Romance of the Rodeo Cowboy

“There’s a young man that I know, his age is twenty-one

Comes from down in southern Colorado

Just out of the service and he’s lookin' for his fun

Someday soon goin' with him someday soon”

(Someday Soon ©Ian Tyson)

Remember that song? Written by Ian Tyson and originally recorded by Ian and Sylvia, then a few years later by Judy Collins.

Ian Tyson “rode the rodeos” in his late teens and early twenties, so it is rumored on the internet, so that is where he was coming from when he wrote this – the sweet faithful young woman waiting for the rascally rodeo rider.

“My parents cannot stand him 'cause he rides the rodeo

My father says that he will leave me cryin'…”

Yep. We all hummed and sang along. Pretty tune.

“He loves his damned ol’ rodeo as much as he loves me

Someday soon goin' with him someday soon”

After my experience with rodeo cowboys, when I hear that song I want to say, “Run, girl, run! Your parents are right!”

The story: as a senior in high school I was accepted by the two colleges to which I applied – UC Santa Barbara, and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

I chose to go to Cal Poly as a journalism major instead of to the University of California at Santa Barbara as a music major. For some reason I thought that journalism would get me a job, whereas music would not. Wrong – in the sixties women weren’t being hired for journalism jobs like they are now. It was a man’s world.

I knew that Cal Poly was the choice that would please my parents. It was an engineering and agriculture school with a ratio of three male students to every female student (“Cal Poly- where the men are men, and the sheep are nervous”), and it was a conservative school.

This was 1965, when the Free Speech movement had taken off in Berkeley, quickly followed by the Filthy Speech Movement. My older brother had gone to Berkeley, but I knew that my parents would never allow me, their wee ewe lamb, to go to that cauldron of Communism and dirty language.

Besides, it was a three-hour drive down 101 from Watsonville to San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara was another couple of hours beyond that, at least. Cal Poly was geographically much more desirable.

My mother drove me down and checked me into my dormitory that September day. I couldn’t wait for her to leave. In retrospect, I’m ashamed of how rude I was to her. She knew better than I did what my staying and her going meant. It was the end of my living under the parental roof (at least until I came crawling out of Los Angeles six years later, but that’s another story).

Once ensconced in my dorm room, I got to know my roommates and the girls living across the hall, Julie and Carol.

Cal Poly had a championship rodeo team, and Julie and Carol were barrel racers on that team. Barrel racing is the women’s rodeo sport.

So, there I was, 17, literally a farmer’s daughter fresh out of the apple orchard, and I had new cowgirl friends at this ag school.

That first quarter I met some of the cowboys on the rodeo team, and those rodeo cowboys – holy carp. I’m not sure if many of them were that devoted to academics. They were there to rodeo on that championship team. And to drink.

I can’t help but wonder if they were like other athletes who are in college for one reason – to play their sport – and their academic transcripts were cooked, if you catch my drift.

One Friday evening late that fall I went to a cowboy party. Most of the team riders were there, and soon I realized that I was the only sober person in the room.

Guess what happened.

One drunk cowboy got into an argument with another drunk cowboy, and soon that escalated to one taking a swing at the other and connecting solidly. The kid who’d been hit went down like a tree falling over and struck his head on the refrigerator. I couldn’t tell if he was bleeding from a head wound or one of his existing orifices, but there was blood, and he was no longer conscious. The drunken party goers scrambled around, trying to figure out what to do. It was decided to carry him to a bedroom where he could sleep it off. No one thought to take him to an ER or call an ambulance. Cowboys.

If I had any illusions of rodeo cowboys being romantic or glamorous, those illusions died that night.

Ian Tyson’s fantasy about that nice passive girlfriend waiting for him and following him anywhere no matter how badly she was treated – well, reality kinda ruined that song for me, both seeing rodeo cowboys in action and my young adult life navigating the stormy waters of romance. My generation of girls was raised to be that girlfriend, and I must tell you that for most of us it did not lead to a happy life.

