The Basque Sheepherder

Once in a while Mom headed out from our Valencia home to Saugus or Solemint area to do errands. The only way out there was along narrow Soledad Canyon Road, whose gentle curves followed the south bank of the Santa Clara River. 

What a treat it was to skirt the broad river channel. It was a dry bed until we had rain; then it could writhe and rage like the banshee in a sour mood. But on the plenty dry days we kept a sharp lookout for the telltale dust cloud that belied the presence of the Basque sheepherder and his flock.

As our car sped east along the channel, the gritty cloud hid its load until the shapes of scampering sheep emerged. They looked like drab dust-bunnies with legs. On and on they came. Behind them the cloud parted and the sheepherder himself appeared. He wore dark pants that matched his dark hair, with some kind of throw over his shoulders. I'm pretty sure he carried a straight staff as he strode with his canine companion.

 a similar view to what we used to see in the dry Santa Clara River

 photo from shorthairstyle2013.net 

I marveled that one man exercised perfect control over hundreds of animals. I suppose the sheepherder moved his flock up and down the riverbed to gain fresh forage. Where he came from and how far downriver he went, I don't know for sure. A few towns a ways north of us had Basque settlements so one of them was probably home. The riverbed was the ideal highway for driving the flock, at least in the dry months. 

Basques settled the American West in the past century, largely in California's Central Valley, eastern Oregon, northern Nevada and southwest Idaho. Sheep was and is their business. I never actually met a Basque until we lived in Idaho in the late 70s and early 80s. Her name was Ruth Arrizabalaza. I have eaten in a Basque restaurant and found the food delicious, and not unlike the meals my Baba used to cook--cabbage and potatoes, lamb and beef, and always bread.

In southern Idaho the Basque sheep camps look like this photo below. On cold winter days smoke curls out of the stack and it's not easy to see the sheep. They're the same color as their dusty surroundings. I've seen pictures of Basque Country in northern Spain. Its lush green mountains are nothing like the desolate areas they have settled in the US. Next time I meet a Basque I will ask about this, why they have flocked (!) to areas so unlike their homeland.

a similar view to Basque sheep camps in southwest Idaho

photo from wonnellvisit2014.blogspot.com

A Perfect Couple of Hours in Cowboy Heaven

 view to the west from Hart Ranch

In a previous blogpost I wrote about my favorite place ever, William S. Hart's Horseshoe Ranch in the southern hills of Newhall California. In early October came the chance to spend a few hours of refreshing solitude at the ranch.

I left my car in front of the old ranch house, then walked toward the trail that would take me up the hill to Hart's Spanish-style homestead. The welcome sign at the trail head warned of rattlesnakes, and I shuddered thinking of the countless times my siblings and I scrambled up these hills through leaf litter--rattlesnake heaven--without giving a thought to the hazards.

At the gateway to the house I passed the turret pictured below, inscribed "La Loma de los Vientos," which translates as "hill of the winds." It's almost an apt name. Yes it is gusty on this hill at times, yet the ideal term would be "hill of the pleasant breeze."

I circled around the rear of the house to the upper level patio toward a park bench set in the shade of a few mature oak trees, whose leaves rustled in the breeze. If they could talk, their stories of past eras would be favorites around western campfires: Spanish explorers, Franciscan friars, cowboys and Indians, American military expeditions, Butterfield stage adventures, Hart's artist and cowboy and movie-star friends.

view of the house from my spot in the shade

For the next few hours I sat almost entirely alone, but not alone. My audio book played The Virginian by Owen Wister, my favorite novel, read by the ideal narrator in a fitting, not-quite-harsh-yet-mysterial tone. Set in 1880s Wyoming, it is the quintessential western novel: people alone or in small groups facing good and evil in a vast unsettled landscape. To be comfortable in the shade on a warm day, wafted by a pleasant breeze, listening to a treasured cowboy story at a cherished western spot--now that's a perfect afternoon!

stone pathway on the ranch

Hart's house

terrace overlooks the valley below

New Calling

For the past four years my church calling has been to serve the young women of our ward. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members serve in some capacity, and that service is assigned by or through the Bishop of the ward. That service is known as a calling, and we are entitled to divine inspiration to help us in that calling.

