October 2021 – lyndajoneswriter.com

October 16, 2021

My Encounter With A Bear

Here is another story from long ago. A story that I haven’t told very many people.

It was August, 1964. I had spent another wonderful summer living in the woods of eastern Iowa. working as a camp counselor at Camp Hitaga. It was an idyllic experience ~ with great friends, horses, a swimming pool, and canoeing on the river. I was stationed in the nature cabin although, in truth, I knew very little about nature. I was there because I knew even less about horses and canoeing.

At the end of the season every year a few counselors traveled to Ely, Minnesota, at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area for five days of camping and canoeing.

I talked my way onto the upcoming trip because my family was willing to host the group at my house in North St. Paul, about halfway between Cedar Rapids and Ely. I had never canoed before but I loved being outdoors. I was excited about being part of the group.

There were six of us, all together. My friend, Jymie, who spent the summer operating the camp store was also part of the trip. She had never been canoeing either. Luckily, the other four counselors knew what they were doing. They were experienced canoeists and had taken this trip before. They were strong and hardy. They knew about scientific phenomenon like weather and currents. Most importantly, they knew how to read a map.

Our first stop was to find an outfitter in Ely to sell us enough food to last the entire time we would be away. We rented three large canoes, a big tent, and six sleeping bags. The outfitter drove us to the drop off point. We climbed into our canoes and paddled out into the water.

The Boundary Waters is a series of lakes, along the Minnesota-Canada border. Canoeist paddle from lake to lake, and portage (carry) their canoes and equipment along trails that go from one lake to another. Portaging is hard work. Although the trails are well marked, sometimes they are long and steep.

A few counselors were able to put a canoe on their shoulders, and meander down the path. Jymie and I, both skinny back then, usually carried bags of equipment. Often it took several trips, back and forth along the path before we were able to drop our canoes back in the water and paddle for an hour or more before it was time to either portage again, or stop and set up camp for the night.

Not only had Jymie and I never been canoeing, we had never camped before. Setting up camp meant putting up the tent, building a fire, and deciding what to cook for dinner. After dinner we tied our cooking utensils and remaining food in waterproof bags, and hung them high in the trees so bears couldn’t reach them. We hadn’t seen any bears while we were canoeing, but one counselor pointed out a pile of bear poop along the trail as we were setting up camp. We knew we had to be careful.

We bedded down for the night, snug in our tent and our sleeping bags. About midnight, we heard a horrible racket outside.

“It’s a bear,” someone whispered.

“What’s it doing?” I asked.

“Shhh… I think it found our food.”

And then we heard rustling outside our tent. Accompanied by heavy breathing. Heavy bear breathing! The bear was right outside our tent, brushing up against our sleeping bags as it circled the tent.

As a group, six young women stopped breathing. I was terrified. The bear was right outside. It looked in the window of the tent and took a long look at us before finally ambling off into the woods.

The next morning we checked for damages. The bear had eaten everything we had. It ate whole loaves of bread. It ripped open a can of peas, and guzzled it down. The bear ate our eggs, cans of tomato paste, and opened packages of pasta. Everything was gone! Coffee and sugar. Oatmeal and lunch meat. There was nothing left.

One of the experienced counselors knew there was a small frontier store somewhere along our route. We stopped another group of canoeists to ask for directions. We had enough money with us to buy more supplies ~ mostly bread and peanut butter. Maybe a package of cookies.

From then on, we tied our provisions even higher in the trees. We continued our trip, grateful to be back on the water. And now, more than sixty-five years later, I am especially grateful that I am here to tell you the story of how I survived. How I was almost eaten by a bear.

October 9, 2021

A Pandemic Tragedy ~ 1918

This is a story of a good man who died too soon, and the family he left behind. It is a story of a hard-working Irishman, with a wife and two small daughters, who died at the age of forty-nine, a casualty of the influenza epidemic. John (Jack) Gorman was the father of my sweet mother-in-law, Dorothy Gorman Hein. Dorothy was eight years old when her father died. Her little sister, Margaret, was six. The year was 1918.

John Gorman was born April 9, 1869, in Donagal, Ireland, one of the poorest counties in all of Ireland. According to family stories, when John and the other Irishmen arrived in New York City, the locals threw rocks at them and shouted, “Get back on the train. We don’t want you here.”

And that’s what they did. John and his fellow Irishmen, got on a train heading west. They came to Colorado, in search of gold and silver and plenty of work in the mines.

