A visitor to the neighborhood

by Pat Laster

        One morning recently, from my roost on the front-porch, south-facing swing, I heard behind me what sounded like a Florida dove! At first—like I did when I was a child––I thought it must be an owl. But there were no trees in the hayfield beyond the property line where the sound came from.
        Mesmerized, I walked from the porch toward the repetitious sound. It came from the giant hackberry that helps delineate the yard-yard from the rest of the acreage. I saw movement, and soon a gray bird flew west into a smaller hackberry. It called/sang again.
         “How in the world did you get so far afield?” I asked my visitor.
          Last year at this time, I sat on the balcony of a high-rise in Fort Pickens and watched doves flit around the light standards. I loved their calls. How different they sounded from the soft, gentle coos of Arkansas doves.
         For the next two days, I heard the Florida bird pair. Googling “doves” I discovered this visitor is a Eurasian-collared dove. Whatever they are and however they got to be in my yard, I care not. As long as they stay here, and bless me with their calls, I can transport myself to the cool Gulf breeze where my older son and his family live.
        Since I returned from Piggott on Friday, I’ve heard the visitor only one time, alas.
        On Saturday—the first opportunity to sleep late after the week’s 8 a.m. breakfast calls, and the 9 a.m. class calls—I awoke at the unusual hour of 5:25 a.m. I had to cut hydrangeas to harden for a Sunday church bouquet. While engaged at that pleasant task—66 degrees—I decided to cut three newly-bloomed, pure white gardenias and some long stems of tansy (white heads).
         That done, I sat in the swing with coffee and the newspaper(s) and mused:
         The difference between a downtown (any city) inn/hotel/motel and home is the relative quiet of the latter—no trains during the night and almost no vehicular traffic, especially at six a.m. In any size city, traffic begins early. Even in this relatively rural area, folks leave early to drive to Little Rock or Hot Springs or Conway. But not on a Saturday.
         The most noticeable difference between any city and home is the abundant birdsong.           Mockingbirds seem to be constantly changing their “tunes.” (Is that like writers revising?)
          One neighbor’s Doberman greeted my presence—after a week’s absence—with what I call a threatening growlbark. I ignored it. Another neighbor’s backyard rooster crowed—as per instinct.
         Other birds with “inside” voices reminded me of farm women going about the chores of early morning. They were in the background. Even beyond those sounds, the mourning doves across the road called and responded.
        The sun rose on my left. I looked up, and a contrail—like a pencil mark—led from the sun behind the trees upward and diagonally across the sky. A symbolic sight I took to mean: rise,  shine, give God the glory, and get to work. 
        The Florida doves might yet come back.

Hemingway-Pfeiffer's writers retreats

by Pat Laster

To ease the work of my children when I have moved for the final time to a place other than earth, I have been going through printed material that includes some of my published works. One son has already said he doesn’t want anything that doesn’t include my writing.

I came across an anthology from the June 2006 retreat. On the first page each writer penned—for posterity?—“one true sentence,” from the phrase used by Ernest H. himself. Perhaps you’ll find them as interesting and poignant as I did.

*  “I never think of Mom as a particularly strong individual until I recall incidents such as this.” – J.A.
 * “Excited to be fourteen years old and scared because I know nothing about growing up.” – G.B.
* “One truth I hold: Life is not a linear progressing inching in years and decades. It is a circle revolving upon itself, moving from unknowing to knowing, sleep to waking, from gain to less to gain, from birth and back, and who among us can fully chart the course before the journey’s done?” – J.C.
* “Don’t waste your life grieving for things that you could not have.” – Milo Miller, father of R.D.
* “My stories are my world to share.” --E. F.
* “Facing my true self may not be what I expect it to be.” --S. H.
* “Writing is like fishing: the best catch comes once you stop fighting the current.” --R. H.
* “I’ll bring the margueritas.” --K.H.
*“Life would be boring if all men WERE created equal.” --C. H.
*“With mentor’s guidance, my pen strikes truer.” --B. J.
* “My best poems have not been written.” --W. J.
* “And all of us are safe because of him and other soldiers like him.” F. B. N.
* “Books are easier than people.” M. S.
* “My mother was not a happy woman.” P. L.

