May Basket Day

May Basket Day

Noel Laflin

4-30-15

What has become of the May 1^st tradition of placing a homemade flower basket on a neighbor’s doorstep, ringing the bell and running away so as not to be caught in the act of kindness and remembrance?

I read that it is still practiced here and there; mostly there I suppose – as I have not witnessed the act since my sister and I last rang and ran in our old Anaheim neighborhood some fifty years ago. We lived on Flower Street which, in retrospect, now seems aptly named.

But, it was something that our mother taught us to do.  She first introduced us to the now-faded tradition back in the early 1960’s.  At her urging, we made flower baskets for older neighbors. And, they were appreciative as I recall.  But then, they remembered the tradition as it had already been around for nearly a hundred years.  It was a hold-over from simpler and more arguably neighborly times.

Maybe one of these days I’ll find a May Day basket on my own door step.

 

I will know a couple of  things then.

First:  Someone will have told their kids about a simpler, more neighborly time and near-lost tradition.

Secondly:  I will officially be old.

Well, one out of two would suit me just fine.

Happy May Day.

Post Script: A beautiful bouquet of flowers was delivered to my door this first day of  May, 2015.  There was a note attached apologizing that it was not a homemade basket. The sender remains anonymous - just as it should be.

Ponderings

Ponderings

Noel Laflin

4-28-15

About nine years ago a covey of bulldozers, posthole diggers, and fence layers all gathered at the old ravine across the street from our home in El Modena and set to work.  They stayed a few months reconfiguring the land below.  When they eventually left and water from nearby foothills was allowed to fill the newly-lined ancient basin, we had a pond now surrounded by a sturdy fence and a well-defined track upon which to walk, run or bike.   It was a lovely transformation.

Soon, waterfowl of all sort started showing up in order to test out the new digs.  As fish had been introduced as a means to keep any potential mosquito population in check, the wild ducks, coots, egrets, and gannets found the reclamation site acceptable to their taste.  Hawks, owls, and crows also moved in, spotting new tasting opportunities as well.

 

Over time, turtles began to appear – at first just one or two – but at last rough count there now seem to be at least twenty of all sizes gracefully sliding through the blue-green water and reeds. They’ll climb the bank and sun themselves daily.  We have all noticed quite a few juveniles lately.  The pond must also be to the turtles’ liking as their numbers increase yearly – as do those of the ducks, coots, egrets, gannets, hawks, owls, crows, and fish.

Three or four domesticated ducks have mysteriously appeared within the fenced-in pond over the years.  They have adjusted well.  It may not have been legal to have dumped the former pets here, but I suppose their new surroundings beat whatever small yard or cage or tormentors they once endured elsewhere.  They co-mingle with the others in friendly fashion.

Canada geese have also taken to the pond.  Their classic, distinctive honking from afar and swooping descent upon our small body of water can be mesmerizing.  The pair or two that yet remain this late in the season lend an air of domestic tranquility to the scene.   Their graceful, long, bent necks and bobbing heads can almost lull one into thinking that they were anywhere other than the middle of suburbia.  I hope they stay to raise a few goslings in our local neighborhood pond and forget about flying north for a while.  We’ll see.

Much of the neighborhood gathers here each morning and evening, as do I, to take in the cool tranquil scene - some walking, running, or biking off dinner; others letting the kids run wild; and those who are here to feed the ducks – although posted signage advises otherwise.

 

However, the ducks, coots, geese and crows are mostly pleased that some folks can’t seem to read.

The Valiant

  The Valiant

  Noel Laflin

 4-26-15

"A coward dies a thousand deaths, but the valiant taste death but once."

It had been another tough rehearsal night. When the director threw a folding chair across the stage - well, it got everyone's attention pretty much.

"Tim!" Jack yelled, nearly biting off the stem of his ever-present pipe, "You've got to FEEL this!  Again, from the top - and with passion this time, damn it!"

