In MO

Last Thursday, October 10th, I landed in St. Louis at 6:10p.m. I switched my phone off airplane mode as soon as we'd arrived at the terminal--only to find 17 text messages awaiting me. A fire was burning in Calimesa, the city where I live. Friends and family members were calling, texting, emailing and hitting me up on Facebook to check on me.

It only took a few minutes to get a Lyft ride, and from the backseat of my driver's car, I called my next-door neighbor. All was well in my senior complex, but the mobile home park 5 miles away had burned to the ground. The good folks in my town were already rallying to reach out to those who had been displaced.

We drove on in a steady rain to Pacific, Missouri, where Marc and Ginger, my two musketeers, were waiting in the lobby of the hotel to take me to dinner. We talked about the fires burning back home, about my flight, about Marc's health and Ginger's current situation with a bad, bad ex-husband. It was so, so great to see them.

The next day was meant for rambling. I met my new-found cousin, Chris, and his wife Vicki, in the hotel breakfast room the next morning. Chris and I share a distant (several times) great-grandfather, Israel Lee, and the day would be spent looking for Israel's grave. We never found it (though we have a few new leads). But along the way we stopped in Morse Mill so that I could visit the grave of my great-grandmother, Bertha Gifford. Marc pointed out the remains of the old mill, which sat upon the banks of the Big River (not to be confused with the Meramec or the Missouri or the Mississippi rivers), and we strolled across the old bridge that is still there.

Later, we would find another mill along the Big River, one Israel Lee might have been involved in erecting. 

Chris and I ventured inside the 100-plus-year-old building, which is mostly gutted, and the giant millstones are gone, but it was clear where they'd been placed all those years ago, and how the pressure from the flow of the river water passed through to turn the mechanism which turned the stones. The place is for sale, and we had half a mind to call the realtor. But then common sense prevailed.

I'd been invited to Missouri to attend a ceremony to honor my great-great-great-great-grandfather on my mother's paternal side, Landon Williams, who had fought in the War of 1812. The Society of the War of 1812 in the State of Missouri, and the National Society of United States Daughters of 1812 in the State of Missouri were joining together to bestow a medallion in recognition of his service on the grave of Landon Williams. He did not die in the war. He survived--and fathered a son who fathered a son who fathered my great-grandmother. Amazing, no?

The ceremony was presided over by Sumner Hunnewell, president of the Society of the War of 1812 in the State of Missouri--and a true renaissance man. He not only emceed the ceremony, he brought 30 small pies for refreshments. Pies he baked himself. From scratch. And I mean scratch--making his own crust and cooking down the pumpkin for the pumpkin pie (which was not the only kind; he also brought berry, pecan, and mincemeat). 

The 4th Regiment North Carolina Militia turned out for the ceremony as well, posting the colors and, at the end, providing a rifle salute to Landon Williams.

Cool, no? Of course, as soon as they posted the colors, I cried--for our flag, for our country, for men who find the courage to act out of duty to both, and for all the generations of my family that somehow survived hardship and kept reproducing so that I could live this extraordinary life. It was a lot to take in. Plus pie.

All of this hoopla started when my cousin, Tim Ogle, went looking for people in the Williams family he was related to. And he found Landon Williams' grave. And the headstone was broken, so he repaired it. (Good job, Tim!!) In researching Landon, he discovered his service in 1812, eventually enlisting the aid of the two historical societies to honor Landon's service. All I had to do was show up and take a seat in the front row.

The next day, my last full day in Missouri, was spent once again with buds Marc and Ginger, just driving around, visiting cemeteries, laughing over lunch and Marc's puns and cornball jokes. (We love them. We really do.) As we were headed back to the hotel, he casually mentioned, "Oh, we're near my friends' home. They raise bison." And suddenly he was pulling to the side of the road. Yep. That's a buffalo all right.

People often ask me why I go to Missouri every year, and what I do there. Well... I spend a lot of time walking through cemeteries... and hugging friends... and laughing... and relaxing... and seeing things I don't normally see... and being spoiled. I get homesick easily, and I miss my fur babies while I'm gone. But the minute I'm home again, I also miss the friends and cousins I will not see for another year. Oh yeah, I'll be back again next year. We still have to find Israel's grave.