The Young Women organization (and its counterpart, Young Men), involves youth ages 12-18. Within the Young Women the girls are divided into three groups by age: Beehives (12 and 13), MiaMaids (14 and 15), Laurels (16-18). The upper age is flexible. For instance, if a girl turns 18 while she is still in high school, she can either remain in Laurels until the school year is over, or even until she goes away to college at the end of summer. Or, she can move into the adult women's organization called Relief Society. Over the four years I served, both of those options were employed by various young women.

Within Young Women I served in three different roles. First, I was MiaMaid** advisor for a year. After that I was Personal Progress advisor for a year. Personal Progress is set of achievements each young woman does over her time in YW. It is not something that can be done in a few months, or even a year. Some girls take all six years to finish. My last two years in YW was spent as Beehive advisor.

Serving in YW was a blast.  One night a week we met for an activity. The activities ranged from cooking meals to deliver to ill people, going to a local corn maze / pumpkin patch around Halloween, learning to decorate Ukrainian Easter eggs, Christmas caroling, sewing pads for the Days For Girls project, visiting our state's Vietnam Memorial, and so on.  On Sundays I taught a spiritually oriented lesson each week out of the YW manual. Usually the three groups within YW were taught separately by their adult advisor; about once a month we combined into one group.

Every so often we are assigned a new calling, and after four years in YW, I was given a calling to teach the youngest children in the ward in Nursery. Nursery runs for about an hour and 45 minutes during the time that adults are in the adult meetings and children above age three are in Primary. Our Nursery children run from 18 months to age three. New callings are announced over the pulpit on Sundays. After it was said that I was switching from YW to Nursery, some of the girls I taught came up to me for a big hug and a thank you. How sweet, that they thought to do that!

Our Nursery is very small--we have three children who come every week, and a fourth who comes occasionally. It's a lot of fun to be with these little ones. I switch off teaching a very short lesson with another gal, who I have known for 20 years. We often give the lesson twice during Nursery time, for reinforcement, and the rest of the time is spent singing songs and playing. The little ones learn how to sit and listen, and how to play cooperatively with other children. 

 There are many other callings in each ward, and the two above are some of my favorites!

 Nursery Manual

**Yes, YW class titles sound unusual, or even odd. The name MiaMaids is derived from the 19th century name of the youth organization: Mutual Improvement Association. Beehives are so named because the beehive symbol was adopted by the 19th century settlers in Utah Territory, representing the focus of achieving something very important by working together. Laurels I'm not entirely sure of, but I suppose the name is given to the older girls because it represents honor, and achievement.

My Favorite Rose Festival Parade Story

This past June was the umpteenth time I have attended a Rose Festival parade here in Portland. It's a delightful annual event, the Northwest's version of Pasadena's Rose Parade, complete with stunning floral floats, high school marching bands, high school drill teams, graceful umbrella twirlers from Asian sister cities, Boy Scouts respectfully carrying American flags, rodeo queens and princesses astride sleek steeds, Rose Festival princesses, mounted horse brigades, the Wells Fargo clydesdales, and the indispensable pooper scoopers. My favorite is always the "One-More-Time-Around-Marching Band," which is made up of those who in their distant youth were high school band members, baton twirlers and drill-teamers--you can't be too old to join this group which plays one song: "Louie-Louie!" Every parade-goer's wish is that this band will stop their march and play in front of them as they yell out the words and rock to the beat. Di-da-da, di-di, di-da-da, di-di . . .

The swell thing about our parade is that you can show up a few hours beforehand to grab a seat, even though hundreds of thousands attend. Our tradition involves a couple of us arriving downtown by 7 a.m., with chairs and blankets in tow to stake out a spot. The early arrivers ensure a front row space in front of the parking garage where we leave our car. This spot also has bathrooms and a food court under the street, an easy hop down the garage elevator.

