Strong Views

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Strong Views

On the narrow road rising steeply
to Sierra City's cemetery, a wry
sign notes, "Not A Through Street."
We set the headstone of a dead aunt
next to a rock wall her brother
built. We place beneath the concrete

a full bottle of whiskey, a
horseshoe, a deer antler, and
a piece of rose quartz. Otherwise,
the aunt's not represented here
except in our memories. Her
ashes travel up by an alpine
lake somewhere. The family's
idiosyncratic, you might say,

and tardy, even haphazard, with
its burial rituals. In fact, there
are no rituals, no funerals or
formalities. People get together
eventually, share some laughs
and glum grief, eat, and drink.

A panting black dog lies
in the truck watching us lay
the headstone. Later, the aunt's
remaining brothers will visit
the stone in the shade, have
a look, say a total of, oh,
seven words, maybe. For now,

we kid around in the cemetery,
get the job done, nobody's
business but our own. Goodbye
to Aunt Nevada. The smooth blue
stone, saved from an arastra,
gives the pertinent dates, her
other last name, and a nickname--
then mentions, "Strong Views."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Cap and Trade: Bring It On!

Apparently one proposal for reducing carbon emissions is known as "cap and trade," a concept that, I gather, involves charging companies (for example) for emitting carbon but allows companies to trade "units" of carbon they have been allotted.

Another proposal, already enacted, involves giving people $4500 for so-called clunker automobiles if they spend the $4500 on a car that emits less carbon.

These policies converge directly on my 1969 Ford F-100 pickup (step-side style, short bed).

I'm ready.

My secret weapon is the odometer, which I, which no one, has turned back, in case you're wondering. The total miles on the odometer is now 52,480. Divide that number by 40 (years), and you get the resulting miles driven per year and carbon emitted per year. Not many miles, not much carbon.

My late father drove the pickup until 1997, so almost all the credit for low carbon emissions and minimalist driving must go to him. Most of the miles he put on the truck involved going to and from work as a carpenter and stone mason; going "to town" to pick up the mail and some groceries; going hunting, which essentially involved driving straight up into the mountains (much elevation, few miles); and going in search of gold.

However, at the insistence of the Ford F-100, I have maintained the minimalist philosophy. If you would emit less carbon, suggests the Ford, drive less. I know: it is a complex theory.

To echo lines from Treasure of the Sierra Madre, I don't need no stinking $4500 dollars for my "clunker" (a term the Ford and I find offensive, incidentally), and bring the cap-and-trade on, baby. I will amass units of carbon that I will sell to, well, I don't know to whom--Du Pont? California? NASCAR?

When I do occasionally drive the Ford into my favorite working-class shopping area in Tacoma, the Ford gets a lot of approving glances--from persons of all generations and from both genders, believe it or not. The truck is certifiably funky. It is an automotive poem.

Bear Nearby

Bear Nearby

Tonight a bear's at the perimeter,
beyond where cabin-lights dissolve.
The animal breaks brush and gulps air,
snorts, working hard, and we hear this.
We glance up at Ursa Major above
the Sierra Buttes, a risen massif.

We figure the bear's breaking down
an apple tree now and gorging--wild
and deliberate, focused and irascible.
We don't walk closer. The bear doesn't
advance. There's a distance to be kept.

There's a fascination in the dark,
which entertains a big invisible mammal
whose family's lived here since before
any human named constellations or
eavesdropped on night's business.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Buddy's Cords of Wood

Buddy's Cords of Wood

Buddy was engaged to marry a woman who
lived in a white house on the hill. He
cut and stacked cords of wood for her.
Before Winter came, she broke off
the engagement and married another man,
who moved in with her. They burned
the wood Buddy had cut. Buddy lived
with his sister from then on. This

was in a town of 225 where few
can afford the luxury of embarrassment.
When Buddy cheated too obviously
at pinochle, the men banned him
from the games for a while. For
decades, an adage flourished in town:
"Don't cut wood for your beloved
until after you marry because some
bastard might end up burning it."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Moon-Shot: The Missing Article

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(image: Jules Verne)
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Moon-Shot 1969: The Missing Article


Somewhere between the moon and the Sierra Nevada,
our TV-reception got fizzed. We leaned in toward
the Zenith set that labored to freight us images
of Armstrong. Outside, illusory sky still pretended
to be blue. " . . .one small step for man, one
giant leap for mankind," said the Zenith, and
I knew the first man on the moon had flubbed
prefabricated lines. The article "a" was missing,
and without it, "man" and "mankind" meant pretty
much the same thing in 1969. The article "a"

is still missing. It tumbles in the Milky Way,
silent in an unspoken vacuum. Yes, yes, I was
properly amazed like everyone else. And a little
sad. After a cumbersome astronaut stepped off a
ladder and set feet, the moon misplaced its
mythology and became dirt and a destination.

