Trigger For Sale

I watched Roy Rogers and Dale Evans a lot.  I’ll admit right now that I always thought Dale was a waste of time.

One Christmas, my parents gave my sister and me life like action figures.  I got Roy and my sister got Tonto. No Lone Ranger in sight. Nor much logic in the choice of toys.

 I got the plastic palomino, Trigger, the molded hat that fit onto Roy’s head and Roy’s thighs splayed in a giant U.  I think my sister felt gypped.

This week I heard that the taxidemied Trigger was up for sale.  Of course I knew that he’d been stuffed and was a star attraction in Apple Valley and then, later, in Branson, Missouri.  Roy and Dale are long gone. I think, Roy Jr. must have needed some money and so Trigger went on the market.

They said Trigger was estimated to go for somewhere between $100 and $200 thousand.  I will admit it here that there was a tiny iota of me that wanted to buy him.  How the hell a stuffed horse would fit in my living room and survive the UV rays of the Hawaiian sun, I don’t know.  Sometimes, you just want something that isn’t possible.  I didn’t share this dream with anyone, just tucked it away with my unrequited desire to get the Mattel belt buckle with a derringer that shot caps. 

Trigger went up—stuffed and mounted—for bid at a Christie’s auction.  The selling pricing was $266,500 to someone in Nebraska. I hope they appreciate him. Roy did. And I did.

He MIGHT have fit in the living room. 

A Town That Rhymes with Diarrhea

One summer, on my family’s annual trip to the Northwest, we drove through Arizona and Utah.  Zion and Bryce were on the itinerary.  But my father had a hidden, and more personal, agenda.  As he steered the Chevrolet station wagon off the highway and onto a bumpy, potholed dirt road he told us that we were headed to a ghost town; a town with a name that rhymed with diarrhea.  That was not how he put it, but that was the way that we took it.

Paria was an unsuccessful Mormon settlement alongside the trickle of the Paria River.  This trickle, and a plethora of diseases that came with it, was why the settlement never made a go of it. My great grandfather had been sent by the church elders to settle a town known today as San Bernardino, California.  This task done, he returned to Utah and was ordered to do the same in Paria. The plan didn’t work.

Bouncing around in the back of the seatbelt-less station wagon my sister and I were excited about the prospects of seeing a real ghost town. Years of Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Roy Rogers, The Virginian and Rawhide had whetted our appetite for this Western phenomenon.  Perhaps my father had billed this excursion with a little touch of flair. But we were not prepared for the stark and desolate place that we found.

After several miles on the dirt road, we came to small cemetery.  We got out of the car and my parents looked at the names on the tombstones.  My sister and I weren’t as comfortable wandering around on top of the dead and stayed behind the small, iron fence.

My great grandfather’s grave was there.  And the graves of several children with our last name. And their mothers. These were all members of my dad’s family.

The name “Paria” became a joke in our family for a place no one wanted to go.

Twenty-five years later, my Scottish husband and I were spending our summer driving around the west. We found ourselves on the same dirt road. On this visit, I discovered a new development:  a movie set Western town was built along the road. “The Outlaw Josie Wales” was filmed there.  Our Honda Civic navigated the potholes until I was once again at the little cemetery. We parked the car and forded the river; which was not particularly difficult.

 The remaining structures and the cemetery had more meaning on this visit. I wanted to show my husband where my ancestors had lived and died. 

Eleven years ago, my husband, son and I took a family vacation to Nevada, Arizona and Utah.  And, yes, this time in a four wheel drive rented SUV, we took the dirt road to Paria.  We took pictures of my great grandfather’s grave, forded the “river” and climbed on the vermillion cliffs.  I took a bolt from one of the buildings that had yet to succumb to the elements.

That night, we checked into a small 1950’s style motel in the mostly Mormon town of Panquitch, Utah.  Across the street was a small museum run by one of the faithful.  My son and I took a tour of the relics, the old butter churns and dishes and went back to our air-conditioned room to settle in for the evening. We turned on the TV and went through the program guide by the side of the bed. “The Outlaw Josie Wales” was on.  The three of us watched Clint Eastwood ride through Paria.

The 4th of July at Angus Street

My family always did something special on the 4^th.  We had friends or relatives around, we churned home-made ice cream, I made pickle and potato chip “sandwiches” and we had a very tame fireworks display.  All this was done in our back yard.

Before my mother met and married my father, she had been married to a man who died within one week of contracting polio.  He left her an insurance policy and she was smart enough to use it to buy a house.  3018 Angus Street.

When my father entered the scene, married and moved in, he took the back yard in under his able wing. I have no clue what it looked like before his arrival, but by the time my little memory was at work, it had three distinct levels.

The bottom tier was grass and raised flowerbeds with roses and agapanthus, and a small grapefruit tree.  In years to come it was transformed into “golf driving range”.  The next level was grass surrounded by flowerbeds, a concrete wishing well and a latticed love seat alcove. There was a plum tree with very scratchy bark and an apricot tree. When my father finally retired, he felt compelled to use every single piece of fruit from his land. We had apricot jam, plum jam, apricot “leather” until my mother could no longer stand coming home from work to a kitchen filled with sickly sweet smelling pots and pans.

Adjoining this lawn was a slate covered area with a built in bar-b–que, large redwood picnic table with benches and a bed of fuchsias.  In later years it would also be home to a wood rat that would appear during party dinners, much to the utter embarrassment of my mother.

The top level of the yard was where I spent most of my time.  It backed, for many years, onto an open lot. When the “open lot” was in the process of being built upon, my mother was horrified at the language of the workmen.  She complained to the boss.  I was enchanted by the forbidden words.

