Who are your favorite artists?

Butch

When people think of artists they most frequently think of painters. I like painters of course, but more often I tend to think of sculptors. The kind of sculpture I like best is cubist. Here are some of my favorites; Alexander Archipenko, Sophia Vari, and Jacques Lipschitz.

I’m not sure that you can call Sophia Vari’s sculpture cubist exactly because she is still making sculpture today. But the type of sculptures she produces look very cubist to me. Lipschitz had a couple of different periods in his work. I prefer the more geometric works over the organic ones. I had the good luck to see an exhibition of Archipenko’s work at the Des Moines Art Museum.

Karen

Vermeer

Our favorite art trip was the one we took to The Netherlands and Belgium. I loved visiting the museums of Paris but the art in The Netherlands was the most inspiring. I had long admired Vermeer’s paintings before but seeing them in person was thrilling. Most of my favorites were housed in the beautiful Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague. The Girl With A Pearl Earring is a very famous painting and very beautiful to see. It is quite small but captures the light and the beauty of the subject. The Vermeer that most affected me was the View of Delft. It is a very large painting of the harbor with a stormy sky. The museum offers the viewer to see the painting at both close range and at a distance. I was completely mesmerized with the beauty of the scene and with the artist’s unique talent.

Rembrandt

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam had recently reopened after an extensive remodeling project at the time of our visit. It is a stunning setting for the beautiful art. The Night Watch is a spectacular painting by Rembrandt that is one of the museum’s prize exhibits. It is of epic proportions and the scene is loaded with many figures and symbols from the time. One of the figures is a self portrait of the artist.

I also loved seeing Rembrandt’s etchings in the gallery above the museum of his house in Amsterdam. We had climbed the stairs of the house into a rather unassuming room filled with small etchings displayed on the walls. Viewers could peer closely at each piece with little supervision. I asked the lone attendant where the prints actually made by his hand were kept. She replied that every piece on display was printed by the artist. None were copies! They were all exquisitely detailed and finely made and I was impressed to be actually seeing work touched by such a remarkable artist so long ago.

Monet

My favorite Impressionist artist is Claude Monet. When we visited Paris, my favorite museum was Musee d’ Orsay. It included all of the Impressionist artists and some of their greatest work. The Giverny garden paintings are stunning examples of the movement. I loved the colors and the textures that created such beautiful visions and feelings for the viewer.

Van Gogh

The tragic life of this artist contributes to the feelings his paintings create. There is a spectacular museum in Amsterdam devoted to a grand collection of his paintings. The museum shows and explains his emotional struggles through the display of his paintings. I particularly love the brightly colored works with sunshine and scenes of flowers and nature. His thickly applied paint and bold brush stokes make his style immediately identifiable.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

What were your favorite toys as a child?

Butch

I have made entries for these in previous Butchie Boy blogs, but they fit this topic to a “T” and it was over 10 years ago that I posted them last, so I’m reprising them here.

Teddy

Teddy is my oldest friend. The earliest known picture of him is in the family photo album on the same page as my first birthday. So I assume he was a birthday present. He was a gift from my Uncle John in England and was of war time manufacture. That picture below shows him as I got him; all fuzzy, with eyes and nose intact and velvet palms and soles just aching to be rubbed against your nose. I don’t remember him this way. As far back as I can recall he has been bald. I remember Mom fixing him up at one time. I guess his eyes had fallen off and the string of his nose and mouth had fallen off too. Mom sewed on two buttons to replace his missing eyes and replaced his nose and mouth too. Her nose and mouth repair has gone by the wayside, but the buttons remain to this day. I assume his stuffing was excelsior which powdered and sifted out through the course-woven fabric. It had to be replaced at the same time as the other repairs. Mom used old nylon stockings.

Here is how he looks today. In the 1980’s he was getting so threadbare that even Mom’s nylons were trying to escape his innards. Karen made him the natty little vest and bow tie for my Christmas present that year, hence the red and green motif.

50’s Vintage Christmas Sets

As kids we all got Christmas presents and the thing I wanted most every year was a “set.” Over the years I probably got five or six of them. Each set consisted of a number of plastic figures, some sort of structure (a fort or castle for example), and usually several special figures.

Three sets come particularly to mind; Rin Tin Tin and Fort Apache, World War II soldiers, and Dinosaurs.

Fort Apache Playset

The Fort Apache playset had a stockade with a couple of buildings, guard towers, landscaping accessories like a well, lots of cavalry men and Indians, and special castings of Rusty, Rinty, Lt. Rip Masters and Sergeant O’Hara. I would set this up in our sandpile and play for hours and hours.

WWII Battleground Playset
Another set I got was a World War II soldiers. This must’ve been the European theater. Current research shows me that there was a Pacific theater too, but I didn’t have that one.

Prehistoric Dinosaur Playset

A third set was of dinosaurs. I’m sure this set must have contributed greatly to the names of the species I know.

It looks like Marx was the major manufacturer for most of these sets.

Karen

I really don’t remember many toys from my childhood. I must have had them but don’t really remember many special ones. I played outside most of the time but do remember a couple of them with fondness.

Tiny Tears

I remember playing with a Tiny Tears doll. She came with a bottle that you could fill with water and feed her with. After she was full you could squeeze her and she would cry little tears from holes at the corners of her eyes.

Jacks

We also played with jacks whenever we had a free moment. They were so portable that we were allowed to bring them to school with us. We could play with them at recess whether it was inside or outside. I used to sew bags out of scrap materials and add a shoestring for a tie. That was one of my first sewing projects.

Roller Skates

I also had metal clamp-on roller skates that I used all the time. All of the neighbor kids had them and we did a lot of skating together. You had to have hard sole shoes to use them so that the clamps would hold them on. I had saddle shoes or the hated hard sole brown Buster Brown shoes that looked like boy’s shoes to me. You also needed a special skate key to tighten them up when they inevitably fell off. Skate keys were valuable and we made plastic woven lanyards and wore them around our necks to keep from losing them.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

What foods do you dislike?

Butch

RANT ALERT! Since I have been asked to name the foods I dislike, it should be no wonder that these comments will take a negative tone.

Onions

Anyone who knows me can name my most hated food. ONIONS! It makes no difference what kind. Scallions, chives, shallots, green onions, leeks, white and yellow onions, and the absolute worst, the insidious purple death onion. This last onion has some napalm-type substance in it that makes the ooze from its oniony pustules stick to your tongue and can’t be neutralized or otherwise rubbed away. It can only fade over five or six hours time causing an eternity of unpleasantness.

I have a theory about onions and their over use in cooking shows. It is that peoples’ like or dislike of onions fits a perfect standard distribution or bell curve. Chefs tend to like onions and come in at one end of the spectrum and therefore overuse onions. They seem to think that the huge number of people in the middle of the bell curve really like onions. I maintain that people don’t care one way or the other. If you didn’t put onions in a recipe they might think something seems missing, but they wouldn’t refuse to eat it if the onions were left out. At the “dislike” end of the spectrum, there are just as many people as at the “must have” end. The difference is they have such an aversion that they can’t eat whatever dish the onions are put in. Given a choice, chefs should opt for leaving onions out. Having an oniony sauce served on the side should satisfy everyone.

Some people like to include garlic along with onions, but not me. I like garlic as long a reasonable amount is used. Like any strong flavored ingredient, it is best used in moderation.

Bitter Things

I have a particular aversion to bitter things. Black coffee doesn’t appeal to me, but is easily fixed with healthy additions of cream and sugar. Also, most herbs are bitter. Only three herbs that I like spring easily to mind; cilantro, tarragon, and mint. Most of the rest jump from “acceptable” to “avoided at all costs”. The nastiest herb of all is rosemary. It’s as bad as eating pine needles. Spices generally don’t cause me any problem whatsoever.

