Category: Motorcycles, Monkeys, Mischief, and My Life

What is theatre without props? Props give the actors tools with which to work their magic. And props sometimes provide an opportunity for great creativity.

First, a cute aside in regard to props. The then-teenage son of a friend was working on the props crew for a production of Chicago in one of our local theatres. Part of the task involved helping with costume changes backstage. Crew members stage-right had to divide the tasks of helping the femme fatale Roxie Hart actress buckle her shoes as she changed costumes and/or helping a sizable actor don a rice-filled brassiere to put on a woman’s costume. Thinking the young crew member would be shy and perhaps embarrassed about helping Roxie, I offered him the option of getting Ken into the bra. Hmmmm…go figure! He opted for Roxie every time!!

One props panic moment occurred during a production of The Wizard of Oz when the Wicked Witch of the West snagged her outfit on the cauldron and pulled it off its platform, spilling active dry ice all over the stage. With a fast scene change coming up, the props crew and stage manager were frantically trying to figure out how to get the dry ice off the stage…especially since we could not touch it without risk of burning ourselves. Never missing a beat, one of the witch’s flying monkeys led her cohorts, all of whom were on stage at the time wearing gloves as part of their costumes and with buckets and scrub brushes as their props, in sweeping the dry ice into the buckets and carrying it offstage at the scene break. Crisis averted! Thank you, Julie, for your quick-thinking and creativity!

And a classic story that I only heard about (but could absolutely envision and appreciate) involved a long-time theatre member, Maggie, who had reportedly become increasingly frustrated (okay, livid maybe) when a co-performer kept upstaging her throughout one of their acts together early in a show. A later act involved Maggie’s placing a props glass on a table when she exited the stage while the irritating co-performer remained on-stage to deliver a soliloquy. Before the scene Maggie had affixed spirit gum to the bottom of the glass. At her exit, she placed the glass on the edge of the table — half on and half off the table, thanks to the invisible spirit gum. The audience forgot all about the other actor’s soliloquy. All eyes were fixed on the glass, waiting anxiously for it fall off. Score — Maggie one; upstager zero!

Ahhhh…the joys of live theatre!

“Anything with teeth has potential,” was my standard response when people, with outstretched hands, would pose that question in regard to my pound and a half furry kids. Just to be clear, squirrel monkeys have teeth like rows of straight pins…and you get punctured by four rather nasty canine teeth before the little ones even make contact.

So it’s interesting that people would assume that, just because they are relatively tiny, squirrel monkeys would not chomp on anyone by whom they feel threatened. Hmmmm…..

However, in monkey language there is a definite term for “Back off!! NOW!!” It is a shriek that should curdle the blood of the most fearless among men…and yet….some folks are just language-challenged, I guess.

But a little-known defense mechanism of squirrel monkeys is that, when nervous or frightened, they seem to get an immediate case of diarrhea…which has an odor that, rivalling a skunk’s scent, will surely fend off a would-be attacker. Amazing what can emanate from such a small being! I used to carry towels for my own self-defense purposes as I was the one usually carrying Kong, Mo, or Edith Anne when the impulsive people would descent. Phew!!! (And monkey “business” does not otherwise really smell bad.)

So if you have occasion to meet a squirrel monkey, first ask “Does he/she bite?” before reaching out what will likely be interpreted as a potentially threatening hand. Certainly, heed a scream, especially when accompanied by bared teeth (remember the canine/straight pin one-two punch). And, just in case, you might want to invest in a set of nose plugs!

I don’t recall ever naming it, but it was a presence in our home for quite awhile.
During one of our visits to Happy Holler, when my human son ventured to frolic in the great outdoors with the seven Donkin kids, an assortment of snakes, and a shotgun, we ended up taking home a steer skull. Rather fascinating, actually. (Reportedly, it had been discovered in a pasture and subsequently cleaned and bleached, so it was fairly attractive as steer skulls go.)
For awhile it lived in my son’s room, and it did a brief stint as part of a Halloween haunted house. My son had put jello inside the skull so that visitors could, in the dark, feel the gooshy insides.
And the skull made its way onstage when the theatre did a production of The Night Hank Williams Died and needed western decor. We like to think it was a significant factor in the Chanticleer award given to my friend John for best props that year!
Next stop was the local middle school where the skull took up residence in Mrs. Cook’s science class amongst an impressive collection of like items. My son maintained bragging rights, of course. And later on three grandsons were able to do the same as the skull moved on to the new science teacher’s room.
Oddly, I rather miss that steer skull. But we were able to have visitation during Open House!