And so it went, night after night.  Poor Tim. Poor Jack. Poor supporting cast. We smelled failure in the making and dreaded opening night, which was fast approaching.

The one-night show was billed as 'Sycamore Presents,' and was to be our final junior high stage production for the 1967 school season.  And we all thought it could not come fast enough as the smell of summer was clearly in the air.

What the drama class had to present for the final production was a series of short one-act pieces. A couple of skits, like the one that I was in, were silly - humorous in nature. The finale would be the patriotic '1776' ensemble. But the headlining act was to be the 1924 classic, 'The Valiant,' for which my old pal Tim had been chosen as lead. He had drawn the heavy straw. The rest of our acts paled in comparison.

Now, 'The Valiant' is a serious piece of business as far as drama goes. A mysterious condemned man is spending his last half hour on Earth in a prison cell when he soliloquies that famous, passionate, Shakespearean paraphrased line regarding death and cowards and valor.  But Tim was struggling with the passion. We could all feel it. And it drove Jack to near tears.

But, the show must go on - and it did of course.  And to everyone's utter amazement, Tim nailed it that evening. Somewhere between the occasionally tossed chair, verbal berating, and just plain hard work, the boy had found his passion in the nick of time and delivered it perfectly. 

His beaming parents stood with the rest of the audience and applauded wildly that night.

Jack wept openly with pride.

The rest of us, peering out from behind the curtains, heaved a collective thespian sigh of relief and joined in the ovation.

The entire night was a hit. We took in the sweet smell of success and made a run for summer.

Many summers passed. Jack would go on to direct two hundred more student productions over those years; encouraging, berating, laughing, cajoling night after night – rehearsal after rehearsal.  Countless chairs and scripts were thrown about the stage no doubt.  But in the end, the man always got his kids to dig deep, find the passion, and deliver the performance of a young lifetime.

The rest of us just had to grow up and find passion where we could. 

                                -------------------------

Tim died unexpectedly a number of years ago. He left behind a beautiful family and scores of folks who thought mighty highly of him.  His funeral was well attended.

In writing his mother a final note of condolence, I spoke of how her son and I had shared a childhood bond of friendship through church, school, and Scouting. But what I would always remember most about Tim, I concluded, was how he had conducted himself so very valiantly in a one-boy performance from long ago.

Lost Train of Thought

Lost Train of Thought

Noel Laflin

4-22-15

(Photo from Stanley E. Bellamy's "Images of America - Running Springs")

So there it was – the train.

Big and black and belching smoke, a narrow gauge Shay locomotive, the one always identified by a single metal star emblazoned upon the front of the engine, sat frozen in black and white time – right there - in what the author definitely identified as logging camp number seven.

Oh, how I loved the words:  ‘logging camp number seven!’ – the very place that would someday become a future boy’s camp - turned Scout camp - turned eventual church camp so many decades later.

The scene had been captured on film more than one hundred years ago.  And I had been looking for just such an image for nearly half that time.  Now, here it was in a slim paperbound book sitting upon my old dining room table.  It was what can only be described for me as a true ‘ah-ha!’ moment.  I do believe I even shed a tear.  Let me tell you why.

When I was a kid, I stumbled upon the remains of old narrow train railroad beds that once criss-crossed our four hundred acres of Scouting forest.  An occasional ancient wooden railroad tie or rusted metal spike could be found if one searched diligently and carefully enough through scratchy buck brush or layered pine needles.  Thick metal cable, the likes of which was used by loggers to ensnare and haul fresh cut timber a century ago, was still a common find, especially near the camp’s entrance right off the Green Valley Lake Road.  But what was odd was the positioning of some of this cable – especially those pieces that seemingly grew right out of trees themselves.

It would appear that some trees, oaks in particular, had a final say in the covering of these old wounds – growing around and encasing the metal strands which once wrapped about their trunks so very long ago.  I would like to think that given enough time, perhaps all of that old cable would be consumed.

