“Do you believe in a higher power?” I had been living away from home for many years, had a family and life of my own. I was an adult far from childhood. But you are never prepared for the death of a parent, and my father’s death affected me profoundly. I was in Poland when he fell seriously ill. My sister called and I caught the first plane home. I think I was over Canada when he died. I admire his last words. As my sister reported, when asked how he was doing, he replied, “I can’t complain.”
For a long time after, I was out of balance – a kind of vague malaise. Then I had a remarkable dream. Words will not be adequate to convey the feeling, and the feeling was what made it remarkable. I felt that in the eternal present. Everybody was there, past, present & future. I don’t try to explain it. My malaise lifted and I have not felt it again. Well, almost never, which is remarkable since it has been more than two decades.
I firmly believe in a higher power, with the stipulation that I can never understand in any rational way what that means. The explanation lies with faith in … faith. That is not say we cannot know anything. Raw truth – the meaning OF life – is unavailable to the mortal man, but we can come to a likeness of truth by seeking meaning IN life. We humans are hardwired to seek meaning in life and to persist in the journey that we know will never be completed. All of us must find our own way.
Some people seek truth by meditating or studying ancient texts. I have great respect for those who do these things with rigor and commitment. I never got into meditation. I fall asleep. If that counts, I am adept at my daily meditations. And although I still sometimes enjoy parsing ancient texts, that is not where I find answers to profound questions. IMO, those answers cannot be found in the intellectual sense but can be perceived. I learn the parts by study and effort; I perceive how they fit together -the whole – only when in motion and engaged in some activity. Just don’t sit still. My favored way is to immerse in nature and try to recognize natural principles, accepting that the joy & connections come from searching, not finding. I welcome a new horizon opening after I summit each ridge. I recognize that is my way and not the only way.
Chrissy and the kids were down to do some planting. The day was okay, not as warm or sunny as we would like but not very cold. A good day to plant trees.
They got around 1700 in the ground before it got dark. It was hard work, but I think everybody got some good memories. We all stayed overnight in South Hill Fairfied Inn. and had supper at South Cracker Barrel Old Country Store
I stole a couple pictures from Marisa’s post, the planters and boomer. Chrissy tended the fire and Boomer, as you see in the second picture. Third picture shows the boxes of pine waiting to be put in. Last are hunting dogs. The local guys were running their dogs to hunt deer. Bear hunters were out yesterday. They got three bear so far this year. Until about ten years ago, there were no bear around here. Now they have moved in and there are lots of them. The dogs do not pay much attention to people. They are friendly but disinterested.
I never got to know my mother after I was an adult. She died when I was seventeen. So my memories are seen through the eyes of a child or at best a teenager. The one thing that I remember very clearly was that I was always sure that she loved me. Everything else is less important after that and I know that she shaped a lot of my character.
Our house was the center of family activity while my mother was there. She had three sisters (Mabel, Florence & Lorraine) and two brothers (Harold & Hermann) and we had much of the extended family, minus Harold, who I don’t remember ever meeting. The family didn’t get along with his wife, Sophie. I don’t know why. All the other aunts and cousins would come over to play cards. Usually the cousin would come too, so while I had only one sister, I feel like I had lots of siblings. I really don’t know what card games they played. I just recall the constant chatter of a kind of mixed German-English. “Wat’s spielt is spielt” and “now who’s the high hund?”
Ma
As I wrote above, I didn’t get to know my mother as much as I would have liked to and I am astonished at how much I don’t remember or maybe never knew. Kids are rarely interested in their parents’ life stories until they get older, maybe because they just cannot believe their parents were ever young enough to have anything interesting to say. Besides, kids in my generation spent most of their time outside and away from the house. Parents and children have much more intense relationships these days, if for no other reason than that they are together when parents drive the kids everywhere and arrange various teams, trainings and activities. We didn’t have a car and we didn’t belong to any organized activities. I spent most of my days hanging around outside with my friends who lived nearby and I didn’t ask much.
