Photo Friday: BRIGHT

 O suns of skies and clouds of June

and flowers of June together

You cannot rival for one hour

October's bright blue weather. 

~   ~   ~

What brightens your day?

"A cheerful heart is good medicine."  Proverbs 17.22

1943 My mother at 19.  If one picture could signify mom's life, this is it.
She was bright in her hardest times; even in her last few hours.

Often when I'm on the phone with my daughter and she is sharing a trying situation she seems to always find something to laugh about in the telling.  I love to hear my daughter's laughter.  It brightens my day. 

"I love people who make me laugh.  I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh.  It cures a multitude of ills.  It's probably the most important thing in a person." - Audrey Hepburn.

Recent Events on Big Meadow Road             Proctor Montana


Don Brander and Maxine Learn, longtime neighbors in the small town of Proctor, were talking on the phone with one another one warm day in August.  

The conversation got around to a long-ago neighbor and his family.  Don was remembering the chimney fire that burned their little farm house down to the ground.  He recalled how neighbors from all around came to their aid, trying to save as much as they could for the family with three small children.  Don was telling Maxine how he remembers carrying their still-burning wood stove out of their 2-story home with his bare hands.  He remembers looking back and seeing Hazel, the young feisty redheaded mother, pregnant with her fourth, trying to save a mattress by pushing it out a second story window.  The stairs were smoking, her husband was gone and she was trying to save what little she could: pictures, keepsakes.  But most would soon be gone.


"What a fire that was!" Don was remembering.


That was yesterday.  Today, 55 years after that fire, two of the three surviving children, drove into the same community in rural Montana.   

Terry Newell and I, Lynda Newell Backman, first pulled up to the little church where we had attended as children.  Peeking in the windows, camera shutters clicking, Terry and I were trying to capture some memory of when we sat in those same pews.  

Surprisingly, not much had changed.  Although, the ceiling to floor oil painting our father, Jack, had painted for the little congregation was gone.  It was a painting of Jesus, with arms extended in welcome and bigger than life behind the pulpit.  That was a disappointment.

After taking a couple final pictures together on the front steps, I peeked around the back, there was a small fenced graveyard and, yep, there it stood, the outhouse.  It was, in fact, this outhouse that especially amused my oldest brother Tracy on a return visit a few years ago... as he called it, "the 2-holer."  That may not seem too strange, but there was no partition in those 2-holers and from what Terry says, they weren't that uncommon, but he says he doesn't remember more than one person using a 2-holer at the same time. Well, except for the time my mother was caught in there with a bear.  But that's another story for another time.


With more to see, we started to walk away.  Terry, with his wife Beverly at his side,  getting in his truck they had driven up from Texas.  Myself, with my husband Don Backman in our car we drove up from our home in Olympia WA.  As I opened the car door to leave, I glanced over to the house next door. 

 What would it hurt just to ask if the people who lived there knew anything of the history of the church next door.  While I was taking pictures through the old wavy glass of the church windows, I had been incredulous to  find pages of very old Sunday School attendance records sitting within sight.  I could actually that there were some of my best friends' names on it!  Maybe I could get a closer  look. 


 I walked over to the house next door, up the steps and knocked on the old worn carved oak door.  A very elderly sweet-faced gentleman appeared.  He was the retired former pastor, Jim Dickinson, and although he had moved into the community the same year Terry had graduated from Polson High and left to join the Navy, Jim said he knew of the Newell name. 

He was delighted to open the church for us.  We all followed him back over next door, him talking all the way about what he could remember of the past.  As he unlocked the door he started apologizing profusely for the dust and mess. 

“No need to apologize!” I said.  Little did he know the pleasure he was providing by unlocking not only the door, but many  memories inside here for us.

I felt part of myself still tucked away


here somewhere and in the dell nearby

where lay the ruins of my childhood home. A feeling foreign to me this

connection for as a child growing up Ihad attended 12 schools in 9 years. 
Connection wasn't a feeling I experienced.  Memories were deep, emotions strong.  I was surprised how strong.  The old sepia picture on the wall of Jesus as a boy teach in the temple, the old organ -exciting in their familiarity. 


                                              
I walked over to the desk by the window that held the rolled up & yellowed Sunday school attendance sheets. I read Susan and Sandy Helper’s names.  I see their faces clearly.  

Other names - our babysitter, Marvel and chubby, fuzzy haired Virginia.  The Masterson kids!  All 10 of them. 

The Masterson family took us in after our home burned down.  That made thirteen kids all together.  I remembered the big table where we all sat during breakfast.  Pancakes.  A big tin bucket of peanut butter, another container of honey.  I still love peanut butter on my pancakes.  For lunch it was often just a glass of torn pieces of white bread, sprinkled with sugar and milk poured on top. I remembering really liking it then. Uck!  Really? Hunger and not knowing better,  I suppose. 



