Farmer's Daughters

After some serious cool weather earlier this week where it felt like summer took a vacation, it returned with a hammer. 94 degrees, humid and time for ice cream at The Farmer's Daughters' Ice Cream Shoppe on route 29.

I'm riding the winner at the Traver's, or was that the rodeo pony at the Washington County Fair? Fifty cents for a good bucking ride.

Kayak '36

It hasn't been in the water since...well, I'm not sure. Dad seems to think he and Robin carried the boat down the hill to Moreau Lake, but after struggling to get it down from the rack in the garage, wrestling it to the roof of the car and dropping it off the car into the lake, he wasn't sure how he managed to lug it down the hill. A bit younger maybe?

I still wonder how two teenage boys hauled it from Lake Mohawk to Ogdensburg, a seven mile trip. That was in the 40's.I thought the last time the boat was out was when Mike and Andrew came to visit. Andrew was fourteen, I taught him to roll my kayak and there is a cool snap of dad and Mike paddling the boat hanging on dad's wall.

The hull needs a good Marine paint after some prep work, as there were a few leaks in the canvas bottom. Seems to be the project on the horizon this week, since Dad and I were unable to go to the Thousand Islands in the RV. The plan changed due to Phoenix's illness. She had a bad weekend of no eating, lots of drinking. Although she is only eight she is experiencing renal failure. It will be a tough trip back to Florida.

Class of ’72

The men were almost unrecognizable and attended in less numbers than the women. The women were full of energy, and although changed, the eyes, still bright and youthful, gave them away. Time erased who we were, fade what we did back then. Some memories remained as vivid as yesterday—a torn ligament in a basketball game, a case of mono, a teacher’s infectious laugh…and the rest we mercifully forgot—High School at Saratoga Springs Senior High.

Thirty five years passed by. Some years with meticulous planning and careful forethought, while others by whim and fancy, the luck of the draw or by the grace of our Lord. As one minute turned the page from day to night, from spring to fall, the journey shaped us. Cruel and harsh events carved deep canyons through the dreams and promises we held in the spring of 1972. Joys and triumphs reignited passion and hope. And without much reflection or thought the next chapter came and went as unnoticed as winter becomes after the first seven snowfalls.

We became a vessel of stories. Tales of thrills and adventure, of conquests and successes. Of miracles and redemption, of moments when we smirk and think, “Just like my mother; just like my father.” And we see who we are in our children and unbelievably in our grandchildren.

We reunited to celebrate and share our pasts. We went to school, went into the service, went to work, went to sea, went on an adventure, pursued a dream, a hope, a promise and tested life in our own way. We measured and compared, pondered and speculated. As if we sowed a quilt, our contribution a small piece to the entire project. Not yet finished, the delicate fabric of life spread before us: a divorce, a miscarriage, a death, a tumor, an accident, a disease, a rumor of witness protection. Yet, we were determined to continue to push the needle with thread through to the next patch. Heartache yielded to the chore of living, renewed by the echo of classmates' laughter in what must be known as The Spirit of Life, the symbol on our class ring.

At the end of the night, I sat with the yearbook and a list of those who are no longer with us. Classmate whose lives had been cut short. A stark reminder of my mortality. I turned the pages searching for their faces. Caught forever in the black and white photos was the sparkle of invincible youth. My memories were diluted by time. It was hard to remember them…some names I remembered, some faces looked familiar. A few I hardly knew. What could I recall? A shared English class. A study hall. A locker down the hall. A boyfriend's brother. Sadly, I didn't know their dreams. Did he want to become an actor?

The class of ‘72 vowed not to forget their classmates and established the Circle of Friends scholarship in their memory.

We became who we are. We did what every graduating class did. For better or worse, we lived. We loved. We honored those were once a part of us.

We acknowledged yesterday for its memories. When the party was over, we stepped off into the darkness with the confidence that the sun would rise in the morning, but wisely knew that the day’s promise is not a given.

