AN END TO THE COVER-UP

Carolyn J. Rose

Twenty years ago I passed in front of a mirror in a poorly lit room and saw my mother.

Actually, I saw myself, but in the dim light with short mousy brown hair sprinkled with gray and a blouse resembling one she owned, the resemblance was uncanny.

The next day I streaked my hair and vowed to let it grow.

Don’t get me wrong, my mother was an attractive woman and I admired her. But my gut reaction was that I was too young to look like that—“like that” meaning “old.”

Now I’m about the age she was when I glanced into that mirror. My husband’s hair and beard are gray-white and the wrinkles in my face are telling me I’m not kidding anyone—least of all myself—with the golden-brown dye job I have now. It’s time to stop the cover-up.

 I tried out the idea on some friends at the pool—some a little older and some a little younger. Comments ranged from “You seem to have lots of silvery white in there so I think it will look good” to “It’s your life” to “You can’t. You’ll look so old.”

My response? I am old. I’m started-on-Medicare-last-year old. Old enough that I don’t need to explain or defend a decision as minor as this.

Still, after two decades of dyeing, going gray won’t be easy. And it won’t be pretty. There will be growing pains. There will be moments when I reach for the phone to dial my hairdresser. There may even be tears.

But if I avoid mirrors, I think I can make it.

Root for me.

(Pun intended.)

ONE FOOT OUT OF THE NEST

Leaving for College

By Carolyn Rose and Mike Nettleton 

Recently we held an off-to-college shower for a young friend headed for college. 

Kailynn Doane isn’t going far from home—about 50 miles—but it isn’t just distance that makes a journey. She’s leaving familiar things behind, taking on more responsibility, crossing some of the many thresholds to adulthood.


Carolyn’s thoughts: 

As she opened her gifts and suffered with a smile through a round of advice from relatives and friends, I thought of my own journey. And I wondered how I ever found the guts to make it.
 
In 1965 I went from a relatively sheltered life in a small town in the Catskills to the University of Arizona. I knew no other students on the huge campus. I was assigned to a dorm room with three strangers who came from wealthier, more cosmopolitan families. I heard Spanish spoken outside of a classroom and tasted my first Mexican food.

Except for the fact that I could hold an A- average, I knew I wasn’t what sororities were looking for. I was awkward and unsure of myself and knew nothing about where to shop and what to wear. My mother worried that I wouldn’t make many friends. And by some standards I didn’t.

But I got what I went for—escape and education. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my family and the Catskills, but that was a world I already knew and one where people had expectations that made me feel boxed in. So I made the leap and, except for the year I played too much bridge, I focused hard on getting my degree. That turned into a big ticket to ride that got me jobs in TV newsrooms in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington.
 
I’ll never regret making that leap, the springboard for so many others since. And, looking at Kailynn’s smile, I doubt that she will have regrets, either.

Mike’s thoughts: 

Watching Kailynn, good sport that she is, eat cake, open her gifts and put up with a gaggle of overprotective (but loving) adults dishing out advice they would have ignored offhand when they were her age, I tried to remember what it all felt like.

Like Kailynn, I started my college career at a small school within an hour’s drive of my parent’s home. Southern Oregon College (not that many years removed from being called Southern Oregon Normal School, a teacher’s college) nestled in the hills fifteen miles north of the California border. More of its students commuted from nearby cities and towns than lived on campus. 

I’d visited Oregon State and Oregon and found myself overwhelmed by the size of the campus and immensity of the lecture halls. As an underachieving B student I felt like I might stand a better chance with less competition. 

Another large difference between my experience and Carolyn’s was the proximity to my home town. I recognized familiar faces from the get-go at SOC. She faced an ocean of strangers. Had to be scary.

Still, some of what I was feeling and dealing with had to be similar. I’d be living with a stranger for a year (we soon became fast friends), scheduling my own classes and making my own decisions about the course my life would take. I felt like the baby bird that is booted out of the nest and told to fly or hit the ground hard. 

