add and mix until lumps removed, but not too long:

1 egg
2/3 cup molasses
1 cup sour milk (2 Tbsp vinegar mixed with sweet milk you made earlier, or buttermilk)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt

Pour batter into greased cake pan. Sprinkle reserved crumbs all over top of batter.

Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit 40 minutes.

Cut into squares and serve.

Rhubarb Cobbler

Rhubarb Cobbler

Bake in 425 degree oven for 25 minutes

4 and ½ cups rhubarb (1 and 1/2 inch pieces)
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp. grated orange peel (or cinnamon)
4 and ½ tbsp. flour
¼ tsp. salt

Place the above ingredients in a flat baking dish, Cover with crust from the next ingredients.

Crust (top only)

1 cup flour
1 and ½ tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp. shortening
1/3 cup milk

Hot tip: roll the crust out between 2 sheets of wax paper. Less muss and easy to transport!

Hitchhiking through Montana

When I was 18 in 1975, I moved from Rhode Island to Montana to go to the state university in Bozeman. I majored in English and studied Beowulf, the Beat Generation, Montana History and glass blowing. I received a broad education. I also learned how to make deerskin moccasins in an adult ed course. Brought up to be self-sufficient, I didn’t like to ask for anything. But I couldn’t suppress my appetite for travel. Rather than stay put, I started hitchhiking. It began with my friend Lana and me hitchhiking with separate drivers and seeing who’d arrive in Missoula first.

The first weekend I went to Missoula to see my brother Bill, I took the Greyhound bus.
It was expensive and dull. The only time it wasn’t dull is when the bus slipped backwards downhill on an icy street in Butte. That was slightly terrifying. I knew from Montana history class that Butte was a mile high and a mile deep. That had been a long slide backward down the steepest street in town.

Hitchhiking, I found, broadened my education. I learned how to change a tire from a driver with a broken shoulder. One time when I put my thumb out to get to Missoula, 3 guys in a yellow state truck picked me up. Right away, they let me know that they were no threat at all. They were going as fast as they could go to get to a ball game in Spokane at 6 pm. I knew I had nothing to worry about. Then one of the guys asked if I knew what their load was. Well, I hadn’t a clue. It was under wraps. Turns out it was dynamite to blow out the landscape to put in a new highway. It was a beautiful sunny day and the 3 guys let me jump out quickly in Missoula.

I had a good weekend with my brother. We went skinny dipping in the Clark Fork River and rode the cold current upstream, then ran through a path in the bushes to our original spot where our clothes were hanging from a branch and started all over again. Billy said it was perfectly safe. On our 4th or 5th trip back through the shrubbery, a train went by with several workmen hanging out the windows waving and whistling. Oops. I’ve always realized you only live once. You might as well do it with gusto- I waved back!

Sunday about noontime my brother and I walked to the bus station. After he left, I sneaked off to the highway and put my thumb out. A little old lady in a very old Plymouth picked me up. It was such a faded black that it was the color of a plum. The old lady started telling me stories about bad guys, people who were crooked and disrespectful of their fellow men. The most memorable of her bad guy stories was about a lawyer, a very crooked lawyer. He was sitting in his Lazy Boy recliner one night in his home in the foothills of Missoula, watching television and someone shot him dead through the window. One bullet. She said people in Montana had no patience for bad guys.

Well, all of a sudden she takes the exit for Deer Lodge and Warm Springs off of I-90.
I need I-90 the whole 180 miles to get home to Bozeman. What I know about Deer Lodge and Warm Springs is not any good. The 2 main things going on are the state prison and the state mental hospital. She told me she was going to see her sister. I wondered which institution she was in. Then the old lady told me she carried a gun and she asked me to retrieve it from under the seat. It was a big heavy pistol. Her son had given it to her because he knew she picked up hitchhikers.

