An Adventure I Didn’t Need

Adios, las Dos!

 

The car was packed, dog exercised, and the fact that the U.S. road atlas had gotten buried beneath all that great packing didn’t upset me much because my planned route would be a familiar one, a trip the Artist and I had taken more than once, one Sunny Juliet had done last spring, and our first planned overnight stop in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, a town the Artist and I stayed in many times. (Sunny and I had been there last year on the very same date, May 1.) There was a little glitch when my credit card was declined in Santa Rosa – for absolutely no reason -- but after I paid cash for a room and made a call to straighten out the problem, the card was “re-set” so it would work again. 

Santa Rosa sunset

I used the card in the morning (at the pump) to fill up with gas, and we were on our way again.

 

Route 54 is the same as I-40 between Santa Rosa and Tucumcari, but at Tucumcari I got off the “superslab” (there’s a long David Grath story associated with that term, a story for another time) for my smaller road. Somehow, though, not taking the Business 54 direction, I found myself on old Route 66, following along beside the superslab. Well, okay. While not my intention, I remembered being on I-40 and looking over with longing to the old Mother Road. Now, here I was! Serendipity.

Click to enlarge for full effect.

Shoes on fenceposts

Tuesday's flower of the day

Old Route 66. Two-lane road. Right down in the landscape, not on a conveyor belt keeping me at arm’s length. So I was happy. Free to stop, to pull off the road, and photograph interesting sights, such as what I called my “sign of the day,” three different kinds wildflower, and a fence with every post topped by a shoe. Don’t ask me what was with the shoes, but I chose the Indian blanket as my “flower of the day,” so perfectly New Mexico, even as I remembered from the previous day all the beautiful blooming prickly poppies, or “fried eggs,” as the cowboys call them, along the road on the Alamogordo side of the San Augustin Pass.

San Jon probably doesn't have many tourists.

Arriving at little San Jon, New Mexico, I took what at first I thought might be a new two-lane north, only to realize quickly, from familiar scenes, that the Artist and I had traveled that road before. We’d been on I-40 and gotten off in search of a gas station, then taken 469 north to Logan. Maybe I’d even photographed this intriguing abandoned ranch house before, but don't you think it was worth stopping for again? 

Again, click to enlarge for full effect.

Logan, New Mexico, presented another irresistible photo opportunity -- and this isn't the last you'll hear of Logan, either. 

Wouldn't you have stopped for this shot?

Then, Nara Vista, the last named town before the Texas state line, emptied out by changes long ago, but with some lovely old buildings, albeit abandoned and ruined. Besides the attraction of the ruins, I remembered vividly the drive east in 2020, the plague year, when the Artist and I stopped in an empty parking lot in Nara Vista to walk our Sarah. When I presented the Artist with a plastic cup of “fruit cocktail,” the ubiquitous 1950s accompaniment to cottage cheese, he was delighted to have something other than jerky and granola bars and congratulated my “brilliance.” So Nara Vista, sad though the place would be to the eyes of almost anyone else passing through, holds a happy memory for me, invisible to the rest of the world. I’d been lazily snapping away with my phone camera but got out the real camera for a couple of long shots.

(Formerly) Ira's, #1

Ira's, #2

Ira's, #3

Most of Nara Vista looks like this.

Detail

Across the road

 

Next, Texas panhandle, Oklahoma panhandle – and I barreled through those two states nonstop, aiming for Liberal, Kansas, another place the Artist and I had stayed many a night, enjoying dinner at the Cattleman’s Café. Gas prices were pleasingly low in Kansas, and I was ready to gas up again.

 

Photo taken for a Kansan friend transplanted to Arizonan.

That’s when terror struck! My billfold was not in my purse! I’d used it in Santa Rosa but not since. Now what?

 

Did I drop it at the gas station in Santa Rosa? Found their phone number on the receipt and called. No, no one had turned in any lost items that day. At the rest area on the staked plains? No luck on that possibility, either, when I called the New Mexico State Police. No, no personal items turned in at all so far that day, other than a gun. (Really! Someone lost a gun? Not me!) What to do?  This unexpected challenge was not at all the kind of adventure I’d been looking for on this trip.

