Smiley’s Dice on the Road

THE Throw of the dice this week is on the road.

Scenery racing by at 60 mph, on a two lane highway, saddled between fresh morning pastures, and broken down double-wides. A New Mexican patchwork of serenity and simplicity. On Highway 84 out of Santa Fe, we pass through the one-blink town of Chama. During the summer tourists flock here to ride the Tupeltec Train through the mountains and fish in the Rio Grande.  The window sign of the coffee house advertises Espresso, but the paint is worn thin, and the letters breaking up. The sidewalk flower pots are filled with cigarette butts, and the newspaper stands are empty. There is an old fashioned gas station, closed for the winter, and just beyond are the train tracks, and a stationary train. That’s where I got the idea of living on a train. I could settle down in a train, like Jim West in the television program from the sixties, The Wild Wild West. Movement is what gives me comfort. Some of us just cannot sit still. We try to cushion ourselves in with big windows and heaps of scenery: fireplaces, and fresh flowers, music, books, and home theater.  What lies beyond home organization is a world of surprises and that’s what we keep reaching for.

Outside of Chama the road grows narrower, and signs of life diminish with the exception of the crows, and the solitary underfed horse staring at a fence, looking like the loneliest creature on the face of the earth. The scenery transforms into a sketch of poetry as the sky suddenly turns white, and the hillsides are caked in snow frosting.  We were on our way to Pagaosa Springs; a small town just across the continental divide into Colorado. The Springs Spa & Salon boasts of having European fashioned mineral springs.

 “That’s it?” SC asked. 

 “Yes, I guess so. What’s it doing IN A PARKING LOT? The website made it look like we were in the mountains.”

“ Good marketing.” He said.

“ Oh no, this is awful.” I snapped.  But I caught myself. You know how words come back at you with meaning, and you have to adjust yourself. I looked the place over and thought, I’ll make this an adventure. I will not complain or snub my nose because I’m here, in the cup of Colorado and it’s beautiful. 

“ The springs are public?” SC denounced.

I looked over at the three-tiered sculpted hillside; pools of water connected by walkways, waterfalls, and this wake of steam rising. It was the lusciousness of a European spa, except, the bather’s were beer-bellied rednecks and saloon sloppy women, wearing stretched out bathing suits that hung from their skin. Children were running back and forth, and Soaring Crow didn’t look too happy.  

“ I’m not going into those baths.” He snapped. 

“ The hotel has its own private area; it will be better.”

“ It’s like getting into a bathtub with a bunch of strangers.”

“ Well, I’ll throw some bleach in before. ” 

We headed into the reception area of the Springs Spa & Salon. A man dressed in Spa-white was gnawing on a chewy nutrition bar. Before he finished swallowing, he said, “ What I do for yer folks?”  

He leaned over the counter and chewed, while SC explained we were checking into the Spa. The Spa smelled of chlorine, and I started to laugh.  What I had imagined, was the Sonoma Mission Inn, or Roosevelt Spa in Saratoga Springs.

“I can’t wait to see the room.”  I said.

There are two types of getaways; first class and adventurous, this was less than adventurous, it was shoddy. We unloaded and went for a drive through town. The shop with the Antiques sign drew us in first. It smelled like acerbic spring water was oozing out of the walls. I looked around; drawing my breath in, to avoid a dust storm. Cowboy mugs, saddles, fiesta flatware, mantelpiece trinkets and dusty smudged books were stacked on shabby boxes and wooden carts. Not much to capture the eye, except the saleswoman. She was built like an old door. I imagined she was young once, and had a softer edge, now she moved in wooden strides, and her eyes were plucked of sentimentality. Maybe she came from a mining family, and they were hardened at an early age. I imagined what she was thinking of me. It sort of slipped out when I opened the door. She hadn’t expected me to say thank you, and when she met my eyes, hers were raising heck with my attire.  Outside, the snow continued to dust the town with a bit of whitened cleanliness.

“ Where are we eating tonight.” SC asked.

“ Oh I found a place that sounds interesting, The Old Miner’s Lodge.”

“ It sounds like we should drive by first.”