Backstage, onstage, from the bridge…stories from the theatre days abound!

Following are some of my favorite memories.

During a production of A Streetcar Named Desire, the actress playing Blanche Dubois breaks a bottle during a scuffle. The bottle is, of course, supposed to be a “sugar” bottle which is designed to break without injury. Unfortunately, during one performance, the bottle somehow turned out to be real glass. Breaking it resulted in severe slices in Blanche’s wrist. Because “the show must go on”, the actress reblocked herself with dramatic gestures in which she would fling that arm (fortunately covered by a bell-sleeve dressing gown) off stage through various openings in the set. At each of these opportunities, the props crew continued throughout the show to add layers of bandages to the bleeding arm. After the final curtain fell, the actress zoomed to the ER for stitches. What a trooper!! It was an impressive “save” to observe from the sound bridge.

Speaking of the bridge, a memorable learning experience for yours truly occurred during Crimes of the Heart, my first show ever working lights. Back in the old days, prior to the high tech equipment used now, the lightboard consisted of panel with two sets of controls so that lighting for two different scenes could be set. Then the lights person would cross-fade from one scene to the next by moving a lever (and then proceed to set the following scene on the dormant board). I got distracted by spotting a friend in the audience during one performance (distraction not being a good thing when you are operating equipment that affects the technical aspects of a play). The first act ended at night, and the second act took place in the morning. When I pulled the lever to bring up Act 2, lo and behold — still night!! Oops!! The stage manager panicked, of course, and insisted I cross-fade the lights. Because I had been a good student when tutored on setting the lights, I was able to point out to the stage manager that cross-fading would only bring back the “curtain warmer” from intermission so that the scene would be lit at knee-level for the actors. I assured him the sun would rise and proceeded to bring up the lights slowly so that dawn could occur as the performers went through the scene. Whew!! Crisis averted, and a huge thank-you to the technician who ensured that I knew how the equipment actually worked.

My favorite bridge memory involved another sound crew stint during a wonderful historical drama, The Last of Mrs. Lincoln. Well, it was wonderful the first couple of weeks, anyway. It was a five-week run and a three-act play. Shall we say……long. And there was only preshow and intermission music to worry about. So lo o o ts of downtime. Sound, in those “olden” days was on a reel-reel tape recorder; but there was also an 8-track tape deck which included settings such as crickets, birds chirping, thunder, rain, and toilet flush. By the third week of the run I was struggling — STRUGGLING — to restrain myself, every time an actor walked off-stage, from pushing “toilet flush”.

The Goat Story began with a Daytona adventure.

Many years ago (circa 1978), between marriages, I bought a new car (Datsun F10 wagon with front-wheel drive) and set off with my human son and a work friend and her son for Daytona Bike Week. The plan was well-laid out: stop off in eastern Tennessee for a visit with two aunts on the farm where my dad grew up; drive to Daytona; camp and attend the week’s flat track racing series; drive to Ft. Myers to drop off my friend and her son with her husband’s aunt (and they would fly back); and stop in central Tennessee to visit friends in Happy Holler (reference the blog post on the Happy Holler Inaugural Visit) on the return trip. And off we went!

