Under the Big Top

7/8/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Under the Big Top

            My grandparents fondly recalled attending Chautauqua. Unlike her younger sibling, Mom had been old enough to accompany them, and everyone agreed it was too bad that kind of entertainment had gone out of fashion.

            “What’s Chautauqua?” I would ask, whenever the recollections began; partly because the sound of the word rolling off my tongue fascinated me, and partly because I couldn’t quite comprehend the explanation of whole neighborhoods gathering under a tent to see historical figures portrayed, hear politicians persuade, and enjoy musical entertainment. Some folks traveled all the way across the state and camped out for a week, to take in Chautauqua.

I’d never been to a real stage play, museum, or historical production. None of the adults I knew—even city folks, who seemed to have landed here from another realm—would have dressed up in costumes and pretended to be someone who was long dead, and pretty much forgotten. Still, the notion called to me, sort of like the concept of mountains, and oceans, which we studied in geography classes. I believed such things existed, and was equally convinced I would never experience them directly.

            Mom was determined that my world would widen beyond our small ranching community. She’d been to college, traveled with her parents on family vacations, and met some well-known people. Dad regretted not having gotten to do these things, and supplemented his education with National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, and all other popular magazines of the day. We listened to all kinds of music on the radio, and every news commentator. And we attended any and all live performances that were offered locally.

            It was understood that when the circus came to town, other commitments were placed on hold. Fourth of July meant rodeo. The Harlem Globe Trotters toured the back roads in those days, and we saw them several times. Rarely, there would be a musical program by some performer whose career was on the wane, but we weren’t very discriminating in our tastes, and most everyone turned out for the fun.

            Eventually, I got to the mountains, which are every bit as impressive as the pictures in our school books. It still amazes me that I’ve put a toe in the oceans on both sides of our continent, and spent time in all but half a dozen of these United States. Last month, a new kind of journey—time travel; Chautauqua came to town.

            Retirement has its perks. We were able to attend most of the events, and came away with a sense of having actually been in the presence of Mark Twain, Willa Cather, George Washington Carver, General Grant, and Standing Bear. As history buffs, we were aware of many aspects of these people’s lives, but the difference between a live interpretation and reading books is comparable to the aroma of bread baking, as opposed to tasting it hot out of the oven.

            Our only disappointment was that the tent, set up to hold 500 chairs, was never more than two thirds full. Mostly, the same folks were at every performance, and mostly, the hair color was gray.

I realize summer is busy, with all manner of organized activities for youth, and parents having to ferry them back and forth. And there are those who can’t bring themselves to miss a single episode of whatever reality show is on the tube. Still, in a town of nearly ten thousand, the audience seemed pretty thin, to us.

            I’m glad to have lived long enough to see Chautauqua revived. Now, if only the custom of whole families gathering for education, entertainment, and fellowship with neighbors would come back.

           

Keep Talking

6/24/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Keep Talking

            A lot of common words and phrases baffle those of us with well-worn faces. Granted, the slang changes quickly. Today’s teens wouldn’t have a clue about “the cat’s meow,” “Kilroy was here,” or “shanks’ mares,” but I can’t help wondering if the electronic generation has ever been exposed to the tried and true sayings that I grew up with. Those shortcuts enabled us to make a point without much explanation.

            If you told your grandkid he was preaching to the choir, would he know what you meant? How about the warning that birds of a feather flock together? Or throwing good money after bad?

Parents of my era used some of those comments as argument stoppers. Try it. Toss out something of that nature and walk out of the room. End of story. I’ll bet it’d work even with the uninitiated; they’d be so busy trying to decipher the code you’d be gone before they got their mouths open to protest. I tried King’s X on my grandkids recently, and got a blank stare until I explained it. And, you know it’s sort of hard to explain—I don’t recall ever having it explained; we just always knew about it.

            My mom took shorthand in high school, and it stuck with her, even though she didn’t ever work as a secretary. Sometimes she used it in letters to former classmates, saying it was good to keep in practice. I figure she just didn’t want nosy little eyes (or my dad’s) in on the conversation if she didn’t get it sealed and sent right away.

These days, we simply lop off the first letter of every word instead of spelling out Environmental Protection Agency, United States Department of Agriculture, or Internal Revenue Service. Put a couple of dozen of those in a news article and the reader is every bit as confused as if it had been written in shorthand. It’s probably done for the same reason Mom had in mind, and with some justification. All of those entities are so scary we’re not supposed to think too deeply about them.