Salady Stuff

I don’t particularly care for salad ingredients, but I can stand most of them. They fall more in the category of “I don’t care if I eat them, but wouldn’t seek them out”. Three exceptions are raw tomatoes, cucumbers, and cooked egg whites. Tomatoes are too sour but do make good sauces. Cucumbers have no reason to exist. Egg whites bring an immediate gag reflex the second they hit my throat. If thoroughly mixed with other ingredients so as not to be noticeable, they are acceptable. Onions are also saladlike foods but I have covered them in detail already.

Other salad type ingredients generally just make me blurpy or gaseous at one end or the other and bring me no joy in compensation. These include lettuce, melon, and peppers, but not croutons, avocados, and palm or artichoke hearts.

When I was in grade school I started realizing that there were things I liked and disliked. I didn’t have any methodology for distinguishing between them. With time I was able to figure out which was which and since then I have had fairly constant attitudes towards the things I eat or don’t eat. I am open to trying new things and I think there are many things I enjoy but others can’t stand.

Karen

I pretty much eat everything. As I’ve gotten older, though, some foods disagree with me and others are just not favorites. After being married to Butch for so many years I have come to dislike and avoid onions but I can even eat those if they are already included in a dish and well cooked. There were some foods that I hated as a child and were regularly served to me at meals.

We always had a lot of vegetables for dinner when I was a kid. I was used to eating them and as we were expected to eat everything that was served, most vegetables were fine with me. In summer, we ate many fresh vegetables like corn, tomatoes, beans, carrots etc. But in winter we had only grocery store canned vegetables which had an overcooked mushy texture that I didn’t like. I hated canned peas, asparagus, and worst of all, canned spinach and hominy.

Canned spinach had the look and texture of pond scum. My parents particularly liked this dish and seasoned the spinach with vinegar and topped it with sliced hard boiled eggs. Yuk!

Canned spinich

Hominy

Hominy is some kind of corn product that is processed so that the kernels puff up into large white blobs. It turns out they are processed with some kind of lye! The taste and smell is like moldy corncobs to me!
E-w-w-w!

When I was in first grade, I was invited to spend the night with a girl in my class at school. Her mother was my Bluebird leader and I was very excited for this new adventure. Since it was my first sleepover, my mom gave me many instructions about being on my best behavior and above all, to clean my plate at dinner. To my horror, when dinner was served they had fried liver, and canned spinach, and hominy! Somehow I choked it all down and have not eaten any of those foods since!!!!!

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

What is the best meal you’ve ever had?

Butch

I figure at 3 meals a day, 365 days a year, and at 72 years old, I’ve had about 78,000 meals. That’s way too many to have any one of them stand out. I remember that a French dinner in Toronto, another one at the Cafe Absinthe in Chicago, and a third one at a high-end Mexican restaurant in Tucson were memorable, but I haven’t got a clue what I had,

I also suspect that fresh breast milk when I was newly born was THE most satisfying and wonderful meal I have ever had. But, I don’t remember that at all.

So, what can I write about? The answer is the Gourmet Club. From time to time we would have our friends over for dinner or go to their house. Many of them liked to cook, so we came up with the idea that we should form a club and have four couples meet once a month. Our group consisted of:

Robert and Karen Thorpe
John and Sue Hawn
Doug Beach and Lynne Carlson
Steve and Terri Howes

Each couple would have complete control of the meal they hosted. They would plan the menu, buy the ingredients, and prepare the food. That way, there could be a uniform theme and no one would be trying to out do all the others. We originally planned to meet eight times a year; four sit-down meals from January to April, and four picnic type meals in the summer months. Early on, we dropped the picnics.

At first people would bring a bottle of wine if they wanted. But that was one of the biggest changes in the group’s organization. We realized right off that having wine with the meal made things way, way better. No one had any particular experience with pairing wine with the food that was to be served. One of our members, Doug took it upon himself to become our sommelier. Over the years he created quite a wine cellar for himself and the rest of us were the beneficiaries. After things got rolling, the hosts would call Doug about a week before and secretly give him the menu. He selected the proper wines and brought them to the meal. The hosts paid nothing for the wine and the rest of us split the cost.

When we were having dinners with our friends before the club, we had nice meals but mostly the kind of thing you would likely have for supper any time. I wanted to set a tone so we dressed the table up fancy with flowers and our best china, water glasses, that kind of thing. But mostly we went high end on the food. I made up place setting cards for each person’s location. Here is what we had:

When we had been doing the club for 15 years I published a Menu Reference showing the menus Sue Hawn and I collected over all those years. We were only missing one menu which was the result of it being made on a chalk board and people having too much wine before they remembered to take a picture of it.

We continued the club for five more years after that, but John and Sue moved to Wisconsin and that made it impractical to go on.

I started taking pictures of our meals and putting them up on my blog, ButchieBoy when I began that in 2007, so the early meals never made it to the internet. For a few other entries the photos have become corrupted and are no longer there. If you want to have a look at some of the things we had over the years go to:

http://www.butchieboy.info

And hit the “Gourmet” category. There are a couple of pages of entries so click the “Older Posts” arrow at the bottom left of the first page.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.

At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

Karen

This question was a real challenge to answer because, as those who know me can attest, I love to eat! Butch and I both like to dine out and often celebrate special occasions like anniversaries and birthdays by enjoying a meal at a restaurant. We also like to cook, and our best cooking adventures were enjoyed with our gourmet club. For 20 years we, along with three other couples, enjoyed gourmet meals cooked in each others’ homes. Our club included Doug Beach and Lynne Carlson, John and Sue Hawn, and Steve and Terri Howes, along with Butch and me. We usually met during the first four months of the year with some extensions into May when busy schedules had to be accommodated. Each couple planned and cooked a multi-course meal and served it with fancy table settings, centerpieces, and printed menus.

Our goal was to dazzle our guests with unique dishes that were fancier than any of us would cook on a regular basis. We tried to coordinate ingredients, flavors, and textures across the meal to present a taste experience. All of us tried lots of new things but over the years each couple had a few specialties. Doug and Lynne often chose Mexican flavors that went far beyond anything found in local restaurants. Terri and Steve incorporated trout, venison, morels and pheasant from their interests in the outdoors. John and Sue often chose interesting combinations of vegetables and herbs from their love of gardening. Butch and I were more likely to choose an ethnic theme. We served one Greek meal, a meal from our French vacation, an Indian meal, a Mediterranean meal, and a meal from our Belgian trip among others.

Accompanying every meal was lots and lots of wine. At first, none of us knew much about wine and we just had whatever had a nice label. Later, Doug developed an interest in wine pairings and studying up on delicious varieties. About a week before each meal, the hosts would send a menu to Doug who would then research and select the wines for the meal. He would buy all the wine and bring it along. The guests for that meal would divide the cost of the wine to reimburse Doug. I have to say that Doug was a generous sommelier and provided many bottles for the evening. It was not unusual for the eight of us to polish off nine bottles of wine with a liqueur thrown in. Because of our conspicuous consumption of spirits we began to fondly call ourselves “The Sh*tfaced Gourmets.”

It is impossible to pick one favorite meal from such a wonderful bunch of cooks. Instead, I have tried to pick some of the memorable courses we enjoyed.

Appetizer – We always had Champagne or some other sparkling wine with our first course. We always toasted the hosts and each other to begin our evening.

Soup – Not every meal included soup but I particularly liked meals that did. We didn’t often repeat dishes but sometimes it happened. Both Hawns and Howes served this one.