The visit with the aunts was enjoyable with lots of catching up. However, as evening descended, they offered for us to stay overnight as it was beginning to snow. We had a schedule to keep, and we were from the north where a little snow is no big deal. We determined with our trusty atlas that going on the local roads to Asheville, North Carolina, would be the shortest route as the interstates were at some distance. My aunts pointed out that the road crossed the mountains, but, hey, I had a car with front-wheel drive. Woohoo! We were ready! Of course, what we did not take into account is that people in the south a) do not drive in snow; b) go indoors and stay there when it snows; c) do zilch in the way of dealing snow on the roads, their theory being that, if you leave it there long enough, it will melt and you can come back out and drive. We also discovered that this route was a two-laner with acute hairpin turns and rather weirdly-cambered tilts to the road. Again, we were from the north — strong, fearless! So….part way up the mountain, as the snowfall increased in intensity, we found ourselves sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic waiting for a tow truck which had no snow tires and was stuck itself as it tried to pull a vehicle out of a ditch. After quite a length of time (and frustrated because we had a schedule to keep), we accepted the invitation of two fellows driving a Gremlin (remember, them, anyone? small cars with no traction?) who were informing folks that they had to get to church over the mountain and were going to hop the median and use the wrong side of the road to get around the traffic snarl (nobody was coming from that direction, anyway). So over the median we went! Did I mention the median, under the snow, was about 8 inches high? Thumpity-thump-thump, bumpity-bump bump! Yikes!! What had I done to my brand new front-wheel drive car? Somehow, fortunately, the thumpity-bumpities leveled out, and we were on our way. Another lesson learned: front-wheel drive vehicles do indeed skid–but it’s the front end that goes sideways. Good to know! Our next delay was in a small town in a valley where the good-hearted (and easily-entertained) townsfolk were all outdoors helping cars on the highway get traction to climb the next mountain. All had come to a standstill because of a semi that had reportedly been off the road at the top. People would stand on the cars’ rear bumpers to give them enough traction to get moving. In our case, they sat on the hood. We made it up the mountain but then learned that our intended route to Spartanville had been closed due to the road conditions. So we eventually made it to an interstate and went from there…slowly, carefully, one of a handful of vehicles still on the road. After driving until nearly daybreak, we pulled into a gas station in Valdosta, Georgia, with a couple of inches of ice covering the tent strapped to the cartop carrier. Another customer took one look and commented, “Wherever it is you come from, I don’t wanna go there!” On we traversed and were relieved to pull into Florida with the sun shining…only to be greeted by an announcement on the car radio that the tornado warnings had been lifted for most of the southern counties and some of the northern counties. Of course, we had no idea what county we were in, so the anxiety continued. Eventually we arrived at our destination, the KOA in Bulow (near the Atlantic Ocean, a bit north of Daytona). For Bike Week the campground was divided into the “family side” and the “party side”. Wisely we chose the family side. Cool campground! Each morning the kids (my 11-year old son and my friend’s 2-year old) would go the clubhouse for breakfast and entertain the other campers by playing pool with the little guy walking on the table using the blunt end of the cue. Luckily noone objected to this, and a good time was had by all. (I do have to share, though, that when my friend discovered upon her return home that she was pregnant, I did jokingly tell her husband that the father was a big biker from the KOA.) The races kept us busy each evening, and at the end of the week, we set off for Ft. Myers to drop off friend and son. Consistent with the comedy of errors that this trip had become, we managed to take the wrong interstate, and had traversed half of Florida being buffeted by 50 mph crosswinds before discovering the mistake. So we crossed from Atlantic to Gulf via the Everglades, deposited our friends in Ft. Myers; and, to get back to the short track races at the stadium that night, hightailed it at 90 mph back to Daytona. Thank goodness the roads were straight and flat and the police apparently otherwise occupied. Still windy, though, so when we got to the stadium I parked, opened the car door and promptly barfed (compliments, I think, of greasy food from the Jack-in-a-box drive-thru and continued buffeting by crosswinds).

