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Bats

The day my son, Jason, discovered a dead bat on my terrace was a lucky day, indeed. Only in retrospect, can I say that.

At the end of June, I noticed an unusual amount of animal droppings in my terrace. I thought it was from mice. After all, when I moved into my new home, one of the first things I did was call an exterminator to move mountains of mouse poop and dead mice from inside my home. I hadn’t seen signs of mice since last October.

When I noticed the increased pile of rodent poop, I brought mouse poison in from the garage and placed it in the terrace. It didn’t work. The droppings only became more obvious. Then I saw what I thought was a dead mouse. Luckily, Jason was coming to give me a ride to my grandson’s baseball game.

“Jason, while you are here, can you get rid of this dead mouse for me? I’m squeamish around dead animals.”

“Mom, that’s not a dead mouse. That’s a bat!”

Jason scooped up the bat, put it in a paper bag, and dropped it in the trash. I googled “bat poop” and learned that “it’s often mistaken for mouse poop.” I called the exterminator right away.

My original exterminator only deals with mice, rats and bugs. He told me to call his friend, Jake, who owns his own company, Envirocritters, and “relocates” small animals, including bats.

Jake came the next day and confirmed that I definitely had bat poop in my terrace and bats in my attic. He showed me where the bats had come in from holes near the roof. They had probably been coming in for years, and recently migrated back to Colorado from their winter home. He explained how he would plug the holes and then add exclusion traps that would allow the bats to fly out of the house, but not return.

I loved getting to know Jake. He is a happy, friendly guy who loves his job relocating animals ~ except maybe occasionally when an animal doesn’t take kindly to his invitation to “move along.”

In addition to removing bats, Jake gets rid of squirrels, skunks, raccoons, pigeons and woodpeckers, snakes (including rattlesnakes), foxes and coyotes, gophers and voles, bees and wasps, and rabbits. When he comes across a box turtle, he keeps it in an enclosure in his back yard. They are his pets.

“Oh, ha!” I told Jake that I had a rabbit living under my house. He said he could relocate the rabbit, as well.

Soon the bats were gone. The pile of poop got smaller every day. Fredy (my friend who lives upstairs with his wife, Paula) found one more dead bat trying to escape through the attic fan. I saw the last bat fly out of the terrace on the 4th of July.

But this is not where my story ends. Oh, no! After the bats were gone, I discovered a much more horrible pest in my house: Bat Bugs! They are a first cousin to bed bugs, but feast on bat blood. When bats are removed, they turn to humans. Ay, no!!!

Fredy saw two live bat bugs upstairs, and I saw two more in my living quarters. I took pictures and sent them to my original exterminator, who confirmed that bat bugs look like bed bugs, “but their bite is much worse.”. He said he could get rid of them “but it isn’t easy.”  I was lucky that no one had been bitten (yet!) and there were no brown stains on the sheets.

The process of getting rid of bat bugs is the same as for bed bugs: Lots of heat and strong poison. All bedding and clothing had to be washed in hot water and dried for 30 minutes at the hottest possible dryer temperature. Mattresses needed to be removed from the beds, and placed upright on the floor. All drawers needed to be emptied and removed from the dressers.

Furniture needed to be moved away from walls, exposing all baseboards. Clean clothes needed to be stored in black plastic bags until the whole process was finished.

Jason helped me move furniture and carry bags of clothing and bedding to and from the basement. The exterminator came last week for round one and returns today to finish the job. With luck, poison, and the Colorado heat, every last one of the nasty bugs will be dead.

And then starts the process of putting everything back together again.

What will be my most lasting memory of the Summer of 2024? You guessed it. It is the year of bats, bugs and bunnies.

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Dorothy’s Cat

I remember my sweet mother-in-law every day of my life. She died in 2008, at the age of 98. I often wear her fuzzy bathrobe when I get up in the morning. I wear one of her sweatshirts it the winter, when it is cold outside. Snuggled in my memories of her, I am cozy and warm.