We drove down the main road, and I looked through the dining guide. The short list was the kind you’d expect in an old mining town, that Robert Redford hadn’t discovered.

“ It’s a steakhouse with a salad bar.” I assured SC.

“ Let’s find something else. I don’t want to bathe and eat with the same people.” 

“There isn’t anything else but what the receptionist suggested, Eddie’s Grill, it’s her favorite place.”

“ Because her father-in-law, or half-sister owns it.” 

We went looking for Eddie’s and along the way I noticed a sign for Keyah Grande. It was the kind of sign that eluded, exclusive, so I suggested we drive up. Outside a large menacing iron gate, we rang the digital keyboard and the Chef answered the phone. He said to come up. We passed through the gate and slowly eased the car up an unpaved road, and entered what looked like safari country. There were elk and deer wandering inside gated pastures, fat and sleek-coated, without visible fear or alarm, they just seemed to nod at us.

We drove past a sign for horses, and I thought, I’d wished we stayed here. At the top of the mountain, a plateau surfaced and a two story Spanish colonial building jolted out of the ground. We were surrounded by mountains, three cars, and a clubhouse attached to a suspended deck that looked like the wing of an airplane. SC immediately dashed for the edge. I lingered back closer to center. We were raised to new euphoric vistas, set above the San Juan Mountains with streaks of snow edged between pine trees and shafts of light. A cold breeze that John Cage would have recorded brushed through the trees.

We went inside the hotel and discovered a palatial home-museum. A woman greeted us.

“ Hi com’on in. We’re just taking these folks through the rooms; would you like to join us.”

“Yes,” SC said.

“ No.” I answered, and whispered to SC,“I’m still catching my breath.    

We followed another young friendly woman to the cocktail lounge. It was the sort of place you’d curl your legs under and hold the glass as if you owned the house. Darkened cherry-wood paneling and leather wrapped a room with built-in everything, and made it feel gracefully masculine. We sat on the sofa sipping wine and forgot about Pagosa Springs.   

   “Can we have dinner here tonight?” I asked without willing to accept anything less. 

  “You bet we can. I’m not leaving until they throw me out.”

  “Will you be joining us for dinner?” The cocktail waitress asked.

 “Yes, we’d love to.” 

 “I’ll show you the dining room.”

 “How many rooms are there in the hotel?” I asked.

“ We call it a guest house. There are eight rooms.”

“ Are they all booked?” I asked.

“ I’d have to check; we may have one.”

  SC looked at me expectantly.

“ First I’ll show you the dining room,” and she took us through the main parlor, a salon of European taste dignified with a gold trimmed piano, original oil paintings, tapestries, and enough natural light to take a sunbath. 

“ How many acres go with the guest house?” I asked.

“ Four thousand.”

“ Eight rooms and four thousand acres.” I repeated. That makes some kind of statement. 

We found out the rooms were $500.00 a night and it was better to go with the package deal; $800.00 including all meals. It reminded me of what I read in the WSJ; about executive holidays, and the kind of money that passes from one pocket to the next.

 After a peek at the menu, and finding the prices comparable to any fine dining, we finished our wine, and drifted outside like two beggars who’d just found a gracious host. We decided to go back to Pagosa and shower.

“ I can’t wait to go back and use the scratchy towels and cheap soap.”

 “It’s more fun this way, it’s an adventure.” I said. The funny thing is; I wasn’t fibbing or pretending. The adventure in me felt atrophied and I was thankful I was out of town and on the road. Even if it was a tiny stiff room without mints on the pillow, I knew we’d be laughing ourselves to sleep. To be continued.  Any dice to throw: Email: folliesls@aol.com  

 

LOST ANGELES PART 2

The throw of the dice this week lands on the continuation of last weeks, adventures in moving again.

I’d just walked into Jack Taylor’s haberdashery. Jack was looking at me from behind his big signature black eye-glass frames; one of the largest frames I’ve ever seen.  He didn’t recognize me right off.

“Jack–it’s Luellen.”  I kissed him on the lips and he smiled.

“How are you?” he said softly.

“I’m good. I was just driving by, and saw your sign. What a place you got here, it’s beautiful.”

“What? I can’t hear you. Speak up.”