After my disillusionment with rodeo cowboys I started hanging around with the beatnik/bohemians at school, so my parents’ worst nightmare about me falling in with the commies was realized.

Of course there was nary a commie among them. They were just young people who drank, played guitars, and sat around talking – they weren’t violent, and they had some conversation.

Big improvement over the rodeo cowboys, I thought.

The Texas Relatives

Opened a paper bag the other day and came upon letters from the mid-70s from my mother's oldest sister, Gladys, in Texas, to Sister, my aunt whom I knew growing up.

Now, these were the Sheffield siblings: Gladys, born ca. 1906-07; Allie, named after his father but later changed it to Allen, born 1910; Della (Sister), born 1912; Thelma Juanita, my mother, born 1915; Genevieve, the baby, born after my mother sometime.

The only one whose year of birth I know for sure is my mother.

Gladys did not go into the home with her four younger siblings in 1921, the home being the Salvation Army orphanage in El Paso, Texas. At sixteen, she was considered too old.

Allen, like all boys, was kicked out when he turned twelve, and Sister, Juanita, and Genevieve remained.

Gladys probably went to work. She married young, a marriage that did not last. She remarried and stayed in Texas the rest of her life, and stayed close to their father, Allie Sheffield.

In these letters she was talking about their father, Allie, after he died. She asked Sister for help paying for his funeral and interment, because it would take her and her husband years to pay off that $250.

From Gladys’s letters I got the impression that Allie was a likable guy with a sense of humor, who was popular in his community, and he would be missed.

Sister had stayed in touch with him and Gladys after she left Texas and had gone back to visit them at least once.

She did help Gladys out with the bill. I found mortuary receipts.

Allie had lost a leg around 1920, and that was the reason the children were put into the home. He was no longer able to support a family of five with only one leg.

There was a picture of Allie with the letters, showing him full length, standing on his wooden leg, next to his pickup.

The wooden leg was a peg leg contraption unlike anything I have ever seen, a bracket strapped to his thigh, with a piece of wood coming down out of the bracket. The bottom piece was shaped down to a more slender end, and it might have had a metal cap.

That picture was a real find for me – after hearing about Daddy’s leg all those years, this was the first time I’d seen it, or seen my grandfather, for that matter.

When my father died in 1975, it hit me hard, so when Allie died sometime later, I expressed condolences to my mother.

She brushed them aside curtly: "I didn't know him."

In her late seventies my mother acquired a boyfriend, Armand. Apparently once when my mother was behaving badly - she was a world class complainer - Armand explained to some friends that she grew up in an orphanage and that was why she behaved that way.

That REALLY pissed her off. Later when she was complaining to me about Armand, she mentioned him saying that. Growing up in the home had not affected her like that, she said.

Hm. I could have sworn it had affected her exactly like that.

She once told me she had been a “happy go lucky” child.

Eh, maybe she did have a cheerful disposition until she married my father and had children, and then was dealing with her depression, and raising children, and my father's temper (he had a bad one, she said), and doing it all without medication or therapy, except for that once a week visit to Polly to get her hair done.

I have been much more fortunate in my life than my mother was. For one thing, I didn’t grow up in an orphanage, but also attitudes about women changed in the last few decades, and I have had the resources of therapy and antidepressants, and I have been willing to accept help.

In the 1950s, you toughed it out and sucked it up. Too bad for you and your children.

Anyway.

Here is the picture of Allie Sheffield and his truck. And his wooden leg. He died around 1977.

Sister died in 1987. Don’t know when Gladys died. Allen died of cancer in 1964, which was a relief for me. You figure it out.

Their youngest sister Genevieve died young. I don’t know how. No one ever spoke of Genevieve. Ever.

My mother was the last of the siblings to go, in March 2001 at the age of 86. Heart disease. I think it was eating at MacDonald’s every day with Armand that got her.

I have relatives in Texas, but I would have to do some serious genealogy searching to find them. I’ve made it so far without them and I’m willing to keep it that way.

As my cousin Nancy always said, “Family! the other F word.”