Carolyn, focused person that she is, finished her degree on time, with good grades and moved on to graduate school. I, having no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up, pinned a class schedule up on the board and threw darts at it (symbolically, not literally), taking whatever classes interested me.

My running joke is that I attended Southern Oregon off and on for most of six years and with one more term of biology would have been a junior. 

But college accomplished the same thing for me that it did for Carolyn. It helped shape what kind of person I would become, provided me with lasting friendships, a trove of rich memories, and in it’s own back-door fashion led to my finding a career. Thanks to my start at campus radio KSOR (the big sore atop the science building) people would pay me to talk for the next forty plus years. Quite a difference from the days when my older sisters offered me money to shut up.
 
I’m excited for Kailynn and a tad envious too. And I feel honored that I could be there to help push her out of the nest. I haven’t the slightest doubt that she’ll fly.

Bubba's Limo--Max's Lament

Bubba and Max--Roll Playing

By Carolyn J. Rose

  
Max: (confronting Bubba at the water dish) How long are you going to keep limping around and milking this?

Bubba: Milk? Somebody spilled milk? Where?



Max: Forget about eating. I’m talking about that alleged injury of yours.

Bubba: Nothing alleged about it. (Bubba limps around in an exaggerated manner, ala Chester from Gunsmoke) I pulled a thingie in my knee. Dr. Ferguson said so.

Max: (A) You don’t have a real knee and (B) I bet you made that up.

Bubba: Did not. If you hadn’t been at the groomer getting all clipped combed, massaged and girlie smelling, you would have heard him.

Max: I’m a purebred. Grooming is important.

Bubba: So is doing what Mom and Dad ask you to do, but nooooo, you can’t be bothered with that.

Max: I’m busy. Sun was in my eyes. I had an itch. (Licks himself in an embarrassing place to make his point).

Bubba: You’re busy every time they ask you to sit or come?

Max: Mostly. My calendar is, uh, crowded. You wouldn’t believe how many squirrels I’ve had to bark at this week. Besides, I’m protesting my treatment. I have to walk. You get to ride. It’s hot and my tongue hangs out. It’s not fair.

 Bubba: (Practicing a prom-queen wave) Seems fair to me. Besides, I walk as far as Mom lets me. The stroller was her idea.

 Max: Yeah, well, that shows what she knows. That stroller is way uncool.

Bubba: You’re just jealous because people stop and pet me and say “Ah, what happened to the puppy?”

Max: (Snorts). You haven’t been a puppy since Clinton left office.

Bubba: Sure, play the age card. (In a creaky voice) Someday you’ll be old. Someday you’ll wish you weren’t so “busy” and paid more attention when Mom asks you to stand on the right step so she can put on your harness.

Max: Blah. Blah. Blah. Harness, blah blah, step, blah blah old. (He sniffs the air) I still say you’re milking it.

Bubba: And I say you’re a squirrel-chasing dum—

Max: Squirrel? Where? (He sprints for the sliding door, only to collide with the screen full face)

Panhandling

By Mike Nettleton

 I joined a line of cars waiting for the light to change at a busy intersection in the Northeast part of Vancouver. A flurry of activity caught my eye on the corner to my right and I glanced over. A middle-aged lady clad in light blouse and baggy slacks, held a sign in the air, bobbing it up and down. A tight frown flickered across her face. The sign read:

Please don’t give my children any more money for heroin!

The message struck me like a slap in the face. I became so intent on watching her and wondering what combination of circumstances had led her to this level of desperation, that it took a strident “toooot” from the driver behind me to alert me to the now-green traffic signal. I cruised slowly across the intersection, watching the parental picketer in my rear view mirror.