“I SAID IT’S A BEAUTIFUL SPACE YOU HAVE HERE!”

“You know how many customers come in off the street?” he     asked.     

“How many?”

“One.In a whole year, one customer.”

“Oh Jack, that’s awful.”

“What? I can’t hear?”

“IT’S AWFUL TO HEAR THAT.”  

“ Look out the window.”  He said. I turned to look, and a young man was passing by. He was hunched over, plugged into an Ipod,  dressed in crotch hugging jeans, a sweatshirt, and lace-up shoes.

“Look at that-no one dresses. They all look like that,” he said.  

“ Jack, they look like that everywhere.”

“Call Bonnie,(his wife)and ask her to come down to the shop.”

I wondered why he didn’t have a hearing aid; knowing Jack, it wasn’t stylish enough. Bonnie got on the phone with me, while Jack sat, staring into his memory through floor to ceiling glass windows.  What separates Jack from all the others is that Jack’s continental suits are custom fit to the customer by Jack, and no one else. His tailors hand stitch each item; with custom lining, handmade bottom holes, and your name woven into the pinstripes.

I remembered back to the summer of 94, when Jack used to fancy-foot around the shop on Camden Drive; calling out orders, answering phones, greeting customers, and yelling at me,

” Luellen, don’t just stand there. For crying out loud, count the suits or something!”  Whenever I went to do something, he shouted, “For crying out loud Luellen, don’t do it like that!” He repeated the same script to me every day for three months. He had a similar script for everyone in the shop. His tailors, some of whom have been there thirty years, shake their heads in frustration and sew. Behind all that shouting and hollering is one of the good guys, a guy who would give you the shirt off his back, a guy from Brooklyn. 

Bonnie, his wife for some fifty years, speaks with a flare born from the genes of an actress. She’s theatrical without being in the business. “Oh Luellen darling–it’s so good to hear your voice. How are you? Did Jack recognize you?”

“Oh yes, right away.” I fibbed.

“I’m surprised. He can’t hear, his eyes are bad, but he won’t leave the shop.”

“Bonny, he said he has no customers. Is that true?”

“Unfortunately, it is. We both thought new customers would come from the second generation, but it didn’t happen, so what can you do? All the old ones are failing or dead. Tell me about you. Are you married?”

Bonnie and I chatted while Jack talked with Soaring Crow. I was looking at Jack the whole time I was on the phone. I noticed the way he raised his brows, and shut-tight smile that resonates a New York edgy resignation. His expressions were so familiar to me from working with him that summer.

“How’s your daughter?” I asked Bonnie.

“She died four years ago.”

I was watching Jack, “Oh Bonnie, I’m so sorry.” Jack’s eyes darted back to me. I promised Bonnie I’d come back and we’d all have dinner. I told her about the memoir and she remarked, “I have lots of stories about your father. He was a character.”   

After I hung up the phone, Jack yelled, “Is Bonnie coming down?”

“No. She’s not up to it right now,” I answered. He pressed his lips into a thin disappointedly accepting line. For twenty years Bonnie worked side by side with Jack. She knew every customer, and made them feel like family. As a young teenager dad used to bring us in the shop. Bonnie always made an effort to be our friend.     

“Look out the window, there’s another one. See what I mean?” Jack said.

“Yes Jack. I do. Listen, I want to thank you for giving me a job that summer. I never had a chance to thank you. It really meant a lot to me.”

He smiled. “I can’t sit here all day and count the birds. What am I gonna do?”

“What do you want to do?” I answered.

 He shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you have any hobbies, anything else you like besides suits?”

“I love to paint.”

“Paint?” Well that’s what you should do.”

“Look over there,” he gestured with a heavy arm. On the wall behind me, half a dozen oil paintings were hanging. I noticed one of a young sailor standing next to his ship.

“I really like that one Jack. I think you should paint.”

 “What?”

 “I said, RETIRE AND PAINT.”

He shrugged his shoulders. I kissed him again and he didn’t move from the chair. He needed me to raise him up, close the shop, and lock the door. I would have done it if he was all alone. I wanted to take him back to Santa Fe and place him at the Audubon, and let him paint the swallows.

