Moose and ducks

                                                                                         Our cabin by the Lake
 

Hayter article for October 17, 2021

“More Ducks than Moose” 

            SANDPOINT, IDAHO -- I don’t mean to pooh-pooh anybody’s moose-sighting story, but I’m beginning to think that Bill and Debbie out of Santa Barbara never saw a moose outside this house. I’ve been standing out here before sunup and haven’t seen or heard a moose one. Regardless, I refuse to let this one setback ruin our North Idaho vacation.

            The origin of the moose story came from the Airbnb guestbook located near the entrance of this beautiful house. When I write my story, I will include the wonderful sight from this pier. If you’re through looking at the house I need you to carefully do a 180 on this narrow pier, so you can see the four separate lines of ducks sitting out there in some cold water. Duck bottoms must be coated in ox-hide. David Attenborough could tell you the name and the genius species of the quackers out there, but he’s not here. He’s in Uruguay studying the eating habits of the Gray Cave Monkey… not to be confused with the Red-bearded Zanzibar Cave Monkey. I choose to call the ducks “short-necked popups”. They’ll float out there like they’ve got good sense, and then all of sudden go underwater and pop up seconds later.

            By the way, the lake you’re looking at is called “Pend Orielle” (Pen-da-ray). It stands for  “pendant hanging from ear”.  It was given the name back in 1810 by a French trader, who chose to reference the jewelry hanging on the ears of the Native inhabitants of the area. (I kid you not.) I might’ve named it after the animals that inhabited the LAKE, “Lake Short-necked Pop Up”. The French?

The width of Lake Pen-da-ray varies, but the length is 45 miles, and the depth 1200 feet. That makes it the fifth deepest lake in the country. As such, much of the area around here was confiscated by the Navy Department early in WWII so they could establish a naval base here to train crews for submarine duty and to test new devices invented for submarines. The navy preferred to do this inland for fear Japanese subs might come in and steal our secrets or sink our subs before the sailors had been properly trained. It is said that at the bottom of this lake is housed equipment and perhaps a submarine that our navy chose to leave in place. Kind of like an underwater Area 51. If we could communicate with one or two of those short-necked pop ups, we might learn the truth. 

I would’ve side-stepped the history lesson, but I thought it too fascinating. Almost as fascinating are those who have accompanied me here. There they are. “From Washington State, we have my niece, Rhonda and her husband Curt, who bought a lot of the grub, including Duncan Donuts coffee, but also hauled Kay and my buns out here. Give ‘em a big hand! Then we have my sister Susan and her husband Don who live on the western side of Washington. Sue, you and Don show yourselves! Col Don, if you will, sir, stay out of the woods. I’ve already looked and there are no moose out there for you to manhandle.” 

I wanted to introduce you to my family here because they are largely responsible for making this trip such a grand experience… them and the ducks. Oh, and the hot tub. The owners of this place put up a hot tub just off the back deck. I’ve never been in a hot tub when it was cold outside. Or warm. Turns out, hot tubs are best when it’s cold outside.

Rhonda did a superb job picking out our Airbnb.  It has a large living space that includes four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a footlocker full of board games, bookcases full of novels and CDs, a washing machine with a spin-cycle that creates the noise and speed of a WWII, P-51 Mustang. And the homeowners included more amenities than I have in my house back in Conroe. They’ve got several canoe-like boats, three coffee pots, and a spatula the size of a shovel. 

Yesterday, Curt found a backgammon board and challenged me to a game. After I gave him my answer, he forced the challenge on me. I’ve only seen backgammon played in movies. It looks way complicated. And when the rules are read to you, it sounds even more complicated. Curt was just learning, but pretty much had to tell me the proper moves to make after the roll of the dice. Get this. I won the first game. More accurately, Curt lost to himself. I now know a little bit about how to play backgammon, but I find it too challenging. Too much strategy involved. Maybe if I was in prison and it was the only game on the cell-block, I could get to enjoy the game, but it’s just not worth going to prison for. 

I’ll tell you this, we’ve sure been eating a lot better than we would in prison. Rhonda, Curt, and Susan have cooked some really good stuff. Rhonda prepared about the best bbq ribs I’ve ever had. And, she’s a Washingtonian! Curt grilled salmon last night, and then made pigs in a blanket and then scrambled eggs with cheese and every vegetable in the house. And, get this, each of the pig blankets had two sausages in ‘em! I didn’t even know it could be done. 

Tomorrow? Who knows? Maybe we’ll see a moose. We’ve yet to see old-town Sandpoint, so we’ll probably do that tomorrow. Oh, while there’s not any noticeable sand out here, the town was named from an entry in a diary where a French trader wrote, “I left point of sand in the early morning.” Upon finding the trader’s log the people of the area called their new town “Sandpoint”. In the Northwest, people don’t spend a great deal of time coming up with the name of places. – Next time.