John rode as far as Denver and eventually arrived in Nederland, Colorado. I would love to know how he got there. Did he take a stage coach from Denver? Did he go to Boulder first? Maybe Central City? How old was he at the time?

We know that John did not just work in the mines, although he must have when he first arrived. By 1911, he was also working in partnership with another Irishman, Jim Nolan. According to newspaper clippings, they were assessors ~ evaluating the quality of Pine Creek gold, part of the Apex Mine system.

Later, John purchased James Noonan’s interest in mines in St. Anthony of the Lake Gulch. He sunk a shaft in St. Anthony of the Lake Gulch and by 1911, he and another partner, John Smith, successfully mined gold that was worth a considerable amount of money.

I tell you all of this, to illustrate that John Gorman was a smart, ambitious man. An immigrant who was determined to make his fortune mining gold in Boulder and Clear Creek counties.

In 1909, John met an Irishwoman, who was also hard-working and determined to survive a hard life in the Colorado mountains. Margaret (Maggie) McNulty was born in Hannibal Missouri. She moved to Memphis, and then came west to Central City, where she met Jack. Together they had two girls, Dorothy, born in 1910, and Margaret, born in 1912.

From all accounts, Jack and Maggie, had a good life. They lived in a small house in Nederland and Jack worked in the local mine. Dorothy remembered seeing her father ride his donkey up the hill to the mine. When he arrived at work, he gave the donkey’s rump a slap, and the donkey turned around and came home by himself.

All of that ended in 1918, when Jack died of complications of the influence pandemic. The family was devastated. Maggie and the girls had just enough money to come to Denver, and move into a little house at 500 South Broadway. They sold candy out of the front room, and lived in the back. The girls attended St. Francis de Sales Catholic school.

Maggie later went to work at the Good Heart laundry, near the corner of Broadway and Alameda. The work was grueling and the pay was low. It was a very hard life for Maggie and her girls.

The girls grew up, married good, hard-working men, much like their father. Dorothy married Bill Hein and Margaret married Harry Gessing, two of the finest men on earth. Margaret and Dorothy were more than sisters. They were always dear friends, who loved to laugh, and dance, and have fun.

Maggie moved in with Dorothy and Bill and their six children. One day she was hit by a car, crossing the street as she left the Shamrock Bar with a friend. Maggie’s leg was broken and never healed well. She eventually lost her leg and had to move to a nursing home, where she died.

Jim Hein, Maggie’s grandson, remembers his Nana as a woman who lived upstairs, wore a big fur coat, liked to tell stories and laugh. We can only imagine how her life would have been different if only her husband, Jack, hadn’t died ~ much too young, in the pandemic of 1918.

October 2, 2021

Dia de Los Muertos

November 2nd, Dia de Los Muertos, Day of the Dead, is a major national holiday in Mexico. It incorporates Aztec traditions and coincides with All Souls Day in the Catholic religion.

Unlike people in the United States who avoid talking about death, Mexicans often joke about dying to demonstrate that they are not afraid. They are determined not to let death stand in the way of their joy of living.

In the days leading up to November 2, bakeries (panaderias) prepare bread in the shape of skulls. In Mazatlán, people put together elaborate skeleton costumes and participate in a raucous nighttime parade throughout downtown.

In small towns, families decorate their homes with altars covered in marigolds, photographs, and articles that remind them of family members who have died. It is a day to remember and celebrate loved ones, to share joy and tears, laughter, stories and plenty of cerveza and tequilla.

In recognition of Dia de Los Muertos, I share this tribute to my father, Robert Jones, who died in 1996.

My earliest memory of my father happened when I was about four years old. My family lived upstairs, above my grandparents, in a small home across from the local Catholic church. I sat on the floor, watching my father sleep on the sofa next to me. My brother and I were eating an orange and we methodically put the orange seeds in my father’s ear.

By the time he woke up, my father’s ear was over-flowing with discarded orange seeds. That event is significant for two reasons. It established that my father could sleep through anything and that he allowed us children tremendous leeway.

Adults in my family have always claimed that the ability to sleep anywhere is the sign of a clear conscience. In my father’s case, that was certainly true.

I miss my father tremendously. He taught me to fully appreciate comic books, holidays, gardening, Alfred E. Newman, horse-racing and music. He was the only father I knew who could click his heels and wiggle his ears. Who would play Sousa marches on his trumpet on the Fourth of July and Taps at night.

The last piece of music I heard him play was Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I never heard him play so well, or so sweetly. He died four months later. He was the most honorable, kind, gentle man I’ve ever know.

Adios, Papí.