Out About The Hood

Three sisters
Why did the turkeys cross the road?
Can you guess where?

Hot Peppers and Hot Sauce

Lightening streaked across the sky at dusk. Under the amphitheater muted notes from instruments being tuned for the night’s performance answered the thunder’s roll. Between the sources of the sounds an audience anxiously stirred anticipating both the rain and the music of Tchaikovsky. A night at Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center, SPAC.

Catered dinner included a spicy hot asparagus pasta salad. Delicious. Served with a Napa wine called FreakOut. Jennifer gave me the recipe. I used all the crushed red peppers and hot sauce as called for. If I were to make it again, I’d use about ½ the olive oil and maybe add some pine nuts.

Desert was a cheesecake tart with homemade black raspberry sauce topped with fresh berries. I made that too. But dessert was 16 cannons during the SolemnOverture, 1812. Followed by fireworks.

318147 Miles

It was 59 degrees this morning. A perfect temperature to scrub down the RV. I had cleaned out the inside removing rat poison and chipmunk droppings yesterday. After a couple hours, it was warmer and time to wash dad’s car after running down to Duncan Donuts for a decaf hazelnut ice coffee with cream and four Splendas. Heck while we were at it might as well wash the old Jeep...inside and out. I’m exhausted. I’m going to need a vacation soon.
Black-eyed Susans

As Predicted

Four days before my high school reunion and I broke a nail. I knew it. I knew it . I knew it. Well, at least it is not a zit!

Photo Log: Forest Floor

Blow this one up!

Running, Not Writing

Okay, I am not getting up at the crack of dawn. Today it was raining. I went back to sleep and had a retro dream, which I think is unusual because dreams are always in the present, at least that is my theory. Think about it. This one was too, but I went back to a place of twenty years or so ago, to TRW and a corporate life. Big job, big income, big promising future up the corporate ladder. No telling where I would be if I stayed. Well, probably in jail, but that is a whole ‘nother story.

Last night, I visited those people who influenced my career. Decisions about line verses staff positions. Later, manufacturing verses human resources and finally stay or leave the company. But in this dream, I reminisced about leaving the corporate world and writing. Ohhhh. A nightmare by the time I woke up, fretting about not making any money and considering working part-time for UPS as a package handler for $8.50 an hour. It was a mistake to leave the track to the corner office. Everyone said so. Now look at me working for minimum wage and at 53 no chance in hell to get back on that track. Opportunities passed me by. Who cares if you enjoy what you are doing, if you don’t have the means to enjoy it.

I could see their faces plain as mine in the bathroom mirror when I finally got fed up with Diablo jumping on my head in an annoying attempt to get me up to feed her. Phoenix lets her do the dirty work.

A good run around the big block (four miles), including running half way up Gailor Road (it is a hill and then some) helped shake the dream out of my head. Then dad and I tackled the dead pine tree and hauled it off into the woods, after stacking the trunk on the elm we took down last week. Yup, a real lumber jack in the making here. While Dad ran into town to get a new chain after an incident (always an incident when a chain saw is involved), I flushed out the water system in the RV. It is not a difficult task, but time consuming. In between projects I did a load of laundry. Working on the RV stirred up a few memories of last year’s road trip. There were some lonely times on the road, lost without Mom.

The Trinity United Methodist Church of Wilton put a plaque on their organ in memory of Mom.

Dad showed me the rotten tree trunk in the woods by the RV and I discovered these mushrooms. Got my elbows chewed up by mosquitoes and still didn’t the snap I wanted.

The School Teachers are here.

At The Track

Offer the public a free place to sit and they will come. By the thousands.

Under shady hardwoods and tall pines surrrounding the clubhouse, a sea of red chairs dotted the terrain, appearing near picnic tables, circling the simulcast TV's, standing hotdog stands, camping under the clubhouse eves, and lining the fence at the turn to home stretch.

