Saturday, November 7, 2009

DOG SLEDDING IN ALASKA

One of my dreams has always been to take a dog sled ride, and when the opportunity arose on a trip to Alaska, I leaped at it, even though it was a bit pricy. The tour package included a helicopter flight to a glacier where the dogs were encamped, followed by an actual sled dog ride.

Alaska is breathtaking at any time of year, but the helicopter ride showcased the contrasts of snow-covered glacier with the myriad shades of green of the untouched forests, and the reflecting blue lakes. I had expected to be terrified on my first copter ride, but the view was so enchanting I didn’t feel the slightest flutter of fear, even though there were no doors on the helicopter. Any fears of hurtling to my death were overshadowed by the awesome grandeur that is Alaska.

Right after landing, we five passengers clambered out as quickly as possible, so that the pilot could return to base for the next group. The sound of the helicopter was effectively drowned out as our ears were assaulted by the shrill yipping and barking of fifty dogs, a sound that never abated during our entire visit.

The camp gave the appearance of being a miniature village snowbound in the wilderness. Tiny individual wooden houses provide shelter for each dog. Long chains from each house kept the happy, barking dogs from contact with each other, as they begged to be hooked up to dog sleds. Several larger prefabs provided housing for the two permanent mushers who lived on the site. We were given a lecture and a tour of the camp site by two gorgeous young men who maintained semi-permanent residence on the glacier. (I may be an old lady, but I can still appreciate a good-looking man.) One of them gave a fascinating lecture on sled dog life and the history of the Iditarod. He had been raised in Ohio and living on this glacier was part of a lifelong dream.

One thing I would never have known was that all human and dog waste must be bagged and flown back to Juneau for disposal, since the glacier camp is in a state park. Not only that, the urine is packaged separately and differently from the fecal matter. I didn’t have the nerve to ask if human and canine waste was further segregated. The idea of constantly cleaning up after the dogs took much of the romance out of the camp for me. The other man was busy hooking up two teams of sled dogs, who were so excited to be in harness they could hardly contain themselves. The unchosen dogs would get their turns with the next batch of tourists. The dogs were a surprise to me. I had expected the stereotypical Huskies seen in movies, but these were smaller mixed breed dogs, wiry, loud, and eager to work. The ride was exhilarating. We took turns playing passenger and standing at the back of the sled, operating the brake. In no time, my leg muscles began to complain, but nothing in the world would have made me cry uncle. After the ride, we were taken to the other end of the camp, to a caged-off area, where a proud mother allowed us to handle her two new-born pups.

While taking pictures of the two-day old puppies, I managed to step into an enormous pile of husky poo! That had to be the world’s stayingest poop. I began trying to scrape it off in the snow, turning and twisting my foot in all directions, since there were no sticks to be found for scraping. I rubbed my tractor-tread boot in the snow repeatedly, trying to remove the disgusting waste. I stomped my foot, scraped the sides of my foot in the snow, did everything I could think of. Then, when I was sure I had it all, I would take a few steps. And there, clear as burglar footprints in the snow, would be scatological evidence of my dirty deed. All along the snowy walk back to the helicopter, I left my one-footed track, like some deranged monoped determine to leave my mark.

I kept thinking about those two handsome young man, who would have to follow my trail, scooping up footprint after footprint of my poopy remains and bagging it for delivery back to Juneau. My shame was so great that I fully expected them to have it delivered to my cabin on the cruise ship in retaliation. I know for sure I can never go back to that glacier camp again. I’m positive I would be met by a photo of myself, in a red circle with a slash across the front.

DAD’S LOVE AFFAIR

Dad always had the wanderlust. When he was 20, he left his hometown of Kearney, Missouri, determined to realize his dream of seeing the Pacific Ocean. Why the Pacific and not the Atlantic remains a small mystery. Perhaps the romantic West drew him more than the long-settled East Coast.

He set out in May of 1934, in the grinding depths of the Depression, and returned less than a month later, thanks to a mysterious letter he received from Mom which caused him to turn around and head home, just short of his first look at the Pacific.

During his journey West, he wrote Mom faithfully, and she apparently wrote him just as regularly in care of General Delivery as he progressed, although we don’t have her letters, just Dad's, which she saved. His letters reveal little of the actual happenings on his hitchhiking trek but do reflect his deep love for Mom, whom he addresses almost invariably as, “Sweetness.” Although those were different times and traveling was safer then, there must have been many unpleasant aspects of the trip Dad felt best to keep from Mom, but I would give anything to know more details about his journey.