I loved spending time with Dorothy. She was pretty and funny, sweet and a little naive. But Dorothy was also determined and brave. She survived losing her father in the influenza outbreak when she was eight years old. She survived diphtheria and being quarantined at Denver General Hospital for six weeks when she was ten. She was the mother of six children, two of whom died before she did. Even as she approached 100 years old, she was determined to stay in her own home.

For many years, Dorothy and I spent every Friday evening together. Often we would go to the neighborhood restaurant for dinner and a glass of wine. Other times, we would sit in Dorothy’s kitchen and talk about our week. At various times, Dorothy shared her home with her husband, her children, her nephew, her mother, and Jim’s dog, Adolph.

Adolph was a medium-size, brown dog. Not a big dog, but not small, either. He was part Airedale and mostly mutt. Adolph was happy and  lovable, but not especially smart. Although Dorothy tolerated Adolph, her real love were her cats. She nearly always had a cat in the house. When one died, usually from crossing busy Grant Street, another one showed up, asking to be adopted.

One Friday afternoon, I stopped in to see Dorothy and I knew something was wrong. Her grey kitty was meowing around the kitchen. Dorothy poured each of us a glass of wine.

“Is everything ok?” I asked. “You seem a little flustered.”

“I am flustered. I had a weird phone call today.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. It was a man’s voice. He said he saw me at church.”

“Are you sure you don’t know him?”

“His voice wasn’t familiar at all. He said he wanted to see my pussy.”

“Oh, my. That’s terrible. What did you say?”

“I was very cross with him. I asked him why he would say such a thing. My cat was right there in the kitchen with me and I wasn’t going to take her outside to show her to him or anyone else.”

“What did the man say then?”

“Nothing. He hung up.”

Dorothy told that same story to everyone she saw that weekend. No one had the heart to tell her why we thought the story was funny.

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D-Day

They called him “Doc.”  As a pharmacist Mate 3, my father was the highest ranking medical officer on his ship, an LST (tank landing ship) used during WWII.

Dad graduated from pharmacy college at the University of Minnesota in June, 1941. Pearl Harbor was attacked six months later. My father knew he didn’t want to be drafted into the Army, so he enlisted in the Navy in June, 1942. He was twenty-four years old.

Dad did not go through traditional “boot camp” but was sent, instead, to the Great Lakes Naval Hospital, north of Chicago. His first assignment was the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, where my mother joined him. He then moved to the Naval Station in Geneva, New York, where he and my mother were married and where I was born. In June, 1943, Dad was sent to the naval base in Maryland. My mother and I went to live with Dad’s family in St. Paul.

Dad’s assignment, the LST 492, was his home for the next two years. The ship left Maryland and  traveled to England to prepare for the first wave on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944.

The following words are from an article written by David Chrisinger, published in the New York Times Magazine, June 5, 2019: “Most of the men in the first wave never stood a chance. In the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, thousands of American soldiers crawled down swaying cargo nets and thudded into steel landing craft bound for the Normandy coast.”

My father’s ship was one of those landing crafts. When they reached Normandy, the doors to the LST swung open, rolling out tanks and army men into the ocean. As a medical officer, my father stayed on the ship with the other sailors, waiting to treat wounded American and German prisons of war, alike.

“Allied troops kept landing, wave after wave, and by midday they had crossed the 300 yards of sandy killing ground, scaled the bluffs and overpowered the German defenses. By the end of the day, the beaches had been secured and the heaviest fighting had moved at least a mile inland. In the biggest and most complicated amphibious operation in military history, it wasn’t bombs, artillery or tanks that overwhelmed the Germans; it was men — many of them boys, really — slogging up the beaches and crawling over the corpses of their friends that won the Allies a toehold at the western edge of Europe.” ~ David Chrisinger

Going through old files, I came across a letter, written by Lt. Commander, Ralph Newman, commander of the LST 492, to my mother on July 4, 1944:

“I would like to take this opportunity to write a few words about your husband, Robert. We point with some pride to the record of the good old 492. No one has so much as broken a little finger. And no one has more friends than Bob. The “doc” has the respect of his officers and shipmates, alike.’