 I walked out and looked back once. He was staring out the window. I thought about the stories he used to tell, like the time Mickey Cohen came rushing through the shop and dropped a suitcase at Jack’s feet, “Hold onto this until I get back.” Mickey had commanded.

“What was in it Jack?”

“Whatta ya think? Stolen loot. They all used to come through the shop on the way out of Ducker’s Barber Shop.  I couldn’t stop them–they did what they did–I don’t even know what they did, but use my phone all day.”  

After I left Jack, Soaring Crow drove me over Laurel Canyon to meet Marietta, my mother’s friend.  We had just passed Lookout Mountain when I recalled being there. It was painted right before my eyes. Lizzie, one of the wild ones in high school, and I used to drive up there in her British racing green Volvo. She loved going to mountain tops. We’d get high, and lean into the flickering spray of lights imagining all we were missing by beings so darn young. We didn’t know then we weren’t missing anything. We had it all; a big bubbling hot city filled with mysteries, puzzles, romance, and opportunities. Neither one of us had dreams of college and marriage. Lizzie wanted a baby, and I wanted to runaway to a distant splendor in the grass. As Soaring Crow descended the canyon and inched towards Studio city, I glanced over, and noticed a street sign, Sunshine Terrace.

“That’s where Kenny used to live with his parents. I bet his mother is still there.  I’m going to call her.” Kenny was an irreplaceable boyfriend at eighteen, who later became the man who guided me towards writing. He used to shout out loud about how f—g good my poetry was, and how I should be published. Who can let go of a guy like that.  

Kenny’s dad, Bernie the big shot, who everyone tolerated because he was a WWII Nazi military prosecutor, had died years before. You couldn’t butter your bread without Bernie finding something fishy about it. Soaring Crow met Kenny back in the nineties, when Kenny dropped by his house on his way to living in a campsite in Escondido. He stayed a month.      

“Kenny! What a case that one is. You gotta love him. I understand him now. I know why he bailed out of society. I thought he was weird back then.” Soaring Crow chuckled thinking about Ken. He always had a neatly organized backpack, a cigar in his mouth, and carried a little black book with all his notes and phone numbers. He was an herbal tea importer and an inventor of gadgets.    

We drove into the strip center on Ventura Boulevard fifteen minutes early. I called information and got the phone number for Ken’s mother, Anna Marie.

“Hello Anna Maria, it’s Luellen.”

 “Oh Luellen how are you? It’s been a long time.” That was an understatement. It had been thirty years or more.”  Her voice revealed so much. She spoke in long unwavering sentences, and it reminded me of how long-winded Ken could be when he got on his philosophical podium.  She was Austrian and her accent smoothed out the awkward moments.   

“I’ll be 84 this week.”

“Really? Well Happy Birthday.”

“ Oh thank you. I’ve been in this house fifty years.”

“ Wow, that’s amazing. It’s a beautiful house. I always admired your cooking and gardening.”

“ I don’t do much of that anymore.” 

“ How is Ken doing?” I asked.

“ He moved to Guatemala.”

“ Really? When was that?”

“ Five years ago.”

“ Have you seen him lately?”

“Five years ago was the last time.”

“Is he all right?”

“He says he is. But I don’t know. We email, and sometimes he’ll call. I wish he would visit.”

“He couldn’t stand living in Los Angeles, or anywhere in the US.”  I added.

“He lived in Ensenada for years; then he decided to go to Guatemala. It’s so far. He loves the Latin culture. It’s too hot for me. He should come back and visit. I need a little help.”

“What about the other brothers?”

“Rick has cancer.”  

I rolled the rental-car window down and looked through people as they walked by. I didn’t tell her I was around the corner; I couldn’t just stop in and leave five minutes later.   

“I’m so happy you called. I’ll tell Ken when I write to him next time. Are you married?”

“No.”

“Oh well. So nice to hear from you. Come and visit sometime.”

“I will, I promise you I will.” 

As I left the car and headed upstairs to meet Marietta I felt a peck of familiarity with my surroundings. I was standing in front of the Starbucks, where Ken used to call me from when he was in town.