The first or second night he slept in a cemetery. Another time he mentions sleeping in a park. He even considered a jail. Reflecting upon how fastidious my father always was, sleeping accommodations alone must have caused him great discomfort. A letter mailed from Colorado tells of staying a night in a transient camp in Denver, where they gave “bums” meals. They could stay a week for ninety cents. If they stayed longer, they had to go to work for the camp. Dad ate only a third of his supper, so the food may not have been too appealing. He had to take a shower, during which his clothes were taken away and sterilized. He commented on the nice beds, with clean sheets and blankets.

Dad made good time on his trip. He first headed to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he worked for $1.50 a day, paying board while staying with relatives of his father's. He stayed about a week, and then was off again, eager to get to California. At one point, when urged to stay another night, he declined because, “My feet were just itching.”

He seems to have been lucky in catching rides, but did mention walking ten miles in one day. By June first, he was in California, the first state he had liked since he left home.

There was undoubtedly a lot of time to dream about a future with Mom, and it is obvious he would have liked to share the journey with her. He couldn't begin to describe the mountains of the West and wrote, “I just have to bring you out to see them when we get rich.” Another time, he wanted to bring her to see the country, “in a fine way.”

It is clear from the letters that both had agreed to date others, and one letter even describes one such date of Dad’s, where he expressed no desire even to kiss the other girl. However, when “Sweetness” dated some other young man, and reported on it, Dad, nearly in sight of the Pacific, cut short his trip, turned around, and headed home. He must have taken a train straight home from Los Angeles with funds he had set aside for emergencies. There were no more letters, but our folks obviously worked things out, as they were married less than six months later.

Weddings were simple in the Depression, but Mom was always proud that, in her little town, she was given three wedding showers. She kept a list of every gift and the donor. Her grandpa gave her a hog. Some of those gifts were passed down to family members later on. Each granddaughter received a sugar bowl and creamer. The hog’s fate is unclear.

My parents had a small wedding. They drove to Liberty and were married by Doctor Hester, a noted Southern Baptist minister, at William Jewell College.

Dad was late picking up Mom for the trip, as he had to do all his farm chores before he could get married. There was never a possibility of a honeymoon, in those hard times.

The next day, Thanksgiving, was celebrated with Mom’s side of the family, and the newlyweds posed for their wedding pictures at that feast. Dad is wearing his blue suit and Mom her cream colored wedding dress. Pictures show a shy, virginal couple, not even bold enough to hold hands.

It’s a sweet picture, both of them looking so happy and innocent, standing stiffly side by side. It must have been a difficult day for them, facing all Mom’s relatives and an uncertain future…except that Dad still had his dream of seeing the Pacific Ocean.

In just a few years, World War II put an end to the Great Depression, creating jobs for everyone, but things which had not been available before because of the lack of money were now unavailable because of rationing. Tires and sugar, gasoline and shoes, butter and eggs—all were rationed.

In 1944, Dad finally persuaded Mom to come to California. They were barely in their 30's and had four children by then. After four births and one miscarriage in seven years, they decided there would be no more children. In later years Dad would say, “I wouldn't take a million for the kids I've got, but I wouldn't give a nickel for another one.”

Mom was terrified and yet excited about leaving Kearney. She would be leaving her entire family, while Dad's family had been moving to California little by little. We traveled with Dad's parents, and his identical twin brother Ray would come last of all with his wife and two children.

The only way Dad talked Mom into coming was to promise her that if she tried it for six months and didn't like it, we would return to Missouri. In six months, San Diego had become home, and we stayed. Our folks eventually bought a home overlooking San Diego Harbor and beyond, Dad's beloved Pacific Ocean, where they lived the rest of their lives.

Dad never lost his love of travel, and nearly every summer we would drive back to Missouri, to visit Mom's family. Dad saved up all year for those trips, a coin at a time, dropped lovingly and carefully into a battered coffee can. Each year we would take a different route to and from Missouri, and each time we saw more of the free attractions of this country—Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert, Navajo women tending sheep in their bright velvet skirts, countless exhibits of roadside oddities, even the forebidding entrance to San Quentin. Our long-suffering relatives always welcomed us with open arms and later sent us back home to California fortified with “to-go” packages filled with wonderful Missouri cooking.

Years later, after our parents died, as we four kids were going through our parents' keepsakes, we came across some interesting items. Mom had kept their wedding clothes, so small they looked like dress-up clothes for children. Her dress had been dyed, so that its usefulness could be extended, where a wedding dress would only have had limited use. In a small blue suede packet was Mom's original gold wedding band. A small note tucked away with it said the band cost $8.00. Engraved inside was “Sweetness.” And finally, there were the ration stamps—dated several months before we left for California—stamps good toward 250 gallons of gas. Proof of Dad's good faith in promising we could return to Missouri if Mom didn't like it here.

