Just For Fun

I am the only one in my immediate family with an actual, genuine, paid-for college degree in art. (Never mind that said degree came from a college smaller than many high schools, with an art department consisting of two people, only one of whom was a competent teacher. There’s still a valid signature on my diploma.)

Despite this official testimonial to my possessing a minimum of creative skill, I am the only one in my family who doesn’t currently “do” art or crafts. My mother quilts. My father is a capable woodworker and has a gift for cartooning. My sisters quilt, sew, make greeting cards, embroider, knit, crochet, and decorate their houses in attractive and innovative ways. All of them produce beautiful things that apparently turn out just the way they are supposed to.

When I try something of the sort, I usually get halfway through and realize, a), this is more work than I thought it was going to be, and b), what I’m creating bears only the slightest resemblance to the picture on the pattern. At which point my tendency is to give up and go read a book.

I may, however, have just discovered a craft that is truly suited to my talents. One of my sisters has been making bags and hats that are “felted.” The technique for this is to knit something out of wool yarn, making it significantly larger than the desired size. Then you wash it in hot water, toss it in the dryer, and shrink it to the size you want.

Now that just might be a skill I could master. I do have experience along those lines. There was the prom dress from high school that, as a college student with no money for dry-cleaning, I washed carefully by hand. The process transformed it from a full-length dress into a mini, which would have been okay if it hadn’t gone from a size 8 to a size 0 at the same time.

Then there was the nice green sweater of my ex-husband’s that I washed and—forgetting it was wool—tossed in the dryer. By the time I took it out, it just fit our son. He was four. Handing down clothes is a time-honored tradition, to be sure, though it is customary to wait for the smaller person to grow into things rather than adjust the clothes to fit. Oh, well, at least it gave the kid something green to wear for St. Patrick’s Day. Never mind that he said it itched.

Over the years I haven’t practiced this skill consistently. Still, I haven’t completely lost my touch. My most recent attempt at “felting” was my partner’s thick terry-cloth bathrobe. It wasn’t quite dry when I took it out of the dryer. Considerately not wanting him to have a damp bathrobe in the morning—it was January, after all—I tossed it back into the dryer for a little more time. When I took it out the second time, it was dry, all right. It also was six inches shorter than it had been and considerably narrower across the shoulders. Perhaps I could have kept it for myself, but I prefer my winter bathrobes to have sleeves that come down past my elbows. After I made a trip to the mall for a new bathrobe, we gave the old one to the thrift store, where it probably found a new owner who was a skinny eight-year-old.

With all this experience, felting might be just my thing. It probably would be best to start with a simple bag, though. No matter what size it turned out to be, I could pretend it was exactly the size I had intended. “I know the pattern called it a purse, but I really needed a little bag for my paper clips.”

Or maybe I could save all the time and effort and just go read another book.

With gas prices well over $3.00 a gallon and apparently settled in at that level for the duration, we’re seeing more and more magazine and newspaper articles about sources of alternative energy. One that always comes up in western South Dakota is wind power.

Wind is something we always have plenty of. As I write this, I can hear the musical jangling of the wind chimes hanging just outside my window—a frequent sound even in the sheltered valley where the house sits. Further out on the prairie, wind is a constant.

I used to think the Rapid City airport was the windiest place I’d ever been, until I experienced the wind at the airport in Rock Springs, Wyoming. I remember landing in a small plane at Rock Springs one July afternoon. As usual, the controller in the tower announced the weather conditions. He gave us the temperature and altitude, then—after a pause—the wind conditions. We could hear the surprise in his voice as he said, “Dead calm.” He had to repeat it, apparently to convince himself that it was true, perhaps because he had never had occasion to say it before. “Dead calm.” Lacking the expected wind to brace ourselves against, we almost fell over when we got out of the plane.

The prairies of western South Dakota are a lot like that. Your cowboy hat had better fit well, and you’d better pull it down tight, or your last glimpse of it will be a puff of dust as it touches down briefly on its way to Nebraska, Wyoming, or North Dakota.

So a recent dinner-table conversation among friends that started with high gas prices inevitably made its way to wind power. As we discussed wind farms, with their rows of massive windmills, someone mentioned that those huge vanes are seen by some as a threat to passing birds.

One of the men at the table, an engineer with that profession’s practical turn of mind, didn’t see potential bird-kill as a problem. He pointed out that you could simply supplement your wind farm income with a second business—selling snacks of wild bird meat. Western South Dakota buffalo wings, as it were. If the windmill vanes were set just right, the killing, cleaning, and cutting up might even be done in one fell swoop.