Salinas: Part Two

Photo courtesy of the National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, California

(You will find Part One of this narrative below this one.)

I arrived in Salinas on Friday afternoon and easily found the old Victorian home I would be staying in. I chose an AirBNB room because it cost me half of what I would have paid at a hotel, and it was located a half mile from the National Steinbeck Center. You know that old saying, “You get what you pay for?” It was exactly true in this situation. Enough said about that.

I met my hostess, dumped my stuff in my room, took a quick shower and changed into jeans, t-shirt and sneaks for my walk downtown. The Steinbeck Center is perfectly located at the far west end of Main Street. There’s a Starbucks across the street (there ya go, tourists), and it’s a classic Main street, with broad sidewalks, shops and restaurants.

Checking in at the Center was easy, and a minute later I was donning my Steinbeck Festival 2019 lanyard which would be my ID for the weekend. Six feet inside the door of the Center is the bookstore, and before I had even completed checking in, I’d seen something I wanted to get for my son-in-law (who loves Steinbeck, too, and I’m going to say “nearly” as much as I do), so that twenty minutes after checking in I was back at the front desk to pay for all the merchandise I’d purchased.

To kick off the festival, the organizers had planned a panel discussion (“Did Americans Ever Get Along?”) with some fancy folks (a Stanford prof, a Cambridge University prof, and Patricia Limerick, a University of Colorado prof—who was lovely and quite a hoot). I had time before that started, so I strolled down Main Street, found a great restaurant that served farm-to-table cuisine, and ate a delicious salad of fresh greens, roasted beets and goat cheese.

Then I strolled back in time for the Big Event—which turned out to be a bust, as far as I was concerned. The Salinas Room of the Center was packed with a couple hundred people by the time I got there, and organizers were bustling around, adding more chairs. I grabbed one near the back in case I felt compelled to duck out later—which I did. If you’re confused by the topic of the discussion, you’re not alone. Each year the committee chooses one of Steinbeck’s writings as the theme for the festival. This year, it was Steinbeck’s last book, America and Americans, a work as timely today as it was in 1966 when it was first published. The book is essentially a long narrative about our social history, how we’ve treated each other (not well) and what needs to change if we are to be successful as a nation (greater inclusion, less disparity in wealth).

But here were these three distinguished persons answering ambiguous questions about an already ambiguous topic from a moderator who was clearly, blatantly, not interested in what the woman had to say. When the discussion reached the point at which she volunteered to answer a question and the moderator asked her brusquely to hold her thought because he wanted to hear what the professor from Stanford had to say in response, I was done. I slipped out, strolled across the lobby to the museum where a wine and cheese after-party had been set up, snagged a glass of wine and chatted with the vintners.

Oh, the museum!

I just can’t describe it. If you’re a lover of Steinbeck, you just must go and stroll through and look and linger and read all the exhibits and see the displays and, in doing so, remember your joy in reading Cannery Row or Sweet Thursday or the agonized journey you shared with the Joad family in Grapes of Wrath or the wisdom you gleaned from East of Eden or the wanderlust you felt while reading Travels with Charley.

Rocinante is there. She is the good old truck with a camper shell Steinbeck drove across America with his dog, Charley. Actually, it was a photograph of Rocinante in Westways Magazine that started me on this journey. I couldn’t believe the old tank was still around—and parked in the museum where everyone could see her. (Actually, during the festival, for a price, you could buy a ticket to be taken inside the camper shell.) On a road trip to Missouri some years ago, I’d listened to Travels with Charley (read by Gary Sinise). I drove my beloved Dodge Ram on that trip, stopping at small towns. The only aspect missing, I thought at the time with great yearning, was a dog.

So there I was, wine glass in hand, staring at the Rocinante, steeped in the memories of that trip to Missouri, witness to the best parts of America, as Steinbeck had been. Oh, that I would have had a good dog as companion for that trip!

To honor Steinbeck’s love of dogs, one of the festival events this year was a dog show, entries open to the public, with the SPCA of Monterey County bringing adoptable dogs to the Center. But all that was scheduled for Saturday, and by the time I’d finished my half-glass of wine and sampled the cheese, grapes and crackers, I was ready to walk the half mile back to my room and fall in bed exhausted.

"I shall take my dog, and that is another reassurance that I am neither dangerous nor insane." --John Steinbeck