           

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The Wrong Columbus?

 

Hayter article for October 10, 2021

“The Wrong Columbus?” 

            Columbus Day was my fourth favorite holiday. The first was Christmas, the second Spring Break, and the third Thanksgiving. A few of you may not put Spring break in the category of “holiday”. That’s a problem you need to sort out.

“Holiday is many things to many people, but I have indorsed the definition à “A day fixed by law or custom on which ordinary business is suspended in commemoration of some event or in honor of some person.”

            That’s why Columbus Day was considered a Holiday. The Congress of the U.S. decided that the man needed honoring. Since a holiday allows kids not to have to attend school, Sunday is a bad day for a holiday. That’s why Congress went with the second Monday in October. This year that’s the 11^th.

            Yet, the Conroe ISD school calendar shows that students get off both on Friday and Monday. And, get this, the holiday is not referred to as, “Columbus Day”. It’s labeled “Holiday”! If the name “Christopher Columbus” had not become associated with so much bad juju the holiday would still be named for him.

When I was a school kid, we were taught that Columbus was nothing short of super. Today, Columbus is considered by about half of us as a great guy. The rest see him as the father of some cruel and selfish deeds aimed at those who considered our New World, to be their “Old World.”  The indigenous.

In this wonderful country of ours, we are allowed to develop our own opinions about things. Only we can’t legally hurt people with our opinions. With that in mind, I don’t care to toss caution to the wind and stir up controversy concerning rights of the “tired, poor, huddled  masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." Those words were not attached to the Statue of Liberty by the French who built the thing. Had they been, we might’ve torn ‘em off. No, a contest was held, and “ The New Colossus” a poem by Emma Lazarus was chosen. The words are as godly as can be, just difficult to implement. Americans can at least applaud themselves for having some great thoughts. 

Perhaps the native Americans would’ve been treated better had they been as welcoming as our Statue of Liberty says we are. But, again, I don’t care to get into that. If I ever come up with some attainable answers to our immigration woes, I will gladly share them. But for now, I would like to approach today’s holiday from a different angle. For several years there has been controversy over whether or not Christopher Columbus ever set foot in the New World. There is evidence that could show that he was imagined. 

History tells us that Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy. From there he moved to Portugal where he learned a lot about ships and sailing. He then went to Spain and asked King Ferdinand and Isabella to sponsor a voyage to Asia so he could bring back stuff from China or India and claim both regions for Spain. An agreement was signed and Columbus made it as far as Japan. Not really. On one of his voyages, he landed in Cuba, thinking it was Japan. If you want to blame someone, blame the mapmakers who neglected to include the Pacific Ocean on their world maps. What saps! Eventually, Columbus did the math and figured out there was a rather large obstruction positioned between Europe and Asia. 

The problems associated with the identity of the founder of the New World have been stirred up since the time of the death of Columbus’ grandson. It was then that people from Spain, Portugal, and Italy claimed they were in the lineage of Christopher Columbus, but they had different names for him, and different occupations for him. Right off the bat, there was no evidence of anyone named Christopher Columbus born in Genoa around the time of 1450, the approximate time of his birth. And different paintings of the man began to surface, that did not match the one being accepted at the time. 

One of those credited with the discovery of the new world was a navigator born in Portugal who had documents to prove his navigating skills. Another was born in Spain who had been given credit by some as being the one who sailed to the New World at the same time Columbus was there. 

The only way to untangle this mess is to question history. Before doing so, let us find a definition of the word “history”. Here’s one -- “The record of past events and times, especially in connection with the human race.” --  Record! When you’ve got families of three countries – Italy, Spain, and Portugal, each with documents forged or genuine espousing different names of those who might have discovered America, well, history becomes a grab bag. A DNA test is in the works that will be compared to a family member from each party contesting the accepted title of Discoverer of the New World. One problem is that the body of Columbus can be both in Spain and Santo Domingo. I’m confident that all of this will be settled long after I’m deceased. 

No worries, my original reason for writing about Columbus was to reminisce about how much I enjoyed Columbus Day while I was teaching. That’s when the Pliers and Hayters would set off on a Friday evening to a camping area near a lake or creek. Such a great time. No school worries were allowed inside the camp area. We’d be home by Sunday evening and still have one day left to prepare lessons for school. 

It was my third favorite holiday of the year. My big regret is that we didn’t get two days off for Columbus Day like today’s CISD students and teachers. That’s just so unfair.