Pajarito rest area in eastern New Mexico

 

The problem was that I’d developed the habit of sliding the billfold into my left front jeans pocket occasionally, rather than putting it in my purse. Easier to grab that way. But the jeans pockets weren’t all that deep, and it could have fallen out – almost anywhere!!! I’d been in and out of the car, photographing (as you've seen) all manner of random, rural sights. 

 

The most important items in the lost billfold from a practical point of view were my credit card and my driver’s license, but there was also a scrap of paper with the Artist’s last written words on it. Illegible those words had been to me at first, but I’d finally deciphered them and did not want to lose that precious note. 

 

And yet, I had to be practical -- thus my Tuesday thanks list:

 

➡️ Thanks to the UPS driver I flagged down there in Liberal, who helped me find the police station. Note: Washington Street in Liberal has two discontinuous stretches, and there is a 325 on both pieces of the street. 

 

➡️ Thanks to the dispatch officer at the police station, who told me I should cancel my credit card and explain the situation of the lost driver’s license, should I get stopped on the road for any reason, and then file a report from my home back in Michigan upon arrival. 

 

➡️ Big thanks to the pleasant, very helpful young woman at the visitors center, who did not have any Kansas state maps but printed one out for me from her computer. I knew I wanted an east-west road to a certain town but didn’t remember either the number of the road or the name of the town. U.S. 160 to Winfield. Good!

 

Two hours were “lost” there in Liberal, but back on the road again I felt pretty calm. With cash from an ATM in Willcox, AZ, on my way out of town, I was confident I could make it to Illinois, where I’d write my sister a check and get more cash for the remainder of the trip. I also had dried mango slices, Kind bars, beef jerky, and rice cakes for that night's dinner, along with foil packets of chicken for Sunny Juliet, plus the last of the rice and green beans from our cooler to mix with her chicken. 

 

So we spent the night in Winfield, Kansas, in the same friendly motel we had stayed in the year before. No time this trip for the dog park, though. We arrived too late in the evening (after sunset) and left too early in the morning. But my dog girl is a seasoned traveler now. Last year, less than five months old, she wanted to play in the evening when we arrived at a motel, when all the momma wanted to do was crash. This year she seemed to understand and settled right down. 

Sunny settles down.

Day 3 got us to my sister’s in Springfield, Illinois, after a 600-mile drive (maybe my longest driving day ever), and I slept all night, not waking once. Exhausted.

 

Oh, but on the way through Missouri (determined not to spend a night in that state), I had stopped again for gas in Wheatland, across the road from a little motel where the Artist and I had stayed once with Sarah. Maybe we stayed there once with Peasy, too? Wheatland is the home of the Lucas Oil Speedway (the Artist swore by Lucas products), as well as the Lucas Bull Ranch, and the Sinclair station sells much more than gas. They have seed & feed, baby chicks, nursery plants, groceries (including fresh produce), and of course anything you might need for a car or a truck. There’s a café attached, where the Artist once bought us a fried chicken dinner.

Why, other than general reminiscing, do I mention all this? Because since my New Mexico loss, I was traveling only with cash, remember. And when I went inside to prepay, I told the woman behind the counter that I wasn’t sure how much the tank would take -- I knew it would take twenty, but would it take twenty-five? -- and she said, “Why don’t you just go out and fill up and then come in and pay?” “I can do that?” “Sure.” Stranger in a strange place, and I was not made to prepay! When I went back inside to hand her a $100 bill for my $23+change purchase, I mentioned having lost my billfold back in New Mexico and not realizing it until Kansas, and she commiserated, saying how much trouble it could be to lose credit cards. I shrugged then and told her, “My husband died a year ago, and other problems that come along now --.” She interrupted to say, “I know what you mean. I lost my husband this past October, and everything else is ‘small stuff.’” “You go on, but nothing is the same, is it?” “Certainly is not.” Loss of a credit card made for kind of an “adventure” I would not have chosen, forcing me to rise to an occasion imposed on me and to improvise, but that was peanuts compared to losing the love of my life. A stranger and I had that in common.