“ I’m over here at Starbucks, what a nightmare, I can’t even find a set a teeth in the place, nobody smiles. I’m telling you Lou, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to me. I got a headache and nothing even happened yet.” I wished he was sitting there, he could bring hours of non-stop laughter.     

Soaring Crow opened the door to the Daily Grill. Seated on a high stool, next to the hostess, was a strikingly beautiful woman. Her hair was pulled back in a bandana, and fell to her shoulders. Her skin was snow white, with a frosty pink glow and her china blue eyes glistened when she smiled.

 

 

 

 

 

“Oh you must be Luellen.  I knew it right away; you look like your mother.”  To be continued next week.

Any dice to throw: Email: folliesls@aol.com

 

AN ALMOST FULL MOON AND OTHER THINGS

The throw of the dice this week falls on adventures in beginnings. Starting over, and rewriting a life you’ve lived many years is the same as re-writing a secret story. It takes the same blind courage. About half between forty and fifty years old, you hear people say, “It’s too late to start over,” It’s not true. Behavioral change is essential to living a full life.

In the middle of the night I woke up as if it was morning. When I looked out the window, an almost full moon, white as a laundered tablecloth, was staring back at me. It said, get up and write. I retreated to my corner of the world; a tiny room bathed in blush pink and gold, and wrote from beneath the goose down comforter. The moon watched. Now that the holiday lights and decorations are placed in the cartons, the wrapping and ribbon tossed away, a landfill of disturbing, distressing, and terrifying global news is dumped on us. I do not understand the external world of political and international power, wealth, and motivation. I fled that world a long time ago when I learned that men who controlled the paths of others were dangerously self-serving. I recall my father sitting on that crushed green velvet sofa, holding the remote control in one hand and watching a news program. He turned the television off and said to me, “Luellen, everything that goes on is fixed; you cannot hide your head in the sand and think otherwise.” I nodded my head in understanding, while internally I thought my father was suffering from his usual paranoia.

Now the forces of evil have shattered that glass of indemnity, and I’m forced to understand. This year is not about selfish resolutions catering to my fanciful comfort and ambitions, it is about survival. It’s about transforming behavior and habits, excesses and denial. Being part of a group, makes us feel less traumatized. Imagine, all the thousands of people paddling the same current; forcing back the mortgage lender, relinquishing precious possessions, driving a car with a shattered windshield, wearing coats without any down feathers left, and wondering when the pink slip will arrive. Alienation, religion, and racism are at the root of mankind’s aggression and discontent. It can lead to unexpected violence, and then to massacre, and war. It is a collective neurosis that grows worse every year.

The inner world, where each of us faces a truth no one else knows, is ruptured. All I can think of is bringing a little bit of light to someone I know is in darkness. Like a child thrown into school on the first day, we are unsure how we fit into the novelty of today’s complexities. It is time for courageous thinking and reinvention. If you have any excesses, hold them up to the light; rethink how to make them work for yourself, or someone else. Recently my friend and business advisor, Jazzwise, told me a story. He is offering business counseling for a program sponsored by the Small Business Administration. One of his clients owns a three bedroom house she cannot afford to keep. She is going to convert it into an Assisted Home Residence for seniors and rent each bedroom. That way she can retain possession, and earn more than enough income to pay the mortgage.

Taking in boarders is another option, and one I considered. When I remember the roommates of my past, I run from that idea. I’ve managed to find a tortured closet lesbian, a Nazi sympathizer, and critical case pot-heads. It was 1988, the summer I returned from my European sojourn, and decided I could not go back to real estate management. With no experience other than browsing the museums and galleries of cities I’d been to, I decided to try working in a gallery. The gallery I chose sold expensive commercial sculptor and lithographs. I got the job because I wore a short skirt. After a few weeks, one of the salesmen approached me. He was coiled like a snake, with icy blue eyes, spiked bleached white hair, and a radio-perfect deep steady voice.

    “Why do you keep running away from me?” he said when I passed through the lunchroom.

     “I’m not. Why?”

      “You’re so jumpy. Sit down for a minute, and tell me your story.” He reached for a extra long Benson & Hedges and flicked the ashes like a movie-star. I watched him because he was so well choreographed. We sat in the lunchroom and drank burnt end of the day coffee. I told him about growing up in Los Angeles, and before I got to the part about moving to San Diego, he had already set-foot into our common ground, and was pulling me down. He knew how to manipulate what I said into the broadest sort of connection. He was sure we’d met when we both vacationed in Laguna as young kids.

