To Butte and Back: Part I

Summer time. The sun stays up till nine or so slathering me with that much needed Vitamin D, and my brain kicks into automatic road trip gear. A full tank of gas, a clean windshield, an ice chest in the back seat, and the horizon’s the limit. Roll the windows down and the scents of newly mown grass or hay, honeysuckle, or even wet dirt and worms after a shower tempt me to hang my head out the window like a dog.

It sure beats waiting in line to get frisked, waiting some more, and then dozing in a cramped seat looking out at acres of clouds, not to mention jiggling to those lovely bumps and grinds of turbulence. Feeling the lay of the land leading to your destination is surely preferable when time permits, and, what's really cool is you can change your destination on a whim. Drive the road not so frequently taken. Stop and stretch your legs and have an ice cream cone or visit with the lady in the gas station about the storm they had last week. Did you know that when you fly to the mountains by plane, you’re much more apt to get altitude sickness than if you drive because your body doesn’t have a chance to gradually accustom itself to thinner air?

Every year my dad insisted we get out of Dodge when his vacation rolled around no matter how many household projects needed tending."Time to hit the road and see how the other half live," he'd say. So, we always took a two-week vacation in mid to late July and were on the road camping over my birthday, July 20. (Having a summer birthday was a bummer, for I missed out on birthday parties and classroom treats, but now that I am a teacher and stepping into those “later years,” I cherish my summer birthday because I can ignore it if I wish or celebrate it to the extent I want without well-wishing staff hanging up black balloons or bras all over my yard or room. I'd rather sneak into the sunset, thank you.)

Baba, my grandfather, called his children "the gypsies." Every summer my mother, the oldest, as well as her two younger sisters and one brother, would load up families and campers and away we’d go, sometimes just a general direction in mind: East, South, North, but most of the time it was West, a wagon train of sorts, more like pioneers than gypsies. Truth be told, my grandfather, was envious. If he’d have been younger and in better health he’d have joined our band for sure.

This year my husband and I trekked out to Butte, Montana to attend the National Folk Festival. He had read an article about it in the travel section of the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, so we checked the website, and our plans began to gel. The Festival is a yearly event that is held in the same city for three years, and then moves to a different location. This was Butte’s second year of hosting the Festival. It will be there again next year, so if you enjoy good music, food, culture, horses and fun, give it serious consideration. A recent poll reported that Butte is rated one of the top five places to retire, considering housing costs, recreation opportunities, beauty, and services. I concur, but what about the winters?
We made our plans four weeks before the festival and hotel or camping accommodations in Butte were all booked, so we opted for Bozeman, seventy-some miles this side of Butte. I90, four-lane and scenic, zipped us across the mountains to the festival in about an hour. Butte, once a copper-mining mecca of one hundred thousand people during its hay-day is now home to less than thirty thousand. As we rounded the last curve into Butte, our gaze was immediately drawn to the humongous human bite from the mountain, revealing a gaping wound of orange rock.

The journey: the first day we left about two-thirty in the afternoon and decided to stop at Hutch’s Motel in Presho, Nebraska at about 11 p.m. We thought about resting in the car, but a comfy bed and hot shower were too tempting. We walked into the lobby; a TV and lights were on, and we were greeted in a friendly, straight-forward manner by a sign on the counter: "Self-Registration: Please choose your room and take a key; fill out the card and in the morning pay $45 at Hutch’s Café and Restaurant next door. Thank you."

Never experienced anything like that before. The trust system of hotel management. The rooms were clean and the shower hot, and the next morning at Hutch's Cafe we paid our bill and bought our breakfast which was delivered by a wry and dry comic character; if her name wasn’t Flo, it should have been.

She the Boss

Today, Saturday, July 25th, 2009, blue skies and a gentle breeze greet us in Platteville, Wisconsin, about 70 miles Southwest of Madison, and 22 miles Northeast of Dubuque, Iowa.

Yesterday, not so much.

At about 4:30 p.m. I was reading Michael Perry's "Off Mainstreet" in my den, which I call the purple room because it is painted a hue called midnight iris, and gradually, not just the walls, but the entire room became midnight iris. I looked outside to see a massive, ominous cloud slowly descending like a giant's big, bare foot.

Instead of going to the basement as all Midwesterners are instructed to do in weather like this, I, like most people, went outside to watch.

Beyond the giant's dark gray sole, clear skies and sparks of sunlight reflected off the football stadium's scoreboard in the north, like she had chosen our neighborhood as her path and spared others. It was only moments, however, before the giant lay down on our town and belched wind, rain, and hail indiscriminately.