Fantastic racing! Slept in the car all night since the winds had collapsed the cabin tent. And the next day, we packed our gear and headed for Happy Holler. We pulled in the gate, thumpity-bumpitied down the mile and a quarter dirt road through the cow pasture, forded the stream, and parked in the yard by the log cabin, excited to see our friends. It was a good visit (even though this city girl had a bit of consternation about the kids playing outdoors in the land of cottonmouth and copperheads). And we slept soundly…until I was awakened by the wife who pulled me out of bed and shoved me toward the kitchen stating, “We have to have a serious talk, and we have to have it right now.” What the heck?! I thought. She asked, “What kind of license plates did you have on your car?” Double “what the heck”! “Temporary tags. Why?” Who on earth would come down a mile and a quarter dirt road half washed out by rain and ford a stream to steal my new car? “They were paper, right?” she queried. “Well, cardboard,” I replied. “We don’t know how to tell you this,” she said, “but we think our billy goat ate ’em.” Stunned silence on my part. What to do?? There was only the real plate. Because I drove my car off the lot and immediately packed it for Florida, the title and registration were to be mailed to me and would, thus, be held at the post office with my mail, to be released to me pending my signature upon return home. Her husband phoned the highway patrol. When they quite laughing, they suggested that he go up the road to the fellow that makes up temporary tags and have them make up a new one for me. So off he went, returning awhile later with a new cardboard temporary plate with TENNESSEE TEMPORARY TAG in bold black type right above my home state address in bold black magic marker. But at least it was a license plate! I proceeded to contact my supervisor at work to explain that I might have to be a tad late getting in as I had some things to resolve. My explanation was met with a lengthy silence and then her acquiescence that I could not have made this up. We gathered all our belongings, concluded our visit, loaded the car, and headed north. The next challenge was to get my son back in time to meet his school bus to go on his field trip to the orchestra concert downtown. Of course, this meant we were zooming all night. (Well, technically, the kid was sleeping.) Zipping along the interstate early in the morning, about an hour from home, I noticed that we were the only vehicle on the road at that hour…except for a southbound van that was slowing down to turn in the median. Uh oh!! Highway Patrol van! Tennessee temporary tag, non-Tennessee address, no title, no registration, and — oh, did I happen to mention no drivers’ license as it was removed from my person by the Florida State Highway Patrol when they apparently objected to my having passed them at 75 on our way out of Florida? License to be returned when I mailed them my fine. Yikes!!! How do I explain this??? Split-second decision!! Approaching a turnoff with a cloverleaf ramp, I careened down the ramp and chose a secondary road. The split of the ramp, by some miracle, was positioned so that it was impossible to see which direction I went from the vantage point of the patrol car behind me. Whew!! Yet another crisis averted. Home we sped. Got to the school. Busses had already left for the concert. Woke up my friend who quickly dressed, hopped in the car, and rode to the concert hall so she could take my son in to find his class. And (of course) while I was idling on the street, a city police car pulled up behind me. We were the only two cars parked there. And I’m thinking, once again, how do I explain this? What will happen when they haul me off to jail? My friend will come out; I will be gone; she will have no ride (before the days of cell phones, so no way to call someone) and no way to help me since my title and registration are at the post office requiring my signature and my drivers’ license is in Florida. Oh, no, no, no! And then, he drove away.

The Goat Story began with a Daytona adventure.

At the flat track races, members of the pit crew have certain responsibilities.  Mine included scrubbing leathers, making sandwiches, occasionally making a run to buy a tire, and–most importantly–taking lap times.  (Modern technology, with transponders, has actually made my one-time big job almost obsolete, although I’ve proudly gotta tell ya, with my trusty manual stopwatches, I could come up with times consistent with what the computers got to the thousandth of a second.)

Back in 1993 (I think), our race team headed off for the Springfield Mile, a twice-annual Grand National Dirt Track race held at the state fairgrounds in Springfield, Illinois.  I don’t recall whether this was the Memorial Day race or the Labor Day weekend, but it was always a major event pulling spectators from all over the United States.  The slick mile dirt track is one of the nation’s fastest and most exciting.  As usual we got set up in the pits and got to work with our prospective tasks — son (the racer), dad (the mechanic), and mom (queen of the stopwatches).  Shortly after we began setting up our area, an announcement came over the loudspeaker that there would be some special events occurring that day.  A movie about motorcycle racing was being filmed, and there would be cameras around to record racing footage as well as crowd scenes.  Spectators would have opportunities to be in the movie as part of the crowd, and there would be some film sequences captured of fans cheering.  Lots of extra excitement for the fans.  Racers and crews were all busy prepping to go for the big bucks.  (Actually, motorcycle dirt track racing does not really pay big bucks when the risk and expense are considered.  These amazing guys do it because they love it.  Racers usually start off as kids, and it’s often a family event to begin with.  Even when the guys get a factory ride, family is always helping out somewhere. Case closed.)