From Normandy, the LST 492 traveled to North Africa, Italy and Sicily, with German POW’s still onboard. On August 15, 1944, they were part of the second D-Day, invasion, Operation Dragoon, an assault against German forces in Southern France that eventually led to the liberation of Paris.

After leaving the  south of  France in September, 1944. The LST 492 was assigned to the Pacific fleet, and traveled to Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines and the Wake Islands. The ship was based in Okinawa. Japan, when bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When asked about his feelings about the Atom Bomb, my father later wrote, “I felt relieved that the war was going to be terminated and I could return to my family and my normal lifestyle. I was happy only for myself. I had no feelings for the eventual consequences of it. I suppose that was selfish. Now I’m don’t believe it was justified.”

My father was always a kind-heart, quiet man. I can’t imagine how difficult war must have been for him. But he has also a man who always did what he was called upon to do. Later, reflecting back on his time in the Navy, my father commented that at the time, he felt that WWII was necessary to defeat Hitler. But overall, he was opposed to war, which he labeled as  “senseless.”

Every year, on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, my father took his trumpet out of its case, stood outside in the dark, and played Taps. I imagine he thought of his days on the LST 492  as those sweet sounds floated through the air, for all of the neighbors to hear.

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Johnny

Johnny and his mother, Gail, lived on my floor in Heather Gardens. I am using their real names because they are no long alive. Gail died on Christmas Day. Johnny died this spring. They were two of my favorite, most memorable, neighbors. I am one of the few people who would say that.

I believe each person has a story. After we die, there is one story that becomes our legacy. Gail’s legacy is that she was born profoundly deaf. That is her story. But she was also a very bright, social woman who had a college degree and raised two sons. Her speech was almost impossible to understand but that didn’t stop her from being the first person to welcome  me to the building. She was always happy to see me. Even as I was getting ready to move and she had advanced dementia and was scaring people, Gail remained one of my favorite people.

Johnny’s story is that he was homeless before he moved in to take care of his mother. That is his legacy, but he was so much more than a dutiful son. He was a tall, unkempt man who was a licensed electrician. He preferred to sleep outside. He made friends easily (except in my building) because he was kind and generous. He was creative and loved to play tricks on people. He decorated his door in elaborate motifs for every holiday. He was especially fond of St. Patrick’s Day and thought of himself as an overgrown leprechaun. Once he decorated his doorway in giant spiders.

Johnny had a special love for his homeless friends, a love that was not shared by the residents of my building. He hired a woman named Marie, who may or may not have been his common-law wife, to move in to his take care of Gail so he could earn money as an on-call electrician for the local electrician’s union.

The bond between Gail and Marie was obvious. Whereas other people fought with Gail and insisted they were right, Marie never told her no. When Gail wanted to play games, they played games. When Gail wanted to put together jigsaw puzzles, they did puzzles. If Gail didn’t want to take a shower, Marie took a shower herself, and called it “good enough.” Marie cooked food and Gail ate it. Gail stopped going out in the hallway and bothering people. Marie did their laundry in the community laundry room, even though she could hear the mean things that the residents said to her. I thought she was a skinny saint in rags and purple hair.

After Marie moved in, Johnny gradually started inviting some of his other homeless friends to stop by, as well. They came to say hello to Gail and Marie. Many of them came to take a shower and wash their hair. They left after about an hour, clean and happy. I liked talking to them. Many of them were intelligent people who had made some very bad choices in their lives. Most of them still had all their teeth.

One night in May, 2023, I rode down in the elevator with a newly washed young man and his bicycle. I wished him a good night and then told him that I was on my way to meet some friends. I was celebrating my 80th birthday. The man shook my hand and then reached into his back pocket for his billfold. He took out the only money he had, a five dollar bill, and gave it to me.

“Happy Birthday!” he said.

“Oh, no. I can’t take your money.”

“But I want you to have it. It isn’t everyday that you turn eighty years old.”