 

How many strangers heard the story of my lost billfold? And yet, I didn’t share it with friends or family before arriving in Springfield. Why worry them needlessly? Once in Springfield, I wrote my sister a check, which she deposited in her bank the next day, handing me cash I knew would be sufficient for the rest of my trip back to northern Michigan. We went to the dog park. Sunny was the only dog there, but we exercised her pretty thoroughly with tennis balls, a Frisbee, and agility stations provided. After that it was on to the doggie wash to rid her of months of desert dust! 

Sister Deborah helping with Sunny Juliet's bath. Easier with two!

-- And now, another unexpected development --

 

I was relaxing with maps and snacks, not fretting, when a call came on my cell phone. Traverse City. Not a number I recognized. Didn’t pick up. A few minutes later another call from the same number, so I answered. It was my credit union. They’d had a call from the sheriff’s office in Logan, New Mexico! My billfold had been found and turned in! I should call and tell them where to send it. Hallelujah! 

 

What can I say? Is there a moral to this story? Not panicking, I guess. You just do what needs to be done, what you can do, and hope for the best. Do I wish I’d stayed on expressway and not taken the road less traveled? No way! Credit cards can be replaced. A driver’s license can be replaced. My memories, though, and the familiar scenes that evoke them are irreplaceable. And how many pleasant, friendly, sympathetic, helpful people I met along the way!

 

Occasionally the Artist called on a phrase to describe this or that person whom he failed to find congenial: “He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." Maybe that’s the moral of my story, the difference between price and value, between the replaceable and the irreplaceable.  

Random Illinois squirrel, just to break up the wordy stuff.

Officer Slate from Logan told me, when I asked, that whoever found and brought my billfold to the sheriff's office hadn't left their name, so I have no way to write and thank them. "There are still honest people in the world," he commented. Since I couldn't thank the finder, I offered profuse thanks to the woman at my credit union and the policeman in Logan, the people on the phone who made my day.

Another moral? It isn't only bad things that happen unexpectedly. Good things happen, too. An even better happening was a three-sisters get-together, but we all agreed the pictures taken would not be made public. We were not looking our best but were happy to be together.

So expect good things to happen, I say. Because they do. And HUGE thanks to the anonymous stranger who found my billfold and took it to the sheriff's office in Logan, New Mexico -- and to people everywhere who do kind things for strangers every day! You make the world of other people a welcoming place for us all to live.

This girl is sometimes naughty, but always pretty, especially after a bath.

Did you ever -- write a letter to a stranger?

Patience on a comforter

 

Good morning! And no, to answer a question about my question, politicians don’t count (although writing to them is always a good idea). I'm thinking of writing to someone geographically distant whose story you read or heard somewhere, and you’ll never run into each other at your local grocery store, but you thought, We have a lot in common. I’d like to know him-or-her-or-them. (There. I’m practicing using they/them as a singular pronoun. I need practice with that, I guess.) Have you ever done that?

 

Occasionally I receive notes in the mail from people I’ve never met or encountered so fleetingly that no memory image remained, because I have had a bookstore in Up North tourist country for 29 years and counting. (Thirty next summer!!!) Because some of my annual visitors keep track of my life on this blog. Or because someone ordered a book or books from me years ago, and we fell into correspondence for a while.

 

But it doesn’t always work out long-term.

 

Once, for example, I had a book order from a Frenchman who was teaching at the time in an agricultural lycée on an island in the Indian Ocean. We were both devotes of the entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre. He had ordered a Fabre book I had listed online (back when I did that sort of thing) and explained the reason that his mailing address was France: all mail went there first, then came to the end of the island where the airfield was, and eventually worked its way to the other end of the island where the school was. He sent me a little package of vetiver, one of the island’s chief exports. 

 

I sent something back (I don’t remember what), and things were going along swimmingly until I shared an idea I had: When he and his wife returned to France, we should set up agricultural exchange visits! I imagined having my French visitors stay in our old farmhouse and touring them around Leelanau County, introducing them to cherry growing culture and farmer friends in my township and beyond. They would have so many questions and would love northern Michigan, wouldn’t they? Then they could host an agricultural visit in return. We might have several of these from one year to the next -- as I imagined the concept growing.

