#2: Overnight @ One Binkley Gulch
More Seattle Road Trip:
Deep South WhiplashThursday, June 27, 2024
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
So Big (4*)
I'm not sure exactly when my mother decided I was old enough to check out adult books from the library, but when she did Edna Ferber topped her list of recommended novelists. Although I can't recall it specifically nearly six decades later, So Big must have been among the ones I read because I tore through her canon quickly, riveted by her superb narrative skill and indelibly drawn characters, including strong, capable women who practiced lower-case feminism.
Does anyone read Ferber today? I chose it as my first audio book mostly for sentimental reasons, and was quickly engrossed by the family saga of plucky Selina Peake, orphaned by her gambling father in late 19th-century Chicago, and her son Dirk, whose ascent to the heights of 20th century capitalism plays as a cautionary tale, particularly for today's young readers. Ferber flavors her tale of this self-made, idiosyncratic woman, who pronounces cabbages "beautiful" long before she ever grows them, with a modest but potent form of eroticism and refreshingly omits any spirituality.
This is So Big's centenary year; it won the Pulitzer Prize, no doubt for its vivid and engrossing depiction of America's transition from an agrarian to an industrial nation. It reminds me a bit of Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, if either of those Christian white men wrote with the Jewish Ferber's verve and perception. Hollywood director George Stevens turned Giant, another of her best sellers into an Academy Award-nominated vehicle, for Elizabeth Taylor--as he did, coincidentally, with A Place in the Sun, based on An American Tragedy, Dreiser's masterpiece, published in 1925, the year So Big won the Pulitzer--but Ferber herself has faded with time while her male contemporaries continue to be taught at the university level.
I suppose I'm keen on a revival that gives Ferber her 21st-century due because I share Selina Peake's values to a tee. My eyes teared as I listened to this speech, in response to a question about what she wants out of life.
It’s beauty!” Selina said then, almost passionately. Aug Hempel and Julie plainly could make nothing of this remark so she went on, eager, explanatory. “I used to think that if you wanted beauty—if you wanted it hard enough and hopefully enough—it came to you. You just waited, and lived your life as best you could, knowing that beauty might be just around the corner. You just waited, and then it came.”
“Beauty!” exclaimed Julie, weakly. She stared at Selina in the evident belief that this work-worn haggard woman was bemoaning her lack of personal pulchritude.
“Yes. All the worth-while things in life. All mixed up. Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People—all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth—growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to—to make something fine come of it.” The word self-expression was not in cant use then, and Selina hadn’t it to offer them. They would not have known what she meant if she had. She threw out her hands now in a futile gesture. “That’s what I mean by beauty. I want Dirk to have it.”
Selina waxes just as eloquent on the subject of why college students should pursue the humanities as a course of study. Alas, like most well-educated straight men, Dirk equates happiness with earning money although he lives to regret it when he eventually falls hard for a woman much like his mother. But the book ends on a happy note, when Roelf, a farm boy Selina once schooled, returns to Chicago after working decades in Paris as an artist.
Selina's father once told her that people fall into either of two categories: wheat or emeralds. While Selina is proud to be "wheat,"--with the hands to prove it--Ferber glows green, if forgotten a century after she wrote this very fine book.
Monday, June 24, 2024
Disappointing Mermaids
When we emerged from the mermaid show at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park, Thom commented "While you tell people you're a 16-year-old girl inside, she's really about eight." Touché! If only they'd look like this.
I'd wanted to visit ever since the New York Times ran a pictorial in 2013. In memory, the show had morphed into an underwater camp extravaganza or at least an Esther Williams spectacle.
The mermaids have been performing since 1947 in an auditorium that seats about 400 people. Let's just say we were the only pair of men in the audience.
When the curtain lifts, it reveals an aquarium.
What might me mistaken for an underwater microphone actually enables the performers to sip air.
Saturday, June 22, 2024
Meet Some Americans
The hotel desk clerk in Jackson, Mississippi recommended the Iron Horse Grill for a meal. "Pretty much everybody goes there." The waiter led me to a table way too close to a live performer. Few other diners paid him much attention as he sang and strummed his guitar. "Take Me Home, Country Roads" didn't sound a lot different from "Hurt" and nobody applauded after either. I ate my salad as quickly as I could and left after throwing $5 in his empty tip bucket.
Despite the sticky heat of a Saturday morning in early June, hundreds of men and women participated in "Tulsa Tough," racing for as long as 40 minutes on downtown streets that had been closed for the event. The Mens Novice 35+ category flew past as I made my way to the air-conditioned Bob Dylan Center.
When I pulled up to the Jim Thorpe Home in Yale, Oklahoma, this sunburned fellow was walking away from the entrance. "The sign says it's supposed to be open but it's closed," he reported. At first I thought he might be a negligent volunteer on his way to lunch, but then he pulled up in his very messy Toyota Tundra and looked me over. "Wasn't Thorpe part Native American?" I asked a little nervously. "Pretty much all of him, I reckon," he responded. "Do you know how he greeted the king after he won his gold medals in Sweden?" "I don't." "Hi ya, king."