Life with birds

Sitting at my desk, I heard the sound of a bird flying into an office window. Darn it. It happens sometimes, but at least it didn't sound like it hit very hard. Took me another couple of minutes to realize the bird was in the room, and hit the window from this side.
There followed several minutes of closing blinds so it wouldn't try to fly through the windows again, and opening doors so it could fly through them. One door I opened let the cat in, and he took a great interest in our new house bird.
Poor birdie - it flew up on top of the laundry cabinets, then into and all around the living room with the cat bounding behind in hot pursuit, and me in pursuit of the cat. It perched on the arm of a couch and I almost picked it up but no, off it flew again.
Finally came back into the kitchen and perched up high on an open cabinet door over the stove, and next to the kitchen door where it probably came in. I had parted the bug curtains so that it could fly out easily, and I sat at the kitchen table saying, "You're almost there, you're almost there."
The cat walked by looking disgusted because he had lost the bird and did not look up to see it. Yay.
The bird was looking at the door with the bug curtains, and you could see it was thinking, thinking, thinking, and watching the birds flying around outside.
Finally it bucked up its courage, took off ... and flew into the top of the bug curtain, and spiraled down to the the top of the milk crate where I keep the dog towels.
"You're almost there!" I said again.
It sat there for another minute.
Then it hopped down to the threshhold of the door, sat there a second, and walked out.
Turned right, and that was the last we saw of it.
We being me and the dog.
I think it might have been a female house finch, but the beak didn't look right. Too pointy. Darn. I sit here poring over my bird book and still confuse purple finches with house finches.
But I do believe I saw a ruby crowned kinglet yesterday. First one this year!

Interesting Times

Remember that old Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times.”

The curse is working.

A lot of people are feeling despair over all that is happening – the pandemic and the pressure of being in isolation for so many weeks; the rise of white supremacist neo-Nazis; the murder (lynching) of black people by the police and any arrogant, frightened white person with a gun or whatever weapon is at hand, like a knee, truck, or rope, etc.; the clear not only lack of true leadership from our president but his more and more apparent separation from reality, most recently manifested in tear-gassing and firing rubber bullets into some peaceful protesters so that he could walk across the street and get a picture taken of himself in front of a church, holding up a Bible.

This was such a blatant display of hypocrisy I do not know why that poor abused Bible did not burst into flames. Heck, I don’t know why the guy himself doesn’t burst into flames.

Oh, if only physics had a conscience.

We were taught to love our country. We were told fine stories of great men who wrote and spoke glorious words, who said that all men are created equal.

I am going to repeat myself now, because I have said this in the past: We were not taught that “men” only meant white European men who owned property (some of which was slaves).

Not women, not people with brown or black or any color than white skin, certainly not our country’s indigenous peoples, some of whom owned slaves, and some of whom resent that black activists have not brought indigenous peoples along in their fight for equality.

This is more complex than you think.

Now we are seeing our beloved country getting its poxy white skin ripped right off, especially the skin of white policemen who feel they can kill/murder/lynch black people with impunity and get away with it because that is exactly what they have done for so long.

The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was tumultuous and entwined with the anti-Vietnam war movement. There were riots, assassinations (Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, just for starters), war in the streets of Detroit in 1967, and a war in Chicago at the Democratic convention in 1968.

Hubert Humphrey was nominated there. He lost to Richard “Tricky Dicky” Nixon, a smart guy who would have been a much better president if he had not been mentally unstable and had not resorted to criminal measures to get what he wanted. Oh, and he was a right-hand man to Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, chasing Commies, many of whom were not Commies.

Anyway, when the Black Panthers were making white people pee their pants (Black men! With rifles!) and the men of the Nation of Islam stood in long lines in their long black coats and hats, man, I’ll tell you, they were every bit as scary as the lines of bubble helmeted policemen with their kill clubs were then and are now.