Of course, we’re talking about robins, doves, and meadowlarks, with only occasional hawks or eagles, so it would take a lot of wings to make up a serving. Perhaps a better approach would be to specialize in breast meat, maybe prepared in a smoker as my father does with dove breasts during hunting season every fall. They’re tasty little tidbits that certainly could appeal to the public. Advertising would have to be done somewhat carefully, of course. “White meat” is a little vague and not necessarily an accurate description. “Smoked meadowlark breast” just doesn’t have the necessary flair. Offering an all-you-can-eat “breast feed” might lead to embarrassing misunderstandings.

Perhaps it might be best just to call them “wings,” regardless of the exact parts of the birds offered for consumption. The public wouldn’t care. They’d be sure to flock in for a taste. That’s because they’d be irresistibly drawn in by the name of the business: “The Wings Beneath my Wind.”

Years ago my father discovered a unique strategy for keeping children quiet. He took four little girls along to a livestock auction. After he explained to them that gestures such as nodding or waving were ways that buyers signaled their bids to the auctioneer, they sat through the sale like little statues, hardly even daring to scratch their noses for fear of inadvertently buying a roping horse or 50 head of bred heifers.

To give credit where credit is due—and to prevent snide comments from my two younger sisters and two of my cousins—I must admit that all four of those little girls were the kind of children who would have sat quietly and behaved themselves anyway. Still, you have to admit it makes a better story this way.

It was a story I thought about several times this past Sunday. The occasion was an auction where my parents were selling some of their belongs as part of the process of moving to a smaller house. Their stuff was secondary, though. First the auctioneers had to dispose of the estate of a woman who had been a schoolteacher for years and who apparently had saved everything. Her furniture lined two sides of the old school gym. Laid out on rows of tables were old school books, dishes, Valentines from long-ago students, scrapbooks, shoes, costume jewelry, feather beds, kitchen gadgets, knickknacks, clothes, and hats.

Some of the stuff was probably junk. Some of it, to judge by the bidding, was collectible if not precisely antique. Some of it, like the magnificent old oak table with six or seven leaves, was obviously valuable. All of it in one place was overwhelming. It felt almost disrespectful, as if this woman’s life had been laid out on display without her having had a chance to choose what she wanted to reveal. One tour through all the tables, and I was ready to go home and clean out all my closets.

Not planning on buying anything, I hadn’t bothered to get a bidder’s number. I sat on the bleachers in the school gym and watched instead, wondering from time to time about the fuzzy line that separates “clutter” from “collectible.” At what point, exactly, does an old item become sufficiently aged to have evolved from junk to quaint keepsake? Two days after you toss it in the trash, probably.

In between pondering such weighty questions, I entertained myself by watching the sale. Auctioneering, I decided, requires a great deal of skill besides just the ability to rattle off numbers faster than the average person can listen to them. Conducting an auction is a bit like baby-sitting toddlers or herding buffalo—you have to be able to anticipate what they want to do next, just in time to tell them to do it. Is the crowd getting tired of dishes and knick-knacks? Go sell a couple pieces of furniture. Some odd item isn’t selling? Combine it with several other odd items until you find one that appeals to somebody. Have a collection of hats to get rid of? Model them, and do a little soft-shoe while you’re at it.

The bidders provided their share of entertainment, as well. There were several dealers, who scribbled in little notebooks, kept leaping up off the benches to go take closer looks at the upcoming items, and bid mostly against each other for the Depression glass and the old toys. There were the focused buyers waiting around for the one or two things they were interested in. There were the young couples hoping to get some inexpensive furniture or dishes. There were the onlookers who just stopped by to see what was going on and maybe get a piece of homemade pie from the lunch stand.

And there were my two younger sisters, who have learned something about auctions since that long-ago trip to the sale barn. Quite purposefully, they nodded or waved their way into ownership of some antique dishes, an old metal box full of buttons, some vintage clothes, a post hole digger, and a pick ax.

I sat very still on the bleachers and was careful not to scratch my nose.

Going from plant to plant this morning with my watering can, something struck me. No, it wasn’t a trailing branch of the lush begonia hanging in my office window. It was a thought. When did I become a person whose house plants thrive?

I’ve always thought of myself as someone whose thumbs are more black than green. My history with outdoor gardening certainly supports that self-assessment. Somehow or other, I manage to produce a mediocre crop of tomatoes almost every year, but that’s about as green as it gets.

Years ago I got a freelance assignment writing copy for the Gurney company’s seed and garden catalogs. When I told my mother about it, she asked, “Did you tell them that your house plants always die?” Of course not. I wanted the job. So for two months I unblushingly wrote descriptions of super-sweet strawberries and burpless cucumbers, then went home to my scraggly Christmas cactus and scrawny philodendron.