Part of me wanted to park, hike back to where she patrolled and ask questions. How old are your children? I was guessing, from her age that they were probably adults. At least in terms of the number of years they’d been on the planet. Why did you pick that intersection? Was it because her children habitually panhandled there? Or simply because she could communicate her message to the largest number of people. How did your children begin using heroin? This is the drug that is the ultimate boogie-man to many people (Despite the fact that methamphetamine is much more prevalent and every bit as addictive). What other things have you tried to help your children prior to this? Is rehab easily obtainable to someone with this kind of addiction? What are some things you didn’t understand about heroin addiction until you children became involved?

For years, I’ve resolved not to give the numerous panhandlers I encounter any money. Some friends of mine, wonderful, caring, generous souls continue to hand over cash to the people who hover on street corners and freeway exits. My perspective is that I don’t want to contribute to an ongoing drug or alcohol addiction. I happily give money to charities that will shelter and feed the homeless and feel it’s a much more effective way to provide help.

My always-ready-to-give friends believe that many of the desperate looking folks with their hand-lettered signs might not have substance abuse issues at all and are merely hungry and homeless. They feel that it is not their place to judge what the money they donate will be used for.

I might be less cynical, were it not for my 4am encounter with a panel van that disgorged eight or nine people I’d seen hitting up motorists for donations at a variety of spots around town. They stocked up on convenience store coffee and cigarettes, assembled signs and chatted among themselves. As I pulled away, I saw them piling back into the van, ostensibly on their way to assigned spots.

I will admit to feelings of guilt upon waving off a street-corner panhandler or a desperate-sounding woman who approaches carrying a gas can, saying she just ran out of fuel and needs to get to Seattle (Hint for those trying this ploy. It might be more convincing if you weren’t smoking a cigarette when you approached me). My better nature, my more evolved self wants to reach into my wallet, extract a few bills and hand them over. After all, there but for the grace of whatever deity you believe in, go I. But I won’t. And part of the reason is the vision of that despairing mother at the intersection and her hand-lettered cry for help.

Please don’t give my children any more money for heroin!

I won’t. I promise. And I hope you can find them some help before it’s too late.

Lemonade

Lenomade! Lenomade for sale! Only 25 cents! Lenomade!

 By Mike Nettleton

When I came home from the gym the other morning, the little boy across the street had set up a lemonade stand and stood beside his proud and bemused mother hawking his wares to the neighborhood. Keep in mind that ours is not a terribly busy street. I’m guessing that by the time he grew tired of the game no more than half a dozen cars passed by.

Still, he had the fire and fervor of a born pitchman, bellowing out Lenomade! Lenomade! in a shrill bellow that belied his limited lung capacity.

Carolyn, who’d been puttering in the yard, wandered over to buy a glass. When she asked him how much a paper cup’s worth cost, he screwed up his face in thought and then blurted 25 cents. Carolyn, always one to mess with kid’s minds handed him two quarters and said “All I’ve got is fifty cents, will that work?” The boy accepted her money, then stood, scratching his head, wondering what to do next. His mother, grinning all the while, prodded him. “Don’t you think you should give the nice lady a quarter back?” The boy considered the concept for a minute, then shook his head. “No.” Carolyn gave him the extra quarter as a tip.

She came back to the house, told me I should walk across the street and encourage the young entrepreneur. Ever obedient, I strolled across and bought a paper cup of yellowish liquid, brought it back to the house and set it on the kitchen counter beside Carolyn’s. (Note: I didn’t tip the boy. I figured he needed to learn early on that some customers are tightwads).

This incident reminded me of all the ways I tried to make money as a kid. My first epiphany was discovering that I could get three cents refunded on an empty pop bottle or a penny for a beer bottle. This worked pretty well until my parents reminded me that they’d bought the pop and beer and were therefore entitled to the refund. Rats!

