Days Of Youth

There used to be an abandoned sugar shanty up the hollow at the far end of Pollywog Paradise. I'd ride my bike along the sandy road that ran beside the Allegheny River  - the spot now known as Coudersport Area Recreation Park.

That falling-down sugar shanty came to mind the first time I read this reminiscence penned by my grandfather, known to readers of the old Potter Enterprise as Golly.

"A memory of the days of youth –

A sugar shanty 'way back in the woods in springtime. One side of the shanty open and facing the arch where maple sap was boiled into syrup.

There was a very slow fall of snow, maybe two inches during the whole day.

A wooden sap bucked covered with a sheepskin that still carried its wool, made a throne fit for a king in the warmth from the crackling and cheering fire with its bed of live red coals.

A lad alone keeping the fire burning. A good book of adventure to read when not firing the arch and watching the flow of sap into the boiling pan.

Lunch time. A pail containing slices of bread and butter, sweet pickles, cookies and uncooked eggs. The business of a dipper of hot sap and the eggs placed in it and set back int he pan of sap to cook.

Not a sound in the woods, not the slightest breath of wind, silence.

Never was a king happier over his repast than was this teenage boy. Golly knows as he was the boy."

And since this is the weekend when maple producers of this century are throwing open their doors to welcome visitors, how about this idea Golly floated in the 1950s?

"A municipal sugar bush for Coudersport-- Splendid idea! Wonderful publicity for Coudersport, and  here's hoping the idea makes some money for Coudersport's Chamber of Commerce. This is a community effort and it may produce benefits to the town and county that cannot be foreseen. Here's hoping the whole town and community will go along enthusiastically."

One Year Later

It was cold in Colville, Washington on March 15, 2020. We were invited to breakfast at the Day house up on top of the hill at the end of Hofstetter Street. Maya barked her usual boisterous greeting as we pulled into the driveway in the space reserved for us that morning, the one closest to the steps. 

I can't remember what we ate for breakfast but I can remember goodbyes that came after. Rowan and Amelia asking, once again, why we had to leave. Me answering that it was time to get back to the farm but also expressing the thought that if we waited a week or two more, we may not be allowed to set off in the Subaru to drive across the country. "Because of the Coronavirus," said Amelia in that matter-of-fact delivery that reminds me of her mother.

Preparations for the trip - four days and three nights if we made good time - had sent us to Walmart the days before for a plug-in cooler to carry our own food and a supply of paper towels, plastic silverware and paper cups, plates, napkins. We already had some disinfecting wipes but no hand sanitizer was to be found.  I searched for pillow cases that I'd use to pack each day's supply of clothing and pajamas. Then when it was time to find a place to stay the night - not near a city but rather in small towns with their requisite Hampton Inn or LaQuinta not too far from the Interstate, we could carry in a garbage bag with the next day's clothing and use the pillowcase to rest our heads.

I  kept my emotions under control through the goodbye hugs and the whispered words of love and then Kate pressed a little bottle of hand sanitizer into my hand. 

I still have dreams about that trip - dreams that bring to the surface real settings with the kinds of offbeat complications that often trouble dreams. Where there is a guy coughing and coughing in a Missoula restaurant, somehow seated next to me in a crowded booth. Where there is no running water in the Interstate Rest Stop someplace in Indiana. Where we can't find a gas station as the yellow light begins to flash red on the dashboard. And the time the guy handing our McDonald's order through the takeout window swiped his hand across his dripping nose first. 

I describe that trip as surreal - little traffic, almost empty hotels, and every day on the radio news of more and more  shutting down. We couldn't stay away from the news channels and NPR on the satellite radio as we learned a new vocabulary with words such as quarantine, social distancing, Covid 19. Then there were the unsettling mixed messages from White House Coronavirus Task Force with the ineffective sing-song delivery of Mike Pence and of course, the strident voice rising over them all, Donald Trump promising us it would be done by Easter.

When we left Colville, the schools were counting on reopening at the end of April, and work from home was the order from the Forest Service. Now, one year later, the children have only recently returned to in-person school but only two days a week and their parents work from new home offices.

One year ago, we'd had a dress rehearsal for pandemic times at the end of February when the Colville schools were closed for three days because of a 'person of interest' who was awaiting test results for a suspected case of Covid-19. Washington was one of the first places where there was an outbreak and officials were acting out of 'an abundance of caution,' words we still hear almost every day.

On one of those cold days, we went to the shores of the drawn-down Lake Roosevelt where we searched for the foundations and sidewalks of the town of Marcus, abandoned when the Grand Coulee Dam flooded the Columbia River valley.

Human creatures had left a shrine of natural and man made treasures tucked under weathered roots of a tree long ago planted perhaps by another human creature, near the tumbled stones of what was once foundations of a movie theatre, pieces of its sidewalk still visible. 

I felt prayerful as I took this photo, capturing the mystery of that moment to hold close for a future time. Soon, the waters of the mighty Columbia would carry these talismans away. The swirling waters of what was being named a pandemic threatened all of us human creatures with a flood of sickness and death and sorrow and grief. And today, in marking this particular trip around that brilliant ball of gas we call the sun, I stop to remember all of it.

Wake-Up Call

A long time ago, morning coffee established its place in the way I begin my day. Over the years, a succession of coffee makers found a place on various apartment kitchen stoves. Then one Christmas, a gleaming white Corningware coffeemaker that plugged into the wall was under the Christmas tree. Though it was later recalled and banished because of its faulty handle design, mine is still tucked in the corner of a cupboard.

These days, morning coffee is brewed in a Cuisinart and savored in my living room, tucked into the back corner of this old farmhouse that used to be a bedroom.  My morning view is often dark - especially this time of year, and I watch for signs of sunrise in the eastern sky and on the hilltop behind the house. Today the sun reflects on the icy surface of the snow, after a clear night when the moon coming through the windows awakened me from sleep. It was then a night of fitful tossings and unease jumbled together to make for bizarre dreams.

I brought those thoughts with me as I settled  in to watch a little bit of television news. As with the kind of habits known as bad, looking at the morning news menu often starts my day with a peculiar kind of unease.

Channel surfing took me to Fox News where I watched a slick-looking white man interviewing my contemporaries in a jam-packed breakfast spot somewhere in North Carolina. It was at first disturbing because there was not a face mask in sight and they were jammed into the booths and seated at adjacent tables, relishing for their time in the Fox News spotlight.

But after I got beyond that particular optic, I noticed these folks in this southern state were obviously selected to appeal to Fox News audience - white, comfortable or comfortably retired. There was a woman decked out in patriotic sequined Trump paraphernalia, another woman who had recently gotten her hair just a little too dark at the beauty shop, and a booth of the kind of men you used to see at McDonald's in the morning - a couple of handsome white-haired retired businessmen, some crustier looking fellows in Carhartts and one heavy set guy in the front sporting a big black eye.

As could be expected, they were there to share with Fox News America their outrages of the day - immigration, killing babies, the important role that owning an arsenal of guns plays in their lives and the fact that they believe the election was stolen from Trump. 

The slick guy with the microphone had to chime in as he sent it back to the three anchors in the studio. "Lara Trump is one of them. They love her in North Carolina!"

But meanwhile in the real world, a new poll survey by Harvard CAPS-Harris reported that the new Biden administration meets with  the approval of 61 percent of voters, and 31 percent of GOP voters approve of the job being done by the new administration.  Confidence in the economy and in the future of the country are both growing as well.