Happy New Year

             New Year’s Day has always been my least favorite holiday.  It’s at the worst time of year, right in the dead of winter.  More importantly, it always marks the end of the long-awaited Christmas break.

     It must be the least-memorable holiday, too, as I can only vividly remember two New Year’s Days.  The earliest I can remember was in the mid-fifties when I was still in grade school.  I spent New Year’s Eve with my good buddy Jake. 

      We went to a card party with his parents at the Union school.  It was a fairly modern version of the one-room schools that dotted the landscape in the early 20^th Century.  The adults played either Pitch or Pinochle.  I think Jake and I were joined by one or two other kids.  I think we played Rook, but we might have played Pitch or Pinochle, too. 

     I was mildly disappointed because the parents of the girl I had a crush on were there, but not the girl.  We stayed until midnight when everybody greeted the New Year and headed home.  It must have been a bunch of Methodists because there was absolutely no alcohol at this New Year’s Eve party.

       On New Year’s Day, we visited Jake’s sister, brother-in-law, and family up north near the Washington County line.  It was shirtsleeve weather, probably in the sixties or seventies during the short afternoon with the sun always in a low early-evening position even at noon.  (That time of year always requires use of a sun visor in the car unless you are travelling due north.)

     They had a huge, high stack of bales that invited us to climb and run across the top, but alas, we were forbidden to crawl up that stack.  The reason given for the prohibition was for our own safety.  Kids have a way of knowing when they aren’t getting the truth.  I think the real reason was because Johnny didn’t want us knocking bales down and destroying his neat stack.  I don’t blame him.

      I remember a few New Year’s Eves at the farm, staying up till midnight to look out an upstairs window to the southwest to see small little glows on the horizon.  No, not Aurora Borealis, the Add-a-Man club shooting fireworks off Pikes Peak.

     Another memorable New Year’s really happened before the actual New Yer's Day.  I must have been a freshman in college.  Brother John had had a mishap with his old green Cadillac in Greeley.  We spent the day, maybe December 30, taking our lives in our hands by replacing the A-frame on the right front of the heavy old car.  It meant collapsing the ornery coil spring enough to get the damaged frame off and a used frame we got from somewhere back on.

      We were racing the sun on the short day, trying to get the machine on the road before dark because there would be no time to replace the damaged fender.  There would be only one headlight if we had to travel after dark.  With the help of a floor jack we borrowed from a neighbor, we managed to lower the body onto the a-frame assembly, using bars to line up the bolt holes.

       We got the job done, but not before dark.  We had the Cadillac follow closely the yellow ’57 Chev pickup.  Maybe the cops would miss the missing headlight.  It may be a figment of my imagination, but I seem to remember we did get stopped on Highway 34 east of Greeley.  If we did, the cop let us go on.  We got home safely.

      December 31 of that year, we spent in B Leach’s junkyard removing the right front fender of a Cadillac nearly the same style and color as John’s.  It didn’t even have to be painted to match his car.

     That evening, I took in the New Year’s celebration at the VFW in Hugo.  I over-imbibed.  We had hoped to finish the Cadillac repair in time to return to Greeley for winter quarter.  Between the ill effects of the celebration and the departure of Uncle Ricky and family, we didn’t get much done on New Year’s day. 

     It was left to Dad to finish the fender job during the first week of January.  We did at least get the car into the old school farm shop where Dad could work in some comfort with the wood-burning boiler blazing away.

      Since 1970, New Year’s has come to mean Japanese food.  The Goodwife would make a trip to Pacific Mercantile in downtown Denver to lay in supplies needed to prepare the feast.  New Year’s being a bigger holiday than Christmas in the Oriental culture, the store was always crowded to the gills.  I spent all my time trying to keep out of the way as the Goodwife shopped.

     The traditional New Year’s Day meal included rolled sushi, rice with three other ingredients, not two or four, exactly three, rolled up in a 8” X 11” sheet of sea weed (nori), then sliced into cute little rolls about an inch-and-a-half wide. 

