And Now for Something Totally Different: Zippedy Do-Dah!

My hubby thinks I'm trying to kill him. You see, several years ago, we started trying some extreme recreation while on vacation.  It began with a hot-air balloon ride one year over Lake Tahoe. Once I realized that my fear of heights was highly exaggerated, I had an epiphany. The adrenaline rush from trying something new and daring was worth every moment of anxiety I conjured up in my imagination. I was hooked.

Having conquered hot-air ballooning, we progressed on to wilder, even more exciting adventures.  We tried white water rafting on the Truckee River. On that particular odyssey, I was the only member of our family to be thrown into the raging river (and, might I add--it was my daughter who rescued me--not hubby.) Then we swam with stingrays and snorkeled in Grand Cayman. Actually we snorkeled there more than once. During the second occasion hubby almost drowned in a stormy sea on a day that no human had any business in the water. That might have been the tipping point--my hubby's enthusiasm for adventure had dampened in direct correlation with his soggy demeanor.

Still, he was a willing participant when we signed up for zip-lining in the rainforest of Jamaica. And what a blast! So much so, that on our most recent trip to Mexico, it took nothing to persuade him to sign on for the same sort of excursion.

But on this trip, as we scrambled our way up to the first platform, we realized the limitations of two geezers who could see "60" at the top of the hill.

"I'm getting too old for this s*%t!" hubby growled, stopping to catch his breath. Each zip was preceded by an ever more strenuous ascent. We started at the front of our fellow zippers. By the fourth platform, we were bringing up the rear. Only sheer determination, the fear of humiliation, and the absence of any other way down kept us moving. Two hours, fourteen platforms and 1500 feet altitude later, we rode the last zipline down to the homebase. I've never felt so whupped! We walked away with a harrowing story to tell and an "I Survived" T-shirt.

The next Sunday I went to church, eager to share my adventure. But before I could even get to coffee fellowship and deliver my tall tale, our pastor shared this video: http://www.noob.us/miscellaneous/kids-ride-a-zip-line-to-go-to-school/.
What my husband and I experienced as a feat comparable to climbing Mt Everest, one family of mini-zippers made look like child's play. Hubby and I had been seriously one-upped. And never again will I complain about the kids who shortcut across our yard on the way to school.

As for next year...wonder how my beloved feels about bungee jumping. Hmm....

The Kitchen Garden Novice Follows Her Family Branches

The Zellers

My great-grandmother, Ella Dieckmann, married Oscar Zeller who lived on the corner, across the street in Wheatland, Iowa. I haven't discovered a great deal about my great-grandfather, Oscar. The Zeller family came to Wheatland from the Oxford Junction area. The 1880 US Census lists Oscar's father, Joseph Zeller as 48 years old at that time and having emigrated from Bavaria. Joseph's wife, Lena, age 39 at the time of that census, had also been born in Bavaria. Ellis Island records reveal that Joseph arrived on a ship named Jenny on July 22, 1865, manifest ID#00010492. His occupation was listed as a barber.

Joseph and Lena had four children, Theodore, Lillie, Joseph, and my great-grandfather, Oscar Zeller.

Grandmother Ruth Zeller Van Kirk recalled that her father owned a farm. When he and Ella's children were still at home, Oscar began to go blind. In those days, medical care was scarce and Oscar was travelling all over Eastern Iowa, looking for a cure. University of Iowa Medical Center actually pulled all of his teeth! Then at the age of 42 he developed appendicitis and died of a blood clot following surgery. He left Ella with four children to raise, Harold (Uncle Jones,) who was graduating from high school that year, Ethel (Aunt Midge,) Grandma Ruth, who was 8 years old at the time, and Darrell, (Uncle Darry,) who was only 18 months old.

I cannot imagine the grief for Oscar's young family. And after the funeral the unthinkable occurred. It had rained heavily the week of the burial. As the hearse turned up the dirt road to St. Paul's Cemetery in Wheatland, it became stuck in the rutted mud. The family watched in horror as the undertaker and funeral attendees struggled to push the hearse out of the ditch. In the months after that debacle, the entire Wheatland community underwent a fundraising campaign to pave the road out to St. Paul's Cemetery.