Whenever I hear SODAK I wonder when we added another state, and where it’s located. Somewhere close to WYOBRASKA, wouldn’t you guess?

            Grandma had her own lingo, but it was easily understood from the context. A blouse (top, in today’s jargon) was a “waist.” She “commenced” to bake a pie, and told me to ride my “wheel” to Mrs. Beals’ to borrow a cup of sugar.

            Our teachers claimed that if we didn’t stop sticking out our tongues and wriggling our ears our faces would freeze that way. We didn’t quite believe them, but did agree that some of our classmates would have been improved if it had happened.

            The English language is a funny thing. It evidently evolves, and not just in the realm of slang or clichés. I was taught that the plural of deer is deer, and a group of buffalo is still buffalo. That’s not how I read and see it done, of late.

Criminals pled guilty in the old days, but now we hear someone pleaded guilty or innocent by reason of insanity. That seems kind of insane to me, but when I hear that someone bleeded to death, I’m going for the straitjacket.

My teachers told us that a hen lays an egg, and you lay something on the table but you don’t lay down on the bed. They said you tell a lie, or lie down. I guess they were right, because my computer objected, just now, to the business of laying down on a bed. Still, I hear teachers and educated commentators use that phrase all the time.

We had to memorize that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights, but Webster now says the correct word is unalienable. I guess he has an unalienable right to change his mind. Here’s my message to old Noah, and a bunch of careless speakers.  You can lead this old mare to water, but you can’t make her drink. 

Keep Talking

6/24/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Keep Talking

            A lot of common words and phrases baffle those of us with well-worn faces. Granted, the slang changes quickly. Today’s teens wouldn’t have a clue about “the cat’s meow,” “Kilroy was here,” or “shanks’ mares,” but I can’t help wondering if the electronic generation has ever been exposed to the tried and true sayings that I grew up with. Those shortcuts enabled us to make a point without much explanation.

            If you told your grandkid he was preaching to the choir, would he know what you meant? How about the warning that birds of a feather flock together? Or throwing good money after bad?

Parents of my era used some of those comments as argument stoppers. Try it. Toss out something of that nature and walk out of the room. End of story. I’ll bet it’d work even with the uninitiated; they’d be so busy trying to decipher the code you’d be gone before they got their mouths open to protest. I tried King’s X on my grandkids recently, and got a blank stare until I explained it. And, you know it’s sort of hard to explain—I don’t recall ever having it explained; we just always knew about it.

            My mom took shorthand in high school, and it stuck with her, even though she didn’t ever work as a secretary. Sometimes she used it in letters to former classmates, saying it was good to keep in practice. I figure she just didn’t want nosy little eyes (or my dad’s) in on the conversation if she didn’t get it sealed and sent right away.

These days, we simply lop off the first letter of every word instead of spelling out Environmental Protection Agency, United States Department of Agriculture, or Internal Revenue Service. Put a couple of dozen of those in a news article and the reader is every bit as confused as if it had been written in shorthand. It’s probably done for the same reason Mom had in mind, and with good reason. All of those entities are so scary we’re not supposed to think too deeply about them.

Whenever I hear SODAK I wonder when we added another state, and where it’s located. Somewhere close to WYOBRASKA, wouldn’t you guess?

            Grandma had her own lingo, but it was easily understood from the context. A blouse (top, in today’s jargon) was a “waist.” She commenced to bake a pie, and told me to ride my “wheel” to Mrs. Beals’ to borrow a cup of sugar.

            Our teachers claimed that if we didn’t stop sticking out our tongues and wriggling our ears our faces would freeze that way. We didn’t quite believe them, but did agree that some of our classmates would have been improved if it had happened.

            The English language is a funny thing. It evidently evolves, and not just in the realm of slang or clichés. I was taught that the plural of deer is deer, and a group of buffalo is still buffalo. That’s not how I read and hear it, of late.

Criminals pled guilty in the old days, but now we hear someone pleaded guilty or innocent by reason of insanity. That seems kind of insane to me, but when I hear that someone bleeded to death, I’m going for the straitjacket.

My teachers told us that a hen lays an egg, and you lay something on the table but you don’t lay down on the bed. They said you tell a lie, or lie down. I guess they were right, because my computer objected, just now, to the business of laying down on a bed. Still, I hear teachers and educated commentators use that phrase all the time.

We had to memorize that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights, but evidently our teachers were wrong. Webster now says the correct word is unalienable. I guess he has an unalienable right to change his mind. Here’s my message to old Noah, and a bunch of careless speakers.  You can lead this old mare to water, but you can’t make her drink. 