I would sit or stand beneath those majestic oaks and pines, cedars, and firs, pondering what all of this meant. Walking across our old parking lot or crossing the small ravine on my way back to the mess hall or my cabin on Staff Hill, I would contemplate these things, wondering where the trains ran exactly, and how the place looked back then.

Over the next decade that I spent wandering these woods, I came to understand how this land – along with thousands upon thousands of adjoining acres within the San Bernardino National Forest had been stripped bare of all its original growth timber during the early years of the last century.  Six miles of track once stretched from the Brookings saw mill in Fredalba (just south of Hunsacker Flats – now known as Running Springs) all the way to the area simply known at the time as GreenValley/Lightningdale – the very land upon which I once pondered.

Over time, I came to understand how three heavy train engines were hauled by oxen teams up the old City Creek toll road – long before it was ever known as Highway 330 and put to work chugging slowly across those six miles of track, each heavily laden with massive fallen living giants - many with interior tree rings measuring their time upon this earth not in decades, but rather, centuries.

For much of my adult life, I sought out old photos of the era, always hoping that one – just one faded treasure from the past might inadvertently show a familiar landmark within the old Camp Ahwahnee property and finally prove what was rumored to be old lost logging camp number seven – a fabled place first brought to my attention some forty years ago. But decades of searching were all in vain until the moment when a single picture, hidden within a heretofore unknown book, jumped off the page and caught my eye.

The photo – old, but not faded in the least – shows a train loaded with freshly cut timber.  It sits upon all too familiar looking terrain.  There is track visible in the background, following a roadbed also familiar in its gentle bend.  There are tents and gear strewn about. 

And that is when it hit me that I was staring at the very road upon which I had walked at least a thousand times. That old star train, along with lost logging camp number seven itself was sitting midway between what would become Ahwahnee’s parking lot and mess hall.  It was parked at the very base of what would also become known as Staff Hill.

'Ah-ha!' I whispered aloud.  And then shed that tear in thanks.

Author and sister unwittingly standing - some 50 years later - where the train once stood belching smoke.

Kitchen Confessions

Kitchen Confessions

Noel Laflin

4-20-15

My mother was washing our kitchen floor when her water broke – or so she always told it - and I was on my way.  My father was called from the other room, my brother was left in the care of neighbors, and I made my appearance at a hospital within the hour.  It was the winter of 1952.

 

Eight summers later my mother found me, panic stricken, trying my best to clean up the brown shoe dye I’d spilled on our kitchen floor – probably not far from where her water had broken the previous decade.  I remember her asking me, ‘just-what-in-tarnation’ did I think I was doing with the shoe dye here in the middle of the kitchen floor.  I showed her the two-headed penny that I had created by gluing together two regular old pennies back-to-back.  The brown dye would camouflage the white glue along the edge, I had reasoned. I wanted to always win at a coin toss, I further confessed.  There would forever be a faded dark stain upon that old patch of linoleum honoring my sleight of clumsy hand.

In the spring of 1971 I stood near the faded stain, still stubbornly residing upon our old kitchen floor, trying to explain to my mom why I no longer wished to attend church.  I had discovered that I was an agnostic and hoped she would not be disappointed in my sudden lack of faith.  She dried a dish, placed it in the old cupboard and told me that neither she nor God was disappointed.  ‘Why else would he have given us free will?’ she concluded.

 

It’s the autumn of 1979 and I am in our old kitchen telling my mother that I am gay.  She said she’d always known.  And, she added, 'I've always liked your friends.'  With that kind observation now put to rest, she asked if I would like to stay for lunch.

Eleven winters later, I stood in our old kitchen and nervously broke the news to my mother that I had just tested HIV positive.  It was a time of little hope for diagnoses such as this back then.  She said I’d beat this thing.  Her hope was contagious.

It’s been a quarter of a century since that last conversation in our family’s kitchen. The folks left the old East Anaheim neighborhood long ago.  And although my mother has also been gone for nearly fifteen years, I bet she’d smile at the scene in my own kitchen just now.