The second retreat I attended in 2007, the mentor began with a pile of peanuts on the table. The obvious first task was to brainstorm using the five senses. Before the week was out, all writers turned in something about peanuts.

Here is a vignette written by Rita Dortch from Rector, and is used with permission. Rita is a retired elementary teacher. 

         "A Peanut Day"

       “Raining again?” I moaned.
       “Come on kids, it’s time to go.”
       “Ah-h-h-h, Daddy, please! Not today. Let us rest.”
       “This is the best time to do it, because we can’t work in the fields.”
        “Momma, can’t we do something at the house?”
        “R-i-t-a,” Momma shook her head and motioned us from our comfortable chairs. Larry Joe and I looked at each other with grimacing faces. Thank goodness, I had Larry Joe. He made the days bearable. He was our comedian.
        We arrived at the barn as the rain steadily danced on the tin roof. Under the side shed, out of the rain, sat a giant stack of withered peanut vines covered in dimpled, dusty, hourglass shells. I cringed to think that my ONE day out of the cotton fields would be spent pulling the musty, bumpy shells from their dead life-lines. Only the smell of Momma’s homemade fudge, brimming with fresh ground roasted peanuts tantalized my taste buds.
        The musty smell of those earthy peanuts linger in my memory—as does the wonderful day we spent with my brother popping one joke after another. We laughed together and forgot the pouring rain.Oh, I wish I had some of Momma’s peanut butter fudge. THE END

Today, since I already had my submissions for the Anthology turned in, I spent the morning revising the pieces Dr. Rick Lott critiqued. One or two of the writers at Piggott worked frantically to finish and turn in their pieces on the flash drives that each of us used during the week. Then, we all headed home with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, new friendships made and old ones renewed, and satisfaction about what we accomplished during the week. #

No TV at Couchwood: the ending and the beginning

by Pat Laster

          ENDING

         I have a telephone pole, but as of last week, no DirecTV. No TV of any kind.

         Back when the country went to digital (over analog) reception and when Charter Cable went offline for a long period, I changed to DirecTV, a modern dish-on-the-old-old-roof, two receivers--the works.
        Kid Billy wanted more than the basic package. He wanted wrestling. But lately, since he is in Arkadelphia most of the time, his TV wasn’t being used. And about three years ago, I quit watching TV altogether in favor of reading and/or writing. Soon, our monthly statement rose to $70—a gift, in essence, to the company.

BEGINNING
      Here is a description and conversation with the person who installed the DirecTV dish that I wrote at the time—March of 2009. Why not use it now?
       He was a youngish man with a salt and pepper beard, a cross on a chain around his neck and no nametag.
        When I told him this was a Depression-Era house, he one-upped me. He’d moved two houses from Edison Avenue in south Benton when Jones Air Conditioning company was set to demolish them for a warehouse. They sit now on the north end of Springhill Road at Sierra Place.
         One time, he said, the grandchildren in one of the families came to visit and told him of a desk that folded into the wall. They found interesting stuff within. No, he hasn’t listed it on the National Register of Historic Placecs.
        He placed the TV dish on the northwest corner of the Couch house and faced it 210° southwest. “Out of the line of the (hackberry) tree,” he said. Dad probably turned over in his grave. Mom, too.
        His brogue denoted a Midwesterner. After showing me how to operate the remote, he asked me to “sign-print-sign.” I said, “You must be from the Midwest.” 
        “No. Connecticut.”
         “How in the world did you get down here?”
         I came down about 20 years ago to work in the nuclear plant in Russellville. I worked a year. Met a girl, married, divorced, married, divorced, married, divorced…”
         “I see you wear a cross,” I said, and that got it going.
          His name is Chris B. and he goes to The Church at Rock Creek. Grew up a very spiritual Catholic. Folks expected him to be a priest. But he “saw through” the Catholic religion, he said, and became dispirited.
          They went to S_____ Baptist until the preacher made light of the Pope’s death.
          Chris heard that the Rock Creek preacher used sports allusions, and he liked sports, so they tried it out. The church has many, many ministries—backpacks full of food for the weekend for children in poverty, helping the homeless (bring a pair of socks next Sunday, for example).