And what a happy person I remember Verna Masterson being.  I would soon find a picture of her husband, Lee, on the wall of the nearby school house – as a young man.  I never pictured him as young! Verna was brown-faced and solidily slender, always cheerful.  And there they were, her children’s names written in neat cursive pencil….Gale, Donnie, Clark, Dale,  Elery, Carol, Doris……   It all came rushing back.  Memories of bottle feeding an orphaned fawn - the feel of it sucking the bottle right out of my small hand.  Bathing the younger children in a large tub sitting atop two old wood chairs facing each other.  That was Carol and my job, young as we were ourselves…using the same water for each youngster in turn.Other memories came, rounding up their milk cow with the older boys, licking the saltlick (all having own spot of course – didn’t want to share germs with each other – no thoughts that we were sharing with the cattle or what other animal!), watching for rattlers in the grass and in the rock piles, listening to Lee sing along wi


Verna

th his guitar after supper or waiting to hear their particular ring on the old oak wall phone.





Jim Dickinson excused himself a minute, as he phoned someone.  When he returned, he told us he had just called a neighbor Maxine who had the key to the old school house.  

Maxine had told him, ‘Curious, I was just talking to Don yesterday and he had mentioned that fire of ’57.’  

Jim said this as if he wasn’t talking about us…or maybe he thought the memory was a painful one.  He was full of information for us, helpfully trying to remember where that painting might have gone.  He had set up a time for us to meet Maxine at our old schoolhouse.  After visiting and taking more pictures, we thanked Jim profusely and he wished us good day. 


Proctor School: 2 rooms, elementary on one side, high school on the other. 


The drive to the school was a short one. It could almost be seen from where we were at the church.  As we pulled into the gravel drive, we were met by Maxine.  She was ready with the key to let us in.  The school from the outside looked very much the same as when we attended. The bell  still in it's place.  The wall's peeling white paint and, yes, the outhouse right across the gravel drive.  The smell of dust and old wood again met us as we entered.  Wonderfully, only a few things had been update.  Yes, there was a flushing toilet.   Two large rooms, the high school side was still the same except for one updated green chalkboard.


 Terry and I found two old class pictures on the wall.  One familiar, one we had never seen before. I am not sure if Terry noticed it, but whoever typed the names under the picture (updated in a new frame) listed Terry as a Masterson.  There were so many of them! And we were living with them at the time.

Terry is here taking a snap of the photo; his reflection captured up against his own reflection as a child. I'm in the lower left sitting near his feet.

Although we were in different grades, the pictures included all the students from 1-8, all 20 of them.   Strangely missing were any pictures of our brother Tracy.  Tracy was the family member who kept us all up-to-date on one another as adults; always calling, checking in and the one and only member of the four siblings  who kept in touch with relatives in Montana.  My heart ached a little that Trac' was not here.  He would have loved being here with the both of us.  Being the oldest, he remembered the most and had many more stories to tell.  But we lost Tracy to cancer a few years ago.

 From there it was a 2 mile drive to what used to be our property.  We knew it very well since we had walked it 5 days a week for years. I reminded Terry how he had fallen asleep in a large snow drift alongside the road on one of those walks home –on a bitterly cold winter afternoon.  And how mom was so mad at Tracy and I when we arrived home without him – leaving him alone in the snow asleep!  I can still hear her yelling at us! 

We pulled up to the barbed wire gate with the same familiar latch: a simple loop over top and bottom of the post.  My husband lifted it open and let us step through.  Terry soon disappeared into the tall grass.  On a hunt for the familiar.

                                  

                  Terry standing where the house would have been. 


And we did find some remnants here and there.  It was strange that there was even anything left after such a long time.  We found the chimney liner thrown aside behind what used to be the house.  The culprit. A chimney fire had taken the house.                                                                          
 Terry recognized the pie cherry tree, picked some and handed them to us.  

The cherry tree, so many years later, feeding us again!    


Next we found the foundation where Dad had started to build a home for us but never finished. All I know is, our neighbors, the Powells, bought the destroyed homesite and it’s 80 acres back then and now it sat, so many years later, the area around the house and barn just exactly as it had been. The back 40 had been harvested recently as big discs of hay sat atop the hill.

While we were walking the property we noticed a man repairing a barbed wire fence on the other side of the gravel road.  We crossed to talk.  It was Ernie Learn.  Still living on the same land he on which he was born.  His wife, Maxine, had called him to say we were in town.  He talked with us as he worked, he said a herd of elk had torn down the fence again.  He was a very stoic man, not very expressive.  Once he warmed a little to us,  he told us the story of how our mother saved the hand of his small cousin when he had almost cut through his entire hand with a chain saw.  He remembered how mom, not knowing how to drive a stick shift, drove him all the way to the hospital in Kalispell 35 miles away...in first gear.  The doctors saved the hand.  

"To this day,"  Ernie said,  "he can grip good; all except his little finger curling up tight."  
Just his taking the time to tell us that added information spoke to how important it is, especially in these parts where men have to work very hard on their land, to have a grip. 