The spinners were out in full force to get their share of 70,000 camp style chairs. China Red. Made there too. My pick of the day, Namaste's Wish (it is Nepalese, not Chinese) finished out of the money. In fact I finished out of the money all day long. I'm in a dry spell. There have been times when all I had to do was look at a horse and the pony won. Think I am looking too hard. And Dad and I worked too hard to get seven chairs, but for three dollars a chair, one can't complain. Before we got home from the track these things were fo sale on Ebay.

I'm taking mine to the beach!

Photo Log

There is a frog in one of these snaps. Enlarge and find. All photos were taken in Dr. Orra Phelps perserve.

Yesterday

After WWII, Dad went to Mexico with his friend, Tony. With them came Tony’s family and Carmen, dad’s mom. It had been over 60 years since dad has seen Tony, who served onboard a ship in the Pacific as a plane spotter, covering 26000 miles without touching land. (Oh my head spins when I think about this.)

Here’s a snap of Lupe, Abundio, Maria (who gave me this photo), and Mathilda de la Torre and Carmen, my grandmother sitting along the roadside, having a picnic in 1946.

I have never seen this photo. Dad (Manuel Luna Perez) is nineteen, standing in the middle. Ralph is 10 and on the right is Joseph (Pep). My grandmother Carmen is 40 and my grandfather Bonifacio, a zinc miner who came to the US in the early 1920’s, is 48. Cool photo, as this is the family in my book.

Now, has anyone got the photo of Mom with Grandma Perez and I think Grandpa on her wedding day. They are standing in front of the Bridge Street house? I can't find it in the house.

Andrew

The other day we got an unexpected call from my brother Mike. He called to see if Dad was home and was surprised to find me in Saratoga. (Mike, you are not reading the blog!) Anyway, Andrew was headed down the Northway, and wanted to stop in, but did not have his grandfather’s phone number. So he called his dad. Mike was in Colorado and gave us a call so Andrew would not be driving and talking on the cell at the same time. Remember, in NY that is a no-no, unless you are doing it hands free-talking, not driving.

Man has my nephew matured over the summer.

Traveling about in his Honda before his last year in school at SUNY Brockport, he has been all over the northeast, supplementing his bank account with farm work--working hard on a cheese farm in Corinth, Vermont. He helped bring in the hay, tossing forty pound bales twenty feet high (oh to be young and strong), cleared fields, delivered calves and had fun with his friends and meeting girls from Ireland and Sweden and other cool places. He did balk at inseminating the cows, but did get as far as getting the “goo” all over his hand. He dined in Boston, did hand stands on the sand dunes of Colorado and carried his nephew Nolan over rocky mountains. The homeboy found his wings, but he still thinks the Empire State is the best. Next stop, Europe.

Cream-cicles

The scent of pines collected in the ditches that paralleled the dirt road which cut over the mountain to Corinth and the Hudson River. It was cooler here, and faint scent of the trees blew into the back seat of the 54 Chevy where Robiin and I sat on towels. The towels were to keep our wet bottoms from soaking the bench seat, but it also protected our thighs from the prickly woolen weave.

Dad had come home from the Saratogian where he worked as a printer in the composing room. On a hot July day, a swim in the Hudson in the late afternoon before dinner was a treat. But the cool dip at the beach in Cornith was lost in the back seat after the Chevy sat on the street windows rolled up while we swam.

Today, I went to the beach, a dirt pit strip along the shore. (Once you’ve seen and felt real sandy beaches, you never can go back to dirt.) I learned to swim here, from dog paddle to a modified free-style stroke that I never improved until a Master Swimmer got tired of watching my awkward kick in the Kona pool a couple of years ago. I taught myself to dive off the dock and raft that sat in the middle of the river, beyond the swimming area ropes. To go beyond the ropes meant I could swim. To swim out to the raft meant you were a big kid. Robin use to dive off the raft and disappear into the dark water. She would not surface right away, making everyone nervous. Eventually she’d surface from the deep having gone to the bottom. Dad taught her to flatten out her hands once she hit the water so she wouldn’t keep going straight down like a rock.