 

A middle-aged man is lost in thought as he absently flips a heavy penny - the one recently uncovered in an old childhood box of treasures - over and over again.

   

It comes up heads every time. 

First Dance

First Dance

Noel Laflin

4-15-15

My shirt was neatly pressed,

But I was clearly stressed,

As I had never danced before,

Yet here was I – panicked to the core.

Easier said than done,

This dancing thing, old chum,

But seventh grade was not the place,

To be the first to set the pace.

So boys did gather to the right,

Shy girls avoided all the light,

The skittish clans sought no-man’s-land,

Pretending to just dig the band.

But on a table to one side,

As if to offer some a bribe,

Were mounds of cookies and pink punch,

The very stuff to break this bunch.

Soon boys were hauling off a cup,

Of the pinkish-sweetish stuff,

To some girl that they favored,

Hoping for a ‘yes’ to savor.

To the floor a couple took,

Glancing down with nervous looks,

But found their groove in moments flat,

Forward, sideways, back to back.

Proverbial ice now was broken,

Nary was a word then spoken,

Other than a, ‘care to dance?’,

Leaving nothing up to chance.

But I was nervous  as a flower,

Upon that wall – all in a cower,

Until this girl, with cup in hand,

Approached and nodded toward the band.

And so she led me to the floor,

I didn’t bolt out the door …

Instead I danced and hid my fright,

And overcame my angst that night.

Tracking the Past

Tracking the Past

Noel Laflin

4-8-15

One thing leads to another, you see.

The present quest all began when a boy spent a week at summer camp some fifty years ago.

The lad then devoted the next ten years of his life developing a mad love affair with the very land upon which he returned each summer.
 

The former youngster, now turned older man, presently finds himself pouring over both current-day Google satellite maps and fragile sixty-five-year-old U.S. Geological topography maps – all the while looking for clues from a simpler era.  And several hints, primarily in the tracing of old dirt roads, are still visible - even a century later.  But so many other features have been neatly paved over with the advent of asphalt and concrete.  The San Bernardino Mountains continue to guard their past - covering their tracks.

And so, he turns his attention to old photos of the mountain – those images that have survived both the ravages of time and benign neglect.  He isn’t so interested in the people captured by those early photographers, but rather the lay of the land, its ancient grinding stones, hidden natural springs, snow laden branches of giant Ponderosa pines,  faded trails, smoke-bellowing narrow gage trains, their tracks, and one long forgotten logging camp in particular.

Impressive black and white snippets of its past have been recently brought to his attention.  And although they are few in numbers, their mere discovery has been a great boost to his on-going curiosity.

Thus renewed in spirit, he reads exhaustively the countless histories, including speculations as to the type of life led by the ancient ones first inhabiting the mountain some two thousand years ago.  Notations, footnotes and references take him from site to site, blog to blog, small mountain community newsletter to newsletter, oral history to oral history, interview to interview, and book to book.

 

Looming large through much of the research is the impact of nineteenth century settlers and trailblazers in search of lumber - the discovery of gold and water and grizzlies - the creation of boomtowns, lakes and sawmills - and the eventual extinction of the very creature that once freely roamed the mountain but is now nothing more than a faded reminder emblazoned upon a flag.

 

Planned excursions to three different museums are on the horizon.  More books have been tracked down and ordered.  Local historians, much better versed in the land than he, have been sought out, their writings and musings devoured.

The former camper wishes there were folks still alive from this by-gone era.  But like the ancient ones, along with the grizzlies who once wandered the land, they have all passed from sight.

So, books, maps, old photos, museums, personal memories, and the insightful thoughts of fellow former boys-now-turned-men will have to suffice at present.

 

But you know, one thing does seem to lead to another.

Ultimately, it keeps leading him back to camp.

And he finds it to be a very pleasant pastime.