THE OLD LADY GETS A TATTOO

I sometimes wonder what ever possessed me, in the Twilight of my life, to get a tattoo. I, who had never even had my ears pierced, begged for laughing gas when I had my teeth cleaned, and spaced my children twelve years apart because, contrary to myth, I remembered every pang of labor with the first one.

There are those who would not consider having permanent lipstick a true tattoo. Those people are wrong. For someone with my low pain threshold, having my lips tattooed was easily as monumental a project as a battleship on a sailor’s chest. Something which I never considered, anyway, because at my age the ship would have slowly sunk below my horizon.

I decided to have my lips “done” when I saw how great my friend Tricia looked. She also has the permanent eyeliner, something I will never tackle, since nobody, but nobody, is getting near my eyes. My frustrated optometrist could testify to that.

Not only did the convenience of never having to worry about lipstick again appeal to me, but I would for the rest of my life be free of lipstick on my teeth, smeared coffee cups, and those nasty little lipstick lines bleeding up the wrinkles around my mouth, heading for my nose.

Friend Tricia assured me there would be very little pain during the process and even gave me some deadening ointment to apply to the lower part of my face a couple of hours before the appointment. That was an experience in itself, much like having novocaine all over my mouth.

Meeting the tattoo artist, i.e., technician, was awe-inspiring in itself. She was gorgeous, a stunning testimonial to her work. My first thought was, “Oh, please, please, make me look like you.” After a short indoctrination, she went to work mixing the right color for me, deadened my lips some more, and then gave me two rubber balls to squeeze if I felt pain, which may not have helped, but in any case left my hands too occupied to hit her.

I can’t say the pain was excruciating--my sigmoidoscopy was much worse--but I’ve had more pleasant experiences. And I suppose there are those who find a mouth massage with a Dremel tool downright soothing, but the experience was unsettling, to say the least.

Two hours later, as I examined the results, it was a bit of a shock. My mouth was a brilliant crimson, and I was a dead ringer for Bette Davis in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” On the drive home, as the numbness began to wear off, I kept sneaking glances in the rear view mirror, drawn by the specter of those red, red lips, which I had been assured would fade. I had been sent home with instructions on the care and feeding of my new lips, along with some ointment and warnings to wear sun blocker when I went outside. As if I planned to leave the house!

I was rather proud of my convalescing period, as I had no bad reactions and didn’t even have to ice my lips, which were tender, but not unbearable. I was pretty hard to look at for several days, however. The second day my Bette Davis mouth began to expand into Angelina Jolie’s. The third day I still looked like Angelina, but in her role as Angie the big lipped fish in “Shark Tale.” On the fourth day, I left the house, as the deep color began to blister and then flake off, leaving a fainter, more natural tinge of color.

A second treatment a month later resulted in a shade closer to what I wanted, but still a bit patchy. I found that some of the permanent color had found its way into my old age cracks, which the technician removed using, I feel sure, #2 sandpaper.

Now that’s it over, I’m happy with my new mouth. It’s wonderful to get out of bed in the morning and not have to face that old ghostly and ghastly face. It’s still ghastly, but at least not ghostly. I love not leaving lipstick on dinnerware or having to wonder if I have lipstick on my teeth. My grandchildren like not showing evidence of granny kisses. I feel sort of like a vampire. They don’t have reflections. I don’t have lip prints. And just think--when I die, and the funeral home makes me up for the viewing, I know my lips will be exactly the color they were in real life.

THE TUBA

I will never quite fathom why middle grandson Pace decided on the tuba as his instrument of choice. It’s large, unwieldy, definitely not sexy (Ed. Note--Though Pace believes it is), and nothing you can casually offer to play at parties.

“Oh, sure, I play an instrument. I know I left it somewhere around here, perhaps in the back of the pickup. Couple you guys want to help me carry it in?” By the time that thing is toted in and unpacked, the people with guitars, flutes and tambourines have taken over the show.

Youngest grandson Dallin, on the other hand, chose saxophone, considered the sexiest musical instrument, and definitely portable. He’s always at the ready for an impromptu performance at a party, cruise ship talent show, or dude ranch karaoke.

Because a tuba is a major expense--we’re talking thousands of dollars here--the school rents them to the students. Hard to believe, but there is more than one tuba player in the school, and the school can’t buy enough to go around, so no one is allowed to keep one at home to practice. Keeping an eye on the higher goal here, which is a college scholarship, it’s imperative that Pace be able to put more time in at home practicing and taking advanced lessons.

The band teacher, Mr. Green, found a tuba being offered on eBay, and said it looked like a promising prospect. I had never bought a thing through eBay and felt it had all the appeal of Russian Roulette, but I asked Older Daughter to take care of it for me, since she not only had a good track record with eBay, she seemed to know what she was doing.