 

But after sharing my brilliant idea, I never heard from my distant friend again. In retrospect, I think he must have thought I, personally, was angling for a free country place to stay in France with my husband, which wasn’t at all the idea, but I never followed up on whatever misconception or misunderstanding there must have been, and there ended our exchange. 

 

Another correspondence was more successful. My distant customer was a woman who ordered several books of old dog stories, and as it turned out, she was also a writer. When her next book came out, she sent me an early copy. Wonderful writer! That was years ago, and we are still in touch, albeit infrequently. 

 

So now, this morning, I’m kind of on the fence. Does a woman-woman letter-writing connection between strangers work better, especially when the women are roughly the same age? Or is there any chance at all that a young(er) male Scottish bookseller (my son’s age) would welcome hearing from an aged female colleague in the wilds of northern Michigan? He and my son have the same birthday, but surely the fascination of that coincidence is only in my point of view and would mean nothing to him. 

 

Really, don’t I already have enough to do without launching – no, attempting to launch – another pen pal relationship? That was a rhetorical question….

 

Happy Labor Day weekend! And remember to join us at Tuesday evening’s open house at the Leelanau Township Library, where you can have Sarah Shoemaker sign a copy of her new book for you, beginning at 7:30 p.m. 

 

“You Never Know.” No, We Really Don’t.

My volunteer tutoring job having been suspended by concerns over the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent school closing, I looked forward all the more to Monday morning at the Friendly Bookstore, my remaining volunteer gig — at least for now. Run by the Friends of the Library (that’s the Elsie S. Hogan Community Library in Willcox, the Friendly is the only bookstore in Willcox, and so it has been a big part of our winters here since 2015. But should I go to work at all? Bearing in mind the current recommended six-foot social distance rule, I felt safe enough behind the bookstore counter to enjoy my three-hour stretch.

How many times over the years have I remarked that a bookstore could exist if it offered only history and mystery? The Friendly is very oriented toward both, and especially toward Arizona and Southwest history. Plus a very large selection of children's books -- and it's important to keep those kids both entertained and learning during all the school closings right now. We also offer honey, supplied to us by a beekeeper down in the southern part of Cochise County, and people come quite a distance to buy it. In fact, some days I sell more honey than books.

When the Artist and I are back at work in northern Michigan and getting ready for another day in bookstore and gallery in the village of Northport, we often wonder who will come into our establishments that day and what kind of conversations we will have. There is no predicting what any particular day will bring, and part of our pleasure at the end of each summer day is sharing stories of our respective encounters, as well as the occasional unexpected big sale. We meet so many interesting people!

I haven’t spent enough time working at the Friendly (this is my first season) to recognize a lot of repeat bookstore customers, but one man who has been in three or four times on Monday mornings is a reader of history, and there was a five-volume of Toynbee I would have liked to sell him, but he already had that work at home — and anyway, he felt Toynbee’s history was too whitewashed, too official, or, as he put it, “high school history, when what you want is college history.” That led me to ask (because staring at me over the counter, on shelves opposite, were several volumes of Bruce Catton’s Civil War series) if he had ever read Bruce Catton. He had not. I said Catton was probably best known for his work on the Civil War but had also written a very readable and not at all “whitewashed” history of the state of Michigan. Another man walked in about then and perked up at the reference to Michigan, saying he was from Michigan himself.

The Artist was on hand, and from Bruce Catton the conversation quickly moved on to where the new browser was from in Michigan. Well, he lived in two places, downstate and the Upper Peninsula, and he had an orchard in the U.P. Oh, where? West of Newberry. He grows apples, pears, and cherries, and his is the northernmost cherry orchard in Michigan. Yes, we know that area well. We have spent a lot of time in Grand Marais. Were we familiar with Jim Harrison? Yes, he was a friend of ours. Well, this man had attended a memorial gathering in Tucson for Jim, and a couple years before that he had attended a memorial gathering for Charles Bowden, at which Jim was the first speaker. Talk veered back to the U.P., via the life of Jim Harrison and his love of good food, and there we were, the three of us, mentally traveling old M-28, which prompted the Artist to ask the Yooper orchardist if he remembered Rashid’s grocery on the south side of M-28 between Newberry and Seney. Of course he did! His orchard is only about a mile from there! And as if all that weren’t enough, Jerry Bishop also speaks French and has travelled in the south of France!

