Much Too Much (Happening)

View from Paradise Valley to Four Peaks in the distance

A friend from Leelanau County, Michigan, called me a few days ago. I forget what day it was. She had been looking for a new post on this blog, and when nothing appeared she began to worry. What was going on? Were we all right? What a loyal blog reader! The thing is (I told her), I hadn’t wanted to put our family news out publicly until we were “out of the woods” and had answers to all the inevitable questions. In the midst of so much waiting and uncertainty, that was part of my way of dealing with things.

 

…Each morning comes along and you assume it will be similar enough to the previous one—that you will be safe, that your family will be alive, that you will be together, that life will remain mostly as it was. Then a moment arrives and everything changes.

 

-      Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

 

So here is what happened in our lives.

 

 

The Ordeal (or, Life Throws Another Unexpected Curve Ball)

 

Exactly a week after we bid an emotional farewell to Peasy in the morning and then had a last conversation with a dear friend the same night -- Wednesday to Wednesday, that is -- Fate ambushed us again. The Artist, a.k.a. David, woke without feeling in his left hand, and when I asked if he could lift that arm over his head, he could not. So as soon as we could hastily pull our clothes on and get out to the car (he was able to walk to the car, which was a good sign), we were on the road to the emergency room of the little hospital in Willcox, Northern Cochise Community Hospital (NCCH). Before we even arrived, David was regaining feeling and use of his left hand and arm, and the first word to me out in the waiting room was further cause for relief. The relief was short-lived, however, as more tests that same day revealed a serious blockage in his right carotid artery, bad enough that the ER doctors did not want him leaving the hospital. 

 

Everyone knows hospitals are overcrowded these days (with COVID patients) as well as understaffed (partly for the same reason), so it was no surprise that he could not be moved to a regular room at NCCH. None was available. Nor was it a surprise that Tucson Medical Center (TMC), where the ER docs at NCCH wanted to send him, had no available beds, either. So he lay in the ER where he started from Wednesday morning until Friday night. The transfer then, by ambulance, was to St. Joseph Hospital in Phoenix – more specifically (and miraculously), to the world-class Barrow Neurological Institute, where on the following Monday morning he went into surgery for a carotid endarterectomy. 

Good message!

At no time did David have any blurred vision or mental confusion. Speech was unaffected. His wicked sense of humor and quick thinking were and remain intact. When he was released on Wednesday, I was able to bring him back to the cousin’s house, where we could stay in the guest suite together. (Jim, the cousin, also has a wicked sense of humor.) So we were very, very fortunate in more ways than one, i.e., 

 

o  The stroke was a mild one.

 

o  We got him to the hospital within the hour.

 

o  Staff at NCCH were diligent in their testing, and the doctor there told us plainly that he should not leave to go home just because he was feeling better.

 

o  The next shift ER doctor at NCCH somehow managed to get David into St. Joseph in Phoenix – and not only St. Joe but the Barrow Neurological Institute, a world-class teaching and research hospital. 

 

o  I was able to stay with David’s relatives and eventually bring David back here, too.

 

o  The surgeon who performed the procedure was Dr. Michael Lawton, “head honcho” of Barrow. (David’s cousin and wife and their friends could hardly believe he was able to get into Barrow from Willcox – and so fast! – and to have Lawton as the surgeon had their heads spinning.)

 

o  I was able to be with David (no small matter in these COVID days!) in his double room over the weekend and in pre-op, recovery, and in the ICU Tuesday, in addition to his private room on Wednesday while we waited for his discharge (always a long drawn-out affair, as many of you know).

 

 

So all in all, if he had to have a stroke, this one may have been a blessing, revealing as it did a blockage that might well have caused a much more severe stroke if left untreated. And if he had to have major surgery so far from our Michigan home and friends, having it done in a world-class hospital, by a world-class surgeon, was a miraculous piece of good fortune. Finally, as if that weren’t enough good luck, he now has had the luxury of very comfortable recovery time here in Jim and Carol’s home before we undertake the long return drive to our ghost town cabin, which is a little over 15 miles from the little hospital in Willcox and over 200 miles from Phoenix.