And with that, my story ended. Who would have thought that some three years later, I would have occasion to share this tale that has sat long in my computer files.

Serendipity, I call it.

c 2012 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press

What did you do with that telephone pole?

by Pat Laster

             An earlier column about the old telephone pole from the electric company that replaced all poles in this community, elicited one challenge and one suggestion.
            The challenge was from my uncle Norval in Oak Ridge: “I’m interested in learning how you’re going to use a power pole.”
           The suggestion was from poet Jeanie Carter from Hot Springs: paint a haiku on it with phosphorescent paint.
          Once, I saw Boots-the-cat use it as a scratching post.
           Instead of Mother’s Day gifts, I asked my children for another Saturday workday here at Couchwood. Due to my previous plans it had to be the following weekend.
           On Mother’s Day, while visiting, son Eric (Hot Springs, highway department employee) and Kid Billy-- with the help of a hammer and screw driver-- pulled the grounding wire through the iron staples holding it. And then removed the staples from the pole.
           On Thursday, like the woman who cleans before the cleaning lady comes, I worked in the yard dismantling a year-old smallish brush pile of sawbriars, sassafras and privet. The kids were coming over to help me do things I couldn’t do (very well) alone—cut a low pecan tree limb, clean the gutters, saw up the telephone pole…
            On the appointed day I came awake at 6:20. Pulling on my summer robe, I went to retrieve the papers. Lo and behold, there was Eric already bent over the pole.
           “I’m used to getting up at 5,” he said, after I oohed and aahed about how early it was. “Besides, it’s gonna get hot later.”
             Newspapers in hand, I hurried back in, rapped on Kid Billy’s door and told him Eric was here. “Already?” he asked. We both dressed and joined Eric by the pole. But that wasn’t the first thing on the agenda.
             Even before that, and after one neighbor was seen up and out, Eric took the leaf blower with a looooong cord to the attic and opened a north window.
             “Plug it into the wall, not the strip,” he directed (I knew that). Out the window he went and blew out the screened gutters all around the house. Oh, the clumps of oak tassels that blew off. Roofing granules scuttled to the downspouts and out.
            The next task was cutting the lowest limb of an old pecan tree close to the west property line where the neighbors kept an immaculate lawn. The cut limb would mean detritus in their space, but only until KB and I could pull it around to the far side of our property to the brush pile. Then, with a leaf rake I groomed their yard.
             Daughter Jennifer and grandson Jake drove up mid-morning, just as Eric was marking (“Do you have a crayon?” I produced a grandmother-stash of crayons and he selected an orange.) the telephone pole into 12, 14, and 16-inch segments.
             Chainsaw at the ready, Eric said, “It won’t be like cutting butter.” Soon, 28 pieces of pole lay like sliced carrots on a cutting board. I had decided to use them as property delineation on the south, where, at some earlier time, part of the concrete-block “fence” had ceased to be.
             Eric and Billy loaded the pieces of the pole into his truck and drove around the back of the house down to the old tennis court, making sure to avoid the horseshoe stakes. Unloaded, the pieces were then put in place by Jennifer, Billy and myself. Quite a neat-looking barrier.
            As soon as I can, I’ll post pictures.

c 2012 Pat Laster dba lovepat press

The last words –what will our families write about us?