There had been no way to anticipate this Friendly meeting, and it reminded me of what we say so often in the summer back in Michigan, marveling at the unexpected individuals who show up at our places of business in Northport: “You never know!” What will a day bring? We never know. We certainly would have been unable to predict on Monday morning, leaving our winter cabin for Willcox, that we would meet someone familiar with Rashid’s Grocery on M-28 and who had heard Jim Harrison speak at Charles Bowden’s memorial and who had also traveled in France and was himself a French speaker!

At the present historical juncture, the phrase “You never know” sounds a more sombre note, not only for us but for the whole world, but we do have our own personal and specific concerns. Will we be able to return to Northport as planned in May? What will be happening across the country by then? Questions closer at hand arise, too, one of them being, Will the Friendly Bookstore be open next week? Yes, we have a good supply of reading material at home (much of it from the Friendly, in fact), but if this volunteer job vanishes, also, I will miss my encounters with local and visiting readers in Willcox, just as I already miss my Wednesday morning tutoring sessions with little readers at the elementary school.

The truth is, though, that we never know, in the best of times, in the most ordinary of circumstances, what will happen in our lives from one day to the next. There is no guarantee that the future will be like the past. All the more reason, I suppose, that I am enjoying so much one of my Monday purchases from the little bookstore where I worked for three hours that day: How to Catch a Frog, by Heather Ross. And when I’ve finished reading that book and have wrapped it up to mail to my sister, who will love it, too, I’ll get back to Barbara Kingsolver’s High Tide in Tucson, and Wild Horse Country, by David Philipps, and after our evening movie, the Artist and I will snuggle down under the covers and I’ll read aloud another chapter of Chiang Lee’s The Silent Traveller in Paris, and we’ll be grateful to have had one more day together, this one under the Arizona sun, in Friendly surroundings, regardless of what the future brings.

Postscript to the nervous: We have ordered another propane delivery, gassed up the car, and have plenty of groceries and paper products, as well as paper, pens, stamps, and books in the house. We are prepared to do a lot of staying home, and you can see my first "home ground" adventure (with Sarah) here. 

Who Belongs ?

Local crowd? All locals?

These past couple of days, I was really feeling like a stranger here. You forget about it for a while, but then a few things happen and people say things to you in a certain way, and it all adds up. You may be welcome here, but at the end of the day, you’re not part of this. You never have been and you never will be. 

- Steve Hamilton, Die a Stranger (an Alex McKnight novel)

I’ve been thinking again lately about who belongs and who doesn’t, since I’m not “from here,” as we say, and tourists visiting my bookstore in the summer often ask me if I am. Sometimes they are looking for someone or something and wonder if I can give them directions or information; other times they’re merely curious. But no, I’m not “from here.” Born in South Dakota, raised in Illinois, long-time downstate and elsewhere resident until 25 years ago, I don’t have generations of county roots.

Steve Hamilton’s McKnight character, living in Paradise, Michigan, is in a similar position, having moved to the U.P. from Detroit. Do writers, I wonder, working in solitude as they do, relate naturally to solitary fictional characters? Maybe so, but that doesn’t explain the broad appeal to general readers of the outsider, the loner, the one who doesn’t quite fit in.

crowd moseying along

And so, I wonder, is that a feeling we all (or most of us) secretly harbor, the suspicion that we’re on the periphery, looking in? Or — another possibility — do we sometimes feel so surrounded, even crowded, by other people and demands that we like to fantasize ourselves as loners escaping from the crowd? 

Moon -- solitary and serene

Maybe even sometimes one, sometimes the other feeling?What do you think?

…The air was still almost warm. Then the wind picked up and as it hit my face it brought along an unmistakable message. It may be July, and it may feel like summer just got here, but the end is already on its way. The cold, the snow, the ice, the natural basic state of this place, it is right around the corner. 