Along this upper level, my father made a small trail to a play area. At the opposite side was a large white peach tree.  The Babcock tree was later axed to make room for a playhouse constructed from our neighbor’s garage door. I have always thought of that tree. The play area changed over the years and saw a swing set swapped out for a ping-pong table.  And then, with my adolescence, the area fell into disuse.

But on the 4^th of July, the backyard always came to life. 

Sparklers were always a big hit.  And once we discovered that you could “spell” with them in the night air, their lure grew stronger.  Hearts, initials, circles lasted just that few seconds longer than they should, and made them magical. We were never a family for the high-flyer type fireworks.  We kept everything close to the ground, always wary of fires and lawsuits, I suppose.  Nothing ever went higher than a foot. This may explain why my favorite “firework” of all time is THE WORM. 

The Worm was a slate gray pellet the size of a thumbnail.  We would put them on the bricks that lined the lawn:  the same bricks that my father had carefully laid when he took over the back yard of Angus Street and made it into a three tiered oasis.  When a match was put next to the worm it would start to grow and an ashen “worm” would grow into a curling, snaking shape.  It left permanent marks on the brick that would be a reminder of 4^th of July for years to come.  I’ll bet they are still there.  

 

Thomas Starr King Junior High Here I Come

When it came time to “graduate” from Ivanhoe Elementary School, things quickly began to change.  The assembly celebrating our passing was made up of our class singing the Doris Day hit “High Hopes.”  I guess I should have taken that as a harbinger of things to come.

Thomas Starr King Junior High pulled from a much wider and diverse catchment area than Ivanhoe. Frankly, I was nervous to be starting this new adventure and very jealous of my friends who were twins who could face the new challenges together, and my friends who had older brothers and sisters who had gone before.  I felt a bit like an explorer without an expeditionary force.

I think it’s ironic that I spent three years at a school named for someone I had never heard of and never was educated about. 

At King, life changed.  No longer was it important to kick a home run at recess or beat someone at handball.  Calluses earned from doing turns on the rings counted for naught. New words quickly joined my vocabulary:  Vato, Saint Christopher medal, Pendleton shirts, rat comb and scrub. It was now important how you held your blue notebook binder.  Girls to their chests and boys down at their side.  If this was not done correctly, one’s sexuality might be in question.

Wearing socks with your shoes made you a dork, hair spray was a must and suddenly deodorant became important.  The smell of Rite Guard Spray permeated the girl’s locker room as if it were the finest French perfume.

A year earlier, I had made a plea to the gods of bodily functions to PLEASE DON’T LET ME GET MY PERIOD IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.  This prayer was answered, but the onset was made no easier by the horrible contraptions designed to deal with our “curse” and the hall monitors who patrolled the bathrooms during break and lunch.  “Recess” was a long gone bittersweet memory.

I think one of the things that junior high, and the entire educational system, teaches is that LIFE lets you get to the top--just every now and then (6th grade, 12^th grade for instance) and puts a most addicting and tiny taste of omnipotence onto your tongue. Then it pulls out the rug with a twisted twinkle of the eye and makes you start climbing the ladder all over again.

At King, we had to start at the bottom, and not with just our “Leave it To Beaver” Silverlakers.

 

When I first started to ask for a St. Christopher medal my very Protestant mother was a bit at a loss.  She was not to know that a shiny blue medal hanging from your neck made you a “Surfer” and not a “Vato.”  The Vatos were a group whose females wore their hair in huge beehives that had enough hairspray to support a skyscraper.  It was rumored that inside of those intricately backcombed styles were razor blades and cigarettes.

On my family summer travels we had passed through Pendleton, Oregon and I was well aware of the fame of its woolen blankets and shirts. At King, I was to learn that a Pendleton was also a badge that said you were a “surfer.”  Those pseudo tartans were worn by boys who cultivated long, blond—often bleached-- bangs hanging just over their eyes. A Pendleton and a St. Christopher medal was all it took to be a “surfer.”  Think Beachboys.

Surfers

One summer when I was about 14, my uncle and aunt went off on a freighter to parts unremembered by me.  They offered their new beach house to my mother who scooped up the offer of a free vacation locale with relish. 

My family moved in for a week, maybe three, watching the waves and the surfers of Manhattan Beach.  I spent the time riding the waves on an inflatable canvas raft and reading SURFER magazine.  The raft had a blue side and a red side and I always rode it red side up so sharks wouldn’t think it was blood. I envied the wet suited boys with sun-bleached hair who walked passed our house to the beach carrying their boards and their egos with confidence.

In those days women didn’t surf…. especially if they were a 14 year old from Silverlake who only had the Pendleton and the St. Christopher medal to prove her worth.

In a moment of great patience, my mother drove me to a surf shop in town to look at the goods.  I coveted the Gordon Smith and Dewey Weber boards and wished more than anything that I could own one.  I think a came away with a decal.

When I wasn’t fishing off the pier or riding the raft, I wiled away those days reading SURFER magazine. I taught myself about the sport.  I learned about far off places called Sunset Beach, Makaha and Pipeline.  I knew what “ hanging ten” was and became familiar with the names of great surfers and their feats.

Little did I know that one-day, by the oddest of confluences I would live in Hawaii and see these places. And odder still, I would end up teaching school with the daughter of one of the most famous surfers I had read about many years earlier. 

My husband wore my Pendleton until it got holes in the elbows. And as for the St. Christopher medal, who is to know what long ago drawer it got lost in. But, to this day, I’ve never been on a surfboard.