I know she was born Virginia Johanna Haase (Mariza has her middle name). Her father was Emil and her mother was Anna (Grosskreutz). She grew up on the South Side of Milwaukee and married my father after the war, as they always called World War II. Of her childhood, I know little. Her father was an engineer who remained employed throughout the Great Depression, evidently a rare achievement. My father’s family was less fortunate.
Virginia was an unenthusiastic student in HS and dropped out of Bay View HS (same place I later went) in the tenth grade, but she always encouraged education for my sister and me. She worked at Allen Bradley during WWII but not long enough to get Social Security benefits. After she married my father, she no longer did any paying work, besides occasionally free-lance catering with her sisters. My mother made really good German potato salad, which was always in demand at family gatherings.
Virginia Haase was phenomenally good-natured and I remember her always cheerful. My father told me that he was lucky to get my mother to marry him, since she was extremely popular because of her open personality. She later became a woman of substance, as you can see in the bottom picture. My father was fond of big women, so I guess they had a good thing going.
My father enjoyed beer every day, but Ma drank only a little and only once a year at Christmas. She had one bottle of Gordon’s Gin in the downstairs refrigerator. She had a drink at Christmas and that bottle was down there as long as I remember, only gradually emptying. It was still half full when she died.
Sad to say that my most vivid memories come from the end of my mother’s life. I was riding my bike up to the Kettle Moraine State Forest when my mother went into the hospital for the last time. It was a big trip that I had planned for a long time. My parents kept my mother’s urgent condition from me so as not to ruin my camping trip. When I called from the pay phone at Mauthe Lake, my father told me that ma was sleeping. I thought that odd. She always wanted to talk to me, but didn’t think that much about it. When I got home she had gone to the hospital. I never saw her again.
We talked on the phone, but my mother didn’t want us to visit her in the hospital during the last days. I feel guilty about that still, but it was a good decision. She wanted us to remember her from better times and I do indeed remember her healthy and happy instead of what I imagine it must have been after the chemotherapy and ravages of cancer. My father got a call from the hospital about dawn on the day before my mother died. I heard him talking on the phone and inferred what was happening, but didn’t come out of my room when he went to the hospital. We didn’t handle the whole thing very well, but in retrospect I am not sure how it would have worked out any better if we did things differently. I lived in dread the whole day, but she didn’t die that day. I know it is illogical but I convinced myself that she would be out of the woods if she only survived the day, that one more day.
But miracles happen only on television & in the movies.
They cut down the last of the big elm trees soon after Ma died. I thought it was symbolic and I paid special attention. She loved those trees and felt bad as they succumbed one-after-another to the Dutch elm disease until there was only one left standing. The tree by the alley was the last survivor near the house, and Ma was happy to have at least one left. It was in its yellow fall colors as I watched it fall to the ground. It was a pleasant fall day with wispy clouds.
I don’t want to end on this sorrowful note because that is not the end of the story. Among many other things, my mother left me a special legacy. Ma followed my various interests and encouraged them. All I needed to do was mention an interest and soon a book appeared.
I thank my mother for all the books on dinosaurs, ecology and history. Even more important, she gave me the gift of reading itself. A well organized or impressive child I was not, but my mother had confidence in me anyway in a way that only a loving mother can.
My first grade teacher put me into the slow reading group and I lived up to her low expectations of me. My mother complained to the school, essentially arguing that I was not as dumb as I seemed and my problem was not that the reading challenge was too great, but that it was not great enough to hold my interest. She convinced my teacher to put me into a higher reading group. Although I couldn’t meet the lower standards, I could exceed the higher ones with Ma’s help. She made flash cards and we studied not only the day’s lesson but also anticipated the next one.
Being able to do more but not less – this kind of paradox is not uncommon. I wonder how many kids w/o mothers as good as mine were/are trapped by the gentle cruelty of low expectations. Ma saved me from all that. She just expected me to succeed. I did, by my standards at least.