I've lived in the Midwest all my life and never seen hail the size of big jawbreakers pelt the landscape like this. Our dog barks wildly when someone knocks at our door, but with the hail banging on all sides of the house, he didn't know which way to turn. I opened the door to show him the ice chunks bouncing on the deck, but he backed away in fear and utter confusion: What the heck is this stuff?

After a few minutes, the hail piled up, and the ground in my flower beds was white as the fleece on Mary's little lamb. We are well accustomed to white ground in the Midwest---but not in July.

The hail ceased, but the winds and rain beat on for another hour or so, and the result in the area was completely destroyed field crops, stripped of their leaves; shattered windows, a number of which filled Main Street sidewalks with shards of glass; downed trees and power lines; plugged up street drains and gutters which caused some flooding; and awed residents.

This morning as the sun shines and the breeze blows, I hear an orchestra of chain saws buzzing as cars of curious survivors survey the spoils. My husband and I were lucky, as we just have to clean up some small downed limbs and leaves. Otherwise, thankfully, all is intact. Including us.

As we uprighted our potted plants and surveyed the slaughter of our tomato plants, I commented how helpless we are when Nature decides to go on a rampage.

"Yup," my husband said. "She the boss."

Call Me Frank

I'm a high school English teacher, and as you may guess, most of us have no life whatsoever beyond grading papers and making sure the world speaks in grammatically correct sentences. After all, we are the hopelessly optimistic people who continue to think up creative ways to teach classic literature like "Huckleberry Finn," "The Scarlet Letter," and "Romeo and Juliet" year after year, even though students don't even pretend to read them anymore and openly stroll into class reading a freshly printed copy of the Sparknoted assignment.

Oh, well. That's a whole other blog.

One of the perks of being a teacher used to be the conventions we were encouraged to attend before the economy went South. I once met Al Pacino and the late Gene Siskel at an NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) convention in Chicago when they were promoting Pacino's documentary "Looking for Richard," which followed the creative process of the conception and production of his feature film, "Richard III." It struck me as bizarre how Pacino portrays glib, glossy characters on the screen, but when presented with questions in a live interview, his sentences veered and lurched, as he unsuccessfully attempted to keep his responses between the ditches. A bad night? The workings of a creative mind? Or, maybe he missed having a script in front of him.

About ten years ago in October, I attended another NCTE convention, this time in Milwaukee. The keynote speaker was Frank McCourt who was there to promote the film based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Angela's Ashes." I adored the book and his no nonsense, yet blarney-filled, story-telling style. Though steeped in the darkness of his poor and pitiful childhood, the memoir is chuck-full of humor, honesty, depth and philosophical musings, all qualities I admire in a book---and an author.

Being of Irish heritage and an aspiring writer, I envisioned my plan to be noticed by him: "Hello, Mr. McCourt. Would you please sign my name tag? I loved 'Angela's Ashes.' I saw in your book that you included a picture of the Leamy School in Limerick which you attended when you were young. My maiden name was Leamy. (I hand him my name tag and point out the name.) I'm a writer too. Love to write stories about families.---You'd like to see some of my writing? Sure, I can send something to you. Oh, why look. I happen to have a story right here in this folder.---Why, yes. I'd love it if you'd read it and comment on it.---I've written a novel, you know. Really? If you like it, you'd consider writing a promotional blurb for the cover? Oh, thank you, Mr. McCourt.---What? Call you Frank?"

Frank McCourt delivered a wry, spot-on, hour-long monologue of quips and ditties about his 30 years of teaching in the New York Public School System to an audience of a thousand teachers or more. He then took questions, and the stories flowed full-bodied and smooth, as Guinness from the tap in an Irish pub. If there were an Academy Award category for Best Live Performance at an NCTE Convention, McCourt would take home Oscar, and Pacino would be left in the dust.

After the standing ovation, McCourt signed autographs, so I stood in line going over my spiel in my mind. All the women English teachers were gathered around him, ogling in admiration, as we tend to do in the presence of a notable author. Finally, it was my turn. (I hate how the pressure builds when you're waiting in line for a long time.) Anyway, I spouted the business about my maiden name being Leamy, and how my ancestors were from Ireland, etc. He signed my name tag as he listened, gave it back, and in his Irish lilt said, "You know those Leamy people were pirates, don't you?"

"It figures," was all I could think of to say, my shining Pacino moment.


***Frank McCourt, author of "Angela's Ashes," "'Tis," and "Teacher Man," died at the age of 78 in New York City of meningitis on July 19, 2009.