And oh, yeah, there’s that, too.

Sarah's winter face

Traveling Around Home — Any Takers?

They do things a little differently in other places

My sister handed me a book the other day that she thought I might enjoy and/or add to my used inventory at Dog Ears Books. The title is Bucket List Adventures: 10 Incredible Journeys to Experience Before You Die (I always think that’s the best time to do things, don’t you?), and while as I turned pages, I realized that author Annette White’s idea of travel adventures was much more ambitious than my own — Tokyo, Costa Rica, Jordan, etc. — some of her ideas on how to travel struck a chord with me. For instance, this section heading, “Immerse Yourself in the Culture.” 

When many arrive to a foreign destination they make the mistake of visiting without ever really leaving their own world. They choose the route of being a tourist looking from the outside in. … They are spectators…. 

… The deepest travel happens when you integrate into a community by actively participating, opening yourself to interact with the locals, and understanding the way they live. This can be as easy as actively participating in their rituals, eating traditional dishes from the region, or learning the history that makes the city [sic] what it is today. 

White has much more to say on the subject, but that was enough to get me thinking. I thought about eating octopus seviche in the Yucatan, trying cheese on my grits in Savannah, cheering the junior rodeo contestants in Willcox, AZ, and walking in the washes of Dos Cabezas with a ghost town neighbor. If you’ve followed Books in Northport this past winter, you know we made many good friends in Dos Cabezas, but even three years ago, as strangers, we made it a point of to explore the whole of Cochise County and to learn about its history and natural history, as well as attending public events from art shows to rodeos.

Letting down personal barriers, going beyond one’s own cultural comfort zone, meeting strangers on their own ground and on their own terms, listening and learning and looking to understand — it doesn't have to be as big a deal as crossing a swinging rope bridge over a yawning chasm.

Let me address the simple grits with cheese in Savannah. How much simpler can travel get? The outdoor restaurant was busy that late morning, and our server had probably been running ragged for hours. He was formal and attentive but distant, just doing his job. He asked if I wanted cheese on my grits. Automatically I said no, then stopped and said, “Wait! Is it good that way? Do you recommend it?” He said yes, and so I said I’d try my grits with cheese. Such a small "adventure," hardly meriting the name, wouldn’t you say? As it turned out, I did enjoy grits with cheese. But the food was secondary to my happiness when I thanked the waiter for his recommendation and saw his face break into a smile for the first time. We had broken through to each other and, for a moment, connected. Even if I had hated cheese on my grits, I would have be glad to order my breakfast that way for the sake of the waiter’s smile.

During our ghost town winter, we met people who live very differently from the way we live in northern Michigan — those who carry guns on their hips (only one neighbor but a nice man), those who hunt (as do some of our Michigan friends, though we don’t), and those who are happy, for one reason or another, with the political direction our country is taking these days (which we, I admit, are not). I will emphasize that there is no more unanimity among Arizonans than there is among Michiganians. Nevertheless, we were on Arizona turf and not looking for arguments. We were the aliens, the strangers, visiting and trying to get to know another (diverse) culture. 

So now, looking back at the Southwest from the familiar Midwest, I wonder how it would be if more of us approached each other at home as if we were travelers in a new land, listening rather than arguing, trying to understand, extending a hand in goodwill rather than standing back with arms crossed tight against our chests. 

One of my winter projects in Arizona was studying Spanish, and for weeks I made good progress. Then an unexpected, though brief, hospitalization threw a monkey wrench into my routine, and I never did get back into it with the same discipline. No matter. I really did have enough of the language to order my Sonoran hot dog in Spanish. Only timidity held me back. Why? Why so timid, self? I was disappointed in myself. Finally, however, at the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, a nice man stopped to admire Sarah and began speaking to her in Spanish. My opportunity! “Se llama Sarita,” I told him. His daughter’s name was Sarah. I admitted that ‘Sarah’ was my dog’s name, too. 

It was only a moment, like the waiter’s smile, but that moment made my day. Could we do more at home to make each other’s day? I’m going to try to keep that in mind over the season ahead. 

Dare to cross the bridge?