The parade doesn't reach our area of seating until about 11:15 a.m., and because the parade route is closed to traffic, children get to play in the street until we see the flashing lights of the police escort. Pre-parade activities have involved bubbles, sidewalk chalk, frisbees, balls, walks along the route to greet friends, a watermelon-chunk toss, and the serenade of a small live ensemble playing jazzed up versions of LDS Primary songs.

More can be said about our wonderful parade, but I am going to tell you my most amusing memory related to the event.

Some years ago we attended with a group of about 30 people, including a family who had a teenage daughter named Mellica. You probably don't know anyone with this unusual name, unless you know this particular gal. She had a boyfriend, and to her younger siblings, the term "boyfriend" carried a weightier meaning than it does to those in the throes of teenage flings.

Mellica's younger siblings got busy with sidewalk chalk drawing a huge pink rose on the pavement in the middle of the street. They added in huge letters, "Mellica loves Ben." She was mortified, yet it was rather harmless as the parade soon passed over the art. But she didn't know about the hovering helicopter carrying a photographer for our local newspaper, The Oregonian.

Lo and behold, the following day in its Sunday morning edition, in living color on the top of the front page, was an aerial shot of the parade route and spectators, and some chalk art. Chalk art of a rose and the inscription, "Mellica loves Ben." Front and center in the largest newspaper in the state.

With her unusual name there was zero chance of wiggling out of this one. She faced the grins and jabs at school the next day. Those of us who used to be teenagers know she probably rated that day as the worst day of her life. Now, when her own kids complain she doesn't understand how mortifying it is to be a teenager, all she has to do is pull out a yellowed front page of The Oregonian. She's got them beat, hands down.

Really Bad Remodel

This awesomely bad remodel job is on South Main street in Brattleboro, Vermont. It doesn't help appearances that the house is in derelict condition, but seriously, to throw on a hideously awkward extension onto the roof of the front porch?

Typical of the 19th century, house lots here were deep, yet narrow across the front. It makes sense, as before auto transportation people relied on foot travel for commuting to work and taking care of business. Thus towns were built compactly, houses close together.

Slapping additional rooms onto a dwelling was a common practice. Because lots were deep, extensions were built onto the back, one after the other. I've seen some old homes with as many as 5 different extensions in the rear. Subsequent additions rarely match what's already there. It gives the impression that the owner rolled out of bed one day and decided it was time for another addition, then used whatever materials were at hand.

August 21, 1968

Dad scooped the Los Angeles Times off our driveway every morning at 5:30. He and Mom usually had it read by the time the rest of us rolled out of bed. This day, August 21, 1968, was different though. We were all up by 5 a.m. preparing to attend cousin Charlie's funeral an hour south in Long Beach, California. Dear Charlie died on the 18th of August after several years of tragic decline due to ALS. He was Mom's first cousin. My angelic father had been the catalyst for getting our family down to visit Charlie almost every Sunday after church, despite the long drive to the nursing home in Long Beach, and later Fullerton, California.

We woke up to the above headline that August Wednesday, the 21st. Our eyes were sleepy, and that front page glared at us from the kitchen table as we ate our rolls and juice, putting a weighty damper on an already melancholy morning. The huge, bold type implies that Times readers should be and would be deeply interested in this invasion and its consequences, and maybe a few were. Our arch-enemy, Russia, had gone rogue again. I suspect that not many folks actually cared about Czechoslovakia, which wasn't exactly on the radar of the average American. Except for us, that is.

Dad's parents had immigrated to the US from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the Czechoslovakia of the bold headline, in the early 1900s. Over the decades what with a depression and two world wars, pinching poverty, Grandpa's long hours in the coal mines, the births of eight children, and then Grandpa's crippling mine accident in 1951, they had never entertained the thought of going back to the old country for a visit.