I use to race down the slope, crash into the shallow water, dive head first, hit the river bottom with my outstretched hands, grab a handful of dirt and surface with two globs of muck, flinging material if the life guard wasn’t watching. More likely, after a close examination for gold, pennies or common stones and soda bottle caps, the guck washed away in the current to sink back to the bottom.

Unlike Robin, I never went to the bottom of the river from the raft. Both the dock and the raft are gone, but the ropes are still in the water, making the swimming area not much more than a place to splash and play the insane and irritating game of Marco Polo. That game should be outlawed.

On hot summer weekends Mom came with us. We’d spend so much time in the water we literally turned blue. Mom would make us stand in front of her and if we shivered, we had to come out. Hard as I tried not to shake, eventually the natural reflex got the best of me and I’d start to tremble. Half an hour on the blanket to recover to a normal skin color seemed like an eternity.

There was an independent grocery store across the street. Hot sidewalks and street surfaces made walking barefoot across the street a quick challenge. How did they walk on fire? Mom would buy each of us a cream-cicle. The white and orange treat melted faster than I could eat it. If nothing fell on the sidewalk, life was good.

I sat on the beach and listened to the kids play. I watched a young boy lay on the sand, dig a hole and plow a dump truck through the water. Little girls in cheap one piece suits with saggy bottoms after weeks of wear giggled in the shallow water and played Marco Polo. Gone were teenagers. No teen boys eyeing girls. No girls looking too cool to notice. What do teens do these days? Mothers sat in lawn chairs at the water’s edge.

It was long ago I swam here. Life was good. Still is.

A Bit Behind

Had a long weekend in NJ and got back late. Will make some observations soon. Until then enjoy some family photos.

Cousin Eric David and Chris.


Dad with his great nephew Dakota Perez, son of Eric David. My Uncle Ralph reminded me that Dad is the Perez family patriarch.





Eric David, with his wife Angie, son Dakotah and cat Gideon.

Orra Phelps, MD

Dr. Orra A. Phelps (1895-1986) took the young neighborhood girls – the two Greys, two Stroups, and two Perezs – to the woods to teach and inspire. As a botanist, she intimately knew the flowers, the grasses, the trees, the fungi and as well as the rocks, the animals and many more living things found in the forests around Wilton, NY and the Adirondack Mountains. She could identify the plants whether they bloomed in spring, thrived in summer, seeded in fall or laid dormant in winter. From a discarded seed pod, or broken twig using sight, smell, touch she could tell what plant it came from, whether the plant was edible or not and if its stem, or leaf, berry or root had any medicinal purpose.

Read more about Orra Phelps

Leslie Dames has been portraying Orra Phelps for a little over a year in a one-woman show. When she walked into the Wilton Historical Society tonight, Dr. Phelps came through the door with her. In several vignettes she depicted Dr. Phelps' life as a naturalist, educator, mountain climber, historian. In a funny and engaging presentation Leslie brought an old friend to life. Good memories.

This extraordinary woman impacted my life and it was a privilege to walk in the woods with her.

Bird Head

After I arrived in Florida, I wrote about my skull collection, in particular the buffalo skull that I picked up in New Mexico. The worms, the stink, the solution. I have not met too many people who also collect skulls. A young man named Ben, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer did.

When darn near everything I own has been in storage for four years, I am careful not to collect too many things, which end up in storage with the rest of my worldly possessions the next time I drive through Tennessee on my way to a new adventure, a new place to live or back to Dad’s house in New York. So far, it has not been for a new job.