“That’s true. But if you really want me to have a happy birthday, you will take that money and buy yourself something to eat.”

My last day in the building, I knocked on Gail’s door to say goodby. She wasn’t wearing any clothes and obviously didn’t remember who i was. She looked happy. I told Marie to let Johnny know that I came to say goodby.

Three months later Gail died in hospice care. Six months later, Johnny also died. He had multiple forms of cancer and was in terrible pain. We never knew he was sick.

May Johnny and Gail rest in peace. I will hold them in my heart forever.

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Memorial Day

 

 

Before Memorial Day became  known as “The Day The Pools Open” it was called Decoration Day. It was a day to decorate soldiers’ graves in honor of their memory. In my small town, families decorated the graves of loved ones in the local cemetery, whether they were soldiers or not. I loved going to the cemetery with my mother and grandmother on Memorial Day to plant flowers on the Hunt family graves.

I’ve always liked going to cemeteries. They are never spooky or depressing. Being from a small town, I knew most of the family names at St. Mary’s Cemetery in North St. Paul.. They were the names of my classmates at St. Peter School. Schmidt…Roy…Luger…Olson …Scanlon … Knospe. They were all there. Some of my classmates were there on Memorial Day, too, planting flowers just like we did.

I don’t remember what kind of flowers my mother planted every year. I don’t remember if she planted the same thing or not. I think they were probably small and easy to grow. Maybe zinnias or marigolds?

Mostly I remember there was a small grave next to the Hunt family plot. It was smaller than the other graves and was always decorated with yellow pansies. Every year my mother would tell the same story. The grave belonged to a little boy who died before he was old enough to go to school. His mother and grandmother came every year and surrounded the grave in yellow flowers because it was his favorite color. It was the most beautiful grave I’ve ever seen.

As I got older, and learned to ride a bike, I often rode through the cemetery in the evening, after dinner. It was a quiet, friendly place, near Silver Lake. Later, after I moved to Denver, my grandmother was also buried in st. Mary’s Cemetery, next to her husband and her son, my mother’s brother, Frank, who died when he was thirteen. I haven’t been back to St. Mary’s Cemetery in a very long time. I wonder if anyone still plants flowers there on Memorial Day?

Now both of my parents are buried at Fort Snelling military cemetery. It is an especially beautiful place on Memorial Day. There are flags on every tombstone to honor the soldiers and their spouses.

My father was proud of his service in the Navy during World War II. He wanted to be buried at Fort Snelling and six years ago my mother was buried there alongside him.

There is something very solemn about Memorial Day. Yes, it is the day the pools open. But It is also a day for remembering.

After planting flowers on Memorial Day, we would have a picnic in our back yard  ~ the first picnic of the summer.  The menu wasn’t fancy and it was always the same: hot dogs, potato salad, chips, beer and soft drinks. At the end of the day, my Dad would take out his trumpet, stand in the front yard and play Taps. It was a signal that it was time for bed. Summer had started.

TAPS: Gone the sun, from the hills, from the lake, from the skies.

All is well. Safely rest. God is nigh.

 

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Graduation

Connor, the oldest of my three grandsons, graduated from the University of Colorado this week. His older sisters graduated years ago. I didn’t attend their graduations because they were out of state. I didn’t want to miss this one.

Connor is a young man with many talents. He’s a journalism major, who wrote a book in fourth grade. He has a beautiful singing voice and plays guitar. He and his roommate throw big parties and invite the whole neighborhood. But mostly, he is a sweet, kind, thoughtful young man who makes me smile when I remember the past twenty-two years with him.

When Connor was two years, I picked him up from daycare every Thursday. We came to my house, sat in the rocking chair and watched Monsters, Inc.  together. Connor knew every word of the movie. At the end, when Sulley sings, “You’ve got a friend in me,” Connor jumped off my lap, threw his hands in the air and sang along. Even then, he had the voice of an angel. It was pure magic.

Sometimes I think Sulley shaped Connor’s character more than I did. This is the official description of James P. Sullivan:

“Humble and caring, Sulley is extremely modest. And in spite of his utmost devotion (to his friends), his moral standards remain more important to him than anything; he is willing to sacrifice his personal gains for what he feels is right.”