(The Christmas cactus, by the way, wasn’t my fault. For several months I wondered why it seemed so limp and was so flat instead of growing upward from the pot. Then one afternoon I discovered the cat sleeping in it.)

But that was a long time ago. Now a daughter of that same Christmas cactus reaches proud, glossy leaves out of its pot. The two African violets in my east office window bloom constantly. The begonia hanging above them needs trimmed back pretty soon if I want to be able to get any light from the window. The two big plants near the front door produce new leaves almost daily. The something-or-other that was a couple of wilted stalks in a plastic bag when a friend gave it to me is now a thriving bush on the kitchen floor.

There are plants all over the place. I don’t even know what kind most of them are. I just water them more or less regularly, turn them every so often so they don’t lean sideways, and fertilize them once a year or so whether they need it or not. And they grow. I don’t understand it; I just enjoy it.

Maybe my aura has changed over the years. Maybe it’s the water. Or maybe, given enough time and a little luck, even black thumbs can begin to turn green. Who knows? Maybe, in a few more years, this remarkable transformation will even move outside and touch my tomato plants.

As a change of pace this week, here is a recipe. It comes from my friend Maureen. As I generally do with recipes, however, I have added a few embellishments.

“Earthquake Cake” is a creation sure to add drama as well as good taste to your next social occasion. Here’s how you make one:

1. Mix up a chocolate cake according to your favorite recipe. (What, you expected me to give you ingredients and step-by-step instructions? Why do you think you have all those cookbooks in your cupboard? Go look it up.)

2. Bake cake according to recipe directions.

3. Remove cake from oven, using only one hand because you couldn’t find the second oven mitt.

4. Drop hot cake onto kitchen floor. If you use the correct wrist action as you perform this step, the cake will land right side up. Approximately half of it will bounce into the air, turn over, and land back in the pan upside down.

5. Say, with feeling, several words appropriate to the occasion.

6. Take the 15 seconds you should have spent in the first place to find the missing oven mitt, which is right in the drawer where it belongs. Pick cake up off the floor and place it on a cooling rack on the counter.

7. Notice dent in vinyl kitchen floor. Say several more appropriate words.

8. Study surface of the cake. The half that is still in its original position has developed an interesting pattern of earthquake-like cracks across its surface. The half that is upside down is uneven and bears a certain resemblance to the Badlands of South Dakota. Frosting might help, but only if you applied it at least an inch thick.

9. Take container of whipped topping out of the freezer.

10. Serve cake to friends that evening. Explain how it acquired its unique topographical surface. Assure them that only the pan, not the cake itself, actually touched the floor. Because they are your friends, because they trust you—and, above all, because they want cake—they will pretend to believe you.

11. Cover cake generously with whipped topping. Eat. Enjoy.

12. Join friends in thinking up creative names for this groundbreaking concoction: "Earthquake Cake," “Jumble Cake, “Almost Upside Down Cake,” “Bake and Shake Cake,” “Fallen Angel Cake.” Laugh. Enjoy.

Friends don’t let friends cry over spilled cake.

Ah, yes, spring. When the little kids dress appropriately for Easter egg hunts by bundling up in their parkas, mittens, and snow boots. When the optimistic lilacs that felt the 70-degree days in March and started budding turn into lilacicles. When the new green grass glistens with frost in the early morning sunshine.

Still, it’s spring. I know this, because there’s wildlife out and about. And there are a lot of animals wandering around, too.

My favorites are the yearling deer. Their mothers, getting ready for this year’s babies, have sent last year’s not-quite-grown children out into the world on their own. There’s a group of five in our neighborhood, keeping each other company as they try to figure out how to get along without moms to tell them to watch for cars and mountain lions. Scruffy with shedding winter coats, they look unkempt, as if they just got up and forgot to comb their hair. They hang out together like a group of young teenagers on a street corner, trying to look cool and hoping no one will notice they aren’t old enough to drive.

There is a fox in the neighborhood, too. We’ve seen it several times in the last couple of weeks, and two nights ago it ran across our driveway as we pulled up to the garage. That does perhaps explain why we haven’t seen many cottontails in the yard lately. There’s something appealing about a fox—maybe it’s the thick brush of a tail that’s almost as big as its body, or maybe it’s the delicate black feet, or the dainty quickness. I think this one is a female with a den close by, probably on the far side of a busy road. Twice I’ve seen the fox trotting back and forth at the roadside, waiting for a break in the traffic so she can cross. Once, coming home after dark, we caught her having a late dinner of squirrel a la Goodyear in the middle of the road. She dashed to the curb, then circled impatiently, waiting for the cars to go by so she could resume her meal. I hope she’s careful out there.

