Them Two Sure Was Good Ol' Gals

These two women, identified only as Minnie and Daisy, lived in Dixie, Idaho, around 1903. They were most likely "camp followers," as female opportunists were called who traveled to remote mining areas to seek their fortune.

Adventuresome girls, like merchants and many business entrepreneurs, made a lot of money supplying needs of prospectors like this odd-ball character at left.

Minnie and Daisy were cashing in on the last of the Old West gold rushes, the Thunder Mountain gold strike of 1898.
Located deep in Idaho's extremely remote and nearly inaccessible interior, the diggings nevertheless attracted thousands of men at the turn of the 19th Century.

Tiny Dixie remains today the last trace of civilization for travelers heading into the rugged back country. Beyond its few homes, cafe and store, the road ends and the going gets much tougher.

I've long been interested in the lives of women who came West a hundred or more years ago. I think I'd have preferred to cast my lot with the likes of Minnie and Daisy than to have been isolated with a no-fun husband on a homestead bearing children every-other year.

I probably would have balked about halfway through the trip if I'd allowed myself to be talked into going West on a wagon. I can imagine thinking, "This totally sucks;" getting madder and madder.

I can relate to an account of a fed-up woman who finally lost it on her way to the Oregon Territory in 1847. Sounds like a full-blown, pissed-off female snit fit:

"This morning one company moved on except one family. The woman got mad and would not budge nor let the children go. He had his cattle hitched on for three hours while coaxing her to go, but she would not stir. I told my husband the circumstances, and he and Adam Polk and Mr. Kimble went and took each one a young one and crammed them in the wagon and her husband drove off and left her sitting. She got up, took the back track and traveled out of sight, cut across, and overtook her husband.

"Meantime, he sent his boy back to camp after a horse that he had left and when she come up to her husband, he says, "Did you meet John?" "Yes," was the reply, "and I picked up a stone and knocked out his brains." Her husband then went back to ascertain the truth, and while he was gone, she set one of their wagons on fire, which was loaded with their goods. The cover burnt off and some valuable articles were lost. He saw flames and came running, and put it out, and then he mustered spunk enough to give her a good flogging." ("Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey," by Lillian Schlissel, copyright 1982, Schocken Books, New York.) http://www.amazon.com/Diaries-Westward-Journey-Lillian-Schlissel/dp/0805211764/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283631296&sr=1-1

As a veteran of many heated discussions with my late husband in our nearly 40 years, I think this woman had decided she was done with this marriage. She had to have known when she'd crossed the line where her husband was sure to become enraged. (I think it was probably when she lit the wagon on fire, don't you?)

I knew where that line was in my marriage and trust me, I always backed off of it. Every relationship has its loaded emotional nuclear warheads that, once fired, pretty much signal the end of the partnership.

I've always wondered what happened to this couple but of course there's no way of knowing. Maybe when she finally got out West, the woman dumped her old man and ran off to San Francisco.

That's what I'd have done, especially after being "flogged." Figuring anything would be better than that, I'd have hooked up with some good old girls like Minnie and Daisy, made a bunch of money and perhaps even had a few good times along the way.

Maybe that's because I've come to realize the enormous value in having at least one really good girlfriend in my life. The support and companionship of your own gender is priceless.

We all need to vent to someone we can trust sometimes. It keeps us from torching the wagons.

How I Passed A Cardiac Stress Test

Here's a photo of what's left of my big, pretty Dodge Ram after my son nearly had a head-on collision with a motor home.

This happened while he was taking my granddaughter home to her mother's. Yes, OMG, he had Anna with him.

No one was hurt in the wreck. That's the good part.

My late husband and I bought this truck brand new five years ago and I had just finished paying it off. Now it's totaled. Ironic, yes?

I found this recent near-tragedy quite emotionally troubling, having lost my husband in a motorcycle crash just last year. You know it's bad when you have to remind yourself, "Just breathe."

The often-heard phrase from friends, "It could have been much worse," meant to comfort me, is the very idea that makes me weak in the knees to contemplate.

Thank God no one was hurt. Absolutely grateful for that, I am, indeed.

I'm also relieved I didn't have a stroke or heart attack when I found out about it. I did have a giant panic attack of sorts when my son called to say, in trembling voice, "Mom, I've been in a wreck." Hearing that totally freaked me out so bad I very nearly fainted, which freaked me out even further. Panic attacks feed on themselves, have you ever noticed?