Thanks Ma. Without you, I would be nothing. I wish you could have met the grandchildren. They would have loved you. It has been decades since we talked. Memory fades, but I have not forgotten that I was so very lucky to have you there for me.
Went to Alex’s commission ceremony today. Mariza, Brendan & Espen went too. Chrissy got to pin on his bars. Alex is going into signals, with the permutation that he will be part of a new cyber corp formed in Northern Virginia. I am not exactly what they will be doing. He will go down to Georgia for a few months’ training in September.
The unit has a real cool name. They are called “shadow warriors.” I think they may have got the name from a video game, but it is still cool. It is something we need for our country to fight that information warfare battle, and after his service is done he will have a useful skill.
Alex and I visited Dinosaur National Monument, near Vernal, Utah. It is literally a dinosaur quarry.
What is now Utah was wet and tropical in the Jurassic Period, and a river ran through it. This river attracted dinosaurs and over the eons some of them died and fell in.The river washed their remains together, where they were covered by sediment and some of the bones turned to stone. There is a survivor bias among the bones. Small animal remains were just crushed, while the big ones persisted long enough to turn into fossils.
With changes in climate, the river ran dry and the former river bed was buried. But the earth never rests. As plates moved, the former river bed was tilted and thrust up to the surface. The dinosaurs rested in the rock until 1909 when Earl Douglass of the Carnegie Museum went to Utah to search for dinosaur skeletons. This is where he found the mother lode. The four corner area is the richest dinosaur region in the world. It is not so much that there were more dinosaurs living here, or that there are more preserved here, but the dry conditions and exposed rock makes them easy to find. It is also the case that there were/are more people looking for fossils in the U.S. than in most other places. It is likely that the local Native Americans occasionally stumbled on these fossils, and may have noticed them, but with no scientific or cultural infrastructure, they remained only curiosities, maybe not even that.
The first picture is Alex in front of the dinosaur quarry wall, now enclosed and protected. Next is Alex in front of the model stegosaurus. It was nice to see his enthusiasm, only a little more concealed than when he first came here when he was only four years old. The third picture are model dinosaurs. Notice the model ranger to give perspective. Penultimate is the lonely and winding road. There is an amazing amount of space out here. Many stretches were you get no bars on your mobile phone. Last is a grouse wing collection spot. It is not mere morbid collecting. Researchers use the wings to study bird numbers and migration patterns.
I thought maybe I would post the beer picture first this time rather than last of the day. This one was taken at the Vernal Brewery. Alex said that I merely have the same photo each time, so I changed it up by putting on my hat.
Vernal Brewery has a nice outdoor seating area and it is conveniently located across the street from the dinosaur museum. Alex and I went to the museum and then just walked over.
I have been enjoying my time with Alex and I am happy to think that he is enjoying his time with me. One of his friends was supposed to go along but dropped out because he could not get off from work. I feel bad for Alex, but it worked out better for me. My role on the trip would have been much more passive. I think it likely that I would avoided some of the more strenuous hikes, like the one to Angel’s Landing.
This is the second time Alex and I have been to the dinosaur places in Vernal. He does not remember well the first time in 1992, when the whole family drove from Spokane, Washington to Washington, DC between our assignments in Norway & Poland. FSOs get “home leave” to be reacquainted with our country. On our home leaves, we crossed the country going east from San Francisco to by train, from Seattle, Spokane & Phoenix by car. Now I have to do it on my own, but I still want to do it.
As I sat in the Vernal Brewery across from my adult son thinking of the boy so excited by the same dinosaurs that I could still see across the street, I felt acutely the passage of time. Looking down at my aging hand, I doubted I would ever pass this way again. This might be the last big hiking trip with Alex and we will certainly never again do a family cross country trip. Driving with three kids asking when we were going to get there was not fun at the time, but it is remembered better than it was lived.
My first picture is my beer photo with the permutation of a hat. Next is Vernal Brewery. When you look at the building, one thought should enter your mind – it could have been built faster and better in the same form using cross laminated timber. That is what popped into my head.
