Kitchenpoet Is Back, But Not the Same

Wy'east High School Class of '65 at their 45th Reunion

Wowser! 45th!? Sometimes those years seem long, and other times short. My shirt states plainly the role I played and continue to play.

The lighted sign before this one said the wait for the ferry would be two hours, and that was an underestimate by half an hour. Waiting didn't bother me. I've seen worse, where the view wasn't near as grand, nor the air as fresh. It was worth every second of waiting. I had camped in the Chelan Wilderness, the night before, my first camping in three years. I had the foam pad problem solved, and slept comfortably. The ferry I waited for left Edmunds so smoolthly I didn't realize the trip had started, until I reached the deck.

Soon I was in Sequim, the lavender capitol, visiting friends. Three days later, two of us headed out to the point to meet another old friend, arriving by motorcycle, to camp on the Olympic Peninsula.

looking north

looking south

Charles, Dan and Irv

This old coot had a great time, and I think my friends did, too. Irv took this one, using his timer. 

I began to look for oddities, and found some interesting things. 

The first clear, close view of Mt Hood always takes my breath. Here is the valley I grew up in, etched by the river flowing from that mountain. 

For the 10th and 20th reunions, I was listed unable to locate, before I made it to the 25th  and 30th. Fifteen years had passed, since I had seen anyone other than best friends, and many I hadn't seen since high school. 

I'm still trying to integrate what I experienced, and it isn't easy. I touted Missoula as Paradise to people who lived in equally beautiful places, and returned to find Zootown wasn't as heavenly as I remembered. When did my favorite small city become so crowded and noisy? And where did all this dog shit come from? Wait, I know the answer to that one.

If I titled this Memories of My Mother, would you think it hokey?

Memories of my mother flitted out of nowhere, settling on the barbed wire. I was waiting for Home Resource to open in search for new display ideas. Mom always loved the snow; it is snowing. Mom always loved those little round-bellied birds; there's a flock of them in my vision. She had given up by the time I arrived in Arkansas to help. She could have carried on, as Pop did, but she wouldn't. It would have taken a cattle prod to move her.

Mom learned to drive late in life. My sister was already born, and Pop had bought the 1957 Ford Fairlane which Mom learned to drive, because we were moving to Oregon, and she would have to help drive. We were all regular church goers, and it seemed, half the congregation saw her the day she couldn't restart that Ford and got out to kick it in the busiest intersection in town.

Driving freed mother to visit the sick and shut-ins, an action she considered her Christian duty. At a formative age, I found myself in the company of the elderly, the ill, the injured, heaps of National Geographic magazines, and others (i.e. Arizona Highways), and daily newspapers sometimes in grand old houses ripe for exploring. Those are among my fondest childhood memories.

I must confess, I feigned illness to avoid attending church sometimes, because it bored me to tears. My father often escorted me outside and used his belt on my behind, when he caught me with some trinket or toy I took to church to play with rather than listen to the sermon. I was a kid, for Christ's sake , and what the preacher had to say meant nothing to me. Alone at home with my illness, the radio tuned to the African-American church service in Oklahoma City, I rocked out.

Still love National Geographic. Still love my mother, too. She's still around, you know. On a recent morning, as I sat in my car in front of Home Resource, she arrived as a flock of birds and danced on the wires in front of me.