           

           

Breathless

6/17/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Breathless

            “Get back in here and sit down, before you fall on your head!”

            “Don’t put your arm out the window that way. I heard of a guy who did that and lost an arm. This truck they were passing swerved too close and broke it off,”

            “Roll up your window. I just had my hair done.”

            People have always tried to separate me from my quest to partner with the wind. And all my life, I’ve practiced ignoring them. No one seemed to understand my compulsion to touch the tips of sweet clover, catch a handful of seed heads from dried sunflowers, and feel the change of temperature as the car descended from hilly terrain to meadow.

            The occasional bee sting or face full of gnats were minor matters, and so what if I should fall headfirst out the car window onto a country path that connected our ranch with the neighbor’s. Soft sand and a bed of clover didn’t seem like a bad landing place. In my mind it would be no different than being dumped off Brownie’s back when he shied at a soapweed, and not nearly scary as the time I took Nick up on a dare to jump out of the haymow.

            On the highway, there’s a certain exuberance in holding an arm out the window to feel the resistance of sixty mile an hour air, and that garbage about passing trucks; well they said your face might freeze in place if you kept wrinkling your nose and sticking out your tongue too. If Ray’s face hadn’t frozen solid years ago, after all the teacher’s warnings, I guessed there wasn’t much danger attached to anything adults dreamed up to spoil our fun.

            And why, on God’s green earth, would my mother prefer the sculpted curls she protected so particularly, to the caress of wind that plastered my locks against a cheek and brushed the bangs off my forehead?

            Over the years, I’ve sought shelter from wind, cussed it, craved it, and run out to meet it. Wind and I have a love/hate relationship, but when not a single leaf or blade of grass is stirring, on a hot June morning, I panic; begin to walk or run, in an attempt to catch a breeze, until the exertion leaves me almost breathless.

I’ve been on a hunt for air all my life. Like a fish on a creek bank, gasping for just one more breath; like a meadowlark on a fence wire, panting under the August sun, a newborn calf whose mouth and nostrils must be cleaned before the first breath is drawn.

            I’ve offered my breath to those calves, held the slobbery mouth shut while pressing my own against a pink nose still wet with fluids of birthing, waited for the little ribs to rise and fall on their own accord, and if they did not; if no returning breath was offered, bent again to the task, until a wobbly head lifted, shook itself to clear the mucous and looked about to examine the strange circumstance called life.

            Alternately, when my own air supply was almost exhausted, and no answering breath appeared, when rhythmical pressure on a rib cage, or hanging a limp carcass by the heels failed, I’ve dragged the body out behind the barn,  choked back convulsive sobs, listened to the mother’s mournful murmurs, and bent down, hands on knees to gulp great gobs of wind. There’s always a God’s plenty of that here in the hills; enough to heal a heart, dry the tears, and propel me onward into my own examinations of strange circumstances.

The Lay of the Land- Henry

6/10/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Henry

            Henry gave me cowboy boot earrings for my high school graduation. I loved them best of all my gifts, and wore them often. They were carved from wood, with sparkly blue stones in the center of a star on the boot tops, and reminded me of fancy styles I used to beg Dad to order in the Blucher catalog.

            What became of the earrings is a mystery. Surely I wouldn’t have given, or thrown them away, but they are gone, and I don’t even know when they disappeared. Sort of like Henry, when he drifted out of my life.

            Henry was a strange bird. His eyes had a wild look; the gray gaze shifted on you, then away, as if looking for an escape route, a look I grew to recognize years later, as a mental health worker. He reminded me of a bronc, undecided whether to buck or bolt; rear or roll, always unpredictable.  The man likely needed to be on medication, although in those days mental illness wasn’t treated outside of institutions, where lobotomies and shock treatments were the norm.

            But it wasn’t a big deal; everyone knew Henry was “a little crazy.” He floated around the country working here and there, and probably stayed longer at our place than most. My dad felt sorry for Henry, but he wouldn’t have lasted long with us if he hadn’t been a good worker.

The only thing that riled Dad about the situation was writing Henry’s check to our neighbor, who was his sister. The sister and her husband were salt of the earth folks who no doubt had Henry’s best interests at heart, but Dad hated the way Henry never had money of his own; only what was doled out to him for cigarettes, a paperback western, or new jeans, and gas for the rattletrap car he drove to his sister’s house on Saturday nights so she could do his laundry. When he left our yard, check in hand, Dad shook his head and growled that a man in mid-life deserved more respect.