I checked out the photo and the listing on eBay and, not being much of a judge of instruments--no judge at all, actually--I made a close examination of the photo and decided it certainly was a tuba. The seller didn’t promise much, but had provided helpful arrows pointed at dents in the horn. Had to admire his forthrightness.

I was thrilled when we were the winner in the bidding contest and for less than $1,000.00, with the shipping and handling. New tubas can easily cost much more than that, the operative word here being “new.” I waited anxiously for the delivery of the precious instrument. The seller said it would be arriving in two boxes, which struck me as odd, but what did I know. Apparently, some assembly was going to be required.

When the boxes arrived, my daughter and I tore into them eagerly, tossing Styrofoam peanuts all over the place. And nearly threw up. Inside were two parts of what had to be the world’s most beat-up tuba.

Assembled, it looked no better. There was not one square inch of that abomination that was not scarred, scratched, dented, or corroded. The little arrows on the photo were teasers, a hint of the disaster that was tuba. My daughter rushed to her computer and checked the listing. Not a word about refunds or guaranteed satisfaction.

I was sick. This disgrace to the tuba world looked as if it had been taken by train to the top of Pike’s Peak and thrown down the mountain from the caboose--several times. I sensed I would have no recourse with the seller, who not only had made no promises, but had obligingly provided that photo with arrows pointing at the worst dents.

I called a friend, who has raised five musical children, several of them professionals, confident she could tell me the value of a beat up tuba and perhaps give me some considered advice and reassurance. She never let me finish my sentence, but started screaming, “Nine hundred dollars? You paid $900? $900? On Ebay? I don’t believe it. You paid $900 on Ebay? I would NEVER buy anything on Ebay! $900? Ebay? $900? Humiliated, I hung up.

Now I was not only sick, but panicked. Before I fell completely apart, I decided I should find out what Mr. Green the music teacher would have to say. I hoped he might even buy the tuba from me in an attack of pity mixed with guilt.

First, I took the tuba to Pace to see if it was even playable. He didn’t flinch at the sight of it and pronounced it all right, except for a sticking key. What did a fourteen-year-old kid know? Pace’s mother, April, with the same voice she would have used in trying to be kind to the mother of a baby who looked like E.T., said, “Maybe he can play it inside the house--back in his bedroom.”

She made an appointment to go see Mr. Green for an after-school evaluation. I told her to be tactful, since I didn’t want any accusations resulting in a lowered band grade. I waited anxiously at home for a promised phone call after the meeting, a call which never came.

Unable to wait any longer, I called April, who reported the meeting was over, which had included one of Mr. Green’s former students, a brilliant tuba player now in high school. “Tell me quickly,” I said. “Don’t prolong the agony.”

I couldn’t believe it. The tuba was a treasure among tubas. Even though its serial number revealed it was a 1971 Mirafone, not only was it worth several times what I had paid for it, according to Mr. Green, but his former student said it had the most velvety, mellow sound he had ever heard. I guess beauty really is only skin deep.


Euphoric, I hung up the phone and called my friend with the musical children.


The tuba did need some minor repairs and a tune up, along with a custom made soft carrying case, since no modern cases were available. At Mr. Green’s urging, I drove to Anaheim, in the next county, to have it serviced. By this time, I reveled in telling my story to anyone who would listen. The technician at the music store wasn’t overly impressed, but enjoyed my reaction when he turned the instrument upside down on and banged it on the counter, dislodging several sizable dust bunnies.

“Hey, you said it had a fuzzy sound,” he said.

“Not fuzzy,” I protested. “Velvety. Velvety.” “

This is nothing,” he said. “I found a dead bat in one once.”

Two hundred dollars later, I retrieved a serviced tuba which looked no better that it had originally, but at least the worst dents were gone and it could be hidden in a nice new soft case.

Pace seems pleased with his instrument. He’s a mellow kid, just like his tuba, and doesn’t get overly excited about much, so ownership of a tuba that looks like it survived a national disaster is no big deal to him. In fact, his friends think this monstrosity is cool. And besides, he can hit notes on this one that he can’t hit on the school tuba.

It was a proud moment when we went to the first concert where Pace played his old, yet valuable, tuba. There were four tubas in the band, and his was easy to spot, distinguished by being the only one with the bell facing forward, while the others pointed skyward.

It became obvious why modern bells point upward, when we watched Pace’s horn blast the musicians in the rows in front of him, where his unfortunate, and now deafened, brother sat, playing the saxophone.

I guess the most important lesson learned here was, that you should never judge a book by its cover, nor a tuba by its scars.