I arrived home yesterday and took the tour around the house with Dad. Yep, I saw the 75 year old elm tree stump Robin and Dad dissected for me. It’s a beaut. The two tomato plants with marble size green tomatoes. It will be a race to see which comes first-the frost or ripe fruit. The rose bush Mrs. Smith gave the family when mom passed way. The new tar patches in the driveway (no that does not involve mastodons sinking in black goo). And the dead trees targeted for removal by me and dad. Oh boy.

As the inspection was finishing up, I passed by the garage, noting the variegated ground cover below the windows. When I took a closer look, I found the remains of a finch. Apparently, a casualty of a midair collision with the window.

Fascinated by the tiny pieces of what was once a bird, I carefully picked through the dull yellow feathers. I found a foot, and the cranium. Then the beak, the upper bone with the nasal passage and lower jaw. What a find. So fragile. If I had a pair of tweezers I could recover more, but I was just after the skull and with luck, the bill.

I need a tiny jewelry box, a piece of cotton and another trip to Tennessee.

Road Notes

It was 8:37 am Sunday morning and I was headed up I-81 north of Morristown, Tennessee. Sunday morning means Camping in the Zone Time on The Big Talker 100.3 FM with Raymond Brody. If you have not been a regular reader since day one ( I think only Dad has been), Raymond Brody, the host of the show, featured my RV adventures down the East Coast last summer.

He and his father have two RV dealerships in Knoxville and Nashville called Campers Corner. Every couple of weeks Raymond would have me on his show via the phone. I updated him and his listeners on where I was and what I was doing. We talked about RV experiences and mishaps, cool people in RV camp grounds and family. All this from the inexperienced solo female RV perceptive. Of course I got an opportunity to plug my book, The Last Voyage of the Cosmic Muffin.

When Mom passed away we still did the show, talking about real life stuff – how precious life is, not wasting time, seizing the moment, no guarantees and family. He helped keep me up beat, reflective and moving forward despite the tremendous loss. I’ve never met Raymond. I admired his enthusiasm for RVing. I appreciated his professionalism and compassion when mom died. And he was a security blanket for this rookie RVer. I always knew I could have called for advice if I got into a predicament.

The show is available on the internet, but since installing security systems on my laptop, I have not been able to figure out how to get it on line. So I was pretty happy to tune in as I tooled up the road still 800 miles from New York.

Raymond’s dad does a spot called Buzz Time. (Buzz and his wife came to my book signing at Barnes and Noble in Knoxville last fall.) Today, Buzz asked how Raymond’s wife was doing. I was shocked to learn she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Tears came to my eyes.

I waited until the show was over. I called him.

I thanked God for letting me pass through Knoxville this morning, for hearing the show and for being able to get a hold of Raymond. It doesn’t seem like much, but I don’t think any of that was coincidental. I have thought about her, Raymond and the family all day.

Keep Beth in your prayers.

Weather

I didn't eat all those chips and threw most of them away after I discovered the ants liked them too. I was going to say they liked them more than me, but I confess, the warm greasy and salty potato was pretty darn good. But the ants reminded me too much of the ants in my french toast served up by my host mom in Micronesia. A taste I just can't bring home.

Anyway, I am packing up for the trip home to NY. Looking at traveling route options. The DC area and I95 corridor is not an option. Anyway I cut it, it is a three day trip.

Phoenix and Diablo know that something is up. Phoenix has found a new home in a Cold Creek box that my high school reunion dress came in. Dress is now hanging in closet, Phoenix is sleeping in the box. Diablo is trying to eat my Brazil nuts.

Photo taken from Howard Park the other day. Lots of thunderstorms in the area, but little rain in Tarpon Springs. Don't forget you can click on any photo to enlarge.

Potato Chips

Don't ask me why I was overcome with this urge to make a better potato chip. Maybe because I grew up in the town where the chip originated, but I doubt that was the inspiration. Maybe because I recently saw a chip factory featured on "How Do They Make That?" and me, with my manufacturing acumen, took a shot at it. But most likely, I had a few potatoes, some oil, it was raining and the Trans Fat Police were down at the local donut shop.