The back pages of comic books offered a myriad of schemes for kids to make money. One involved a product called Cloverine Salve, which, according to their pitch, was magic for aching muscles and joints, healed deep bruising and cured general malaise. You sent them money, they mailed a package of flat cans of the stuff and you went door-to-door selling it at a significant markup. A couple of small problems arose. I had to borrow the money to buy the first shipment, the stuff smelled awful and I was possibly the worst door-to-door salesman every born. My standard technique involved knocking on a door and when someone answered it blurting out “You wouldn’t want to buy any Cloverine Salve would you? I paid the advance money back by snitching pop bottles and running them to the store.

I never opened a lenomade stand, since the place I grew up was cold, rainy and not conducive to lenomade sales. I did sell copies of a local weekly newspapers to the drunks at the Alibi Tavern, shag golf balls that had bounced into the gorse bushes at our local nine-hole course (I’ve still got the scars) and mowed lawns and pulled weeds.

At one point, my friend Johnny and I decided we could pick up stuff on the beach that the tourists would find on their own later and sell it to them as they pulled into the roadside parking lots. Hey, a quarter for a piece of driftwood that looks like the letter J is a heck of a deal. An authentic Oregon Coast seashell for a dime. A steal.

Another friend, Bill, who was a bit of a scientific prodigy as a sixth grader invented a sluice box that would separate gold from the other elements of the black sand found in abundance on his father’s land in the dunes north of town. It worked, but by my estimation it would have taken until my forty-seventh birthday to come up with an ounce of gold. To make any significant amount of money we’d have needed a sluice box the size of a football field.

I forgot about the lenomade sitting on our kitchen counter until late in the day when time came for my evening libation. I tipped a little from one of the paper cups into my mouth and shuddered. Apparently our budding businessman had limited access to mom’s sugar supply. But, with abundant ice and a healthy splash or two of Jack Daniels it made a pretty good whiskey sour. I think we got our fifty cents worth. (Plus tip)

What do you remember about the ways you tried to make money. Lenomade? Walking a neighbors dog? Buying and selling stock online? (For the truly prodigal). Love to hear your stories. Leave a comment.

Notes from the trail

Important lessons learned on the Rogue River Trail.

When you reach my age (64 and closing in fast on 65), you tend to dream up things to do to prove to yourself you’re not really getting old. Many of which are: (a) unrealistic, (b) delusional, (c) potentially fatal (d) not even things you could have accomplished when you were young.

My original plan for the summer involved walking the length of the Oregon Coast Trail, some 360 miles, camping along the way and seeking spiritual enlightenment. This plan ran into some immediate problems, the first of which was my inability to interest anyone else to tackle this project with me. Responses ranged from: “you must be high,” to “sounds great, can I have your golf clubs?” to “you wouldn’t know spiritual enlightenment if it jumped up and bit you in the yin or yang.” Okay then, perhaps it was time to try plan B.

My son Rob, who initially thought he might come along on the Oregon Coast Walk (I think he decided someone needed to be on the trip who knew CPR), suggested we scale back a skosh.  After some palavering (like negotiation done while hunkering), we decided to take a week, jet boat up the Rogue River and hike, camp, and fish our way along the trail. I jumped at the idea—a chance to reconnect with my son, eat freshly caught trout and sing campfire songs (turns out neither of us knew the words to Kumbaya). What’s not to like? Plus, if I could get spiritually enlightened in three weeks, I could be 1/3 enlightened in a week, right? 

It was a great experience, one I would recommend to anyone who wants to spend time away from cell phones, television, people and light pollution. The scenery is eye-popping, the air is clean and it’s amazing how you can learn to love food that only requires adding boiling water. Here are lessons learned and more pictures. 

Lesson #1.  The jet boat up the Rogue River can transform otherwise mature adults into a giggling, gasping, gaping 3rd-grade class. I’ve never heard so many grownups scream whee!!!in my life. Here we are admiring turkey-buzzards snacking on a dead sturgeon. 

Not a big  fan of carrion? We also saw ospreys, eagles, deer, otters, river seals and the occasional dinosaur. 