 

 

The Different Week We Lived

 

Generally speaking, we are (to use the Artist’s phrase) “joined at the hip” all winter long during our seasonal retirement. It is rare that one of us goes somewhere without the other, and three hours is about the longest separation we experience even then.

 

This past week was completely different from our usual way of life, winter or summer. David was flat on his back for eight days, in two different hospitals and, between hospitals, in an ambulance. Meanwhile, I commuted between Dos Cabezas and Willcox, then trekked to Phoenix, and then commuted between Paradise Valley and St. Joseph Hospital. While I was by myself, navigating unfamiliar streets and heavy traffic in a strange big city, David was being asked his date of birth multiple times a day, subjected to sophisticated diagnostic tests, and monitored every minute. His attempts at sleep were fraught. My nighttime situation could not have been more comfortable, from a physical point of view. Of course we were in contact by cell phone and spent as much time together as possible, most of it waiting for one thing or another to happen.

Strategizing my route

Another sunset from the hospital parking garage

One thing about traveling separate daily roads was that we had a lot to tell each other when together. On Sunday (since nothing much was going to happen that day), I took an afternoon break from the hospital, giving David’s cousin Jim a chance to visit, and I went a short distance away to the Heard Museum, “world's preeminent museum for the presentation, interpretation and advancement of American Indian art….” What a fabulous place! The Art was beautifully displayed, and I didn’t even try to see everything. Sometimes I didn’t even read the information but only stood in front of a work and let its power move me.

Sculpture group outside Heard Museum, Phoenix

If the Artist and I were here in Phoenix for other reasons and both of us feeling tip-top, we would be visiting galleries and museums and bookstores galore, but such was not the case this trip.

 

Reading

 

The Artist’s cousin’s wife, Carol, is a champion reader, beside whom I feel like the rankest of amateurs. She not only keeps lists of all the books she reads but writes up an entire journal page for each book. (She is also a wonderful cook and gardener and sits on many civic boards and committees. A superwoman, in other words.) The first evening I was here, she brought an entire bag of books to my room that she had finished reading and was passing along to me, and by the next day four more books were stacked next to the bag, one being Cloud Cuckoo Land. 

 

It isn’t often that I am reading a book on the New York Times bestseller list, as I’m frequently years or even decades behind the rest of my fellow book-loving Americans, and in that context I have to admit that I have yet to read Anthony Doerr’s previous bestseller, All the Light We Cannot See. But Cloud Cuckoo Land has been the perfect book for me to lose myself in off and on during the past week. The time span of the story is incredible, and we are not simply flashing back and forward in a single country or family, but hopping from one country to another and even into a future far beyond our own, with a complicated cast of apparently unrelated “main” characters. The only link seems to be the Greek story of Ulysses. 

 

“Stranger, whoever you are, 

open this to learn what will amaze you.”

 

Will Zeno and Anna and Konstance and Seymour and Omeir all be somehow saved by books? By stories? At about the midway point in this 626-page novel, I cannot presume to guess, but I can tell you that these characters have been good company for me during a time of anxiety in my own life.

A Star in the Western Tradition

Railroad Street, Willcox, Arizona

I vowed not to leave the Willcox, Arizona, area without paying a visit to the Rex Allen Museum, and now I can highly recommend it! Here’s how to get there:

To reach old historic Willcox from I-10, take the middle of three available exits and you’ll find yourself on Rex Allen Drive. Follow that to Haskell and turn right. (On Haskell you’ll pass the Motel 8, which occupies the site of the old house where Rex Allen was born, contrary to what you might read in Wikipedia about his being born 40 miles to the north where, it’s true, his parents did live before moving to Willcox.) At the intersection of Haskell and Maley, turn left, then turn left again at Railroad Street, and you’re right there, with a couple of museums and wine-tasting rooms on your left in the Old Town buildings and a beautiful park on your right. (Across the railroad tracks are yet more wine-tasting rooms. Willcox wineries outnumber those of Sonoita.) In the park is a bronze sculpture of Rex Allen himself.