           

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Comparison of Moments

 

Hayter article for October 5, 2021

Vacation Moments

 

            GRANDVIEW, WASHINGTON – When I was a youngster, a vacation was a two-week family stay in Bristow, Oklahoma, a town first settled in 1898 and named after U.S. Senator Joseph Bristow. I would tell you why it was named after Senator Bristow, but I would’ve lost too  many of you. It was way boring, know whatta ya mean?

            The hometown of Faris Hayter and Elsie Teegarden might’ve been as exciting as all get out when Mom and Dad were kids, but during my childhood, the place was a den of dull.

            Among my best memories of our vacations was our visit to Aunt Vera and Uncle Laurence’s place in the Oklahoma Outback. It was actually a few acres just outside of Sapulpa.  To me, the place looked like kangaroo country. I liked Vera and Laurence. Mom’s youngest sister was a real cut-up. Her sense of humor was dry, drier, driest. All of the Teegarden clan was dry-witted, but Vera’s quick wit was the best.

And get this – Aunt Vera and Uncle Laurence liked Elsie and Faris’ kids. In comparison to their son, Roger Dan, I think we were safe as zip-tied bread. I’ve mentioned my Uncle Laurence to you a time or two. He was a hero during WWII. Awarded two silver stars, he was,  for some things he did in Anzio, a port city near Rome. Anzio was the location of an Allied attempt to defeat Hitler by attacking the “Soft Underbelly of Europe.” Unfortunately, there were too many German soldiers among the Italians. Germans could turn any “soft underbelly” into a gut of stone. It would take a second major attack at Normandy, some five months later, before Germany would witness the pressure from a two-front war.

Roger Dan, the son of the hero, was a wildcat. Each time we visited, he got Dennis and me involved in doing some wild and crazy stuff. During one visit, Roger Dan borrowed the neighbor’s plowhorse and took us riding all over three counties. (Seemed like.) Three boys, one swayback horse, no saddle, and no reins. I was the youngest so I got to sit on the horse’s rump. Each time I fell off, I took the two of them with me. The grown-ups knew nothing of our exploits, nor did they seem the least bit interested. 

Yep, a visit with Roger Dan was the highlight of my Bristow vacations. I tell you that, to tell you this. -- For the past couple of weeks, Kay and I have been vacationing in Washington State, and at no time have we been allowed to get bored.

In fact, at this moment, I doubt I’ll be able to finish this article before we head to Spokane. Yesterday we drove west to the mountains. We saw rock strata that looked like a fence of towering pillars of stone. As we continued the drive upward, we saw rapids racing over huge rocks.  At one point, we rounded a bend and saw fields of leaves and berries that were yellow, orange, red, purple, and green. Curt stopped at practically every pullout. With four cell phones at work, we ended up with enough photos to give each old person in the U.S. a couple dozen great shots.

And, we added to the collection when my nephew, Curt, made another of his “S” shaped turns up the ridge.  Only, at this particular time, Mt. Ranier jumped right out in front of us. It was a huge ice-covered chunk of mountaintop!  -- “Stop the truck!” --  All four of us jumped out as if we’re the first to discover the nation’s third most active volcano. (I researched that after the Bristow thing.)

We had such a great outing. The day before we went to the town of Prosser and watched the early morning launch of about 15 hot air balloons. There was little to no wind, and the air was cool. Those balloons slowly drifted right above us. You may have seen several such spectacles, but it was my first. My smile never broke. I am now persuaded that a flotilla of hot-air balloons can extinguish any frown. Yep, I was awe-struck.

Next week, we’re supposed to go to a lazer light show at the Grand Coolie Dam. It’s located west of Spokane, where practically all of Washington State is located. Kay and I will get to see “one of the largest structures ever constructed by mankind.” Enough concrete was used in building that dam to create a concrete highway from Seattle to Miami. 

So much to see and do. It beats the daylights out of our Oklahoma vacations. Well, all but one. It was Autumn, and the ground and surrounding trees were covered in yellow and orange. A superbly dressed group of seven soldiers stood in a perfectly straight line, and as the fall wind beat against my face, they aimed their rifles in a high arch above Uncle Laurence’s casket and and fired three shots with brief pauses between each. It happened outside a small church building in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. Tears filled my eyes when one of the soldiers bowed to my Aunt Vera and placed in her lap a folded American flag. He then whispered to her something about “a grateful nation”. 

I have been so blessed during this trip to witness and participate in some spiritually moving moments. Each of them should stay with me to the grave. Likely, no moments during my past nor in my short future will likely be more touching than that the one at my Uncle Laurence’s funeral. Life is a collection thousands upon thousands of “now” moments. Whether good or bad, each holds value for each of us. That’s nothing you didn’t already know, but it’s something I too often overlook.  – Next time. 

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