Salad – Lots of times someone served a dish that included an ingredient I had never had before. Fennel was new and was delicious combined with pears.

Main Course – Butch and Sue collected menus from each meal and at the 15 year anniversary Butch collated them into a book. This salmon recipe was one that we cooked several times for special occasions outside of Gourmet Club.

Sides – Sides were not the stars but we had some super delicious fancy stuff over the years.

Dessert – By far, most of the desserts over the years included chocolate. What could be yummier? Often it took a whole day for me to make and decorate a fancy dessert. These are two that were favorites of mine. The Birthday Cake dessert was made for an April dinner that we hosted that was near the birthdays of Sue and Lynne. The Tart Tintin included a slice of candied sweet potato and that fancy pumpkin brittle!

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

What are your favorite TV shows?

Butch

Antiques Road Show

One of my favorite programs is Antiques Road Show. I watch both the English one and the American one. The best thing about the British one is the depth of history that they have and the age of the antiques that are often shown. At the time that I write this, Fiona Bruce is the show’s host and I enjoy her very much. On one episode she came up with a jump suit that Diana Rigg wore while portraying Emma Peel in the Avengers from the 1960’s. They are shown together in the Photoshopped picture below.

The American version of Roadshow has its own “star” cast. In the next picture the old fellow has brought in a Navajo blanket, very plain. It turns out it is a Navajo Ute First Phase Chief’s Wearing Blanket, some of the earliest Navajo weaving ever done. It was done in the 1840’s. The appraiser valued it at about $350,000 to $500,000. The older fellow later sold it for $450,000 to an anonymous buyer who donated it to the Detroit Institute of the Arts where it is on display. American Antiques Roadshow is an hour long and usually has two episodes back to back on Monday nights, right after the half hour British Antiques Roadshow.

Finding Your Roots

Finding Your Roots is an hour-long show presented by Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. It usually features 2 or 3 celebrity guests who are curious about their ancestry. The show features a short section about their life and who they are then follows their family tree back with reference to a paper trail. Towards the end of the episode they sometimes refer to DNA data for more clarity.

Masterpiece Mystery and Masterpiece Theater

 We started watching this show when it was just known as “Mystery”. Usually it had a short series of episodes featuring a detective, for instance Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple. Later it became part of Masterpiece Theater and was called Masterpiece Mystery. I didn’t like it when that happened because the mysteries were just a part of many Masterpiece shows and ended up having only about half the airtime, but lately, they often have the mystery and regular Masterpieces back to back so there is usually a mystery every week.

Masterpiece Theater has shows that are usually taken from literature. “Last of the Mohicans” or “Pride and Prejudice” are examples. Most are quite good, but they tend to run a lot of shows like “Little Women” or the afore mentioned “Pride and Prejudice” or shows like “Downton Abbey” which I don’t care for at all. For when those shows are on I try to find something else to do. Karen likes them so they are usually on in the background. Longtime host Alistair Cooke is shown below.

Streaming

Since the advent of streaming television, shows that you can watch whatever day or time you want, for me the idea of a favorite TV show has somewhat become a thing of the past. A favorite show is something that you look forward to. Week after week you wait for the next episode. Unless you still watch shows that are on broadcast television, like the four I mentioned previously, you can and probably binge a whole season in a night or two, maybe you stretch it out for a week. It becomes a point in time thing and not an ongoing pleasure making it somehow less memorable. I think this ongoing pleasure is part of what a favorite show is. Also, streaming shows have to be sought out and selected. Then there is the problem of which of them in your queue will you watch next. Mind you, I like watching shows when I want and the variety of what you can watch is much, much better. I still like to watch the regularly scheduled shows, maybe because that has been the way of things since I first started watching television in the 1950’s. I’m sure my grandchildren will have no concept of this because streaming will be what they have always known.

Karen

Gunsmoke

My dad had first pick of evening tv shows in our house. He liked westerns so naturally, so did I. My favorite was Gunsmoke starring James Arness as Matt Dillon, Milburn Stone as Doc, Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty, Dennis Weaver as Chester, and later Ken Curtis, as Festus. The show was shown originally in black and white and later in color. I loved all the characters and I thought the show was really good. Since I was just a kid at the time, I looked up the reviews and it was also highly thought of at the time. It ran for 20 years on CBS which says something about its popularity. Matt Dillon was huge, 6’7″, and a handsome hero. My favorite character, other than Matt was Chester, his deputy who walked with a limp because his knee would not bend. It was a show our whole family watched together and all of us liked it. I went on to like other westerns like Raw Hide but Matt Dillon always held my heart.

Ed Sullivan – Beatles

 Another show that our whole family watched was The Ed Sullivan Show. This show was ho-hum to me until Ed started bringing in rock and roll acts which were thrilling to me as a teenager. Of course the absolute highlight was on February 9, 1964, when the Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was a Sunday night staple in our house to have Sunday pie and ice cream as we watched the show. On February 9th we packed into the kitchen with our whole family, which included my Aunt Noma and her two girls, Peggy and Mary Jane who were living with us at the time. We watched the show on a little foot cube portable tv that my sister Diane bought. It was perfect, they had long hair, sharp suits, they were super cute and loaded with cheeky personality! They played five songs, “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” I knew all of the words to some of them. I had heard all the songs on the radio and on records but seeing them perform live was over-the-top exciting. They all bounced and shook their hair in the most breathtaking way possible! I was in love! We watched many other acts on Ed Sullivan that I loved but none compared to that memorable night in 1964.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

What are some of your special talents?

Butch

I like to think I am pretty evenly balanced between being left-brained and right-brained.

One might be either predominantly left-brained or right-brained, meaning that one side of the brain is dominant. If you’re mostly analytical and methodical in your thinking, you could be left-brained. If you tend to be more creative or artistic, you could be right-brained. Of course, you use both sides of your brain all the time. The idea is that you tend to be one way most of the time.

I once did some consulting work. I was part of a team that was hired to develop some training materials. I think there were about 5 of us. One was a writer and teacher. Another had a PhD and I think was in charge of the team. Two others had various jobs that I don’t remember. I was hired to set up the computers and get things up and running. One time, a discussion with the team came up between being left-brained or right-brained. The writer thought that I was “over-the-top” left-brained. Well, I was in that situation. But I reminded him that I often created artistic products, sculptures, illustrations and that type of thing.

I have always been a little talented at art. My sister Judy has always been way more talented than me, but I would say that I am a bit more talented than the average person. During junior high and high school, when I should have been developing my artistic skills more, I was diverted by school counselors into more academic or professional pursuits. This is a shame because I think I could have been a much better artist if I had been given some encouragement.

I dabbled at being creative over the years, but it wasn’t till we moved to Bever Circle in 2003 that I got involved with sculpture. My brother-in-law accidentally knocked over a long unused gas light next to our driveway that functioned as our address marker. I asked Karen if she would like me to make a more sculptural one. She said yes. Over the years I had worked at places that gave me some experience with metal fabrication so I had some background in how to proceed. I enrolled in an elementary course in artistic welding at the local community college. Over the term I fabricated the pieces for the address marker and welded some of the sub-assemblies together. After that I got myself a welder and finished the piece. It now stands at the foot of our driveway, just about where the previous marker was, but farther away from the drive so it doesn’t get run over.

This started a period of sculpture making which is now fairly dormant due to not being able to stand for a prolonged period anymore. While I completed and sold a number of elaborate sculptures, I had the best luck with producing inexpensive garden pieces. Ones my wife Karen and I collaborated on.