I can’t believe I’m telling this story. Anyway, Heidelbaum, I’ll call him, made me his personal pet. Since he was highest grossing salesman, when he asked me to be his, what did he call it, “frontline,” I accepted because we were paid on commission. Heidelbaum knew a lot about art, and just about anything else I mentioned. He claimed to be a dancer in the original “Hair” production in San Francisco; a former golden-boy broadcast personality, a child prodigy of the piano until some irreversible accident, and a frustrated but hugely talented writer. He only associated with creative people. He told me I was creative, and that’s what got me hooked. He also insisted on calling me LuLu, when I was still attached to the name Luellen. We worked as a team. I wore short skirts and he closed the deals. Those months at the gallery were the most deranged period of my life. I learned that there wasn’t anything creative going on in the gallery. Most of the salespeople were misfits of some breed, and the company policy was to practically force clients to buy on the credit we provided. We advised young sailors anchored in San Diego, that they needed an Erte sculpture to feel culturally accepted. Heidelbaum sold a sculpture or two a week.

“I’m going to take care of you. Don’t worry about everything so much LuLu, it ruins your personality.”

Within six months he picked out an apartment in a wooded canyon and told me I could have the large bedroom. He’d pay the rent and all I had to do was make coffee and be nice while he tried to write. I believed him, he was a non-attending student of Method acting. He studied books and film with relentless appetite. When I moved my furniture in, he went through the boxes. “What’s this?” he said as he browsed through my odd collection of art, books, and photographs.

     ”Is that Bugsy Siegel?” He held the photograph up and smiled. The photograph was inscribed; to Al, from your pal, Ben.

    “How did you know.” I asked. “ LuLu you have to realize I know a lot.” Everything he said was preceded with, you have to realize.

    “Your Dad was involved with him. Did you know that?”

    “ They were friends.” He did that thing with his eyes, he practically tore the skin off my face staring at me.

    “ LuLu, your dad was more than a friend. You can handle it.” I never did find out how he knew about my Dad and Ben. This was way before google, so he had to have read about him, or asked one of his big shot friends. After that, Heidelbaum turned into the tyrant from a science-fiction thriller. That first night he cooked a chicken, and threw it in the garbage because he said it was lousy-stinking lousy, “ I hate my cooking, and I hate this apartment. I only rented it for you.”

He drank cheap wine, and stomped around the room all night, mumbling about how wrecked he was, and how much he loved his sister, who had died, and all that other stuff he’d been hiding for six months. I closed the door of my bedroom clutching the photograph of my father. Heidelbaum banged on the door, and I held my breath. Naturally in the light of day, he bowed his head, turned his icy eyes into rose pedals, and begged me to tell him he still had his looks. I didn’t have any idea what I’d gotten into. I managed to live through three months of the most explosive and emotional behavior I’d ever witnessed in my life. Poor Heidelbaum was really choking on his identity. During that period a former boyfriend came to rescue me, after I called for help. Kenny could talk sense into a murderer, and manage to get a confession. Kenny was the one who found out that Heidelbaum’s grand-father was very big in the Nazi party. When Kenny told me to get my f—bag and move out before I lost my mind, I listened. I vanished from the apartment, and took my silly little boxes with me.

 When I resettled into my next home and unpacked, something was missing. Heidelbaum had stolen the photograph of Ben Siegel. He probably sold it to a pawn shop and now it’s part of someone’s collection. My sister was outraged when I told her. ” You idiot, that was worth a lot of money.” The funny thing is, Heidelbaum and I used to write together, he out on the wooded terrace, and me in the yellow wall-papered kitchen. Then we’d exchange our work. Mine was always, sort of boring. I lied about his, I said it was good, but I knew it was contrived. That’s the first time I’ve ever written about Heidelbaun. The story has a part two but I’m not ready for that yet. Sometimes a story gets out that you hadn’t planned, and then there it is staring at you. I don’t like remembering that Lulu, but now that I have said this much, Heidelbaum did set off a spark of creativity in me.