Did you know that owls can swivel their heads 270 degrees, more than any other bird, and that they're much dumber than their reputation? That's what Uni--short for Unique, she said--told us during an informative raptor show at Royal Gorge which included a barn owl as well as a hawk and a vulture. She also made an impassioned plea for the audience to stop using poison to eliminate rats. It slows the rodents down and makes them easy targets for raptors, thus endangering the birds, too.
There's definitely a strong, countercultural vibe in Fremont, WA.
Stacy gave me the scoop about the kinds of salmon using the fish ladder at the Crittenden Locks in Seattle. Most are from local hatcheries. If they're wild, they're more likely to be sockeye, which start running first, but the coho and chinook climb the ladder, too.
Sandy had begun the daily count of sockeye salmon in the Crittenden Locks the day before I visited. Once sufficient numbers have been tallied, officials declare the fishing season open. She's attaching her harness to the railing so she won't fall into the locks while she's counting, something the guys directing boat traffic through the locks do, too.
When I started asking Sandy questions about the operation of the locks, she referred me to her boss, who had started in her position a decade earlier and now heads the program even though he lacks a relevant higher academic degree. "They release 80,000 gallons of water a minute into the locks to raise the boats through openings beneath the surface," he cheerfully explained. Definitely the kind of engaged, can-do kind of guy you'd want working for you.
The fishmonger at Seattle's Pike Place Market was looking forward to quitting time after a long day serving tourists who come for the show as much as the freshness of the product.
I figured if this garrulous hiker could ascend to the top of Mt. Baker, just outside of Seattle, I could, too, although he certainly was better equipped.
Alison, a 60-year-old Chinese immigrant is an avid trekker. Unlike nearly everyone else we encountered on Mt. Baker, she intended to descend to Snow Lake, visible behind her and accessible only with crampons.
You almost can tell by his expression that this roadside cherry huckster in Chemult, Oregon, had been caught pulling a fast one. As I handed over $15 for 1.5 pounds--a high price justified in my mind only because I figured the ripe fruit in several varieties had been plucked very recently from local trees--he admitted they had been trucked in from Sacramento, California, nearly 400 miles south. Nevertheless, the yellow cherries were as sweet and juicy as any I've ever eaten.
This docent solved a mystery we encountered in the sculpture garden that depicts the Stations of the Cross inside the St. Francis Cathedral in Sante Fe. "Who's Veronica?" I asked Thom and Léon, identified at the 6th station. Neither knew. "Catholicism is a blend of scripture and tradition," explained the friendly, masked fellow. "Although the Bible doesn't mention Veronica, she encountered Jesus on his way to Calvary. In an act of kindness, she removed her veil, now a holy relic, to wipe his face with it."
Mouths agape! That's the reaction both Thom and I had to Buc-ee's, a mammoth convenience store with a beaver mascot where we charged twice in the Lone Star State. To give you an idea of its size, there were 120 gas pumps outside. Five pounds of ice costs just $1.50 and inside you can find almost anything. "Except a car vacuum," complained Thom. Standing in line for the restrooms, which live up to their reputation as being the cleanest in America, you'll get a good look at the people who pass you going fast as hell in trucks with rifle racks on Texas highways. I'm pretty sure some of the guys waiting to pee were sporting holstered weapons, too.
Thursday, June 20, 2024
Meow Wolf
Magda and Joe raved about Meow Wolf after they returned from an extended stay in Sante Fe several years ago.
An enormous robot stands near the entrance.
It's probably best described as a funhouse, marketed to families who couldn't make it to Burning Man.
Visitors wander around a house searching for portals. Thom and Léon climbed through a refrigerator door to get here.
An altered state probably increases your enjoyment of Meow Wolf.
This piece resonated because it's partially constructed of Scrabble tiles and because I had a quick answer to the question it poses: driving an electric vehicle by myself from south Florida to the Pacific Northwest without having any real sense of the nation's charging infrastructure. The risk paid off handsomely!
I'm a sucker for Coca Cola art. Isaac Mizrahi once created a dress out of Coke cans.
Kids definitely get a big kick out of the place.
After skipping lunch, even this artificial food began to look tasty.
The small plates at El Farol on Canyon Drive, Sante Fe's oldest restaurant, really hit the spot.
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| Polenta |
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| Boquerones |
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| Pastel de crema de limón |
Adobe Lifestyle
If you're going to live in the Southwest, you may as well adopt an adobe lifestyle. It once formed the basis of my retirement dreams which increased the natural allure of Sante Fe's picturesque Canyon Road neighborhood.
My stepmother, who always wanted me to move back to El Paso, once sent me an advertisement for a company that taught people how to build them.
She also once sent me a Christmas wreath made of chili peppers. During my first summer in the Pines, I pulverized the peppers in a Cuisinart and used the powder in a Mexican dinner. "I'll bet you've never had homemade enchiladas before," I crowed. My housemates didn't that night, either. The meal's spiciness made it mostly inedible.
Landscaping and wood ornamentation add pizzaz to the simple look.
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