      Our sushi rarely included raw fish, what most folks think sushi is.  It is hard to get fish fresh enough to eat raw in the great heartland of our continent.  Canned crab meat or canned shrimp can be substituted, but many of the sushi rolls are vegetarian, including cucumbers, pickled radish, ginger slices, burdock roots slice into strings, or my own very favorite, California-maki which includes slivers of avocado and mayonnaise in the rice.  (My mouth is watering at the thought.)

    Other menu items include sweet black beans, sliced cucumber and shrimp in rice vinegar, special potatoes boiled in soy sauce, maybe a grilled salmon, maybe teriyakied chicken or beef.  I must quit.  I’m getting hungry.

     In later years, when the girls grew up and left, we didn’t always have the feast on New Year’s Day.  We had to schedule when everybody could be there.  Some years, we have to pretend we are celebrating Chinese New Year’s, coming some weeks later than our Western New Year.

      We won’t be feasting this New Year’s Day.  We haven’t had time to get to Pacific Mercantile.  We won’t be going today.  It’s fifteen degrees, snow on the ground, crazy drivers on the road, and a trip down I-25 is not much fun in the best of weather.

   

Books I Have Read II

      The short days of the year have arrived.  Thanks to electric lights, a person can sit and read a book after it gets dark before 5 p.m.

      The most modern book I have read is Hidden figures.  I haven’t seen the movie, but I understand that the book and the film are pretty close.  Not only does the story give the black women their just desserts for their part in the World War II effort and the space race, it is a pleasant reminder for those of us for whom the story was current events and not history, of the good old days when things were simple (not). 

      You get a good look at the development of computers, tube machines that took up entire floors of a building, with coolers necessary to keep the thing from overheating, that began to replace the human computers, as they were called.  The ladies used adding machines at first, and were themselves the computers.

     The book reminds you of the shock Sputnik created in the USA, of the ramp up to try to catch up and surpass the Soviet Union in the space race.  You get a good review of all the astronauts culminating in the moonwalks.

   Of course, segregation plays a major role in the women’s stories.  What reader will not feel a sense of shame as the story of what the black women contributed to their country and how they were treated unfolds?

     The oldest book I have read recently is Chris Berg’s biography of Charles Lindbergh.  He must have been born under an influential star.  He remained  an icon in the public’s eye throughout his lifetime, though not always in a favorable light. 

      After his historic flight from New York to Paris, he went on to become an ambassador for aviation to the world.  His marriage and the kidnapping and murder of his oldest son drove him to try to avoid the limelight.    

      He fell into disfavor during World War II because he sang the praises of Nazi Germany as they advanced the cause of aviation beyond other nations during their buildup to the War.  He was not loved by the Roosevelt administration.

     He was shunned as an advisor to the Army Airforce, but he continued to function as a test pilot, actually flying into combat in the war in the Pacific, where he downed a Japanese pilot, an event that troubled him for the rest of his life.

      His career spanned the birth of aviation to the space age.  He was a farmer, an inventor, a scientist, and a traveler.  In his later years, he worried about the effects of modernity on the natural world.  He spent a lot of time in Africa and got involved in the attempt to protect threatened animals.  He was an interesting character.

     My favorite book in the past year was The Meadow by James Galvin.  The meadow referred to in the title is in the front range of mountains near the Colorado-Wyoming border. The “story” involves the folks who owned and resided in the meadow, a place nearly inaccessible during the winters.

     Galvin is a poet.  His first-person narrative chronicles the lives of basically three people who would probably be considered somewhat unremarkable except for Galvin’s tale.  One character grew up in the area and was one of the occupants of the meadow.  His father fell in love with the place during an overnight stay under unfortunate circumstances with his rather cruel father.  App purchased the meadow but lost it when his two wives fell ill and the medical expenses bankrupted him.

     He and his three boys had to leave.  They “homesteaded” a no-man’s land which neither Wyoming nor Colorado claimed.  One son returned to the area after a career as a plasterer in Denver and Laramie.  He worked for a water company that provided him a house and equipment necessary to keep an eye on the ditches and reservoir, even in winter. 

