Tag Archives: family

The saddle

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The saddle that rests in my Mom’s house is a family relic, displayed on its stand in the living room of brick and western hearth. It is draped in ropes and leather chaps my Dad made when he worked on a ranch.

“Ride ‘em cowboy!”, I would shout with spindly legs drowned in the chaps, hands gripped around the horn while I ran alongside the painted cowboy on the wall above the piano. Sometimes my friends joined me and we would ride off into the sunset of imagination, dreams yodeling over the horizon.

The lasso engulfs many a memory of Halloween costume contests with my oldest

A friends daughter

A friends daughter

brother standing in the chaps with a rope hanging from his leather belt. 1st place for authenticity. The fringed leather legs got thrown back on the saddle while the spiders creep-crawled in the saddle bags that once held more than dreams.

The last year that Santa was real to me, my brother, Kenny, told me about his latest act of espionage, hiding under the saddle while the jolly old elf filled our stockings above the fireplace. I bet Santa never dreamed his cowboy career would betray his identity.

The grass wasn’t so soft when we pitched tents on the lawn layered in packed earth and stickers, but this is how our Dad slept in his round-up days – under the stars (without the tents) and drifting to sleep with the coyote song. It was especially great when we wound down the evening with my Dad strumming his guitar, singing Ghost riders in the sky and scanning the night for a shooting star.

Childhood fantasies danced alongside us, and above us, and in the dreams lighting up the darkness.

The awkward teenage movement cast the saddle into a shadowy corner, briefly drawing my attention for art class when I needed something to sketch. It was simply lines, texture and layers of dust. The western theme permeated those days. My school was full of cowboys, the mascot was a cowboy and the saddle stand stood without favor for a few years.

Baby showers and parties began to drape the stand in streamers, balloons hung from the saddle horn to celebrate another decade and it bore witness to a new trail of dreams.

The fringe ran down the chaps just the same and it stood there, holding up our new-found adventures along its neck like paternal support.

A cliche for one is life for another. Some call it a museum piece. We just call it The Saddle. How many people can say they were raised by a leather seat?

Do you have a family heirloom that speaks volumes? Tell us in the comments.

Grumpy cat and snakes

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Another facebook post rolls by and I wonder if anyone reads beyond its headline. I only have five minutes to sift through the myriad messages; the 400 emails in my inbox are calling me as the facebook photos, comments, and jokes roll by and there’s always the ones who journal their days walk for the public feed: “I tied my shoe and ate lunch and blew my nose and am so addicted to this that I will recount every move I make”.

I laugh at another grumpy cat post and hit “ligrumpy catke.”

And here comes the political stuff. The anti-this and so-and-so said that – likes and comments pour out with passion and I wonder how many people know how to have a real conversation anymore, beyond pointing the finger and virtual unfriending. The surface of life barely gets touched and I snicker when I think of the reaction I would get if I posted pictures of my Dad’s gun shop. Conversation? Probably not. Maybe  inaccurate statistics, a few “likes” and the possibility of being blocked by others. I bet I’d hear something about  Hitler.

Should I tell them about the snakes?

After all, it would be first-hand information, and after watching one of the news stations pulverize talk about the Heroes 19 story, we could all use some truth.

I was raised with cactus and javelinas, cowboys, dirt, and…..snakes. I hate snakes, especially rattlesnakes. I know, God created them and they have some purpose (like being satan’s first choice of disguise in the garden), but I still hate them. They slither, blend in with perfectly good trees and sticks that kids may play with – and they can kill.

Sometimes they would find their way into our yard, the wood pile (Mom has since graduated to a pellet stove), and porch. Occasionally the cats would corner one for my Dad who would come in for the kill (Remember, gunshop). Boom and that devil became part of the landscaping.

The porch was a different story. Cement porch, brick house. If you know guns (and you should if you have one), you shouldn’t use them if there’s a chance for ricochet. So here are three little kids who run around outside and there’s that nasty rattlesnake coiled up on the porch.

My Dad grabs a shovel and he and the snake waltz back and forth; jab, rattle – jump, jab, rattle – jump, until the snake gets it from the makeshift guillotine.

The back door step was a pallet and sometimes we’d see the head of (satan) a snake peeking through the top, waiting for it’s latest human victim.

Boom.

And the family is safe again.

This is one peek into the life of a family that needed a gun. Don’t worry – we were responsible – if the snake was non-venomous, it got to live. But we also knew this wasn’t the type of story that people heard on the news. And if it was – it would probably be full of politically correct holes.

Kind of like those quotes on facebook that tell 1/1,243th of the story.

If I don’t remember the whole story, men who get paid $1 million to hold a gun in front of a camera may try to tell me that guns are evil in the “real” world and snakes are people too.

I’ll stick with grumpy cat.

Do you have your own story that needs told? Tell us in the comments.

Memories in perpective

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There was this rock shelf down at the creek where the bones of mice rested. My friend, Mike, and I could play for hours going through these bones, making up stories, wondering if the mouse captor was lurking behind the cat claw bushes, waiting for us…
It was the type of graveyard where kids can play without bringing home nightmares.

Around the corner and down the dry creek bed was our rope swing, frayed and hovering over nothing but rocks and sand. Oh, how we loved to swing. We saw the frayed bits as a sign of a loved thing — danger was a word we left home with our parents.

Dream, swing, run and play, these things that filled the childhood treasure chest.

As I outgrew the bone cave and understood frayed as may break and let you fall onto the rocks I found that girls made good friends too and who didn’t want to look like Molly Ringwald?

Leah invited a few of us friends to her place for a party. Her life was gloriously mysterious. Leaving the traditional life behind, her family lived in their RV, spending three weeks in a Thousand Trails campground to move to another local camp until they reached their maximum stay. Back and forth, from a valley to a park, all under the Arizona sun. It was on one of their Thousand Trails rounds that we had our party.

It was hot.

It was amazing. We got ready in their tiny bathroom area, poofing our hair to 80’s standards and venturing out with kids of the road. The recreation room was stuffed with chaos. Noise, play and the kind of games that could produce a bloody nose or two.

Bounce, bang and none stayed down for long.

It was awesome.

Leah wore an outfit that could have been in Pretty in Pink. It was a thrift store find which disappointed me only because I knew it was the only one. I’d have to check out Sprouse Rietz for some pink fashion when I got some birthday money.

Back home again to a house of bricks, secure in the ground. Until the forest called…

Kindling works best when it’s nice and dry, and cooking over it makes for the best food in the world. It was cowboy camping with my family with no bathrooms but the shadows of juniper trees. The pine scent that inspired millions of air fresheners filled the blue skies of summers and I never felt dirty until we got home and I permeated the space around me with the perfume of campfire.

I brought my skills inside and built a fire in our woodstove that some people find 100_2621primitive. It made for cozy holidays and reminders of the ancients who brought us this far.

Ramble and vroom we went in my grandparents motor home to get a taste of comfy camping.

The black and white TV played my grandpa’s favorite Ernest movies and I slept on a bed that has no home but the landscapes of America. Carrots and potatoes were peeled in the campgrounds, McDonald’s a chicken nugget feast when we were in between destinations.

It was always world class travel when I got to see bits and pieces of America.

Time to do some stitching.

I could sew a beautiful quilt out of all the ragged bits of fun I’ve had or I could just write a book. So here I am, putting in scraps of truth into a bit of fiction that penetrates deep with the life experience of me and those warriors of rope swings and RV’s. It digs deep into the bloodline of America, passing from the fingerprints of all of us into one giant quilt of a story.

What do you do with your memories? Do you paint them, teach about them? Tell us in the comments.