So off I went to position myself for the best view to get lap times — a platform that was the roof of a building that houses real restrooms (not port-a-pots!) and leads to the tunnel that goes under the track from the infield to the grandstand/fairground area.  With me, of course, I had my handy stopwatches (two Robic watches that would give individual lap times; one watch for each hand as I could never manage three watches on a clipboard like some of the gals) and my handy-dandy lap time notebook to list the laps of as many of the fastest riders as I could capture.  This information is crucial to gearing decisions and mechanical changes that must be made to keep up with changing track conditions as the day wears on.  Sunblock, shades, and caps are also important as hours in the sun can be grueling.

All decked out, watches in each hand, notebook balanced on an arm….here we go!  Practice starts.  Diligently I am getting riders on the clock and doing lag times (to most efficiently get the maximum numbers of riders feasible).  A row of folks with watches gathering data.  At my left side I become aware of a young woman who is watching intently but without a stopwatch.  Eventually she took advantage of a brief break in the action to ask me which rider was Geo Roeder (George Roeder, Jr., often a crowd favorite as his dad had also been a grand national competitor).  I indicated the number 66 plate on Roeder’s bike, and the fan continued to watch intently.  Eventually, she was joined by a tall scruffy guy in dusty black leathers, also an apparent Roeder fan.  He looked vaguely familiar, but a lot of fans follow the racing circuit, so we see the same folks all over the U.S.  As practice went on, the tall guy started asking questions…about Roeder, about the other racers, about times, etc.  My job was to keep times for my rider, so….I kept taking times and ignoring the intruder.  (Felt kinda bad about it, but — hey, I had work to do.)

Practice over, mission accomplished (albeit with a bit of annoyance), I hustled back down to our pit area with the times.  As there was a break in the action while riders prepared for the upcoming qualifying heat races, the movie cameramen were filming crowd action scenes, and the announcer proceeded to share information about the movie which was entitled “Ride with the Wind” and was being produced by Craig T. Nelson (of TV show “Coach” fame).  The story line involved a washed-up, jaded motorcycle racer who, as the result of a crash, ended up in the hospital where he met a child being treated for cancer…and the child’s mom.  The story would go on from there.  The announcer pulled some people up onto the platform where I’d been timing for interviews to fill the gap in the program.  He told the audience that Craig T. Nelson would be playing the part of Tim Shelby, the racer, and that his stunt double would be Geo Roeder.  I glanced up toward the platform to get a gander at the goings-on and saw a back view of a tall scruffy guy with dusty black leathers that had the name Shelby and the  number 66 on the back.   I turned to my husband who was also looking at the platform and asked, “So Roeder is the stunt double for Craig T. Nelson, and that’s him they’re interviewing?” to which he nodded in the affirmative.  I smiled and replied, “Remember that guy I told you I was rude to?”……

And that’s the story of how I met one of the famous people in my life.

Edith! Edith Edith Bo Edith, Bonana Fama Fo Edith, Fee Fy Fo Edith! Edith!
Anyone remember the song “The Name Game”? Ahhh. the ways we entertained ourselves in the good ol’ days!

So….Mo and Edith Anne, the next leg of the Monkey Mom stories.

When Mo came to live with us, we knew he seemed a bit older. Visually we could see that he was larger than Kong had been. And the attitude! We always felt that poor Mo had been netted in the Brazilian rain forest and taken away from a wife and family. Or at least from his bio mom. He was never the cuddly, snuggly baby Kong had been.

Mo did have an astute sense of character, however. There was a neighbor boy, Dickie, who, according to my human son, had a history of trying to shoot squirrels with a slingshot. The first time Mo got within a leash length of Dickie, he made a direct leap to the boy’s stomach and chomped him. Dickie never ventured near Mo again.

Years after Mo had passed away (a stroke), we went to see the movie “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan”. It broke my heart in many ways, especially the scenes in which monkeys were confined in labs for experimentation. Nostalgia overcame me, and I started to consider monkey parenting once again. Husband number two had not had the previous monkey parenting experience, but he was sympathetic and proceeded to set aside a chunk of the income tax return and schedule a road trip to a dealership called Monkeys Unlimited.

Entering the facility, we were greeted by the sight of an adorable baby baboon dressed in a striped shirt and bib overalls (reminiscent of Waldo) climbing up and down a floor-to-ceiling chain link cage which boasted a humungous padlock. Staff informed us that the little guy was getting close to being able to pick this lock, too, so they were trying to come up with plan B (B obviously standing for Bright Baby Baboon).
In the next room was a bank of cages on the wall into which a variety of breeds of monkeys were grouped. We were given monkey chow to feed them, and we proceeded to make friends…with all but one, Leon (more about him later).