Number three the the traditional duel between triceratops and tyrannosaurus. It was standard fare for the dino myths of my childhood. Scientists now believe that such things never happened, that tyrannosaurus was colorfully feathered and that they didn’t walk around in that clumsy clipped kangaroo fashion. But besides that, it is accurate and it was the best science at the time. Next is a full skeleton of a long necked dinosaur. Finally is something called a “mochops”. I never heard of it before, but I appreciated the quizzical look on its face. I noticed that several of the animals depicted have looks like that. I think that is more the result of the artist than the science. Maybe he used his dog as a template.
Glen Canyon We went over Glen Canyon Dam. It is about as tall as Hoover Dam, but a lot narrower and impounds less water.
First is the Colorado River below the dam, next the dam and the river above. Last three are from the dirt road that we took to Buckskin Canyon. The colors and contrasts are very bright here. Alex pointed out that blue and orange contrast on the color wheel, since lots of the ground is reddish-orange it sets off strongly from the blue skies.
Buckskin Canyon We hiked down and through Buckskin Canyon. This is an iconic slot canyon often featured in magazines. It is an easy hike except for one place where a big rock has blocked the way. The canyon is very narrow and you can understand how a flash flood would be deadly, but we had blue skies and little sign of water in general.
Farmington Latest in our travel: beer drinking, filling up with gas at Sinclair and eating at Porter’s Smokehouse. We had a couple of flights of beer, which is why the cups are so small. You can see me, Sinclair, Porter’s Restaurant and Alex in the wash on the way to Buckskin Canyon.
My father’s CCC records came in the mail today. I didn’t learn too much but what I learned was interesting and it was interesting to see a facsimile of the originals that he held and signed.
He was seventeen years old when he went far away from home. He was 6′ tall and weighed only 145 lbs. The report says that he had dark brown hair and green eyes. There was a place for “nationality” and they did not mean citizenship. My grandparents were listed as Polish. Grandpa had a sixth grade education. Grandma was a scholar who had graduated the eight grade. Young John Matel dropped out of HS in the tenth grade. CCC provided education to its young charges. I was surprised to find on my father’s report that he was not interested in education. Later in life he respected education and wanted it for us. I also learned that my father attended vocational school, studied shoe-making. I don’t recall him ever mentioning that. He didn’t keep up with it.
Like the other common laborers, my father received $30 a month, of which he had to, by regulation, send $22 back to his family. The CCC helped the young men by giving them work and discipline and helped the families back home with supplemental income that they earned. And the CCC boys did valuable conservation work, some of which we can still see in our parks. It was the most popular of the New Deal programs for a good reason. The CCC was probably the best thing that happened to my father in his young life. I have the impression that joined the CCC semi-voluntarily after some undisclosed trouble with the law. As a city kid, this was my father’s first sustained contact with nature. He worked in Pattison State Park near Superior, Wisconsin.
He did only one stint with CCC, starting and ending as a common laborer, from January 14, 1939 until June 30, 1939, which means that in that part of Wisconsin he worked only during the winter. His record indicates that he has scarlet fever when he was 13 years old and a tonsillectomy in 1929, but was otherwise healthy. In service, he missed five days of work because of the flu and was AWOL for two days. What he did during that time was not specified and there was no follow up. When he mustered out, he owed the USG $1.50 for “clothes and equipment” but otherwise had not debts or demerits.
After the CCC, John got a job with Medusa Cement, where he stayed for the rest of his working life except during his service with the Army Air Corps from 1942-5. I was surprised when I found that the old man served only six months in the CCC. It seems to have loomed bigger in his life than that short time would imply. He talked about it frequently and with some fondness. It changed his life and so made mine possible. Thanks CCC.
For Mariza- they have a statue of Boomer at Vatican Museum. Who knew? The other picture is Apollo that was nearby. This is the most famous Apollo statue, thought to embody perfection. Looks okay.