by Pat Laster

          In the Arkansas Times’ 20-year anniversary issue, published May 9, was a feature called “Best of the ‘Best and Worst’: 20 years of high absurdity.” In that piece was a section called Best Obits. There followed three segments. In another section was another obit.
           Because of this, I consider the subject—though I stop short of using the word “absurdity”––open to other writers.
           For many years, I have read or skimmed every obituary in every paper I’ve read. Those sentences written, presumably, by family members, are noted by me as Mini-Bios or Bios for short in my daybook/journal/notebook. I may have even written one column on these interesting tidbits, but it’s been a good while back.
            Since AT reminded me, I’ll share some of those jottings with you readers and friends. Disclaimer: this is not an attempt at humor, but at getting to the crux of what’s important to the family about the deceased.
            * “B. (74) was the last real American cowboy.”
            * “If you weren’t friends with him (78) when you met him, you would be before he got through talking to you.”
            * “She (59) devoted much of her time and energy as a caregiver to family members.”
            * [S]he (78) had a unique affinity for mice.”
            *”Following [husband’s] retirement . . . she/they sacrificed dreams of exotic retirement locations and moved to [place] to assist in the raising of her/their disabled granddaughter and her newborn sister.”
            * “He (82) was married to his wife … 63 years to the day… [of his death]”
            * “… and in his last years [he] often read a 500-page book per day.” (79)
            * “In 1957, [her] family blew into Houston with Hurricane Audrey and settled there.”
            * “[She] (80) expressed that love [of family] every Sunday in the form of a family dinner after church.”
            * “She (92) was very domestic …”
            * “She (96) lived through both World Wars and the Depression.”
            * “It was his (73) pleasure to make people laugh.”
            * “He (88) truly enjoyed his life.”
            * “She (85) still carrie[d] her pharmacist license -- for 63 years.
            * “She (92) was the last living of … nine children.”
            * “There are no survivors (82 – female).”[Sad, sad.]
            * “[She was] the first woman soybean buyer for Proctor & Gamble in the South.
            * “He (91) had an idyllic childhood spoiled by his two sisters … “[Methinks he was spoiled BY his sisters, not that his childhood was spoiled. Oh, how a comma would have helped.]
            * “Her death (82) brings a new chapter to the K. family.”
            * “On the L. coat-of-arms [from her ancestral home of Spain] … reads ‘Hoc, Hic, Mysterium, Fider, Fir miter, Profilemur.’ Translated, it means, ‘Here is the mystery of Faith that we so strongly profess.”
            * “Being a wife and mother was her whole life.”                                                   

            What will our families write about us?                                                   c 2012 by Pat Laster

A fantasy on the first anniversary of Mom’s death

by Pat Laster

 “Come in here, Mom,” I said, as she swept into the house where she’d lived for 64 years. She glided to a stop. Looking around the living room, her lips thinned, eyes clouded, brow furrowed. Upturned palms panned this area of the family home––now mine. I half expected her to say, as she had during the last days, ‘What are you doing here?’

I pushed a swivel chair under her so she could view the entire room. “We sold your sofa. None of your heirs needed it. This one’s mine, remember?”

Mom cast one arm toward her piano that was still where she left it. Mine stood beside it. “Carolyn doesn’t have room for it in her house.”

Slowly, she surveyed the rest of the room, shaking her head.

“No one needed the cabinet stereo, so I gave it to my friend Dot. Your hospice nurse wanted the macramé plant hanger from that corner. Doesn’t your pink recliner look good there?”

Mom lifted her hand toward the sunroom that I had turned into an office. She held my arm, rose from the chair and moved toward the bright area. At the double doorframe, I turned a rocking chair around and eased her down. She shivered; I shawled her shoulders with one of her throws.

She studied the room. Nothing stood where it previously had. The only familiar piece was Granddad Noah’s handmade library table.

She spotted her African violets. For years, the stunted blue-flowered plants merely existed in plastic yellow pots set on spiraling ledges of a wrought-iron stand. I’d repotted them into ceramic containers and sunk two more into blue pottery jardinières.

With regular care and plant food, the violets had thrived; the blooms were profuse. Mom motioned to one and held out her hands. I took it down and let her hold it on her lap. For the first time, she smiled.

We continued the slow journey through the house. In the dining room, she finally relaxed. Her massive china cabinet still stood in its place. She didn’t seem to notice that the oak buffet was on another wall, and that my china hutch was in that space. As if she had just come in with the newspaper, she sat down at the table—as cluttered now as it was then, albeit with different items—reached for the unfinished crossword and the ubiquitous pen, and went to work—an eerie scene of dejavu.