We found that the black and white colobus monkeys were pleasant, but a bit unwieldy. The guenons were a gentle, unusually polite group. We would hold a handful of food outside their cage, and the would approach it with such manners. “Oh, you go first. Thank you. Don’t mind if I do. Oh, I’ll wait. Your turn.” Fascinating! Capuchins were another story. Hand out with food. Four monkeys, eight little fists scrabbling and grabbing. “Mine! Mine! Get outta here! Mine mine mine!!”

And then there were the squirrel monkeys. And out of a group of five, one adorable wide-eyed little girl who tentatively looked at us pleadingly. “Mom?” her eyes asked. “Mom? Will you be my mom?” And Edith Anne came home with us, my youngest child.

The Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, Iowa, was built over a period of 42 years by Father Paul Dobberstein, a German immigrant who, when very ill with pneumonia, had promised the Virgin Mary he would create the grotto if she interceded for him. Construction began in 1912. Because Iowa farmland is not especially rocky terrain, people from around the world have sent minerals, fossils, petrifications, and shells to be incorporated into the grotto which is larger than a city block. We had the joy of visiting the grotto in 2014 on the way back from South Dakota. The above slide show displays a few of the photos we took.

Once upon a time (fairly recently), I made the comment, “Wow! I am getting klutzy in my old age.” My friend, the Brussels sprout (born in Belgium) responded by pointing out that I have, apparently, always been a klutz. Hmmmm….
So I thought back…and back a bit further…and further…and, yep! Always a klutz!
I grew up on the third floor of an apartment building. Wonderful potential for a child to roam and explore. We had an elevator (took me till age 5 to be able to open the heavy door), carpeted inside steps, and a metal fire escape. This child loved to run down the indoor stairs. Actually, in retrospect, this child managed to occasionally tumble down the indoor stairs. Okay, frequently. Thank goodness I somehow never fell down the fire escape steps (probably because they terrified me)!
Does this happen to other people?
At age 11, after church, I shook hands with the minister after a service and promptly plummeted down about 15 steps, taking them in three strides. (The beginning of a lifelong issue with knee problem, by the way.)
And I remember twisting my ankle running down the sidewalk a couple blocks from home and ending up on crutches for several weeks. (Had to compete in the 7th grade spelling bee on crutches and somehow managed to finish fourth!) The summer going into 9th grade, I managed to be on crutches yet again after having been kicked by a horse…while I was on another horse. (In fairness to the kicker, my horse was the intended kickee and my leg just happened to get in the way.)
One particularly memorable day. Came in from the oily asphalt parking lot at my workplace (thanks to a summer shower) toting a heavy crystal salad bowl. Had to traverse a large terrazo floor in the dining area to reach the refrigerator to store it as I would be going to a luncheon later that day. Halfway across the terrazo, whoops! Boom! Immediate drop to the floor, cross-legged, salad bowl miraculously poised on one flat hand. Only one witness, who discreetly helped me up. Hobbled to the fridge to deposit salad. All was well, I though. Just a bit embarrassing. Whew! Later, I had to go to court for a work-related hearing. Had to meet a client on the second floor. Again, terrazo. Yay. Started to wave at client as I started down the hall…whoops! Boom! Went splat again. Pulled myself up, rather humiliated, and before I could utter the complete sentence, “You won’t believe it, but this is the second time this has happened today,” — whoops! Boom! It was the third time. By this point, I just went with it. (Pretty amazing bruise on my hip, though.) Learned later that the shoes, which were those plastic-soled high-heeled cloglike things, had a metal post in the heel from which the plastic had eroded away, exposing the slick metal. (Took me three falls to figure this out, mind you. My learning curve is kind of a drop-off.)
Throughout my life, I have managed to fall on ice on numerous occasions (without benefit of skates). At the indoor bike races, held in a horse barn one winter, I managed to enter the building through a door which involved lifting one’s foot about 8 inches up to step over. The right foot was in the air to step through when I somehow lifted my left foot to follow…only to find that the right foot got stuck on the door frame. I gracefully (yeah, right!) landed inside the door at the feet of the gate person.
And I love long dresses, sweaters, and coats, so I periodically step on said clothing items when going up stairs, resulting in some interesting gymnastics. And, of course, as my Word of the Day “timber” post explained, that was my utterance when I would be putting on jeans and find that the reason I could not get my second foot all the way down the leghole was that my first foot was standing on the pantleg. Timberrrrrrrrr…….!!!
And yet I have made it this far in the world somehow.