Actually, all of us probably should be careful out there. As if the ever-increasing population of mountain lions isn’t enough, an article in our weekly newspaper announced that we have verified sightings of black bears in the Black Hills. The assumption is that they are mostly young males, just passing through on their way to seek their fortunes. Sooner or later, though, one of them is going to bring his girlfriend along and settle in. It will give us hikers something to think about besides 150-pound cats.

I’ve only been close to one bear in the wild, and that was a half-grown black bear in Jackson Hole. It was a few feet away from the hiking trail, munching berries without regard to the handful of tourists watching and taking pictures. If you’re going to meet a bear in the woods, this one was probably the ideal size—not big enough to be threatening, but too old to have a protective mama hovering nearby. Still, being that close to it made me uncomfortable. Call me unreasonable, but I find it hard to relax when I’m within easy range of something that tends to think of me as lunch.

I much prefer the fox. I just hope she never finds out about the fox fur coat hanging in my closet.

Things one can learn from making an impulsive decision to move the washer and dryer into a semi-finished downstairs bathroom and convert the laundry room into a workshop:

1. According to the Law of Expanding Improvements, any small remodeling job such as this will grow beyond your initial estimate (in cost, time, and disruption) by a factor of four.

2. The day the workmen come to “look at the job” and unexpectedly decide they can do the work on the spot will be the day you overslept, you have three appointments and an urgent deadline on an important project, and you left underwear drying on the shower curtain rod.

3. When several guys are working on a project inside your house that requires them to make many trips back and forth to their truck, it will be raining.

4. When you have someone in the house working on the plumbing, he will always announce he has to shut off the water just after you’ve had a second cup of tea.

5. It isn’t the work that’s difficult, it’s the decisions. Such as the following:

Vinyl or tile flooring? Compare prices, compare durability, consider how this laundry-room-in-the-process-of-becoming-a-workshop will be used. Okay, vinyl.

Which type? There’s the cheap one, the middle-grade one, the really thick one with the 20-year warranty, or maybe the other really thick one with the imbedded stain protection. Compare prices, compare durability, consider as above. Okay, the stain-protection one.

Which pattern? It’s getting easier here, because there are only two in stock and I don’t want to wait for a special order. Okay, this one.

Which color? Finally, the answer is easy and obvious. Beige.

6. Getting the workspace you want? Worth every cent and all the disruption.

7. And having friends who are willing to advise, to help you make decisions—and even to delve boldly into the intricacies of 30-year-old plumbing? Priceless.

It’s Saturday morning at a local coffee shop. The busy room with its mismatched tables and chairs feels rather like the dining room at Grandma’s house when the whole family is visiting—friendly enough to seem cozy rather than crowded.

I’m alone at a table for four, waiting for some friends, supposedly writing but really eavesdropping in both directions. The seven or eight people crowded around the table to my right are talking and laughing with animation. The volume is, not unpleasantly, somewhere between “background noise” and “impossible to ignore.” Their caffeine-fueled chorus tends to drown out the conversation of the smaller group on my left.

Until the inevitable happens. A cell phone rings. The sound, and the ensuing conversation from my left, is at first merely a new voice in the chorale. As it progresses, though, I find out more. The caller is apparently the daughter of the owner of the cell phone. She is out of town at some sort of competition. She has done well in the first round of debate or basketball or dog-grooming or whatever it was. She will call back that evening after the next round.

I know this—and so does everyone else in the coffee shop—because we are lucky enough to be privy to both sides of the conversation. The woman at the table, after answering her phone, says, “It’s noisy in here. Let me put you on speaker.” We get to hear, not only the mother’s side of the conversation as she shouts into the phone, but her daughter’s as well. The young woman’s voice screeches out of the speaker, enhanced by background noise and distortion into a credible imitation of the featured soprano in a wannabe punk rock band.

I try to close my ears and concentrate on my notebook and my scone. The conversation at the merry table to my right falters as people glance over their shoulders and frown. The patrons at the other tables look up. The staff members behind the counter pause in their coffee-brewing and tea-pouring. We’re all suspended for a few moments until the cellular invasion, mercifully brief, is over. Then we breathe a united sigh of relief and go on about our business.

The culprit, apparently oblivious, drops her phone back into her purse. Let’s hope that this evening, when her daughter calls back, she isn’t out in public.