Karen

I have usually considered myself competent rather than talented but I do have a few things I am proud of. One of the things I particularly enjoy is container gardening. When we moved to our house on Bever Circle, I loved everything about our lot. It had beautiful big trees, lovely shade, and big beds of hostas. What it didn’t have was enough sunny spots to grow flowers. I had always planted perennials and annuals in colorful beds at our previous house on Mansfield Avenue. If I wanted to grow things in our new house it had to be in containers. Over the years I have experimented with plants that will bring some color to our shady deck and our view through our big windows. Over time, I have settled on plants with bright leaves and interesting shapes and textures. I have used the formula of “thrillers, fillers, and spillers” to create interesting arrangements that complete the pots. I often mix interesting objects in with the plants to make arrangements that make me smile when I go outside or glance out a window.

Another of my interests is glass fusing. My friend, Lynne Carlson suggested that the two of us take a class at the Iowa Ceramic and GlassCenter in the Cherry Building here in Cedar Rapids. After a few sessions the two of us were hooked. We learned to cut beautiful pieces of specially formulated colorful glass, create pleasing designs, and fuse them together in a kiln. The process actually melts the pieces of glass together so that they are a new material.

It is definitely not an inexpensive hobby. Most pieces of glass are sold in 12″ squares and range in price from $14 to $33 per square. There are also costs for fusing the items you make in the kiln or slumping your pieces in molds to create plates, bowls, or art pieces. Of course there are also special tools such as glass cutters, breaking pliers, and circle cutters as well as specialty products like Frits (small chunks of glass) powders (finely ground glass) and long thin pieces called stringers and noodles. All of which are necessities for avid glass fusers. Still, it has been very rewarding to make beautiful objects for our home, gifts for friends and family, and even pieces that have sold from local shops and shows.

Butch and I even collaborated for a while by combining his skills in welding and metal work with my fused glass pieces to make yard art. For three or four years we made pieces of yard art that we sold at the local Brucemore Art and Garden Show.

My most substantial and ambitious piece was made for my sister Sue. She and her roommate, Patty, built a new house and wanted a large piece of art to hang near their front door. They wanted something that would be somewhat of a show stopper for guests who came to visit. I created a piece that incorporated the colors they loved and that showcased the reflections, transparency, intense color, and beauty of the medium of glass. I am very proud of it and glad that they have a piece I made in their home.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

What are some of your
family traditions?

Butch

Baptismal Gown

This tradition is not one that is of my doing, but truly a tradition for the whole family. My grandmother, Grace Caroline Thorogood Bellamy had a baptismal gown that she kept for when anyone in the family got baptized. The earliest proof of its use that still exists is of my Auntie Barbara’s baptism.

I suspect here brother and sisters were also baptized in it but no one who knows is still alive. It is possible that it was used in generations older than my mother’s. My grandma came from a family of three children. Her older sister died as a young woman and her brother never had children so it could have been left to her as the only surviving descendant. I suppose we will never know unless an old photo appears some time in the future.

The next time the gown surfaces is when my older sister, Carol Lynne was baptized. We have pictures of that. And we have pictures of me getting baptized in it. My sister Judy was not baptized in it because we were in England when it would have been done and my cousin Claire had also been born. You couldn’t let one of them wear it and the other be left out in the cold, so neither of them wore it. It has been used by countless people in the family ever since.

Dutch Rub

As the jokester dad/uncle/grandpa I would challenge the younger generations with a Dutch Rub or Noogie as it is sometimes called. I also used it as a symbol of deep affection for the little ones. When a new member of our family entered our lives I would gently and lovingly give them the lightest of rubs while saying something like, “Welcome to our family, Young Wyatt”.

Birthday Cakes

Ever since our children were very little, Karen and I would work together to make them a birthday cake. Karen made the first one for Lance . After that, she usually baked the cake and gave it the base coating of frosting. Then I would decorate it with a scene, usually one they asked me to make. This has been going on for 50 years. After our kids were married we continued to make cakes for our grandkids. Unfortunately, last year the tradition slipped due to the Covid pandemic. Let’s hope we can get it going again.

Karen

Christmas Ornaments

Years ago the daughter of some good friends got married. While at the wedding, I had the pleasure to talk with our friends’ parents, the grandparents of the bride. Her grandmother told me that one of the gifts she brought was a collection of Christmas ornaments that she had purchased for the bride over the years. She bought each of her grandchildren an ornament labeled with their name and the year and kept them all at her own home to decorate her own tree. She planned to give each one this gift when they married or settled into their own home. I thought it was a charming idea and decided I would do the same when we had grandchildren.
I bought each child a small tub and kept their ornaments separate from other decorations.

Rachel and Ben, Lance’s kids, almost always were able to help me decorate our Christmas tree and add their special ornaments. Wyatt and Augie, Wendy’s boys, were here about half of the time to add theirs. After a while we made a photo book, kept in each tub, so I could remember which ornaments to look for when I was taking the tree down. I tried to buy ornaments that matched their interests or important events like horses and dogs for Rachel, Toy Story and Bob’s Burgers for Ben, Star Wars and video games for Wyatt, and skate boards and Pokémon for Augie. Lately I have made ornaments for them. I have had my doubts about their interest or appreciation of the collection especially by my three boys. Rachel is more apt to talk about the ones she likes best. This last Christmas, our Covid Christmas, was abnormal. We got together with Lance’s family for only an hour or so to open gifts. While Ben and Rachel put their ornaments on the tree, I heard both of them talking about their ornaments and both looked through their photo books. Later at a Zoom call with the Copleys I shared the Covid ornament with the boys.

Christmas Ornaments

Birthday Cake

When I was a kid we didn’t have big birthday celebrations or parties. Birthdays were family affairs. Most times it was just my parents and siblings in attendance. The birthday cake of choice in my family was a recipe we called “Split-the-layer-cake.”

This was the fanciest cake my mother made and a big favorite with everyone. It was made from two layers of yellow cake which were each carefully split in half horizontally to form four thin layers. The filling/topping was a rich homemade chocolate pudding (absolutely no box mixes) spread between each layer then pored over the top. I don’t think my mom ever made it unless it was someone’s birthday.

Christmas Cookies

I love cookies. They are pretty much my favorite sweet treat. Who couldn’t appreciate the perfection of cookies? Just about the right size whether you want one or a handful, delightfully chewy or crunchy depending on the type, and filled with your favorite sweet ingredients! Our house in Cedar Rapids has often been the gathering place for my extended family and Butch’s too. For years many siblings and families traveled home to Iowa for Christmas. When they arrived I would have an assortment of everyone’s favorites. For Butch it is Snickerdoodles, my sister Sue likes Cherry Winks, Lance and sister Diane went for Roly Poly Balls. One type that had to be included were rolled, cut, and decorated sugar cookies. These were always a favorite of Wendy’s and the grandkids liked to join in the making and decorating process.

Christmas Stockings

Holidays are where traditions are born. Another Christmas tradition are stockings. We started with our own children. My sister Sue gave Lance and Wendy long knit Christmas stockings when they were toddlers. On Christmas morning the kids woke up to one big present that Santa brought, a Santa filled stocking with small toys and candy, and gifts from Mom and Dad. Santa continued to come as the kids became adults but he only filled their stockings. As time went on, we added stockings for Cherise, Lance’s wife, and Zach, Wendy’s husband. Now there are stockings for Rachel, Wyatt, Ben and Augie. In the house on Mansfield Avenue, we had a big fireplace with a big oak mantle and lots of hooks for stockings. When we moved to the house on Bever Circle we still had a fireplace but mid-century modern doesn’t run to big oak mantles. We had to put some hooks under the edge of the entry table to manage all those stockings. Problem solved. Santa is happy.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

Did you get along with your siblings?

Butch

To my way of thinking we got along just great, but I’m sure you would get different answers from my siblings.