This is Connor! But he’s much better looking.

This week Connor graduated with a bachelor of science degree, with a special interest in sports journalism. He plans to stay in Boulder for a year, while he looks for a job in his field. My darling boy is all grown up.

As Connor prepares for the world ahead, I am reminded of Sulley’s song, written by Randy Newman. It was our song, too.

“When the road looks rough ahead and you’re miles and miles from your nice warm bed, you just remember what your old pal said:  Boy, you’ve got a friend in me. Yeah, you’ve got a friend in me.

“If you’ve got troubles, I’ve got ’em too. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. We stick together and see it through, cause you’ve got a friend in me. Yes, you’ve got a friend in me.

“And as the years go by our friendship will never die. You’re gonna see it’s our destiny. You’ve got a friend in me!”

I love you, sweet man! I always will!

Grandma Lynda

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Loca

Ernesto has two daughters by Loca, a woman from his neighborhood. He is adamant that he didn’t like Loca and never married her, but he has always loved his daughters. He calls them Princesa and Reina. In this essay, I call them Uno and Dos.

Loca’s mother owned the house that Neto and Loca rented when the girls were young. Most mornings, Loca’s mother would put her fat head in his bedroom window and yell, “Get up you good-for-nothing lazy ass.” When I first met Ernesto, he was working nights as a security guard at a parking lot. He had often just returned home from working overnight when his landlady appeared at his window.

The first year Neto worked for me, he was excited  about Christmas. He saved $700 from his paychecks to buy gifts for Uno and Dos, who were six and ten years old. It was the first time he had money to spend for gifts. He bought bicycles and art supplies. The girls were delighted when they saw their gifts on Christmas night. They called him Papí and gave him hugs and kisses.  After he put the girls to bed, he came back to the living room and Loca threw him out of the house. She told him never to return. He was too embarrassed to tell me or his mother what had happened, so he went to sleep on the beach. The girls woke up  the day after Christmas Day and he was gone.

When Neto came to work for me the next day, I asked him, “How was your Christmas?”

“It was nice,” he told me. “The girls really liked their gifts.”

Neto spent the next nine months sleeping in the sand. He slept on the beach until he moved into my house the following September.

Loca tormented me the entire time I lived in Mazatlán. She didn’t want Neto to live with her and the girls, but she didn’t want him at my house, either. Eventually, she chased me out of Mexico. She was not the only reason I left, of course, but she was one of the main ones.

Loca’s weapon was the telephone. She called my house at all hours, wanting to speak to Neto. If I answered the phone, she hung up and immediately called back. One night, when Neto was at his AA meeting, she called sixty-three times in a row. It was a landline so I could get calls from the U.S. After that, I unplugged the phone and only plugged it in when Neto was home.

Loca knew that Neto was devoted to his daughters, especially Dos. She would call late at night with alarming news:

“Dos has been raped. You need to meet me at the hospital.”

“Dos is choking. You need to take us to the hospital.”

“The girls have run away. You need to help me look for them.”

Neto would jump on his bicycle and fly out of the house. Of course, all of these were false alarms, but what father would take a chance? Certainly not Neto.

The five years I lived in Mexico, I noticed that the girls wore clothes that were dirty, torn and wrong for the season. They didn’t do well in school. Uno failed two grades in elementary school and didn’t move on to middle school until she was thirteen years old. Neto tried to get custody of the girls but was denied by a judge, who was bribed by Loca’s mother.

One day, I heard someone pounding on my front door. I opened the door and saw an armored truck full of police carrying automatic weapons.

“We have reports that you have kidnapped this woman’s children,” said a policewoman, who spoke English. “Where are they?”

“I did not kidnap them! They are not here,” I answered.

Loca was standing next to two policemen. She was speaking in agitated Spanish. I lost it. I started screaming in a mixture of English and tortured Spanish. “This woman is crazy! Because of her, I’m leaving Mexico and never coming back.”