I've seen people in the movies faint upon receiving bad news but had never really experienced that extreme-shock reaction in real life. It's like your brain just goes, "Nope. I am not hearing this, I am definitely not dealing with this, and I am out of here, right now." It's a weird sensation. It felt like my heart stopped, but of course, it didn't.

I have advised my son, should such an unfortunate incident ever happen again, to please begin such phone conversations by saying, "Mom, we're alright, but ..."

So now I am looking to buy another vehicle, which is one more thing I've never done without my husband. Sometimes I wish so badly that I could just call him up and have him tell me what to do.

That ain't happenin', though, so I'll just have to wing it once again and delve bravely into the strange world of "man stuff."

Last year at about this time I was pondering getting in my firewood supply for the winter, which had always been another one of my husband's domain. Followup: Red fir is my choice as No. 1, followed by Tamarack. A blend of the two makes a nice mix in my particular stove. No more Birch for me, however; burns too hot and causes creosote in the stove pipe. The darn bark is unruly, too.

Live and learn. Roll with the punches. Such are the cliches I live by these days.

Could an angel on a Harley have been there to intervene? Well, actually, I thought that was fairly obvious. Of course he was.

Accepting What I Cannot Change

"He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless."

--- Samuel Johnson (1709-84), English author

Seems like some things never change. Other times, it's obvious that nothing will ever be the same in my life.

There is a huge division now in my concept of time: Before Roger died and after Roger died. To even say the phrase, "Roger died," out loud sends a jolt of something close to panic into the pit of my stomach. Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?

Part of my mind subversively clings to the delusion that Roger's just away at work. For the last six years of his life, my husband worked in Russia on a six-week-off, six-week-on rotation.

I got used to him being gone half the time. But reality bites me right in the butt when I see his things untouched, just as he left them more than a year ago. Now they're gathering dust.

I can't change the facts, so I have no choice but to carry on, as I must. But don't worry about me, dear readers. There is no easy way up this steep, dark path for anyone who's ever walked it.

If it's a just matter of hanging in there for several more months before it begins to smooth out, as I suspect, then in there I shall hang. If, in a year from now, however, I feel like nothing's changed, then we will have to seriously discuss a Plan of Action.
I was startled when someone said to me recently, "Maybe the best is yet to come." That was a totally foreign thought to my mind. Really? Not just better, but maybe, the best? Of my whole life?
Anything's possible with God. Of that, at least, I am certain.

Old Photos, Windows to the Past

I love old photos; I always have. Aware of my fondness for pictures from the past, people give them to me. I have lots of them.

Sometimes I know who the people are in the pictures, sometimes not. I like to examine everything in an old photo with a magnifying glass. I pretend I was there.

This is a picture of a guy named Sumner Stonebraker standing on his head on his brother's front porch in Stites, Idaho, in about 1903. The Stonebrakers operated a pack train hauling supplies and mail into Idaho gold miners.

I made a little slide show of some of the best of these rare pictures for YouTube, which I just added here for you to watch. It's interesting, I think, even if you don't care as much about Idaho history as I do.

It's a well-known fact in the newspaper trade that editors become historians when they retire. It's just natural.
Even while I was still working on newspapers, I always had a sense of recording history. 

I love to go to a library and spend all afternoon reading really old newspapers on microfilm. The stories in them are usually hilariously slanted by today's journalistic standards. Early newspaper publishers were usually guilty of shameless "boosterism" when writing about their newly formed little towns.

This old photo is of my grandmother in a canoe in about 1919. I love the way she's trailing her hand in the water; it shows her serenity at that moment. It makes me glad to know she was happy then.

That's her younger brother, my great-uncle, to the right of her. I can't tell who the two other people are because they're too out of focus, but it doesn't matter.

I love the picture just the way it is. Aside from adding a little tint of color, I did nothing to enhance it. It has the ethereal feel of a soft watercolor painting, I think. It's almost Impressionistic, in a way, but maybe it's just the era and how my grandma was dressed. Whoever took it may have felt it wasn't a very good picture. I'm just glad it didn't get thrown away, and that now, it's mine.

I love to scan and share these windows to the past. I hope you like them, too. I'll post more when I can.