 Lesson #2.  Hauling a 40 pound pack up a rocky trail is hard damn work. I’m reasonably fit, but damn. Schlepping a backpack 360 miles for 3 weeks? My initial critics were right, I must have been high. We didn’t hike any killer distances.

The two camps we stayed at were between a mile and two and a half miles away from the lodge where we caught the boat home. .  

 Lesson #3.  If you’re going to wash your clothing in a fast-moving creek, be sure to grip it tightly. Some lucky rafter is now the proud owner of a pair of 38-30 cargo pants that descended from heaven via a stream-fed waterfall.

 

 

Lesson #4.   You learn amazing things about people you’ve known all of your life when you camp with them. 

I learned that my son, who never picked anyting up off the floor in all the years I lived with him is an accomplished and conscientious outdoorsman. 

He can light a campfire with wet wood in a torrential rainstorm, pitch a tent like a pro (is there a league for that?), and identify all kindsof plants and animals. 

For example, he knew instantly that this was a deer. I was under the impression it was some kind of horned fungus.

 He also insisted we leave our campsites cleaner than we found them. Who knew the kid who grew accidental biology experiments under his bed would be so tidy?

Lesson #5.  Sodden is an entirely descriptive word for a certain state of being. It rained hard for one day and most of another. When I awoke on Wednesday morning, everything I had with me was saturated. I was ready to break camp, hike to the lodge and thumb a ride back on the jet boat. Rob calmly spent an hour and a half starting a fire, making us coffee and telling dad to mellow out. 

Lesson #6.  Nobody likes a hardhead. Thursday morning Rob even allowed as he could be convinced to go hole up at Paradise Lodge for the final night. The tipping point was the realization that we were out of coffee and would face a decaffeinated scramble to catch the boat on Friday after breaking camp. Both of us craved a shower, a meal someone else prepared and drinking a beer (or eight) on the deck and watching the rafters float by. Sleeping on a real bed after 4 nights on rocks and dirt? Near orgasmic. I recommend this place. It’s a tad spendy but includes meals. And the view is phenomenal.

Final and best lesson.  I may joke about it, but there certainly was an element of spiritual enlightenment in my trip up the Rogue River. Even as an agnostic, I felt a level of inner harmony and peace that seems impossible to accomplish in the confines of a city. You look at the sheer cliffs, magnificent trees, abundant wildlife and star-packed skies and wonder whose plan this might have been. 

The Last Day of School

The Last Day of School

Carolyn J. Rose

 

 Schools Out--Muppets and Alice Cooper  

The last day of high school.

  

The seniors have already graduated and gone and many of the others took their finals in advance and headed off to summer jobs and family vacations or long days of just hanging out.

The halls aren’t crammed between classes.

The classrooms echo with farewells and promises.

Even the sunlight through the trees seems to have a different shade and slant.

Walking to the office to turn in my substitute keys, I cast my mind back to the June days of my teen years when I would count down the hours, the minutes, and even the seconds.

My thoughts then would be on the rising level of the water in the pool we scrubbed and whitewashed on Memorial Day. Fed by a spring now dry, it seemed to take forever to fill. And it was cold—muscle-numbing, breath-catching, toe-curling cold. But it represented summer—afternoons of sunbathing, listening to the static-ridden signal of WMGM from New York City for the hits of the season, and wondering who might come down the road and dive in.

As school days dwindled down to the final one, moods shifted. Those we now refer to as slackers did less and became more disdainful of the educational process. Those hoping for college scholarships hunched over their notebooks and drilled with their vocabulary cards. Those with confidence joked. Those freaked out about finals joked more. Everyone talked about summer plans and speculated about what teachers would do after the final bell.

Everyone was aware that all that was familiar and mundane would be behind us in a few days. When we returned in the fall, there would be a sense of strangeness. There would be harder subjects to tackle and perhaps a few new teachers or new classmates. We would find seats in classrooms we may never have entered before, or get involved in new activities with new friends.

And, until tedium set in again, we would be energized and somehow renewed.