       An alcoholic, Ray froze to death while relieving himself during an attempt to find a refuge when caught out in a storm.

     The main character, Lyle, began his life near Flagler, Colorado where his parents homesteaded.  After his father abandoned the family, his mother moved them all to Boulder.  A thrifty woman, the family unit stuck together and saved enough money from their various occupations to buy the meadow at the beginning of the depression.  Due to their thrifty ways, they made it through the depression.

     Lyle never left the meadow, surviving his two older brothers who died in plane crashes, one in World War II, the other crop dusting in Texas, and his sister (suicide), and his mother.  Lyle was a genius who built his own forge.  He then made his own tools and could manufacture nearly anything he needed.

      He expanded the original log cabin, including running water with indoor plumbing.  He built his own barn with logs cut and fitted without power tools.  He built many structures for his neighbors.  He kept the meadow hayed and irrigated with ancient equipment.

      Lyle lasted longer than any other owner.  His lifelong habit of rolling his own cigarettes, and smoking them finally did him in.  Emphysema rendered him barely able to keep the fire burning and feed himself during his final winter in the meadow.  Lyle finally gave up and let his neighbors take him to the hospital in Laramie where he died.

     Lyle was the idealized westerner, an independent man who survived on his own without relying on anyone and on very few modern conveniences.

    It must be a great read.  I’ve read it three times, now.  Maybe it is the local color.

     Currently, I am reading The Girls of Atomic City.   I hope to be done in time to attend a discussion at the Verboten Brewery.  Sounds like my kind of book club.    

     

      

Train Wreck on a Silent Night

    We always rehearse at the church on Mondays, so once or twice a year we try to pay our rent by bestowing upon the congregation our tremendous talent.  (Ego knows no bounds.)

     It’s the third Sunday of Advent.  We have a crack arrangement of “Oh come Emanuel.” It begins with unison voices singing in Latin.  At the “rejoice” refrain, it splits into two-part open Chinese-type harmony, like you hear in a monastery.  The second and third verses are in English with minor and major harmonies.

     We kicked off the service (the Introit, maybe).  We did a fair job on the opener.  Then we sat through the service.  We sang again at the end of the service.  We were supposed to be the tail end of the communion accompaniment.  But communion was over when we got up to sing. 

     We launched into “Silent Night”, another neat arrangement with three verses, the first the standard harmony, the second with the lead soloing while the other three parts “ooh”, creating some non-traditional harmonies, followed by the third verse where the tenor and the lead play tag with the melody in an upper register.    

     To begin the second verse, the lead goes up one full step to begin his solo.   But “summat went amiss,” to quote a James Herriot character.  The lead didn’t step up.  We “oohers” couldn’t find anything that fit.  Ted stopped singing and said, “This isn’t working.” 

     We were marooned on an island of silence surrounded by a sea of embarrassment.  Ted apologized, first to the congregation.  He is a member of the church, known by many, the embarrassment that much worse.  Then he apologized to us, his quartet mates.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry guys.”

     He tried starting the second verse a couple of times, with no success.  “I’ve lost the key,” he said.  Dick pulled out his pitch pipe, said, “Here’s the starting key”, and blew a note.  Ted picked it up and launched into the second verse.  Gradually, all three of us latched onto the right slots for our “oohs” and on we went.

      Then came the third verse.  We were a full step below where we should have been because Dick started us on the stating key and we did not transition up a full step.  The result wasn’t as disastrous as it could have been.

     Actually, it worked out quite well for the tenor.  I was in easy range, no straining on the high notes.  Ted got the low notes.  It wasn’t quite as nice for the bass who had to reach a step lower than normal, but oh well.  I did rather quite well, too, if I say so myself (see the parenthetical in paragraph one).

      All’s well that ends well, they say.  When we were done, church was done.  The relief brought about by the end of the service greatly outweighed the embarrassment third parties always experience when performers struggle. 

     The three of us laughed it off.  Hey, things happen during live performances.  You pick yourself up and go on.  Ted insisted on apologizing to us privately afterwards.  He said what happened was that he skipped the second verse and went to the third verse.