After the passing of Civil Rights Acts in the sixties under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (a much despised president who also started Medicare and other social programs that latter day Republicans have been deconstructing as fast as they can), after police murdered black activists in the streets and asleep in their beds, after the Vietnam war was halted, after black actors began turning up in television commercials and shows, and blaxploitation movies became popular, after the advent of busing and affirmative action and college admissions quotas, there prevailed a false sense that racism was beginning to be a thing of the past - at least in the minds of some white people.

Non-white people have always known that was a lot of hooey. Racism only went into hiding for some people. It became visible with a vengeance during the Obama administration.

Black people have politely pointed out that lately we have become aware of the persistent and random killing of black people because people now have cell phone cameras and can make videos of white people murdering black people, as in the case of George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery.

Watching a person die while you hear his voice fade, or you see his body reel when the gun blast hits him, begins to make this centuries old practice of treating black people as animals to be hunted down and killed real, and repulsive, and impossible to ignore or dismiss, and maybe, just maybe, you begin to grasp why people say BLACK LIVES MATTER. Because in the entire history of the settled white European presence on this continent, black lives have not mattered.

Brown and Red lives have not done so well, either, but I have to stop now.

Isolating On Down to New Normal

Crumbling up newspapers to start a fire in the wood stove this morning, I came across the Seattle Times issue of March 2, 2020.

The headline reads: “2nd U.S. coronavirus death in King County; more cases likely”

I could not help but think, aw, look how sweet and naïve we were a couple of months ago, before schools and businesses were shut down, before people were thrown out of work, before the unemployment offices were swamped, before people were dying in the tens of thousands.

There is a guy named Matt on TV whose ad has been playing a lot. He says, “One thing we know for sure is that we’ll be getting back to normal …”

Every time I see that ad I yell, “NO, Matt, we are NOT getting back to normal!”

For one thing, over the last few months, say from December to the end of April, a lot of people would have died in the regular course of events. Add to that number this year an extra two hundred thousand deaths, give or take, attributed to the coronavirus.

That’s an estimate based on the recorded numbers, but the recorded numbers for the pandemic are sketchy.

The United States leads the world in the number of confirmed coronavirus infections and deaths. The numbers vary depending on your source, but as of Saturday, April 25, several sources report that the US has had more than 50,000 deaths from COVID-19.

The fact is, we don’t really know how many people have been infected by the coronavirus. We don’t know how many people have died without being tested or diagnosed. We don’t know how many infected people have not been counted. We do not know how many governments are lying about their statistics.

Doctors are still learning about what this virus does, and how it behaves. Yes, it can make mush of your lungs and lead to multiple organ failure, but it can also make blood clots throughout your body and give you pulmonary embolisms or major strokes. At first it was believed that older people were more vulnerable, but the virus turns out to be more egalitarian than that regarding the age of its victims.

So, families and friends of about two hundred thousand people are grieving, along with the millions who are grieving the deaths that were going to happen anyway.

We are not going back to the normal we knew.

I dream about the new normal. Wouldn’t it be great if the pandemic brought about national healthcare in America, like there is in the rest of the free world?

Why is medicine still a for profit business in America? Why do people lose their homes, lose everything, because of medical bills they can’t pay, even when they have insurance? Short answer: there is too damn much money to be made. Money is more important than people’s health or welfare in this country.

Wouldn’t it be great if the people who could make a change realized that there must be a financial safety net when there is a worldwide emergency that affects every single person?

I saw a mean looking man with a bow tie on television the other week. He was saying that we had to beware of this pandemic making the welfare state expand.

I wanted to reach through the screen and crush his windpipe. That impulse was unChristian and unworthy, and I pray for forgiveness, but a person gets tired of the conscienceless rich getting richer and the poor getting deader.

Heck, yes, expand the welfare state. Shave a small percentage off the defense budget and stop starving people and leaving people homeless and depriving children of education.

Yeah. That would get Mr. Bow Tie’s knickers in a twist.

Wouldn’t it be great if the new normal included time to be ourselves, time to be with our families, time not to be running our butts off to chase the almighty dollar, and included our current awareness of how precious we are to one another, and our being kinder to one another? You know, like now?