Those approaching from Chiricahua National Monument on Hwy 186 have only to cross the railroad tracks and turn right, and there you are.

Intersection of Willcox and Railroad streets

 Before we came to Willcox, David and I were not familiar with the name Rex Allen, but since the name is everywhere in town, with “Rex Allen Days” the well-publicized high point of the summer season, we asked one of the first residents we spoke with and were told that he was one of the mid-century singing cowboys, along with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Well, those names we knew, but the name Rex Allen still didn’t ring a bell with us.

Admission to the Rex Allen Museum, which also includes the Cowboy Hall of Fame, is only two dollars. I want to emphasize this: it only costs two dollars to tour this museum! And so, friends and other readers, if you’re traveling west to Tucson, take the time to get off the expressway and detour through the old town of Willcox, because you are in for a big surprise!

When Roy and Gene read the writing on the wall and saw that television was the up-and-coming entertainment venue, they started making their own TV shows, the ones I grew up with in the 1950s. Who else remembers? Besides Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans and Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger were favorites of mine. Who else am I forgetting? My point here is that when Roy Rogers stopped making films, an opening was created, and it was Rex Allen who filled it. Between 1950 and 1954 he made 19 feature films, all with cowboy themes. The advantage to the studio was that no one had to teach him how to ride. 

his first guitar

He was not an actor needing cowboy lessons. Starting out from Willcox after high school graduation (“Willcox, Home of the Cowboys”), he went to Tucson with dreams of being a rodeo bull rider. He’d worked cows before. His first ride on a Brahma bull, however, persuaded him to concentrate on his music instead. That’s another thing. Rex Allen wrote the “Arizona Waltz” when he was only 14 years old, and his recording of “Crying in the Chapel,” long before Elvis touched the song, went gold. He recorded “Frankie and Johnny.” He had his own long-running regular radio show on WLS in Chicago. His recording career with Decca spanned 35 years!

And as for the movies, even after Western films faded away Rex Allen kept working in the film world. Have you seen “Charlotte’s Web”? That narrator’s voice is Rex Allen’s. He also narrated “The Incredible Journey” and many other Disney nature documentaries. “So,” as the volunteer museum host for the day put it, “even if you’ve never heard of Rex Allen, you’ve heard Rex Allen.”

David wasn’t sure he needed the Rex Allen Museum experience, so he strolled around in the park across the street, admiring the sculpture and looking it over carefully while I went in to begin my tour. But there in the museum I found a different, smaller, limited edition sculpture David just had to see ... an exhibit on the making of the large outdoor sculpture ... and then, capping it all, a photograph with accompanying note to Rex Allen from the Lucchese boot people! “Oh, my god!” escaped me at that last one. David could not miss this museum!

(David's boots, not Rex's)

Lucky for me, too, that I got David into the museum, or I might have missed, in my hurrying to rejoin him outside, the Cowboy Hall of Fame. 

In the parlance of baja Arizona, a “cowboy” isn’t only a lariat-slingin’ vaquero (although he can be that): he’s any horse-riding, cow-working rancher or ranch employee. Naturally, I am especially interested in the women ranchers, and in the book of “cowboy” mini-biographies, the only one I was in its entirety, with pleasure, was of a “cowgirl.” The guys and gals pictured here in the Hall of Fame are all the real deal.

When Rex Allen’s horse died, Koko’s ashes were buried in the park in Willcox. Rex himself, with failing health, spent his last days in Tucson, but he never forgot his hometown. “He’s the reason we have a hospital,” the museum volunteer told us. While still alive, Mr. Allen often came to sit in the front window of the museum bearing his name and chat with visitors.