As the oldest child I was always bigger and stronger so I dominated the others as is usually the case among children. For the most part I don’t think I forced them to do my bidding in an overall way, but I’m sure I must have made them do it some of the time. I didn’t have any plan for organizing and directing their behavior, however. Judy was the organizer of the bunch. She seemed to be in charge most often and wrangled the rest of us into what needed to be done.

The four of us fell into two groups. Judy and I were in one group and Bunny and Lisa were in the other. There were only 20 months between Judy and my birthdays. There were 3 years between Bun and Lisa. But between the two groups there were 4 years. So, we tended to associate with each other by group. Home movies usually show Judy and I doing things together and Bunny and Lisa doing things together.

Since Judy was advanced a grade between 6th and 7th, we went off to college only a year apart. That left Bun and Lisa to interact with only themselves for many years, while Judy and I only had four years by ourselves before the others came along. We have pictures of that time but I really don’t recall them. I remember when Bunny was born, and also Lisa, so the four of us were together for 10 years.

Karen

Did you get along with your siblings when you were a kid?
The basic answer is yes! I have four siblings and we are spread out by twenty years from oldest to youngest. There are big gaps of years between the five of us and I have always thought that the gaps contributed to the relative harmony among us. There were, however differences in the kind of relationship I had with each one.

My oldest sibling was my brother, Dick. He is fifteen years older than me so it would be ridiculous for the two of us to bicker or to have any sort of disagreement when we lived in the same house. He left home for college when I was only three years old and got married when I was six. I had a hero worship relationship with him. My earliest memories of him were of being picked up and riding on his shoulders. I remember him as being very tall and handsome. In a lot of ways he seemed more like an uncle than a brother. He was a grown-up already by the time I had any real chance to interact with him. I was a shy little girl and probably didn’t initiate any real conversations with him until I was a teenager. After he was married I went to stay with him and my sister-in-law, Jeanne, a couple of times at their house in Marshalltown. After they moved to Texas, we didn’t see each other very often. It was fun to go to their house when his kids married. Each wedding gave me a chance to interact with him, Jeanne, and their friends as an adult!

My next older sibling was the oldest of us girls, Diane. She was eight years older than me but lived in our house as I grew up. Since she was the oldest, she pretty much bossed me around and I generally did what she said to do. By the time I was a young teen, she had entered the world of work. One thing I remember was that she was always asking/telling me to go get things for her like her book, her nail clippers, her scarf, etc. I remember going to search and ALWAYS having trouble finding what I was sent for. I would look forever because there was always trouble if I couldn’t find whatever she sent me after. She got downright crabby if I came back empty handed. I also remember that she was very generous with me. She often bought me things that my folks never would have. She got me a Barbie doll when they first came out and bought me the coolest outfits to go with it. In those days the clothes were very well made, stylish, and very expensive. I remember the ski outfit with gorgeous fake leather jacket and a gold lame’ dress and pillbox hat that looked like an outfit Jackie Kennedy could have worn. She also bought me a pair of navy blue wool bell bottoms that quite made me a trend setter!

Next older than me was my sister Sue. Since we were only four years apart, we actually did bicker a bit when we were younger. Most of the time it was over the chores we had to do around the house. We had to do the dishes after every meal. We fought over who would wash and who would dry etc. If it got really intense, she might sock me in the arm but for the most part there was no physical stuff. Just as often we would laugh and joke around and have a good time. When I was younger, Sue was given the chore of watching out for me and had to let me tag along after her and her friends. I’m sure she resented that and sometimes tried to ditch me. I always wanted to do the same things she could do and looked up to her and and admired her. She and I both went to the University of Iowa and both of us became teachers! She was also very generous to me. She let me come stay with her in her apartments at college and introduced me to her college friends. Once after Butch and I got married, she bought us tickets to the musical Hair which was playing in Chicago and paid for us to fly into Milwaukee where she lived and invited us to stay for the weekend.

The youngest in our family was my sister Linda. I adored her from the minute Mom told me she was going to have a baby. I took part in all the preparations and loved helping Mom while she was pregnant. I always buckled Mom’s shoes for her when she couldn’t bend over and gladly ran around fetching things. I was five when Linda was born and was so excited to be a big sister. I spent lots of time just looking at her, touching her soft skin, and trying to make her smile. I watched out for her and tried to keep her out of trouble. I did get irritated when she got into my toys but that pretty much stopped after a near tragedy. I was playing with jacks on the front porch and Linda, who was just a toddler, reached out and grabbed one of my jacks. I tried to grab it back when, quick as a flash she popped it into her mouth. I shrieked and tried to grab her and she sucked in a big breath prior to crying. The jack went down her throat and she began to choke. I was horrified and called for help. My dad ran in and tried to reach in her mouth, then began to pound her back. The whole family came running. Nothing was working and she started to turn blue. Dad was frantic and said he would drive her to the hospital. Just as he and Mom got to the car, I suppose he realized there would never be time and he held her by her feet and turned her upside down. He gave her a thump on her back and she threw up and out came the jack. By then all of us were terrified and crying. I knew it was all my fault and couldn’t have felt worse. After that, of course I wasn’t a perfect sister, but I always tried to look out for her and protect her. Butch and I provided a lot of space for her when she was a teen and ran interference between her and our parents when things got tough. She slept on our couch many a night until she worked through a couple years of rebellion.

As we all became adults, I have loved the special close friendship I have had with my sisters. We have laughed together until we cried, and taken care of each other through thick and thin. Losing Diane to lung cancer left a gaping hole in our family but we were all there for her when she passed away. My siblings are a very important part of my life.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

What are your favorite books?

Butch

Don’t expect anything particularly profound on this topic. I was always a slow reader. So much so that I had to take a speed reading course just to get by in school. Any time I had to read, I was reminded of my lack of ability in this area. So, homework was a nightmare.

My favorite books are the ones that brought me a lot of enjoyment. They made me feel good but were not deep or meaningful.

All about Dinosaurs / Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

In third grade at Riley Elementary I began a lifelong interest in dinosaurs. That was when they first introduced us to them in school. Mrs. Kappelman was my teacher and suggested I read “All About Dinosaurs” by Roy Chapman Andrews. Like all kids I memorized the names of the known species of the time. There were far fewer of them back then. But I knew Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, Ankylosaurus, and of course, Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Over the years I kept up my interest, following new discoveries with enthusiasm. Gregory Paul published “Predatory Dinosaurs of the World” in 1988 but I didn’t get a copy until Christmas of 1991, not till after I read Michael Creighton’s Jurassic Park which was influenced by Paul. Especially as regards velociraptor. After reading Predatory Dinosaurs I too became a fan of velociraptor, but not the big ones as depicted in the movie, Jurassic Park, rather, the greyhound sized ones from Mongolia. I carved a model of its skull and even saw the “type” specimen, or the fossil the species is described by, in a traveling exhibition that came through Iowa. I was gratified by what an accurate job I had done in my carving.

Call it Courage

By sixth grade I was at a new school, Moore Elementary. My teacher in fifth and sixth grades was Mrs Daggett. She would often read to us, usually towards the end of the school day. One book she read us was “Call it Courage” by Armstrong Sperry. This is probably my favorite book of all. It is the story of a young Polynesian boy, Mafatu, who was deathly afraid of the sea because it had taken his mother when he was very young. You can see how this could be a problem living in Polynesia. He would not go out and fish like the other boys. Instead he had to stay on the island learning the things that the girls did. So not only was he ridiculed for being a coward, he was teased because of doing the more domestic things. He has enough of it and one day and he takes a canoe and sets off with only his dog for company. He arrives at a deserted island which he discovers is visited by cannibals when they perform their grisly ceremonies. He also has run-ins with a shark and wild boars, as well as just having to do everyday things to survive. The domestic training he has endured these many years turns out to have been perfect to help him. The cannibals eventually come and he barely escapes and returns to his village a hero. The perfect ending!
Years later, I found a copy of the 1963 printing and I still have it to this day. Karen read it to our kids many times and I hope it is also one of their favorites too. Later on I found out that Disney made a movie of it. I also have a copy of that.