“Please don’t leave,” the policewoman said. “We believe you. But we had to check this out.”

I left Mexico in 2010 and Neto went back to living at his mother’s house. They girls visited him every Sunday, asking for money and food.

Follow-up:

Uno is now 28 years old. She has a son and a daughter, by a man from the neighborhood. He is a known drug-dealer and is often in rehab. Uno lives with her mother-in-law and works full-time. She calls Neto about once/week.

Dos is 24 years old. She has two daughters. She lives with a man who is an Uber driver and she calls Neto only when the Uber car breaks down. She seldom calls, unless I am visiting. Then she calls relentlessly, just as her mother did years ago.

The parish priest recently came hurrying down the street to find Neto. A band a neighbors were close behind.

“Neto, you have to do something with Loca.”

“Why? What is she doing?”

She is standing outside my church, yelling, “The Virgin Mary is a whore!”

“Call the police,” Neto told them. “I’ve never been able to do anything with that woman. She’s Loca!”

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Auditions

I started piano lessons with Sister Aimee when I was six years old. We lived in a duplex across the street from St. Peter Catholic Church. The convent and grade school were a few houses away. My grandparents lived upstairs.

Because we didn’t have a piano, I practiced on an old piano in the church basement, where the church custodian lived. He drank whiskey from a bottle and smelled terrible. I thought he was creepy and I tried not to think about him as I practiced my lesson, alone in the church basement.

When I was eight years old, we moved into our own home two blocks away. My Aunt Margaret gave us a piano, so I didn’t have to practice in the church basement any more.

Sister Aimee was my teacher for the next eight years. She taught only classical music. Popular music was strictly forbidden. In addition to teaching seventy children to play the piano, she also taught music at the Catholic school and directed both the church choir and the children’s choir. She put on an elaborate Christmas pageant every December and an operetta in the spring. I don’t think she ever slept, which probably accounted for her demeanor, which was nothing short of terrifying.

Sister Aimee was tall and skinny. I don’t remember ever seeing her smile. She would check the length of our fingernails before every piano lesson. If they were too long, by her standards, she would grab our hands and forcibly cut the offending nails. The sound of fingernails clicking against piano keys drove her crazy. It was not the only thing that put her over the edge.

Every spring Sister Aimee scheduled an audition at the MacPhail School of Music for all of her students over the age of eight. We were judged by highly trained classical pianists. Thinking back on it, I realize now that Sister Aimee felt that she was the one being judged. If we failed, she failed. She wasn’t going to let that happen.

All year we prepared for our spring audition. We had to memorize ten songs, in varying degrees of difficulty. We had to come to the audition wearing our best clothes, not our tacky school uniforms. By February the pressure was palpable.

Every Monday, Sister Aimee reminded me that I was one of her worst students. Then she would recite a litany of her worst pupils. “You and your brother, Madonna and James Francis, and the Tracys. All of you have lessons on Mondays, so I don’t have to think about you the rest of the week.”

What a strange teaching technique! All of this came to an end when I was in the eighth grade. It was a Monday, as usual, and I entered the piano studio with a sense of dread. The audition was less than a month away.

“What did you work on special this week?” Sister Aimee wanted to know.

“Nothing,” I replied. I meant that I had worked on all my pieces. I didn’t work on anything special. She thought I meant I had not practiced at all.

Sister Aimee went berserk. “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” she shouted. “Take off your glasses.”

I did as I was told. I took off my glasses and Sister Aimee slapped me across the face. Hard! And then she continued to slap me. Back and forth she slapped, until finally she caught herself and told me to go home.

My mother knew something was wrong when I came through the door. My face was red and I had been crying.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“Sister Aimee hit me.”

“Why did she do that?”

“Because I didn’t practice anything special this week.”

When my father came home from work that night, I heard my parents talking in their room.

And then a miracle happened. My father, who rarely spoke to anyone and never used the telephone, picked up the phone and called the convent. He asked to speak to Sister Aimee.