She didn’t want the gun for herself. She wanted me to know how to use it. We were in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even a sheep in sight. She told me to aim it up out my window, pull the trigger back and fire it. I obeyed. Never underestimate an old lady. My right shoulder reverberated. That pistol packed a punch.

As we neared Deer Lodge and Warm Springs, I spotted a big sign which read, ‘No Hitchhiking within 15 miles of city limits’. I thought I was sunk. She left me off right in the middle of town. I looked around quickly and put my thumb out again. Within a minute a trucker picked me up and brought me all the way to the supermarket in Bozeman. He was delivering a big load of groceries.

I moved back to Rhode Island in 1981 and hitchhiked one last time, from Vermont back home to Rhode Island. A couple of Boy Scout leaders delivered me almost to my door. I decided that would be last hitchhiking adventure. I’d had a good ride with God on my side.

Cats We've Had

When I was a kid, our family had an orange cat named Orlando. He ruled the house. We’d wanted an orange cat for awhile. One day one showed up in the Sunday paper want ads. My mother and I went to the ‘Point’ section of town to fetch him. I had to pry the poor cat out from under the radiator. It was winter-time. This was not a stupid cat!

Orlando was named after a storybook cat from England. He had a good life in our old farm house and three acres. Five children and one mother doted on him. My father wasn’t at home enough to know Orlando very well. My sister painted an official coat of arms that she posted over his feed bowls. When Orlando heard us pour the dry food into his dish, he came careening around the corner, his nails clicking on the linoleum. He ate with gusto. When I got home from school the cat would be sitting on my mother’s lap while she read.

I’m not sure how long we had Orlando, but the first few years, when my mother was still alive, seemed idyllic, for Orlando and me. We both had plenty of time to roam around outside. There were so many of us that Orlando didn’t need to cling to a radiator. We all wanted him in our lap!

Fast forward about three decades. I’m married and we live in a house with a front porch. The houses are pretty close together. One day after work my husband and I were sitting on the porch. I noticed an orange cat trying to move into my next door neighbor’s house. She was shooing him away. Mrs. Williams was far too busy to have a cat. She played bingo several times a week and hung out with a group called the Recycled Teenagers. She was about a four time cancer survivor and was 92 years old.

“Well”, I said to my husband, Phil, “If that cat comes up on our porch, I want him.” I came home from work at the library about twenty past nine and guess who was in or living room? Phil knew I wanted him so he fed the orange cat salmon scraps. We’ve had Julius for eleven years now. He has some set patterns and I think he has lots of cousins in our neighborhood- there are several orange cats.

The vet told me Julius age was five when we got him. He said he could tell by his teeth. One of his patterns is after dinner about seven each night; he’ll get our attention to get outside to hang with his friends. Phil says he’s in a hub cap gang, that they’re up to no good. We’ve seen the lot of them sitting in a circle in our neighbors’ yard.

We call Julius Kit Kat. The vet asked for a name the first time I brought him in so I quickly named Julius after a boy I liked in elementary school. My friend Kristina calls Julius Caesar.

Julius doesn’t like going to the vet after that first time. But they sure like him. He toughs it out and takes all the shots. A few years ago the vet convinced me to have Kit Kat’s teeth cleaned. It’s a long drawn out process: first they check him ahead of time to make sure he’s all healthy. Then the night before, no food allowed after 9 pm. I asked Phil to make sure he didn’t eat after 9 and to keep him inside. When I got home from work at 9:30 there was no sign of Kit Kat. In the morning he turned up for breakfast. That’s when I quick got him into the pet carrier and to the vet’s by 8 am. They said they’d call when he was ready, that it’d be about 4. About 4 I came off the beach to my car and listened to my phone messages. The lady from the vet tells me on the message that our cat has done something no cat at the Portsmouth Veterinary Clinic has ever done before, and that he’s ready for pick-up. When I get to the vet’s its near closing time. Kit Kat is on the counter in his carrier and the lady behind the counter is bragging about him!