Great-Grandmother Ella sold the farm Oscar owned on a contract and raised her four children on the income from that sale. Those funds, combined with the food they raised in her vegetable garden, kept the family (and half of the depression burdened neighborhood) fed.

Ella Zeller set the example for strong women in my family. Although we never met, I know her through the stoicism of my grandmother, the grace of my mother, the resilience of my sister, and the steadfast pragmatism of my daughter.

The Kitchen Garden Novice: On Picking

I have a confession to make. I am a closet fan of the History Channel's American Pickers. I can veg out and watch that show mindlessly for an hour. (Actually, if you throw in a Mexican take-out dinner, I'll watch for several. Follow it with an episode of Pawn Stars, and I can be in front of the tube for days.) 

For those of you who haven't enjoyed this guilty pleasure, American Pickers is a docu-reality show that follows two antique dealers, Mike and Frank, as they scour the rural landscape in search of resellable...well...junk.  Let's just call it what it is. Most of their acquisitions lay untouched, unnoticed for decades in someone's yard, basement, or barn, just waiting to be uncovered and possibly, possibly restored.  Some of their finds they resell "as is." The value of those items is enhanced by the patina of their age and decay. Patina--that's a euphemism for "rust," isn't it?

I cannot tell you why I have become a Pickers junkie. We've already established the fact that I get a kick out of recycling old vintage clothing--(see my previous post on Skirting the Issue.) Perhaps I identify with Mike and Frank's sense of adventure in the hunt. But that's about where my empathy ends. Once they uncover a stash of "treasure" it's a bit like viewing scavengers rip apart a carcass. As they zero in on what they really want, let the games begin. Mike and Frank are masters at haggling over trash.

The most recent episode centered around a hot tip they received from their homebase about a man named Hobo Jack. They followed this lead down the railroad tracks and into the woods to a dump site of landfill proportions. In the timber they met one wily picker who had been collecting ''stuff" for decades. They spent hours sifting through piles of junk, superficially covered under tarps and inside dilapidated shacks. I'm not even sure the property belonged to Hobo Jack. Mike and Frank were like two kids on Christmas morning.

Now what struck me about this episode was not that these two pickers were so enthralled by their discovery. What blew me away was Hobo Jack.  He spent decades acquiring stuff and squirreling it away. For what? He wasn't even aware anymore what he had or where it was. He had attended no careful maintenance to any of his cache. But when offered cash for some of his horde, you would have thought he was in possession of museum objets d'art. He immediately recognized the Gollum-like gleam of greed in the two pickers' eyes. And he drove the hard bargain. After much dickering, Jack accepted several thousand dollars for a few of his treasures. And I had to wonder...what will a hobo do with that kind of money?

I'm left to marvel at the irony of it all. One man's trash is indeed another man's treasure. We value that which we want. Those things are only valuable because we assign their worth to them. Centuries from now, if the same items remain and have not gone to dust, will they be of value to everyone or to just a select few--those born to be pickers?

Waiting on Orlando

During every cruise there are one or two individuals who simply "make" your trip. On our recent cruise to Mexico, this person came in the form of our head waiter, Orlando. The first night at dinner he introduced himself to our table with a shy smile, and quickly beguiled us all with his humble manner and gracious service. "Something for dessert, Misses Soosahn?" "How is your steak, Meester Reechard?"  We were charmed.

Over the week, he told us of his family back in Manila. This was his fifth contract with the cruise line. He worked for seven months on board and then spent two months back in Manila in between stints. His wife in Manila kept the home fires burning in his absence, raising their three children ages 13, 10, and 8.

"My son ees now tirteen. It ees harder every year," he said, teary eyed.