“Sister, this is Bob Jones. Mary Lynda and Robert will not be taking piano lessons any more.” Then he hung up.

The following Saturday, my brother and I were in the car, going to meet our new piano teacher, Hod Russell. Hod was one of the very best Dixieland Jazz piano players in the Twin Cities. He was a kind and gentle man. He told my mother that my brother and I were two of his very best students. I took lessons from Hod for the next four years. I never opened another book of classical music. I never had another audition or recital. Music was my joy and my salvation.

The moral of this story is obvious: Often the worst moments of your life turn out to be the best. In my case, that has certainly been true.

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Fire!

In 1968, when Jim and I were first married, we knew we wanted to move out of the city of Denver. We wanted to live in the mountains, but we both had jobs in Denver. Where could we go that was close to Denver, but not too close? We found the perfect town ~ Idledale, Colorado. A quiet, unincorporated village tucked just west of Denver, Idledale sits in the foothills along Bear Creek. It’s easily overlooked on the drive between Morrison and Evergreen.

Situated at 6,466 feet above sea level, Idledale gave us the right slice of mountain life. The population was about 300 people, more or less. The incredibly beautiful Red Rocks park is close by.

We found a great house. Located on five acres of land, at the top of Grapevine Road, the picture window in our living room provided a view of the entire valley. We had good neighbors. The home cost $15,000.00. We probably bought it with Jim’s GI benefits. Garth was born while we lived there. It was a good life.

Like most of the men of Idledale, Jim signed on as a volunteer on the Idledale Fire Department. The volunteers were a rag-tag group of men, young and old. Women weren’t allowed to join because it was considered bad luck to have a woman in the station. Women were allowed to make sandwiches and deliver them to the station after the fire, however.  No one complained or even questioned the rules. That’s how it was.

Idledale had only one truck when we lived there. The Denver Fire Department donated an old pumper in 1956 and the men built a station to house it. There weren’t any fire hydrants in Idledale. When a fire occurred, the chief drove the pumper into Bear Creek and filled it with water. It was a delicate task. Often  the chief filled it too full, and the pumper quickly became too heavy to climb out of the creek bed and onto the road. The chief then had to keep dumping water back into the creek, until the old pumper could be coaxed out of the stream and up the road to the fire. Meanwhile, women who were home taking care of children, sprang into action. They put fires out using garden hoses and buckets of water. They soaked small rugs in water and beat out the flames before the truck got there. Then they went back to making sandwiches.

For some reason, there were a lot of fires during the four years Jim and I lived in Idledale. The volunteers did their best, but often came home full of soot and ashes.

“How did it go?” citizens would ask.

“We saved the trees,” was the reply. That meant that the house had burned to the ground. The conversation was over.

Eventually someone caught on. It was obvious that only one firefighter was present whenever there was a fire in Idledale. A young man who lived in a small shack in the middle of Grapevine Road was a very enthusiastic firemen. He was often the first person on the scene.

People started asking each other if maybe he was actually starting the fires, just to watch them burn. Sad, but true! He pleaded guilty to arson, went to jail and the incidence of fires decreased dramatically in our small town.

Jim and I sold our home in Idledale and moved to Lakewood soon after Jason was born. We didn’t want to take Garth out of the mountains. He loved being outside, roaming up and down the hills. We had an old dog, with only one eye, who was his constant companion.

Now, as an adult, Garth lives in the mountains of Winter Park with his wife, Bethany. He is an engineer on the Aurora Fire Department. There are women serving with him in the fire station. The guys make their own sandwiches.

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Hero

My mother grew up on a farm in Minnesota during the Depression. There were eight children ~ two girls and six boys. My mom was the youngest. Uncle Bob, not quite two years older, was her best friend and ally against their older twin brothers, who conspired to make their lives absolutely frightful. The twins taught Bob to steer a car when he was five, and my mother, in the back seat, was three. On Christmas Eve the twins sat outside with their air rifles, threatening to shoot Santa out of the sky, while my mother and Bob clutched each other and cried. Bob consoled my mother from a very young age and spent the rest of his life taking care of people. He was a hero.