After lunch, where we watched the birds in the birdbath and beautyberry bush, and before viewing other changes, Mom agreed to a nap.

The bathroom wall heater still warmed. A flea-market picture frame held a picture of her and her mother. She seemed pleased.

After she lay down, I placed a pillow under her knees, then added blankets until she motioned to stop.

Later, we walked into the bedroom where Dad endured his final illness. It now served as my sitting room. The hide-a-bed sofa was the only thing she recognized. Her face twisted; she shuddered and turned away.

She led me to the room beyond the kitchen which was her sitting room. When she noticed her houseplants, her eyes sparkled for an instant, but faded like a firework.

Suddenly, Mom tugged at my arm, and then skimmed unaided across the hardwood to the front door. She scrabbled at the hardware like a pet wanting out.

I opened it, and before I could kiss her, she was gone.     #                                    © 2012, Pat Laster

Did you know this………. about animals? I didn’t

by Pat Laster

 Here is a column’s worth of unusual items found in my readings and added to the in-progress Compendium I am assembling.
* A ungulate species at the Little Rock Zoo, is a muntjac–– a tawny, dog-sized antelope.
* Gorillas are given the same kind of birth control as women and are given the same pregnancy test. (L. L. Williams, ADG)
* The difference between bloodhounds: one is a trailing dog who keeps his head up to sniff; one is a tracking dog which puts his nose to the ground and follows footsteps. Both can be trained (field work) for search and rescue and narcotics detections and apprehension. (A. Wallworth, ADG)
* Domesticated animals define what it is to be a human.” (Samantha Brooks, assistant professor of equine genetics, Cornell University)
 * A female python can lay 100 eggs though 54 are considered the norm. The reptile trade is a $2 billion business in the U.S., says the Humane Society. More reptiles are imported to this country than to anywhere else in the world. (D. Fears, WA Post)                
* Preble’s meadow jumping mouse is an endangered species.
*Bees cannot drink while flying (unlike hummingbirds) so must land to feed.
*The mandrill is the world’s largest monkey species.
* Types of lemurs in the Little Rock zoo: red-ruffed, ring-tailed, blacks and blue-eyed blacks.
* Male Campbell’s monkeys have six basic alert calls: ‘boom,’ ‘hok,’ ‘krak,’ ‘krakoo,’ ‘kok-oo, ’and ‘wak-oo.’ (Findings, Harper’s Magazine, Feb 2010)
* “If cats are not fed at a regular location, their instinct is to roam.” – Jennifer Franks, a feline rescue volunteer. [I hoped this was true, because once, I left eight feral cats without any food for two weeks. When I returned, six were still here. But how many squirrels and birds met their death during that time? Another time, I left for ten days; the cats were still here. The third time, I left for a week, and only three had persevered.]
* On land, geese are a gaggle; in the air, they are a skein.
* A swarm of bees can also be called a grist.
* The Ozark hellbender is a species of aquatic salamander that can grow up to two feet long.
* A species of mussel is the snuffbox mussel. Freshwater mussels require clean water. (L. Lamor Williams, ADG – last two entries)
*Other species of mussels are Sheepnose, Spectaclecase, Arkansas Fatmucket, the Magazine Mountain Shagreen and the Pallid Sturgeon (Doug Smith, Arkansas Times, Feb 2011)
* The largest flatfish is the halibut.
* Three different beetles attack pine trees: the Southern pine beetle, the IPS engraver beetle and the turpentine beetle. (Janet Carson, ADG)
* The U.S. Department of Agriculture issues permits to kill blackbirds. Also gulls, herons, hawks, waterfowl and shorebirds on airfields.
* Four U.S. zoos house giant Pandas: Zoo Atlanta, San Diego, Memphis and Washington D. C.
* Drum (fish) are native to Arkansas, a gray, freshwater species. Not usually sought by fishermen. They are bottom feeders that eat other fish and insects. (R. J. Smith, ADG)

Collected during 2011-2012 by Pat Laster, dba lovepat press