He apparently ate plenty the night before, not inside but out. When the vet went to check on him to make sure the anesthesia was properly taking effect, our mild-mannered Kit Kat was projectile vomiting one mouse after another, three in all.

Always Set an Extra Place

“Always set an extra place at the table for the person from the highways and the byways.”

My mother Joanne always sets an extra place at the dining room table. When she married my father, she gained five instant children, ages 12-22. All of a sudden, there she was- a 33-year-old single mother of a 9-year-old girl who liked McDonald’s hamburgers- thrown into cooking for seven or eight every night of the week. My favorite supper dish was ‘Ranger Casserole’. I think you would call it cowboy gruel these days. It was delicious and its deliciousness emanated throughout the entire rambling ranch house.

My parents met at Easter time at church. I may never know all the specifics but I do know it was a match made in heaven. One friend of my father’s said it would never work; Joanne was too young or too something. Well, 40 years later, 9 grandchildren later, multitudes of meals later, I still ‘drop in’ near mealtime and Joanne quickly ‘enlarges’ the meal. After all, sustenance comes in many forms.

Coffee at Wall Drug

This I Believe:

Manners are Always of Paramount Importance

It’s not like me to turn down an invitation for no good reason. So when a driver who looked to be 8 years old rolled down his window on an early morning in June and asked me if I’d like to have coffee at Wall Drug, I smiled, said yes, and for the next 300 miles we sidled up to each other like ponies going 70 miles per hour. There was no one else on the road.

I was brought up to use good manners on all occasions and with everyone. I believe good manners are always of paramount importance. I can and will talk with anyone. I am not a true New Englander. I don’t avert my eyes to strangers. It is plain rude to act as though another person does not exist.

Now 300 miles is several hours. It was a beautiful blue sky day in South Dakota. There was a new billboard every 15 miles or so announcing how many more miles it would be until we would arrive at Wall Drug. None of the signs really said what Wall Drug was- a town, a little shop or what. I think that was the idea: to pique the customer’s curiosity and lure them on, kind of like the gallant 8 year old boy driving his pony car next to my pony car.

Alas, come about 10:30 in the morning we arrived at our destination, parking side by side. Wall, South Dakota looked like a series of Wild West mini strip malls on one wide street. It was surrounded by vast emptiness.

I had my life possessions in my car, my first car, and I was moving from Rhode Island to Montana. I carefully got out of my car to keep my long skirt intact and watched the 8 year old boy awkwardly clamber out of the drivers’ seat. Funny thing was his legs looked incredibly long next to the rest of him. That’s when I realized that my host was not one person, but two! The tall party whose feet reached the pedals woke up and peeled himself off the seat. He was not just tall, but handsome and swarthy, too.

We picked the storefront that advertised, amongst other things for sale, coffee. A bottomless cup. We made our way past personalized license plates, glasses for shots, glasses for juice, and an electronic bucking bull. This was 1978. I was 21 and always ready for an adventure. They gestured me up on the electronic bull and the little boy hopped up, too, while his dad took a picture. They looked very much alike, so I knew they were father and son. They both had impeccable manners. One pulled my chair out, the other pushed it in.

The man’s name was Salvador and he was an iron worker who worked at great heights on buildings and bridges in Pittsburgh. I can’t remember his son’s name. They were on their way to see friends in California. Salvador had his son for 2 solid weeks and to make the most of it he had taught his son to drive so they could takes turns and not waste time sleeping instead of getting to California. The boy, it turned out, was really 12. He was just still small. What he lacked in stature, he made up for in manners and gallantry. After about ¾ of an hour of shooting the breeze over coffee, we wished each other safe journeys and drove off into the day. I’ve never forgotten these 2. I hope the photo that Salvador took of his son and I on the electronic bull came out well!

If I’d averted my eyes to the boy on the highway, I’d have no story to tell and I’d be a dull girl with no inner resources and poor manners. I believe that good manners are of paramount importance to living a rich life among one’s fellow souls on this earth.