Uncle Bob was one of the few young men who didn’t serve in WWII. He desperately wanted to enlist but my grandfather wouldn’t allow it. Grandpa wrote a letter saying that all his other sons were married with children. Bob was the only one left to help him run the farm. Without Bob’s help, my grandfather wrote, he would lose the farm.

According to my mother, Bob was devastated. He wanted to go to war, like his friends. He was determined to leave the farm as soon as he could. Eventually my grandparents sold the farm and moved into town. Bob went to work as a mechanic at Thornton Motors, a local Chrysler/Plymouth dealer, one block away from the North St. Paul fire station.

During the war, Uncle Bob continued to help his family. Because my father was in the Navy when my brother was born in 1944, Uncle Bob drove my mother to the hospital. He was still her main confident and friend as she raised my brother and I alone until the war was over and Dad came home again. 

As he watched the other young men return home, Uncle Bob didn’t feel like a hero. Because he wasn’t a veteran, he wasn’t allowed to join the American Legion or the VFW, although he was always welcome to come inside and drink with his friends.

Until he met my Aunt Leslie, the fire station was Bob’s life. He drove the fire truck and made sure it was in good working order.

Because he worked just one block away, Uncle Bob was always the first person to arrive at the station when the siren sounded. He jumped into the truck  and took off. If another firefighter happened get there in time, he would hang onto the back of the truck for dear life as Bob raced to the fire. Other volunteers called the town telephone operator to find out where the emergency was. By the time the other volunteers drove themselves to the fire, Bob was already there, taking care of everything until they arrived.

Later, when the fire call was over, the men met back in the station, drank beer and rehashed what they had just seen. Bob always had a great sense of humor and a huge circle of friends. He was handsome and charming. He was hard-working and kind. He was the guy who drove the fire truck. He was the town hero. 

Eventually North St. Paul hired a paid chief of police. Uncle Bob wanted that position, but he didn’t get it. My family believed that Bob was the most qualified, but didn’t get the job because he wasn’t a veteran.

Unlike my mother’s other brothers who married young, Uncle Bob waited until he was in the late 20’s to get married. When he met Leslie Webster, the whole small town was buzzing. Leslie was the granddaughter of  the town doctor, Dr. Cowan, and the daughter of Bud Webster, the president of the school board. They lived in a big house near Silver Lake. Leslie was young and beautiful. Bob finally found the girl he wanted to marry. 

My brother and I were in Bob’s wedding. I was five years old and my brother was four. The reception was held in a big barn-like building. My only memory of the wedding was the shivaree, performed by Bob’s friends at midnight. Suddenly, in the midst of the celebration, there was a horrible racket outside. There were whoops and yelling like I had never heard before. Bob’s drunken friends were banging on pots and pans with spoons and other utensils in some sort of  mock serenade. My brother and I were terrified. Uncle Bob laughed as he comforted us and warned that we needed to keep his friends outside. If they came inside they might steal the pretty bride. 

Bob and Leslie had four children and lived in a big, beautiful home near Leslie’s parents. Uncle Bob was a devoted husband and father. He loved Aunt Leslie and very much enjoyed spending time with his children. Mom and Leslie were good friends. Dad and Uncle Bob had great times together. 

In 1963, Bob was promoted to branch manager of LP gas sales for Skelly Oil. The job was based in Barron, Wisconsin, near the Minnesota border. Bob accepted the job, but wasn’t happy about leaving North St. Paul. My grandmother was very ill and being cared for in the town nursing home. Bob drove his family back to North St. Paul most weekends to visit her.  It was hard for all of us to see Grandma dying in that small bedroom. I think it must have broken Bob’s heart. 

In 1967, Bob was transferred to Berlin, Wisconsin, a town much further from North St. Paul than his previous assignment. Bob’s job was stressful and he dreamed of returning to North St. Paul when he retired.  But that never happened. In 1977, at the age of 57, Uncle Bob had a massive heart attack. Everyone was devastated. We lost a hero.