LIFE IN THE PLEISTOCENE (My Childhood)
Sometimes when I think back on my own early childhood, and compare it with the one my grandchildren inhabited, I am struck by the sheer miracle that any of us survived from that earlier time.
For instance, whenever we were shooshed outside to play, we were instructed to be home by dark. We were less than ten years old. There was no mention of where we could go or couldn’t go, no parent checking on us at intervals … just “be home by dark.” There was a small park about a four block walk from our home in Minneapolis, and we would pick up our baseball gloves and shout back to our mother that we were going to Powderhorn Park. “No problem,” she would say. “Just be home …” you know the rest.
This is a photo of the first family car that I can remember. Of course this is not the actual one we owned, but a well-kept one, and little resembles the plain gray, perpetually unwashed version that our family actually traveled in. And those lovely whitewall tires … nope, never happened.
That odd thing in the back was called a “rumble seat.” There were two cushions in the trunk, one to sit on, one to lean back on.
Since the car was a coupe and had only the single seat in its cab, you would stick a passenger back there, who was now out in the elements, cruising along with the wind and the rain and the flying insects and any large predators in the vicinity. Much like being in a modern convertible but for the fact that there was no top to put up for protection.
This was where my brother and I would ride, from the age of seven years forward. Never mind that there were no seat belts or any other sort of restraints, and that we weren’t even in the car! Now of course we were admonished by our parents not to stand up, wrestle, or do any other sort of exhibition passengering. After all, it was the 1940s and there were societal expectations of what made a good father or mother.
Even back in 1945 it was considered unseemly if one’s child were to fly out of the boot and go tumbling down the highway on their own. Bad form, and all that.
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When I was about eight years old I was given a .22 caliber rifle. I have no recollection of being given safety instructions, operating instructions, or any advice other than “never point a rifle at anybody.” Up until that moment I had never given such pointing a thought.
I rushed to the hardware store and discovered that .22 caliber ammunition came in short, long rifle, and birdshot varieties. The short looked too puny and I had no idea why I would want birdshot, so it was “the long rifle, please.” Within hours there was not a can in the farm dump that didn’t have a .22 caliber hole in it, nor was any bottle unbroken.
At that point I asked what bigger game was allowed. Gophers, was the answer, striped gophers. (actually their true name was 13-lined ground squirrels). For some reason farmers didn’t like them, although I could not see what harm they did. But they were allowed as targets, and off I went.
Over the next few days I discovered a couple of things. One was that I was a sort of child marksman. What I aimed at I hit. So the striped gopher population declined sharply, tempered only by the fact that when the ammunition was gone I had to save up before I could buy any more. Looking back of course I am ashamed of those small lives taken, but this emotion is how I feel today, not when I was eight and about three-quarters feral.
The other discovery was that I had patience. Part of hunting is learning to wait, quietly, without doing much moving about. That is also key to wildlife observation of any kind, even when you are not thinking lethally.
I found that I saw more sitting still in a forest than I did tramping through it. And out on the prairies any animal that wishes to grow old sees the human coming long before it is itself seen, and hides. But if one stops and waits, they come back out to see what’s up.
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(Translation of lyrics to “Migra,” which song is more relevant today than when it first came out.
In the original translation “migra” was migration, today it would be I.C.E.)
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Today one of my self-assigned tasks is to find the snow shovels. Even on a small place like ours, things can be often difficult to locate. Mostly because I don’t take the proper care to put them in sensible places. And it’s not as if I’m going to need a shovel this week, but it’s much more pleasant to perform these searches when the sun is shining.
I had to clear my driveway and sidewalks perhaps six times last winter, and most of the time the snow depth was less than two inches, so shoveling is never much of a burden. I do it so that when the sun returns the walks quickly become dry and don’t threaten the senior citizens in the area. Including me. Icy patches on concrete and aging bodies are best kept apart from one another is my thinking.
Compare with winters in the midwest what we have here in Paradise is almost laughably tolerable. I’m estimating here, but there are less than ten days where the streets are even mildly treacherous. There are people in town who bicycle year-round. Not me, however, because those chilly breezes on my nether parts I find quite discouraging.
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From a family budget standpoint, these are the golden weeks of the year, when neither the air conditioners nor the furnace need to run. Cool days and nights, my my my, where’s the pause button? I’d like to stay right here, please.
We now have the crunching underfoot and the aroma that dried leaves on the ground provide. Autumn, plain and simple. I am surprised that our hummingbirds haven’t taken their leave, but they still entertain us every day. A bear came into town last week, just a couple of blocks away. She was only looking to fatten a bit more before settling down for the winter ahead, but she caused quite a commotion before officers tranquilized her and moved her off to a safer spot. Safer for her, that is. Hanging around where people are gathered is not one of the best ideas that a large wild critter can have. Our tolerances are very small for rubbing elbows with anything larger than a squirrel.
The Uncompahgre River is looking its absolute best these days. Clear, clean water running fast and beautiful. Montrose is about 22 miles downstream from the dam that forms Ridgway Reservoir, so water flows here in town are governed by what those upstream engineers decree rather than any schedule of Momma Nature. They always draw down the reservoir quite a bit in the fall, preparing for the mountain snowmelt next year.
On our neighborhood walk last night, we saw a man walking about a new construction site along 6700 Road, a place where there have previously been no houses, only farmland. Being incurably nosy and having lost some of my filters along the way, I hollered across the road “Is that your house?” When he nodded yes, he made a serious mistake because in less than a minute I was in his face asking all sorts of questions. Poor Robin had to come along, fearing the worst whenever I do something like this.
Turns out he was a 33 year resident of Paradise, but now lived on the other side of town. He had decided to build a new house better suited to his family’s needs, and the foundation we were standing by was its beginning. The man had a delightful first name – Wellington. He is a Brazilian by birth but has been in the US for a generation or two. Speaking of delightful, he told us exactly where everything was going to be … garage over there … patio over there … fencing for the dachshund he had with him over there, and so on. He even brought out the blueprints to round out his presentation.
Wellington … great name. I have often wondered if having a cool name like that would have changed my life. My first name is Jon, and while it seems ordinary enough, you wouldn’t believe the number of times that not having an “h” in that moniker has caused me grief. When I am in a line for anything, and finally reached its head and the person at the desk is filling out the form asks for my name, the fun begins. I say “Jon, but there is no H in it, it’s just J.O.N.” Seems simple, right? But the bureaucrat has already written “John” before the latter part of that sentence registers with them. They then look up at me disgustedly and tear up the form they have begun with an exasperated flourish. Never a good start, that.
My last name is Flom, a stoutly Norwegian surname of which I have never been particularly fond. It doesn’t roll off the tongue, with that “fl” sound in the beginning lacking euphony, at least to me. Thirty-five years ago, the last time I gave it serious thought, I wondered how much trouble changing that name would be. In my mind I had already picked out “Snowdon” as its replacement.
Liked the ring of it. Smacked of the gentry, doncha know. But (sigh) it became just another one of my half-baked life projects abandoned in their infancy. However … think about it.
Jon Snowdon
Impresses the hell out of me even now. Think I missed the boat.
Little Home In The Valley 