Some places are “opening up” now. Some people are refusing to isolate or quarantine because they think it impinges on their liberty. I’m thinking, great. Here comes the next surge of infections.

The coronavirus has made it easier for a lot of us to ask, “How are you?” because we really want to know, and to say, “I love you,” because we do, and we know there may not be another chance to say it, or hear it.

Which reminds me: I love you, you wicked monkeys. Get out there and laugh at a stuffed shirt today.

Wash your hands. Wear your mask. Keep your distance. Stay safe. We need you.

Blessings.

The Consolation in Isolation

“There is no guidebook for living through this, but we will, and we are.”

“We've seen some beautiful things emerge from this time of tragedy.”

“We as a people, are really beginning to see that as it turns out, we need each other.”

“We're going to get through this together.”

“The pain we feel today will be the strength we feel tomorrow.”

~ “Do you know what all of those statements have in common? They are all quotes from refugees that I've met over my years doing humanitarian work and those statements are so relevant to us all right now.” – Aid worker in Syria

Perhaps you have noticed that since the shelter in place rules have come down, many people are discovering unexpected feelings of happiness, unity, and community, and a new closeness with their families.

I thought that might be a first world phenomenon, until I read that dispatch from my friend working with refugees in Syria, refugees who have fled their homes which are now rubble, refugees who have lost family and friends to bombing.

The human spirit is a crazy thing, isn’t it, finding beautiful things in tragedy?

In this country, we are not fleeing war, we are fleeing a virus, and many of us are living life at a slower rhythm. We are not waking up to an alarm, stressing all day to meet expectations while trying to stay afloat in the fire swamp of office politics with its rodents of unusual size. Not chauffeuring the kids to lessons, sports, etc., rushing to make dinner, helping with homework, rushing to get chores done, rushing to night classes or meetings, having sex if it’s a sex night, maybe getting some sleep, getting up and doing it all over again.

Or some variation of that run-like-hell schedule.

Nope. It’s all different. Maybe you’re working at home. Maybe you don’t have a job anymore. Maybe you have kids at home, perhaps home schooling, perhaps doing online school.

Maybe you are retired, and life hasn’t changed that much, except for not being able to gather with friends. Perhaps you are an artist, a writer, a musician, and you have been doing solitary work at home or in a studio for years. No more rehearsals or classes right now.

Before the industrial revolution kicked off, the human raced pooped along in its tribal village way for thousands of years. In the early 1800s we had to begin to adjust to spinning jennies, and then steam engines, railroads and factories, steamships, automobiles, the typewriter, the telephone, electric light so we could work longer hours, and before you knew it, aeroplanes, modern war, the Spanish flu, the Roaring Twenties followed by the Great Depression followed by World War II.

Inhale.

And release.

My cohort – the baby boom - was born into the mid-20th century and grew up with the Cold War, rock and roll, and the fear of nuclear annihilation, followed by Gen X, Gen Y, the Millennials, honestly, I have not kept track of all the Gens and their labels.

Comes now the novel coronavirus, mowing down people all over the world.

Normal life has come screeching to a halt, except for medical caregivers and other essential occupations, of course. They are literally working themselves to death.

To.

Death.

There are people who think the virus is bogus, just a little flu. They go on doing what they please, when and where they please, and they ain’t wearing no stinking face masks. That would be fine, if they weren’t making other people sick, and if there weren’t innocent people who love and depend on them.

Most of us are staying home and following the rules when we go out. We wear masks, and we keep our distance from other people.

We live this new slow rhythm of life, which is somehow … friendlier. Technology and progress ripped us away from our family and village roots, developing much faster than humans were able to evolve. Our great jobs, our dashing about, our always being tired, living for the pursuit of the almighty dollar and power – tain’t natural, not for people who still have their souls.

So we isolate and move more slowly. With the internet we can stay in touch with people and have online appointments and meetings and conversations and church services and other gatherings.

I am not saying technology is bad. I think we need to run technology, instead of technology running us, that’s all. Technology is saving lives, and technology will defeat the novel coronavirus.