      The experience surfaced in my consciousness now and again throughout the day.  In my usual slow way, toward evening, I came to a realization:  it wasn’t entirely Ted’s fault, though we were content to let him shoulder the burden.

     Somehow, it dawned on me that at the end of the first verse, one (or more) of us sang the ending that goes after the second verse, rather than the one that goes after the first verse.  Provided with that stimulus, Ted naturally began singing the third verse while the rest of us tried for the second verse.  The train derailed. 

     Who engineered the derailment?  Was it me?  It doesn’t matter, I guess.  After all, when the train crashes, it matters little who was driving.  Everyone on board crashes.

      This train wrecked on a silent night.  With God and everybody watching.  There were no casualties.  Long live live music.      

      

Home Improvement

     The financial news folks say GE is in trouble.  I can see why.  The wind machines that dominate the landscape around the farm are GE.  Two wind machines in the farm’s back yard have had major repairs.  One had to have a complete new wheel and a top tower section replaced when a blade broke off and whacked the tower a denting blow.

      Another had to have a blade replaced in the first month or two of operation.  The neighbor always said the GE machines were built in China.  They definitely have a quality problem.

     About four years ago, I put in a GE dishwasher at the farm.  If you wanted the dishes to come out of the dishwasher clean, then you must put them in the dishwasher clean.  They came out pretty much the same as they were put in.  When it was newly installed, it went through the main wash cycle without any water in the tub.

     Even after the no-water problem was solved, it still didn’t clean the dishes.  When I replaced the kitchen floor, I had to remove the dishwasher.  The GE need not apply for reinstallation.  It went to market.  I finally gave it away to an appliance repairman who said he could use it for parts.  He wasn’t interested in trying to make it work.  I have been washing dishes by hand since the floor project began.

      The floor job completed, I checked into the local Craigslist to find a used dishwasher.  I found a KitchenAid reasonably priced.  The seller helped me load it onto the pickup.  My job, to get it unloaded and installed.

     A couple of sixteen-foot planks came in handy.

     Getting the dishwasher from the pickup to the house was fairly easy, especially with the furniture gliders under it.  The time-consuming problem was rerouting the 220V outlet that supplies power to the stove.  The outlet found a home tucked in the back left corner of the dishwasher housing, beneath the stovetop.

     It took three tries to get the dishwasher into its slot.  Hoses and wires kept getting caught under the motor, the wheels, or some such thing.  The only thing left to do to finish the installation is fastening the kick plate in place.  It didn’t come with the screws, and I have no idea what size screws are required.

      The dishwasher worked fairly well.  Dishpan hands may once again fade into the past.

     On a related note, I took on a concrete problem.

      The big chunk of concrete that serves as the approach to the front door step has sagged about two inches.  The downspout was discharging its contents into the area just off the cement.  It didn’t flow away from the house.  A puddle always formed in the area beside the sidewalk, next to the house and the air-conditioner pad.  The previous owner must have wanted to save some of the runoff from the roof.  The water ran into that area.  I directed the downspout into a pipe that must lead to the storm sewer system.  Since then, we haven’t had the puddling problem.

     I still wanted to raise the slab back up to its rightful place.  It would help with a “trip hazard”.  The slab has teeter-tottered, raising the opposite edge above its neighboring sidewalk sections.

      Like most jobs, getting things ready took more time than the actual job.  The rocks and the plastic plant barrier had to be removed so I could dig a hole deep enough to get the jack under the slab.

       I jacked it up into place, then started tamping dirt under the slab to try to get it to stay in place.  It went up and down several times before it finally stabilized.  I jacked it up, packed dirt under it, and let it down.  The first few times, it did sink.  Eventually, it did stay in place.

  I let it stand for a couple of days and elevated it one more time, again packing dirt under it.  It has stayed in place for a week or two now. 

     Next on the agenda is raising a couple of sidewalk segments to try to ameliorate further the trip hazard.   It’s also hard on the snow shoveler to be gliding along and hit the raised cement with the shovel.  Everyone should have such perplexing problems.