Sherlock Holmes

In the summer of 1966 I went to England. I must have read The Mystery of the Speckled Band some time in high school and it created a life long interest in these stories. The whole summer I would stop into book stores and see if they had any paperbacks that I hadn’t already bought. By the time I got home I think I had them all but one which I learned was under a different copyright than the rest and never was available as an inexpensive paperback. Never mind, I eventually got them all in a comprehensive hard cover volume like the one shown here. I also have several other hard bound copies. I had watched several movies made in the 1940’s and 50’s starring Basil Rathbone and figured you couldn’t do much better than him. At least not until Jeremy Brett came along. Too bad they didn’t get all the stories dramatized before he died.

The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings

In 1969 I had to have an operation and spent some time in the hospital. I asked Karen to buy me a copy of The Hobbit. “The Lord of the Rings” was all the rage but I knew it was preceded by “The Hobbit” and I thought it would be better if I read that first. It made the idle time I had to endure much easier and set me up for the Rings trilogy. Over the years I have read the books several times and seen the movies too of course.

Dune

Dune was a good read. I liked it a lot but it wasn’t overly great. What makes me include it in this list is that once I started reading it, I hardly put it down till I was done. I had never done that with a book before. This must have been about 1971. The movie came out in 1984. When I was watching it, I thought it had almost nothing in common with the book. So I reread it and I was amazed at how good a job they had done. When Star Wars came out in 1977 I thought that lots of it was ripped off from Dune.

Little Quack

This is one of my favorite books not because of the joy it brought to me from reading it myself, but from reading it to my grandchildren. When I did, I would read it with a fake German accent. I had no particular reason for doing this but I guess I tried it one time and it just stuck after that. I renamed all the characters and even wrote their names down in the copy I gave to my grandsons Wyatt and Augie.

Karen

I have been an avid reader for my whole life. As a child I read everything I could find. My mother and older sisters took me to the children’s section in the basement of the downtown public library whenever they went. I checked out a whole stack every time right up to my limit. In the summer time my sisters and I often walked to the Bookmobile that parked on the Sun Mart grocery store parking lot a few blocks away but the downtown library was my preference. The children’s librarian was a lovely woman named Mrs. Zerzanek. She knew about every book in the library and sometimes had a suggestion for me when I arrived. I was a shy and quiet little girl and she asked me about the books I checked out and enjoyed. When I was in 5th grade I was wandering around through the stacks trying to figure out what to read next. Mrs. Zerzanek came up to me and told me that she thought I had already read every single book in the children’s library. ( Probably an exaggeration!) She said that it was time to go upstairs to the main library and check out books from there. I was stunned that she knew anything about me and in awe of the idea that I could choose real grown up books to read. She offered to take me upstairs and introduce me to the main librarian. With such a richness of choice I didn’t know where to begin. The librarian offered a selection of four or five books and suggested I choose my first book from them. I chose:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

This book was different than any I had read before and had a deep impact on me. The story takes place in the early 1900’s and is the story of a young girl, Francie Nolan, and her family who live in a poor neighborhood of immigrant families in Brooklyn. Francie is eleven years old at the beginning of the story. She often escapes into books and imagines the life she would like to live when she grows up. Both of Francie’s parent are first generation immigrants who came to America with their families and see education as a path to a better life for their children. Jamie Nolan is Francie’s father and works as a singing waiter. He is an alcoholic and disappoints his wife and himself with his weakness for liquor. Katie Nolan is very down-to-earth and cleans apartments to make ends meet for her family. Eventually Jamie dies from drink and the family is left to struggle even more after he is gone. Katie is determined to give her children a better life at all costs. The tree of heaven is common in Brooklyn and grows up through cracks in the concrete to survive against the odds. This tree is a symbol of dreams, struggles, and perseverance running throughout the book.
This book opened my eyes to all kinds of challenges that I had no idea of in my sheltered life. It made me think about what was worth dreaming of, what it takes to overcome obstacles, and what qualities it takes for a person to keep going without much support. It was the first book I read that touched my heart in such a deep way and made me cry for sadness and also for joy.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

OK, I admit it. I love to read a good romantic historical fiction book. This has to be one of the very best books in that category. If there is anyone reading this who doesn’t know the story, it takes place in in England about 1810. Elizabeth Bennet is the second oldest in a family of five girls. Her father is a gentleman and owns a modest estate in the country. Unfortunately, the property is entailed, so that when Mr. Bennett dies, the estate will pass to a distant cousin, the odious and pompous Mr. Collins. Women, in most cases, are not allowed to inherit property. Mrs. Bennett is obsessed with finding well set up husbands for her daughters who can support them, and her, if the estate passes to the cousin. A new, wealthy, single man has leased a nearby estate and moved into the neighborhood. He has brought his even wealthier friend, broody Mr. Darcy with him to help him learn how to manage a property. The story revolves around a series of misunderstandings, prejudices, and prideful behavior, between Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. The couple is attracted to each other almost against their wills. There is an evil villain in the person of Mr. Wickham, and many misbehaving relatives who add to the drama. Elizabeth and Darcy both learn unpleasant truths about their own characters and eventually work to become better people.
This is not deep literature but Jane Austen wrote and anonymously published this book and others in a time when women were not allowed to have a career or earn money for themselves if they were born into the gentry. Nearly everything a woman did had the potential to compromise her reputation and ruin her opportunity for a good marriage. And marriage, in any class was a priority for her survival. This and other historical fiction, regardless of the time in history of the setting, helped me to understand the things all women have had to overcome to get to the place we are today. Jane Austen, you go girl!

For part of my career as an educator I served as the school librarian in the Media Center at Prairie View Elementary. I had the joy of greatly expanding a poorly funded and neglected space into a beautiful , modern, and functional library. I also had an amazing budget to create a collection of gorgeous picture books, nonfiction books on every topic, and fiction books to entice all children. Kids in my school were welcome in the library and invited to love books as much as me. I was in heaven. I read every single book that I put on the shelves. I had many favorites but loved the ones I could read aloud in one setting.

Pink and Say

One favorite author was Patricia Polacco, who wrote and illustrated lovely books. One I particularly loved was Pink and Say. The story is true and was passed down from great grandfather, to grandmother, to son, and finally to the author-artist herself. It takes place in the civil war and the author’s ancestor, a Union soldier who is barely more than a boy, was wounded and left for dead on a battlefield. Another young Union soldier, also wounded, finds him and takes him home to be nursed back to health by his own grandmother, Moe Moe Bay. As the boys regain their health and their strength, they realize that staying in Moe Moe Bay’s home in Confederate territory puts her in great danger. They leave and their interracial friendship grows and deepens. The story is poignant and has many themes of friendship, loyalty, sorrow, and hope. It generated lots of discussions, not only about history and race, but also of the continuity of stories in families. It was always hard to read aloud without shedding a tear.

Now, I mostly read novels, and particularly like crime stores and mysteries. I look for books that are well written and include well developed characters in interesting times or places. Two series I enjoy are written by the same author and also incorporates my interest in World War I. I say author, but actually the books are written by a mother and son writing team who publish under the name Charles Todd.