THE FOLLIES HOUSE IN SARATOGA

The throw of the dice this week falls on the end of the road journey….and the mystery I call home.

Every morning I rose at dawn to sit in the parlor. There I watched the sunlight illuminate the, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” movie board in the hearth, and drink a cup of coffee in silence. I felt at home. Those are the most precious moments of the day; the moment of peace before throwing the dice.

I looked out the window to the street, and one morning a handful of eggplant leaves autumnized to a transparent sheen of bronzed gold. The silence following summer descended down over the rooftops of the people that lived on East High Avenue. The sky was seared with streaks of white, and bubblegum pink clouds drifted just above the rising of the sun. The moment was a peaceful stroke to a summer that had been indeterminate, chancy and without design. We went back with the intention to sell the house, and we couldn’t let Follies go.  Now, four years later, I’m about to return with the same idea. 

   

In the moments when SC awakens, I heard his footsteps on the creaking wood floor. I closed the journal and went in the kitchen to make buttermilk pancakes. When we live in San Diego, and now Santa Fe, NM we eat fruit and muffins, usually in short order, between telephone calls, and conversations about things that it’s too early to discuss. Those mornings a Follies House, he lingered  on the porch and read the New York Times,  because he had the time.

 

If my body was willing, I ‘d  run down to the stream, and look for the blue heron. Along the way, I’d  pass by the quiet man with the three beagles, and a mother walking with her children to the bus stop. I ‘d pass the funeral parlor and look the other way, and when I saw the Federal Express Truck, he’d  wave because he knows I’m the woman that receives mail addressed to Soaring Crow. The front porches I passed are the opening pages to the home stories of people inside. If there are children, the remains of their toys are scattered about. If they are elderly, they will leave their gardening shoes by the back door, and if they are a young couple, they will be in the midst of home repairs, a roof that needs fixing, or a new coat of paint. I’d observed just one campaign poster board in the neighborhood. It seems to have gone out of style to post your politics on your car or in front of your house ( not now). In the front yard of one home, a banner was pitched in the ground that read, “Remember our Troops.” I didn’t ask but it is probable they have a son serving in Iraq.

 

 The hanging flower planters are replaced with mums and corn stalks. Some scatter straw on the lawn. I used to giggle at that September tradition, then I got giddy about arranging my seasonal display in the yard.The run back through town took me by the high school, a brawny brick building that looks like the setting for a chapter from “Catcher in the Rye.” A teacher passed by, dressed in a conservative suit and pumps, and smiled. She looked  wholesome as apple pie, and I wondered if I ever looked like that.

 

On chilly mornings, the fireplaces may be smoking, sending out puffs of burning wood as sweet as perfume. Our own fireplace was inoperable, which explains why the movie poster was in the fireplace.  By 8:00 a.m. the yellow school buses are chugging up the street and the children, gathered at our corner; bob up and down in innocent bursts of energy.They are  celebrating the beginning of a new day. I arrived  home about this time, and stopped to watch the quaintness of the moment. The habitat of those surroundings striped me bare of my Hollywood movie star Southern California roots. I was nourished by quaint tradition and scenery, and that is one answer to this mystery I call home.

 

I ate cider donuts when I wanted and instead of working out three or four times a week, I took long walks, past the Sunny Side farms to see the young foals in the corral. I dressed  in style-less shoes and pants, whenever I felt like it, without fashion consciousness. I preferrred to go to bed early and read Carson McCullers novels. If I woke  up in the middle of the night, I sat on the porch and looked at the hands of a storm forming in the sky.

People dropped by my house without notice, and sometimes just walked in and yelled  my name. My favorite Broadway hangout knows who I am, what kind of wine I like, and that we like to sit on the patio. Sometimes I met strangers who had  heard of the Follies House, and I felt a twinge of pride. 

We left Follies behind, and journeyed back through the plains of middle America to Taos, New Mexico, and on to Solana Beach. A few years later we moved to Taos, and then to Santa Fe. I thought the  mystery of that journey was over; that Follies would always feel like home; but it’s been a long time.  This summer we’ll journey back and find out.