I think to have the guts, strength, loyalty and all the rest it takes (I can’t imagine and will never know) to work this hard for this long to maintain a home here.  To make a go of it.  I admire these Proctor people!

He said goodbye just as nonchantly as he said hello.  As if we'd always been here and we'd be back tomorrow.  So matter of factly.  Is that the Montana way? I don't know.  I've been away way too long to know. 



       

A shot of the three of us at the ranch

© Lynda Newell Backman

Reflection

Reflection

Store front, downtown Olympia, WA

            

I have tomatoes of different colors & sizes lining my countertops waiting to be juiced or sauced. And drawing fruit flies.  A little light-hearted reflection is needed.

I recently upgraded my camera -better ability with the closeups. 

In the garden, Hosta Frances Williams

In the kitchen window, a reminder of my summer birthday and my daughter

   

. . . . . 

My son's roommate's car.  More than just reflecting blossoms of the Passion Vine on a window, reflecting back to days we drove cars like this daily.

         Last Summer, Cape Cod                                     

grandchildren

 On the drive home from church last Sunday, we past the funeral of a local fireman.  A different kind of reflection.

My husband, remembering his parents I never met. 

Reflections on Reflections Play

Poets finger frequencies chromatic

which few imagine, fuse into our days,

highlight dross in unexpected ways

turn common hieroglyphs to gold syllabic.

Poets tune to wavelengths which harmonic impressions

fleeting, turn to inter-plays outside time transformed.

For image stays as fly in amber; glowing, flowing, tonic

despite encroaching time's invasion chronic.

Reflections on reflections play. 

Relays found unbound, may color in life's grays,

unpick the spirit's drawbridge lock symbolic,

depict emotions which with rainbow tint

may move, may pain remove and joy imprint.  Jonathan Robin

 "color in life's gray, unpick the spirit's drawbridge lock, 

depict emotions which with rainbow tint may move, 

may pain remove and joy imprint"..

Holding a bubble and capturing my distorted reflection.  It appears I'm wearing a rainbow tint blouse, but no  (notice my inverted self in gray) 
the color is mysteriously reflected in just the right place on me. 
(This so fits the poem and only noticed after I pasted it below the poem)

In reflection:  My perspective IS my reality.

PHOTO FRIDAY:  GOLD 

                                THANKSGIVING IN SUMMER

Last year my daughter decided to start one of her own family traditions.  Celebrating Thanksgiving early.  This year there was deep fried bird with all it's trimmings.  The weather did cooperate and let us celebrate outside.  

So for me, this week's theme is a perfect description of the day we spent together with family  and new friends. A day spent out in the country alongside a river.  There was much laughter in the preparation (what a beautiful new family my daughter has become a part) pets, football, good food and conversation.  

Because nature set the stage and sun the light, as it set between the firs, all became golden.

 

 

Life is like a camera 

Just focus on what is important

Capture the good times

Develop from the negatives

and if things don't turn out.....take another shot.

PHOTO FRIDAY:  C o l d

With images of cold, air temperature comes to mind first, but the Pacific NW has been unseasonably warm and sunny this year.  In fact, a record-breaking dry and sunny Autumn so far with no signs of cold or rain coming soon.  Which is so okay by me, as I have actually been able to enjoy watching the
'Turning of the Trees'.

-----

My father was a logger and before we bought the chicken ranch where we grew up, he wanted so to fulfill a life-long dream of singularly building a log cabin with own his bare hands.  He did. But before he could install panes of glass, the snows hit.  That first winter we spent in the cabin was cold! 

My older brothers remember that winter better than I.  Days & nights of trying to warm ourselves by the old 50-gallon drum we called our wood stove:  First warming our backsides then turning to warm our faces.  We brought our beds closer & closer to the center of the cabin at night where the hot stove burned.

  

This is the best example of cold in my memory.  My bare-legs with snow nearby. With mother it was a dress most of the time, regardless.  Looking close at the smaller snapshot, we still hadn't  windows in by the next summer, but mother saw to it that we did not spend another winter in that cabin.

 The 16th green of a golf course is near our yard... IS our front yard, actually.  Last winter we were smiling at a group of golfers outside our window,  putting orange balls in the snow without the benefit of gloves.  Wearing wet jeans & tennis shoes - but seemingly having great fun!

So on these warm days, cold appears on the inside

Yesterday, my hubby came in from working in the warm out-of-doors:  frosty iced tea was waiting.

A favorite treat in our home - as was it for my children growing up - frozen blueberries and milk. Cold enough to give you a brain freeze.

                                                                                                                                                    photo by heidi schley

‘Goodbye, and keep cold’ 

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;

But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.

"How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,

And such as is done to their wood with an axe—

Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night

And think of an orchard's arboreal plight

When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)

Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God.   

                                                                             Robert Frost