We’ve come a long way since Samuel Morse opened the door to instant communication with his invention of the telegraph. The first message he sent was, “What hath God wrought.” Had he had the gift of prophecy as well as technology, he might have said, “What? Hath God wrought wrath? Or is it just noisy in here?”

It started with an invitation from a friend. She had a gift certificate for a restaurant, one of the popular chains. Would we care to join her and her husband for dinner that Saturday evening? We would. We did.

The place was busy, not surprising on a weekend evening, so there was a short wait before we were seated. We ordered. We waited. My friend had asked for hot tea. The waitress came by twice to say it was “on its way.” All the way from China, apparently. On the slow boat.

When eventually the boat docked—er, the tea came, it was green. My friend, who hadn’t been asked for a preference, requested black tea instead. “I’m sorry,” the waitress told her, “This is the only kind we have.”

It apparently hadn’t occurred to her that mentioning this at the time the tea was ordered could have saved time and hassle for everyone. Okay, we would get along without the tea.

Eventually, our meals came. One chicken and pasta, two shrimp dinners, and one salmon salad, which the waitress put in front of me. I am not a fan of salmon; I had ordered the steak salad. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll get that right out for you.”

Everyone else began eating. Declining offers to share, I sat wistfully watching servers trot by with plates of food. Our waitress stopped by twice to assure me, “They’re working on it.”

By her second visit, I began to assume that “working on it” was shorthand for “they’ve headed out to round up the steers, and they should be finished butchering some time tomorrow morning.”

Finally, about the time my friends were finishing their meals, my salad came. It had oil and vinegar dressing. I don’t like oil and vinegar dressing. Nor do I like the vast quantities of salad dressing most restaurants consider a serving. For those reasons, I had ordered ranch, on the side.

I told the waitress this, then realized I may have made a mistake. Having actual food in front of me at last, it didn’t seem wise to let it disappear again. “Oh, not a problem,” she said. “There’s another one ready. Really, it will only take a minute to change it.”

On that basis, I sent it back a second time. Not a good strategy. “Only a minute” turned into ten or fifteen. We occupied the time by chatting with the manager, who did her best to make soothing noises and agreed that there were problems in the kitchen. Since half the items on the menu were made with “(insert famous whiskey brand name here) sauce,” we wondered whether said problems might have been related to over-zealous sauce tasting on the part of the kitchen staff.

Eventually the third version of my meal appeared. It had ranch dressing on the side, just as I had requested. It also, I realized after my first bite, was covered with the original oil and vinegar dressing.

There was nothing left to do at this point except laugh. Then I shut up and ate. There was no way I was letting this plate of food escape. While I ate my oily lettuce and steak, my companions had another visit with the manager. She made more soothing noises, apologized, and cancelled our entire bill.

My friend didn’t receive this news with the satisfaction one might have expected. After the manager left, she hissed across the table, “Do you know what this means? I still have the gift certificate. Now we’ll have to come back!”

British author Dame Rebecca West has suggested, "If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: ‘It seemed a good idea at the time.’"

It’s easy to come up with examples, both personal and global, that support her statement. You can even do it without mentioning wars, laws, or politics. There’s a simple formula: problem + creative solution = unforeseen consequences.

Problem? No familiar small animals to hunt in Australia. Creative solution? Let’s turn loose some rabbits. Unforeseen consequences? A bunny population explosion with resulting destruction of habitat, extinction of native animals, and huge long-term costs even 150 years later.

Problem? Erosion in the southeastern United States during the dry years of the 1930’s. Creative solution? Kudzu imported from the Far East. Unforeseen consequences? The nickname says it all: “the vine that ate the South.”

There are plenty of smaller examples, as well. Such as this one from my years as a legal secretary: Problem? You’re on your way home from a long night at the bar, and your car won’t start. Creative solution? Just shoot the danged thing and put it out of its misery. Unforeseen consequences? What’s the big deal? There was already a crack in the windshield. But I guess I can get my mail here at the jail for a while.

Or even closer to home: Problem? Losing control of one’s skateboard while going down a long, steep hill. Creative solution? Bolt a pair of old shoes to said skateboard and tie shoes firmly to feet. (Did I mention this problem-solver was a 10-year-old boy?) Unforeseen consequences? Not really that bad—in a few years the scars will hardly show.

All in all, Dame Rebecca certainly has a point. Unfortunately, I operate at a literary level somewhat lower than hers. I must confess her quote reminds me irresistibly of another one. The vocabulary might be different, but the essential point is the same.

It’s the joke about the redneck’s last words: “Here, hold my beer and watch this!”