A Fatal Lie

The first series is about a Scotland Yard detective, Ian Rutledge, who has returned from WWI with shell shock. He spent some months in care to help him be able to function as a civilian. As an officer near the end of the war, his duty was to send men into battle when there was only a small chance for their survival. At one point a soldier who had fought heroically over more than a few years under him refused an order to go over the top. His punishment, determined by military court, was to be shot. It was Rutledge’s responsibility to carry out the order for punishment as an example to others. The horror of what he was ordered to do was carried home from war. During the course of his cases, the soldier he killed is constantly at his shoulder making comments, advising, and keeping him from finding his own peace.

A Casualty of War

The second series by the same author team is about Bess Crawford who trained as a nurse as soon as WWI was declared. She served on the front lines and at aid stations and field hospitals for the duration of the war. These stories are also mysteries that are solved amid the horrible wounds and suffering of the soldiers. The books are set at intervals across the whole length of the war and in the latest books depict the aftermath that includes men returning home with horrible wounds, both physical and mental, trying to begin new lives.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

Tell me about and adventure
you’ve been on

Butch

A Trip to Philmont Scout Ranch

I have had many adventures in my life. I tend to think of adventures as outdoor experiences. We have been on vacations that were quite adventurous, but they somehow don’t qualify as time spent with nature. I have been canoeing in the north woods five times. Those would count as adventures but the one I choose to tell about is my trip to Philmont Scout Ranch in 1963 when I wasn’t quite 15 years old.

When I found out that the Hawkeye Area Council of Boy Scouts was putting together an expedition I told my folks I would really like to do that and they signed me up. Planning started months earlier. The powers that be decided the dates of the trip, the route we would go, and any side activities we would see on our way there and back. They also assigned us to patrols of about 10 scouts and an adult leader. I think there were 4 patrols altogether. Ours was the Falcon patrol, another was the Playboy patrol and I don’t remember what the other two were. I made a flag for our patrol and when we got back, we all signed it then had a drawing to see who would get to keep it. As it happens, I won it. I still have it somewhere.

We were encouraged to get a pair of good hiking boots. In the Spring our patrol started getting ready. The leadership said it was important to break-in our boots so we wouldn’t get blisters. Figuring how many hikes we could get in between when we started and the trip itself, it is pretty obvious that none of us would have our boots ready to go. the hikes did help us build up some stamina, but most boys in their mid-teens were in pretty good shape anyway. I was.

Here is a picture of our patrol:

Richard Mathes was our patrol leader with Dave Tackenburg as the assistant. Dave is holding our patrol flag in the picture above. Dick Eyman was our adult leader and was as unpleasant as anyone could be. He seemed to think his whole purpose was to impose some sort of military discipline and make our lives miserable. He was particularly conscientious in my case. I dislike him to this day.

My tent mate was Mark Arnold. When I first learned I was getting to go on this trip, I was going to have Mickey Freymiller as my buddy. He was from my own troop, Troop 2, that met at Hayes Elementary School. But Mark, who was in a lot of my classes, asked if we could be partners and I eventually chose to go with him.

The big day arrived and we set off. Earlier, our patrol had decided that we were going to wear campaign hats. I have mine on in the picture below. I think it cost $5.00. In 1963 that was a bit of money. However after I bought it, the leaders decided that we were all going to wear pith helmets, dorky mass produced hideous things. This was going to come back and bite me on the backside later in the trip.

We boarded the bus and took off for Cimmaron, NM. When we arrived they checked us in and took a commemorative expedition photo. Our expedition was No. 811A1. We were surprised to learn that Expedition 811A2 had just arrived too. They were another Troop from our council and nobody had even mentioned them before. They were from Iowa City and one of their leaders was one of our favorite teachers, Spencer Pink from Wilson Junior High. They were in base camp with us and when those scouts were around Mr Pink, they called him Spencer. I was jealous. I asked him if I could call him Spencer too, but he said I could just go on calling him Mr Pink.

The general plan of the trip was to hike from camp to camp every day or two. It was about a ten mile hike each day we were on the move. The leaders were pretty careful that we had the proper equipment in our packs; clothes, mess kits, maybe a first aid kit too. We were issued a big tarp to be used as a tent. You could put it up any number of ways and we tried several over the time we were out.

One of the first things we learned was that the hiking boots were a mistake. Most of us had a second pair of shoes, tennies or slippers, for wearing around camp after the hiking was over for the day. I had some handmade moccasins that were way cool, but worthless for footwear. One of the older scouts just wore his tennies all the time. He never suffered a bit from that. The leaders gave him some crap but he would not put the boots back on. They were heavy and hot and didn’t seem all that worthwhile, even in the uneven, mountainous terrain. There were such extremes in temperature between day and night. If you wore trousers, you were hot. If you wore shorts, you were more comfortable, but you got grass cuts if you went through high weeds and insects were a bother on your bare legs. I thought wearing leggings or tights or long underwear might be a good solution, but of course no one had anything like that.

Most of the camps we went to had a little supply hut. They had candy and other treats, but they knew they had you and the prices were higher than they should have been. One time there was a big rain storm and the supply hut in the next camp was completely washed away. We heard about it before we left the next morning and my friend Mick, who seemed to have quite a bit of cash at hand, bought up all the candy in the camp we were in before we left the next day. He made out like a bandit.

On some nights it got quite cold. Most of the time it wasn’t a problem but one time we set up our tarp/tent as an open front lean-to type design. We practically froze to death. Next night, we cobbled up a tight little package but it took forever to set up and take down and only worked marginally better for the cold. Mick didn’t like the cold any better than the rest of us and decided to put some warm, rounded stream pebbles in his sleeping bag. You can guess what happened. They were too hot from being in the fire and burned holes in his sleeping bag. Another story with Mick and rocks was he would sneak one into my pack every now and then when I wasn’t looking. I don’t remember ever finding them and taking them out so he must have felt bad about it at some point and taken them out himself.

I think our route was a big loop. We hiked up mountains quite a bit and the dorky pith helmets were a real pain in the ass. Their brim bent down so the bottom of the hat was about even with your eyes. Good for shielding the eyes from the sun, but worthless for seeing where you were going as you walked up hill. You could only see about 3 or 4 feet in front of you. It was maddening. We also had to walk along in single file so chatting with your buddies was almost impossible. I took my hat and bent the front up, ala Gabby Hayes. This particularly insensed Mr Eyman. I told him I couldn’t see where I was going and that I wanted to leave the flap up. He stomped back, ripped my hat off, bent down the flap, and slammed it back on my head. He threatened me not to put it up again. I told him when we got to the “Tooth of Time”, a Philmont landmark, I was going to throw it over the edge frisbe style.

Well, I didn’t throw it away. It was too valuable to me as a souvenir.

I was always on the lookout for something interesting and along the trail, I think it was by the Tooth of Time, I found an old dried up cow pelvis. I discovered it made a perfect seat. You just nestled right into it and it supported you all around. Again, Eyman tried to make me throw it away. I refused. I suppose he thought if I carried it everywhere it would be a burden I took on myself and that I was my own worst enemy. I kept it all the way to the end of the trip and then took it home too. I kept it as a trophy for many years.

This picture shows us on the trail over the Tooth of Time. A ragged bunch of hikers, huh? Most of the guys in the picture were in my patrol. That’s me in the middle. The guy just to the left of my walking stick is the one who refused to wear boots. You can see he has his tennies on.

After we left the scout ranch we stopped at a couple of places on the way home. Taos was one of them and also Dodge City. A good adventure.

Karen

An Adventure In the Canadian Quetico

In 1996 Butch and I had an adventure in the Canadian Quetico with our son Lance and his future wife, Cherise. The Quetico is an area in Canada that is like the Boundary Waters on the American side of the border. Butch and Lance had both been to the Boundary Waters a couple of times, once with Lance’s scout troop, and other times with our friend, John Hawn. I had been to the Boundary Waters once before with Butch and John and Sue Hawn.