Henry was clean, polite, and quieter than most of our hired hands, except when telling about the adventures of the Daltons, Younger Brothers, James gang, or Doc Middleton. He read a lot and was fascinated with outlaw tales, but that’s understandable, for someone who hasn’t much personal freedom.

There was this other thing about Henry. He loved to dance, and was good at it. In those days families went to public dances together, and teens usually rode with their parents, because few of the younger set had access to wheels. 

I was kind of a wallflower until the last couple of years of school, when I acquired a steady boyfriend, but every girl knew she’d dance with her dad, and the dads of her friends, as well as a hired man or two, as long as they were appropriately sober. Those men, including my boyfriend, were all good dancers, but none was as smooth as Henry.

I still smile, remembering how he’d show up, hand outstretched to me, every time the band struck up Rock Around the Clock. I didn’t care a whit what my friends thought of me out on that dance floor cutting a rug with a wild eyed, gray haired old guy.

“Who was that?” a classmate asked, after one of our capers.

“Oh, that’s just Henry,” I said. “He works for my dad.”

I’ll never solve the mystery of the missing earrings, and until recently, I didn’t know what became of Henry, but last winter I crossed paths with two of his nieces and during our trip down memory lane learned that some years after leaving our community, he took his own life.
           I think of those pretty earrings every year about graduation time. Maybe I give Henry too much credit for finding something that would please a skinny tomboy who was part outlaw, like the heroes in his dime novels. Maybe his sister picked them out. But no, she’d have chosen something more ladylike.  These were too—well, too Henry. That look of satisfaction when I opened the box and put them on; I get it now. For once, he had done something on his own

It’s a bittersweet memory, the way Henry used to swing me out on the dance floor; both of us conscious of nothing but the rhythm. So long ago, when I was naïve, and believed that easy kind of joy would last forever, but he took happiness by the hand when the music began, knowing it never does.

Out My Morning Window

6/3/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messsersmith

Out My Morning Window

               We’re all settled in now. The dogs have been out and come back in, taking their usual detour through the kitchen, interrupting my coffee building routine to get their treats. Molly, the elder of our menagerie, had her arthritis pills, followed by a milk bone, while Maggie came back for seconds on the milk bone deal. I swear they both know how to count. Today, Molly asked for her breakfast bowl early; she must have worked up an appetite chasing something in her doggy dreams.

               Maggie by passed her dish, knowing it’ll be graced with a drizzle of bacon grease if she’s patient, and headed off to join Bruce for another forty winks. Molly and I retired to the sun room, where she always flops down on the rug in front of my chair.

               Not much of our meadow is visible this morning. A welcome three day drizzle has ended, but fog waits at the edge of the yard, as if pausing to decide what to do about the day ahead.

               Taffy is perched in her normal spot, a corner fence post next to the meadow. She lives up to her name, from where I sit, all taffy colored, except for the dark tail curled under her haunches. With her eyes focused on the tall grasses in front of her, mind on the possibility of a mouse or gopher, she’s already decided what to do about the new day. She gets up, arches herback and stretches, turns a dark brown gaze toward the bird feeder, but no breakfast has appeared there either. That’s ok, she will wait.

               My coffee has cooled, so I refill it and sit again, to contemplate these quiet morning routines of retirement, which are kind of new for me. There were years of morning rush; packing school lunches while frying bacon, waiting to start pancakes until my husband, son, or a hired man came in from milking. Some of those mornings began long before daylight, saddling up under the barn lights and riding out just as the east began to turn pale. There was no time to contemplate the days that sprang at me out of a sound sleep, caught me in a whirlwind and dropped me, exhausted, into bed, already half asleep.

               Not being a morning person by nature, I don’t miss the hustle and hurry, or not having time to decide what to do about the day, but I regret not realizing at the time, that it wouldn’t always be this way. Yet, in a sense it is. Others are continuing a lifestyle that I inherited and passed on.

               Pheasants are gathering now, chasing away the red wings that think they own the driveway. Last week we saw an oriole, and a western bluebird. They’ve evidently moved on, but no surprise; that’s the way of things around here,

               The wind is picking up now, as it generally does shortly after sunup, reminding me that the years pick up too, as we advance. I haven’t decided yet, what to do about this day; this segment of life I have landed in, but I know that not a lot of it will be my choice, so I choose to be here, now, knowing that this too will pass without my permission. If someday my early morning window looks from an assisted living facility or nursing home, I hope there’ll be a bunny or bird to watch, and that I’ll decide to be grateful for the day. Here and now, it’s an ordinary morning and we’re all settled in.