An adventure!  A road trip! The 1970s…before the days of the GPS, cell phones, free long distance, or the internet…  Picture a mom, a dad, and a kid — embarking on a 9-hour drive to find friends that had packed up seven kids in an old school bus and moved from California to the southeast, sending only their new mailing address, “route 2” in their new city, a small town in the mountains of Tennessee. A spur-of-the-moment adventure.  A happy reunion.  How hard could it be?

So nine long hours later, having driven overnight. we arrived in the downtown area of a hilly metropolis boasting 16,000 people.  Our friends had moved fairly recently so were not listed in any phone book (and might not have had a phone yet, as I recall).  What we knew: they lived on route 2 in a rural area and had arrived in a school bus which they were likely still living in.  So, armed with that information, we stormed the post office to ask where route 2 might be.  After giving their name and the other pieces of information, the gentleman at the post office provided an address and a rough hand-drawn map of the route (which turned out to be about 50 miles long), and off we went.  After winding through the hills for what seemed like hours, we finally discovered a mailbox emblazoned with the street address numbers.  Nice little suburban ranch house.  No lumbering school bus parked in the driveway.  We knocked on the door.  It was not them.

Back to the post office we went.  Wearily, we sought out the gentleman who had provided directions and explained our plight.  We showed him the envelope with the return address of our friends (name and route 2), and he began to laugh.  “Oh”, he exclaimed, “you meant Donkin, Dee-oh-in-kay-eye-in. I thought you meant Duncan, Dee-yew-in-see-ay-in!”  But, alas, no address was available, so he sent us back out to traverse rural route 2 in hopes of coming upon the mailman who would surely know where to find our friends.

After unsuccessfully coming upon the mail truck, we eventually pulled into a general store for some refreshments and any possible information.  Lovely little road stop, complete with a pot-bellied stove (radiating wonderful heat as it was New Year’s weekend and quite chilly) and a few farmers sitting in rocking chairs chatting about the news of the day.  When we asked the proprietor if the mail truck had passed yet, he said that it had not.  When we asked for an approximate time, he responded that it would depend on how many magazines were in the mail that day as the postman sometimes took breaks to catch up on his reading.  So we decided to wait at the general store in hopes of catching the postman.

In the meantime, the proprietor (taking advantage of the opportunity to help solve a mystery), got on the phone and began contacting folks on route 2.  “Hello.  This is Harold Dawes, down at the store.  I was wonderin’ if y’all had a family by the name of Donkin up by y’all.”   No luck, though.

But eventually the mailman arrived, walked in to drop off the mail, and offered to have us follow his truck to be led to our destination.  At long last, in the middle of nowhere (no houses visible), he pulled over and showed us a mail box by a fence that opened to a long country lane down a hill through a pasture and some trees.  The sign on the fence proclaimed “Happy Holler”, and the postman assured we could go through the fence (being sure to re-fasten the gate so the cows wouldn’t get out) and go down the lane to find the Donkins.  Off we went, down a mile and a quarter dirt drive, through the pasture, through the trees, through a stream (had to ford it), and up a small hill to some outbuildings and a large log cabin with sheep, chickens, and familiar kids in the yard.  Success!!

The visit was great.  A joyous reunion.  Accommodations were modest but comfortable…fireplace heat, gas lights (just in case the electricity didn’t work), indoor plumbing (thank goodness, as I live in dread of outhouses), and a glorious featherbed that kept us toasty warm after the fire died down overnight.  It was a bit scary, however, to have our friends tell us (just after the children went outdoors to play, of course) about the fact that the area abounded with black snakes, king snakes, coral snakes, and cottonmouth (water moccasins).  Yay.  They neglected to mention the abundance of spider types, and that’s just as well.

This was my first adventure to Happy Holler.  But not the last.  More about Happy Holler to come….