Then it was time for the wait-staff entertainment, and we discovered a different side of Orlando.  This sweet little Filipino busted moves that would make a Chippendale Dancer blush! He shimmied and gyrated like a pro, and we were laughing so hard, I feared we might have to use the Heimlich Maneuver on someone at our table. (Whoever said that "laughter is good for the digestion" clearly never took into account the consumption of Molten Chocolate Cake after a meal of Roasted Duck.) "Does your thirteen-year-old know you can dance like that?" we teased him.

"Oh, no!" he said gasping in horror. "What happens on cruise ship, stays on cruise ship."

One night after dinner he entertained us with table tricks, involving silverware and water glasses. The next evening it was sleight-of-hand magic. Was there anything this shy little waiter couldn't do? We soon found out. One night he tried out a joke he'd heard on a transpacific flight. The punch line got totally lost in translation, but we all laughed anyway. We simply warned him not to quit his day job.

Late in the week, after a day when we'd all been in port, the unthinkable happened. Our table of eight sat down to dinner, only to be greeted by two total strangers. Two different waiters handed us our menus and served our bread. I glanced around the table and met several questioning gazes. Finally one of my fellow diners voiced what we were all thinking. "Where's Orlando?"

"Oh, they put him off the ship in port," cracked the substitute waiter. I swear, he actually sneered when he said it.

Someone cleared his throat. No one spoke. No one made eye contact.  In silence, we perused the menu options of entrees. It was as if we were all holding our breath in subdued anxiety. 

Then, by the magic of pure intention, Orlando appeared. And everyone exhaled. The tension at the table evaporated. Stories of what we'd done that day were traded back and forth, an easy banter of good will and joking.

And suddenly I saw the irony of it. For a week, Orlando had been waiting on us, attending to our every desire, our slightest need. But for one brief moment, we were the ones who had been waiting...waiting on Orlando.

The Kitchen Garden Novice Plays

Dear Sis,

It has been a long, ugly, crappy, trying week. Work challenges, compounded with conflict from one particular colleague have spiraled and sucked me up into a big, black funnel cloud of discontent. To top it all off, I haven't been sleeping well (due to the aforementioned,) and the puppy got me up at 5:00 am today because she's feeling neglected. Bad Mommy!

So after a cup of coffee and a half-hearted attempt to do some meditation, I threw a leash on her and let her drag me down the street for a walk. Maybe a little exercise and fresh air could restore my Zen, eh?

I still couldn't let go of all the drama rolling around in my little pea-brain. In my comatose stupor, I stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk. No, I didn't do an endo, but it snapped me out of my delirium long enough to make me look down. You know how you look for the affronting obstacle that audaciously tripped you? Nothing there but that crack in the sidewalk, but something I spied "cracked" me up. There, on the concrete, one of the neighborhood kids had scrawled "Go!" with a big arrow.

As soon as I read the , I was transported back to when we were kids. Do you remember those summer nights we played "Go Sheepie, Go"? I don't recall any actual rules for the game--just two teams, one hiding, one searching. The "hiders" ran, armed with chalk to draw directional arrows for the second team. Some of the arrows were in plain sight. Others were drawn in less obvious spots or as total red herrings, leading the second team down a blind alley. I think that was about as much fun as a group of kids could have on a warm summer night.

I ventured a bit farther on my quest to regain balance, still thinking about those summer games so many years ago, and I spotted this:

followed by this:

and then this:

And all the arrows led directly down to the school.  The last entry before the street that circles the school read, "Look both ways before crossing."  This was no game of "Go Sheepie, Go!" This was the work of a pint-sized Tony Robbins, motivating the neighborhood kids on their first day back to school.  I suspect that the sidewalk pep rally was NOT applied with something as benign as chalk. So in the interest of maintaining this little neighborhood tagger's cheerleader's anonymity, I'll refrain from posting a picture of the list of the names involved. But I owe them all a personal thank-you. On a week when I was feeling particularly lost, those children restored my sense of direction and pointed me back to where life was simple, carefree and fun.

And, knowing that you're a harried and tired teacher (who should be REtired,) I thought you might like to join me on the journey down Memory Lane.

Go Sheepie! Go!

Sis