In the meantime, slowing down and finding the beautiful gifts in this tragedy is a good thing.

One last thing: rest in peace, John Prine. Thank you for the beautiful gifts of your songs, and for who you were, and how we became better because of you.

This Is Not a Dystopian Movie

As I write the United States has the dubious distinction of leading the world in the number of confirmed Covid 19 infections.

We’re number one!

Those of us who wish to survive this plague and live to see another day are washing our hands, disinfecting surfaces, maintaining social distancing, and staying home.

Some healthcare workers are literally laying down their lives. We know what real heroes look like now.

If we are not healthcare providers, life is slower for many of us. Some of us haven’t left the house for weeks. We’re reading books and taking naps and tackling projects, like sewing medical masks. Our bodies are confined, but our spirits are breaking free: we go outside to garden, we sing, we dance.

Being an introvert who likes to stay at home, isolating has been okay for me. I know that extroverts are suffering, and some people who live alone are feeling hard loneliness. At this point contact with family and friends is of vital importance. At this point we are grateful for the telephone and the internet.

My church streams Morning Prayer on Sundays on Zoom. Still working on how we all use the app, but we’re working on it, separately and together. It is good to be part of this community which has been so close for so long.

Some of you are keeping in touch via Skype and other video connections. Being able to see and hear each other in real time – way cool.

Art, music, reading, gardening, rest, exercise, helping where you can, these things are getting us by. I know I’m missing options that are working for some of you. Crosswords have been big for me.

There are zillions of dance, meditation, and exercise videos on Youtube. Did you know that the Vashon Athletic Club is live streaming classes for free now? Go to their web site and click on the live streaming banner.

Oh – while I’m thinking of it, big kudos to the Vashon-Maury Food Bank. They are doing an amazing job of keeping people fed. Thank you.

And a big thank you to all you nurses and doctors and first responders and pharmacists and grocery store employees and liquor store and dispensary employees (‘bout blew my mind to find out that cannabis stores were considered “essential”) and all you other Vashonites who are keeping things going, taking care of the rest of us in this interesting time.

A lot of people are thinking that relying on digital processes will not go away when the pandemic slows down – working remotely is too easy and more efficient and green in many cases than commuting to work, not to mention that disabled people have been begging to be able to work from home for years, and it’s about time.

The shutting down of “non-essential” businesses is a severe hardship on many working people and businesses – ruinous, in fact. Renters are wondering how they’ll pay their rent in April and May. Homeowners are wondering how they’ll pay their mortgages and the first half of their property taxes.

There is talk of mortgage and rental forgiveness, and financial assistance, and no evictions or mortgage foreclosures.

The Congressional stimulus package which will mostly stimulate the prostate glands of aging white billionaires might help working people a little. How far does $1200 go these days?

The hopeful part is the way so many people are responding to the pandemic. They have come together to help the sick and the families of the sick, to help each other, to cheer each other up, to feed each other, to literally save each other’s lives in every way. This is humanity at its best.

The sad and heartbreaking thing is that health care workers and their patients and people who never make it to health care are getting sick and dying. A whole new unexpected burden of grief weighs on the world, more than we would have in the natural course of this time.

The most enraging thing about this plague for me so far has been that the first and only consideration for a certain group of people was, “How can I make a buck on this?”

There are the hoarders who bought out toilet paper, sanitizer, and sanitary wipes, and will defend their rights and their stashes with their AK-15s, I suppose, but they are small change.

It’s the soulless element of the crew that has most of the money and power that cheeses me off and hurts my feelings. Those laughing, happy criminals already have everything, and the rest of us have so little, and they want that, too.

The entire world is walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and most people are being glorious to one another, including wealthy people who have their priorities in order. They’re not all weasels, with apologies to weasels.

As the numbers of the infected and dead keep going up, we know that nothing will ever be the same. We don’t know which dear ones we shall lose. We don’t know if we’ll lose our own lives. We don’t know how long we’ll be home bound, or how many waves the pandemic will have.

We do live in interesting times.