I didn’t get the name of that volunteer at the museum, but he and his spiel were memorable. Born in Tucson himself, he came to Willcox and taught for 28 years in the public school, and when he retired, he stayed, because, “Where am I gonna go?” Small town life and higher elevation climate had spoiled him for city life. When I told him where we had spent the winter, he told me a personal story, about singing for a burial at the cemetery in Dos Cabezas. His speaking voice was gorgeous, and I can only imagine how thrilling his singing voice would have been, out there under the open sky. Here is a rendition by Vince Gill of “Go Rest High on That Mountain” to give you a taste of the goosebumps I felt hearing the story.

Even when you feel very much at home somewhere, it's worth taking a day to play tourist. I wouldn't have missed this for the world.

Tribal News

Eyaawing Museum and Cultural Center in Peshawbestown is holding a series of cultural presentations this season. Arlene Marozas came by with a poster for her presentation tomorrow, July 23, 1-3 p.m. Her topic is “Jingle Dress Values & Ethics,” (which reminds me to note that pow-wow this year will be August 19-20). Here are the rest of the cultural events scheduled this summer at Eyaawing:

July 27, 1-3 p.m. Carrie Leaureaux, “Anishnaabemowin & Cultural Presentation”
July 30, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Doris Winslow, “The Making of Clay Storytellers”
August 6, 1-2 p.m. Eva Petoskey, “Dream Speak: Anishinaabe Poetry”
August 12, 1-4 p.m. Nancy Fuller, “Teaching Quilting” (please bring your own supplies)
August 13, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Cindy Patek, “Finger Weaving”
August 20, 1-2 p.m. Linda D. Theis, “Learned Optimism and Resilience”
August 27, 1-2:30 p.m. Karen Sinclair, “Maori of New Zealand”

There will be additional events in September. For further information, call 231-534-7768.

November Visit to Wisconsin

Two Rivers, Wisconsin, with a population of 13,000 was hit hard by the economic downturn. A “stop on the way to Door County,” what does the town has to offer that is uniquely its own, besides their claim to be the original home of the ice cream sundae? Well, there is the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, housed in the old factory building that manufactured wood type for so long, and it’s the only wood type museum in the entire world.

Five years ago, returning through Wisconsin to Michigan after my father’s funeral in Illinois, David and I stopped overnight in Two Rivers. It was late, we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and in the morning, poking around the older parts of town, we happened on the Wood Type Museum. Never having heard of it before, I was enthralled by the very idea, but it was Sunday, and the museum wouldn’t be open for several hours, and we had many miles to travel.

Thus I must admit that my visit this November (2010) was made via a DVD called “Typeface,” brought back by friends who made the trip and did not miss the museum. It isn’t the same as being there and having an opportunity to run my hands over the carved blocks, but it’s better than nothing.

Wood type was the first Hamilton product, and it was their only product for the first ten years. With a quality product and a lower price than anyone else in the business, Hamilton was able to put its largest competitors in New York and Chicago out of business (and then, naturally, doubled their own prices). In the hey-day of letterpress printing, big posters and billboards demanded wood type, as very large letters could not be cast in metal. It was a marriage of machine work and handcraft.

Then in the 1960s came offset lithography, and out went letterpress printing. Mountains of type must have been discarded all over the world. What was it good for? Who needed it? And then came computer graphics and printing.

Now letterpress printing is making a comeback for the same reasons that other “outdated” crafts and ways of doing things are returning. There is something beautiful and real about it that can’t be duplicated by a computer. The Hamilton Wood Type Museum offers workshops year-round by print artists from all over the world. Poetry and letterpress are a heavenly partnership made right here on earth. Letterpress books and letterpress wedding invitations carry high value and cachet in niche markets.

It’s strange, really, that this way of printing, which has little to do with the majority of books, should fascinate me so. It’s stranger still that I learned what goes on in the museum and elsewhere in the letterpress world by watching a DVD on my computer. I would rather have been there. I’d like to go back to Two Rivers and spend time in that museum. I’d like to visit that Chinese restaurant again, too, and spend more time along the old docks and check out the farm museum and have an ice cream sundae. Can’t believe how much I missed in that little town the only time I was there....