This trip was different for many reasons. Lance had been inspired with the beauty of stripper canoes and wanted to build one for himself. We had long had a big aluminum canoe that had provided us with much family joy while our kids were growing up. It was big, wide, and heavy but practically indestructible for river canoeing and very safe. While those were great qualities, there was no real beauty or grace involved! So the beginning of the adventure was building a beautiful canoe. Butch and Lance poured over designs and building techniques and chose the way to proceed. We turned over our garage to the project and spent over a year in the building process. The canoe was made of redwood strips, wood that is now, and then, rare and precious. The design they chose was called the Red Bird. While most of the work was completed by Butch and Lance, I also contributed helper type labor and the inconvenience of no garage for what felt like forever. My main actual building contribution was caning the beautiful canoe seats installed near the end of the project. Caning is a very meticulous process which includes very sore fingers and hands. The results, though, made me very proud of my part.

We planned the trip very carefully as well. We wanted to maximize the time spent paddling the lakes and minimize portaging the canoes and our gear. Portaging involves carrying everything across land to get from one lake to another. This involves emptying the entire canoe and making several trips across a hopefully short and level path to the next lake. Unfortunately sometimes there is a miscalculation of the elevation of the land in the middle that requires carrying heavy things up and down a steep hill! After searching the maps carefully, we planned our route and applied for an entry permit.

The Quetico, like the Boundary Waters, has strict rules of what can be carried in, in order to protect the cleanliness and pristine beauty of the lakes and park. Camp sites have no latrines and no facilities for garbage. That means we had to carry dehydrated foods and supplies that would not produce waste. Anything that did generate waste had to be burned or carried out. Also for obvious reasons, we could not carry in coolers or drinking water. Lance bought a water processing system that pumped lake water through a filter that created drinkable water free from parasites and pollutants.

I took on the role of planning 3 meals a day plus snacks for the week of our trip. Purchased dehydrated camping meals are very expensive so I planned for regular foods that could be bought in a grocery store. Of course I got a lot of input from my fellow travelers about foods that sounded good. We ate things like oatmeal with dried fruit, and pancakes for breakfast. Once I made baked cinnamon rolls which were not so successful. We took along dried salami and sausage to provide meat in our diet. For lunches and dinners we had macaroni and cheese made with powdered milk, and other pasta and rice dishes favored with lots of spices. We also made pizza from dough mixes, powdered Parmesan cheese, and tubed tomato paste. Snacks included nuts, dried fruit, gorp, beef sticks, candy, and packaged cheese and crackers. Butch and I had bought a camp oven that was heated by a small Coleman stove. We were able to make pizza, brownies, and even coffee cake. Camp cooking was a group affair and we took turns taking the lead. It is one of the fun activities of camping that I have always enjoyed plus everything tastes great when you are out in nature and hungry!

We drove to Canada in two cars. Butch and I had our small Chevy truck with a rack to carry both canoes on top. Our gear fit into the back. Lance and Cherise with their two dogs drove in their own car. We left very early in the morning and planned to reach our destination in one day. We found a resort close to our “put-in” site so we could sleep there over night and get an early start in the morning. This was before easy internet access to everything and we found the place and booked the rooms without much information about the place. It ended up being pretty basic but clean. Our plan was to stay there again on our way out. As a side note, we entered Canada with just our driver’s licenses unlike passport requirements nowadays. We went into the nearest town for pizza and ended up spending over a hundred dollars for pizza, a salad for Cherise and maybe a beer.

In the morning we drove to our entry site, loaded up and took off across the lake to the ranger station. All of us were experienced canoeists but the wind was blowing really strongly straight into our faces. We ended up struggling to get there in any good time. The ranger made comments about doubting our abilities which was a bit insulting. He looked over our permits and our plan and redeemed himself with some very helpful recommendations. When he asked to see our itinerary he was dumbfounded that we actually had one. Apparently most people wing it! We had picked a lake destination that was described as, “the Jewel of the Quetico” in our books. When he discovered we had not brought fishing gear he said that the description was because of the great fishing. He suggested lakes that were actually closer and said we would be more isolated from others, hear wolves howling at night, and see native ancient pictographs on the cliffs. We were convinced and readily changes our plans! We had much easier paddling as the wind died down and spent most of our travel actually on the water with a couple of very short portages.

We found a great campsite with a nice clean, rocky place near the water with a place for the tents higher up. There was a little cove to the side for wading and bathing which the dogs found great fun.

Our weather was very good. We came prepared for wet and dry and cold and warm weather. By and large, at least a part of everyday was beautiful. We had some fairly regular afternoon showers but they were mostly gentle and gave us a great excuse for a nap and some alone time. We had brought a Jane Smiley book and I often read aloud to Butch inside our tent. We spent our days exploring in the canoes. The Quetico, at least in the area we camped, was different from the Boundary waters in a couple of ways. First, it has not been as heavily or as recently logged so the trees tend to be bigger, thicker, and older. Also, I was particularly charmed by the lichen growth in small bays along the lake shore. They were varied in color from lots of shades of green, blues, yellows, and even dusty pink. They encrusted the rocky shores and looked like a fairyland to me. Also, there were a lot of rocks piled up everywhere as part of the landscape.

The best most exciting feature were the native pictographs the ranger had told us about. Many of them were right above the lake waterline. You could imagine the artists paddling up to the cliffs just as we were doing. Some were handprints left by spraying pigments over their hands placed against the cliff. It was awesome to see such a personal signature left by an ancient person. It was tempting to put our hands in the same place, but the ranger had asked us to avoid touching them to preserve the magic for other visitors. We also saw paintings depicting canoes, animals, and people. It is amazing that they have been there for so long and respected by other visitors as they deserve.

We also found and explored an old logging camp maybe from the 20’s or 30’s. We found some discarded or burnt cans, shards of dishes and crocks, and part of an old car or truck. The buildings were pretty much gone. I can’t really remember hearing the ranger’s promised wolves howling but we might have. The Quetico, like the Boundary Waters does have lots of wildlife. We saw more birds by far than on previous trips but no bears or moose at our campsite. We did have the two dogs with us which might have been a factor. We had a scare one night when the dogs ran off at twilight. Lance called and whistled to no avail and eventually they came back with no injuries. They could have run into all sorts of trouble but apparently were unharmed. We did see a moose and calf while driving, but no bears.

A less than pleasant adventure was toileting. When we went to the Boundary waters there were latrine boxes back in the woods away from the lake. Fellow campers gave you privacy by staying away. On this trip there were no latrines. Each of us had to dig a hole with a camp shovel for our business then cover it. It is very hard to dig a hole there because in most places there is just a thin layer of soil on top of big rocks. You may have to try a couple of spots before finding a place that would work. Also, for Butch and I, it was more challenging to squat than it was for Lance and Cherise. We also brought special low impact soap for washing ourselves and dishes, another reason we liked our swimming/wading spot for a quick bath.

The night before we packed up to come home, Butch was sitting on a rock eating his meal. When he started to get up, he twisted his knee and heard something pop inside. It was very painful and made for a less than pleasant trip back. He believes it was the start of his knee troubles that eventually led to knee replacement surgery. It reminded us that we were, indeed, far from help if there had been a serious accident.

It was a fun trip and the two couples got along well and we had a lot of fun together. I love being deep into nature and there is nothing quite as peaceful as being on a lake in a canoe. It was a perfect way to launch Lance’s beautiful boat. Our trip was well planned and we had good equipment but it is good to have some skills, common sense, and trusted companions, on a grand adventure like this one!

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.