Sometime after Grandpa's death in late 1966, we had word that Baba was considering a visit home. Though her parents and siblings were deceased, she had nieces and nephews who were living, a few of whom corresponded with her. The 'Prague Spring' was warming. Why she did not just pick up and go is unknown. But on August 21, 1968, the opportunity vanished. I wonder now if she would have been trapped behind the Iron Curtain had she been caught in the invasion.

Then followed several decades of silence from her family in Czechoslovakia. I remember the significance of the first letter she received from her cousin Michael Ihnat-Mikula in the mid 1980s. The political climate was relaxing a bit, and he was able to reestablish contact.

After European communism tumbled, Slovakia became independent. In 1997 I traveled to  meet my Slovak family for the first time. A large group of cousins gathered at a home in Humenne to meet me. We discussed their lives and events of the past. The oldest person there was Irina Porochnava Bubnasova. I brought up the Russian invasion of 1968, and wasn't prepared for a wrenching emotional response.

Irina gravely recounted the grief and dread and terror of that August morning. Every woman who had endured World War Two was hysterical. Russian tanks crowned the hills around town with guns pointing towards homes, at these women, at their children. It was the world war all over again.

The vision of Russian soldiers seizing the town, and the women of Humenne reliving erstwhile terrors in their minds, brought forth tears. I couldn't and wouldn't ask Irina about the terrors, but am pretty sure that the same horrors of war going on today in Syria or Iraq are what went on then. My comfortable American self can feel sympathy but can never fully fathom the abominations of war.

Though the 1968 invasion stifled the wave of freedom behind the Iron Curtain, the Russian army didn't occupy long. Life in Humenne and the country returned to normal, albeit a harsher version of it. Less than 25 years later, the Soviet yoke was thrown off, and my family there now lives in light and prosperity and freedom.

City of Humenne
My grandfather was born in a village located on the upper slopes of Vihorlat, the mountain in the background

Humenne's town center

Perryopolis Terrorist Attack

 

 the Perryopolis drug store is the beige stone building on the right

I have the blessing to be the aunt of a very nice, and now sensible young man, who I'll call PD here. From a very young age he has been a busy, active boy, a classic case of an ADHD child. He is known in the family for the crazy ridiculous things he did as a child. Actions such as jumping on the back of a moving pickup patrolling the zoo when he was about 3, come to mind. When a mud puddle was handy, he knew just what to do: plaster himself from head to toe and brightly declare, "I'm a mud-dauber!" One day I was talking on the phone to his mom when she suddenly announced she had to hang-up as "PD is ironing the carpet." He was maybe 18 months at the time.  The iron shape on the floor remained until re-carpet time.

When PD's family moved to an obscure small town in Pennsylvania, my sister Alice commented, "That boy is going to put Perryopolis on the map." And that's just what happened several years later.

 One day Alice picked up her newspaper--we're talking the bulky big-city tome known as the Los Angeles Times here.  She gasped on seeing a small article announcing a possible terrorist incident in Perryopolis, Pennsylvania. She skimmed through it, gasped again, and immediately got on the phone to me, announcing "he's done it!". Yes, PD had put this "has-been" coal-town on the map.

The previous afternoon PD and a friend had stopped at the town drugstore for candy on their way home from school. Both were carrying their science experiments home, which resembled fishing poles with various wires snaking out of them. Fifteen minutes later when the boys left for home, pockets bulging with candy, they neglected to grab their science experiments and left them leaning against a wall in the greeting-card section of the store.


A few hours later PD was at home watching TV. A news flash reported that a suspected bomb had been planted in the local drugstore in the tiny town of Perryopolis. The area around the store had been evacuated, the bomb squad was deployed, and a special robotic bomb-disarmer had blown up the suspected bombs. PD was half paying attention when suddenly he yelled out loud, "O my gosh, O my gosh!" He ran for the phone to call his friend, then spilled the beans to his parents.

bomb squad

He and his friend confessed that the "bombs" were their science experiments, no malice intended. It was certainly the most lively, interesting day Perryopolis had seen, probably since Colonel George Washington himself strode over the woodsy acreage while scouting out a site for his grist mill . . .

bomb robot