River Talk - Coming Home

The motley crew on Bank Street 1974

This is a tale of turtles

Soft shell turtles

coming home

Back in the day - I recall being assured and expected to concur with Thomas Wolfe’s proclamation, You Can't Go Home Again.

Wait a minute. I’m perplexed. All I know is coming home…Being at home where ever I am. I’m from a family of soft shell, thick skinned turtles, carrying our homes on or backs and in our minds…or our hearts. 

Turtles on the move—calling home a trailer park along Blue Bonnet Texas freeways, a tent site in Mountain Air Colorado or Wyoming, some auntie’s back yard in corn fields Iowa, dirty inner city Detroit, Rochester….Chardon, Ohio…

A band of nomadic turtles, never sure if the Wisconsin pond could hold us all or we’d be washed down the Muddy Mo.

It’s a big world out there—one family turtle is off to Paris to be an au pair, smoking reefer in a West Bank Cafe along the Seine; one’s off to Boy Scout Camp setting off fire crackers in the cabin; one’s off to music camp; one’s plain off its rocker.

My favorite small turtle memory is curling up on the back ledge of the powder blue Lincoln sedan—in the days when cars had a back window large enough for a 9 year old to snuggle up with a stuffed turtle and a pillow—and watching the moon and stars pour across the sky or torrents of rain pound against the glass… fantasizing a glamorous, fast-paced life as papa turtle sped down unknown rural highways at his turtle-like speed, somewhere just above or below 100 mph.

Dad was one of six sons and two daughters raised by the strop. I knew the discipline part, but I didn’t know the killer subplot until after all the brothers were gone and the only remaining sister was muted by a stroke. Not much gets explained or shared under the rule of threats and fear. so when two thirty-something brothers had a bit too much to drink, a scuff over a girl, and the older brother delivered a fatal punch to the younger brother, there was no coming to terms. The surviving brothers thought they could hide the evidence by tying a cement boot to Milos body and pushing him and his car into the Cedar River. In the way that turtles are often seen half submerged, it worked. It was a mystery to everyone except the five remaining brothers, who retreated into their shells. Four to lives of domestic tranquility; the  most culpable to a life in exile.

Growing up, all the rest of us turtles only knew was that brother Wesley took off for California, never to be seen again, and only heard from occasionally through one of the older brothers.

This reminds me  of the turtle we had when my family lived in a small garden brownstone on Bank Street in Greenwich Village. My husband had made a rock garden  with a trickling fountain in a pond Turtle could enjoy in the small enclosed back yard. One especially lovely spring day when the yellow and red tulips were in full bloom,  our son took Turtle into the yard for some fresh air. When it was dinner time, Turtle was no where to be found. For days we went out looking for him, nothing… Finally we gave up. Months later when Turtle was but a faint memory, I opened the back door and was face to face with Turtle, head arched ominously, hissing at me for abandoning him to city rats, cats and other ferrel elements. We joyfully took turtle in, reunited with family.

The turtle story doesn’t end here. This is where it begins…

River Talk Love

A few days ago I volunteered to tell a story for River Talk on the theme “Is it really love?”  This makes me think of what the Haines audience likes to hear-- local stories. That’s what I’ve been told. 

I wish I knew more of the stories about my dad. They are funny. He was such a tight wad! I remember being bribed to do something…the offer…half a stick of Wriggley’s Spearmint gum. There were four of us kids, so if he wanted us all to do something, two sticks would go a long way. I can still see where he ripped the stick in half, the gummy exposed halves torn by his knobby thumb and forefinger, a thin line of silver foil and the outside green and beige wrapper exposed. It was even funnier because he didn’t allow us to chew gum…not lady-like. I guess we all share some of these lovely moments growing up in All-American families.

Like coming up to Alaska in the first place. What brought you here? The Nelson family story goes something like this: Our dad was into staying abreast of the news and important developments. Walking on the moon, except I don’t think that had happened yet. Electric cars. Like my brother Paul, Dad worked in the automotive industry. Building super highways…criss-crossing America. All that was exciting for him, and he and his cronies talked shop whenever they got together. A kind of male drone in the background of my exciting don’t-let-my-parents-know-what-I’m-doing-life in the Rochester New York suburb we were living in so Dad could educate us to be proper ladies at Eastman School of Music. He was a man with a plan.

There must have been a conversation about Alaska becoming a state. Going to Iowa public schools I knew all the states, what they were known for…Iowa, is where the tall corn grows…but territories and those manifest destiny outcroppings were off limits to elementary students. We might get the wrong idea.

My most vivid getting ready memory is painstakingly coloring a piece of typing paper with “Alaska or Bust” in the style where every letter is 10 different colors, so no one except the person who made the sign can read it. “Alaska or Bust” was taped to  the inside rear window of our turquoise Ford station wagon. Did you know that turquoise was one of the more popular car colors in the midi-1950s? Elvis and Hawaii. That didn’t last long.

We made it to Alaska driving cross-country on the detour-ridden, under-construction super highway dad was so proud of and up the flat-as-a-pancake most of the thousand -plus twisty, s-shaped gravel, permafrost heaved AlCan into the interior, stopping to be tourists to the last of Alaska’s sourdoughs sitting outside one-room cabins whittling a stick, maverick gold miners who were using hydraulic pressure of glacial streams to literally move mountains, and vestige military training grounds scattered around the state. None of us knew that dad was on a quest to be an Alaska homesteader, but we played beautifully into his plan, oohing and ahhhhing all the way.

Except for the night we camped in a barren area that made me think what the surface of the moon must look like. Dad slipped away with a revolver strapped to his side and instructions to get the fire going. He returned with a skinned animal and announced that we were going to have chicken for dinner. Really? He puckishly admitted that we were dining on porcupine. That was when we still thought of the prickly critter as a storybook character. No thank you, Dad.

The first family “stead’ was the Fort Seward Quonset hut where I think Byrne Power now lives. This is when what I call the Nelson Ma & Pa Kettle era began in earnest. The place looked like it hadn’t been lived in for decades. They spiffied up some of the rooms  with bright yellow and robin’s egg blue paint and settled in for the winter….several winters…the high point of their cozy life being icicles forming on the ceiling when the fire died down and when the fire was roaring, dripping water from the ice stalactites around the stove pipe sizzling on the surface of the barrel stove.

After a few years Dad looked around and found what in his estimation was a more suitable home up the highway and on a trip back to Haines from Anchorage he pulled up to the gas pump at the 33 Mile Road house to get to know his new neighbors before moving in. In his  astute research mode he starts the conversation, “I hear the house across the road is for sale.” Roadhouse owner Binks replied, “Yeah.”  Dad went on, “What do you think of the house?”  

“Well, it would make a good barn, if you took the floor out.” And the neighborly love affair began.

But all kidding aside. Dad did finally get the chance to prove up on a Mud Bay homestead, and interestingly enough he played a small role in job creation and economic development in Haines. Reminiscing about the days when Dad grew barley in the upper field, Scott Carey told me Dad would hire him to work alongside him in the field. One time after they were done for the day, Dad was already in the garden pulling up carrots when Scottie went to get paid. Dad only had cash to pay him the $7.00 an hour for a little over half of the time. Rather than offer to make good on the balance, Dad separated one of the carrots from the bunch he’d just pulled and extended it to Scottie, “Here, have a carrot.”