Corresponding With Nostalgia

Nostalgia's a fact of life because it springs from routine, it provides an easy if illusory alternative to bothersome change, and it may be legitimately related to things that worked pretty well in our lives. Things in the past were not necessarily worse, even though our tendency is to over-estimate them (arguably).

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In my case, an example of the latter (things worked all right) would be . . . the post office. In a relatively remote mountain-town, the post-office provided one obvious link to the world at large. It provided one of the most stable routine's of the day--going to get the mail.

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I inherited my father's 1969 Ford F-100 pickup, which I am steadily refurbishing but not restoring; he purchased it new, and by 1997, when we left us, he had put fewer than 50,000 miles on it. Here's a rough guess: at least 25% of those miles were put on when he drove the truck to town to "get the mail." (We had no rural delivery, except of a newspaper or two.) The round-trip was probably around 3 miles.

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I also remember liking the musty smell of the old post office; oddly enough, my dad helped build the new post-office (which is now old), including a nice stone-facade in which he embedded venerable gold-mining implements. I also liked the highly ritualized transactions of buying stamps, getting mail-orders, opening the wee mailbox, and so on.

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One ritual that still obtains in the town is that, when someone dies--especially after a long illness and even if they have moved away--someone attaches a notice of the event to the glass doors of the post office. Email and voice-mail have yet to replace this mode of communication that precedes an official obituary.

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Post-offices still seem busy, but I suspect they're far less busy with personal correspondence, which is delivered via various incarnations of phones and computers (and phones are computers). At the same time, neuroscientists might argue (I guess) that nostalgia is a matter of electrons, too--located in the electrical wiring of our brains.

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A wee ballad, at any rate (and postal rates always go up; why, in my day, a stamp cost only . . .):

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Corresponding With Nostalgia

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The correspondence used to be

Composed of pulp and ink,

Now seems elaborate and slow,

Indeed antique, I think.

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The mail comes digitally now,

Encoded on the air.

Yes, personality persists.

And no, it itsn't fair

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To say we write robotically.

The wait and weight of post--

The palpability of what

I read, I miss the most.

*

Yet now I'm totally plugged in,

Am tethered to my screens.

I send and post, receive and text.

("Text" now's a verb, it seems.)

*

A letter to Nostalgia, yes:

I think that's what I'll write.

It will come back: "No such address."

Electrons are Nostalgia's site.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Summer Carpentry

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Summer Carpentry

Sometimes when Sierra sun baked
and bleached a new house's skeleton,
I'd stand on a plywood sub-floor, jeans
sweat-drenched, forearm fatigued from
hammering all day, and look up at
an immobile mountain greened with
manzanita, fir, oak, and pine, and know
something secretly but not sadly.

We'd built that thing, frame of dwelling.
Wages came, sun lavished light, mountains
mimed illusion of permanence. Everything,
everything changes always and everywhere.
This isn't news but you can come to it
newly after a long's days work with wood.

And the Old Man said, "Hans, time to pick
up the tools," and it was 4:00 p.m. that one
day once in all of time, and somebody wanted
a house by the river. A canyon-breeze caught
sweet odor of sawdust. I stopped staring,
came back to tasks, reached for a saw,
a plumb-bob, a level; moved in and with the
changes. Newly nailed partitions cast shadows.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Deliveries

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In our small town, there was a guy named Harold Hallman who hauled freight for a living, but he didn't change his name to Haulman. He drove 3-plus hours down the mountains to Sacramento, got the stuff, and drove 3-plus hours back, delivering bread, milk, meat, etc., to the grocery store but also delivering stuff to indivuals in town.

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For example, my parents had Harold deliver milk and ice cream for a while. The only ice-cream he ever delivered was Maple Nut because that was the flavor my father liked. --Not a democracy, in case you were wondering. The ice cream came in a huge tub, which I guess held 5 gallons. Maybe ten. All the stuff came in boxes made of hardwood and metal. I think the Crystal Dairy Company in Sacramento owned them, and Harold was affiliated with it.

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At any rate, my father kept some of those boxes, which he flipped over (metal bottom on top) and put in the back of his pickup when he had too many passengers than could fit in the cab. I believe this sort of practice is illegal now, as it should be, especially in late Fall in the Sierra Nevada (when al fresco transportation is not enjoyable), but also because of the whole seat-belt thing, etc. Sometimes there were several of us back there with hounds because my father wanted to drive around looking for deer after work, towards dusk, when the weather was even more lovely.

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Rarely did we see a deer that he might shoot, I presume because the deer were at home with their feet up, reading the newspaper. Nor did we really want him to see a deer and to shoot it--for we were cold and selfish and did not wish the evening to be extended any further.

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A very classy image comes to mind: a family and its dogs riding around mountain roads. The dogs had their noses in the air.

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I'm sure my father asked Harold's permission to keep those unusually durable boxes, but it never occurred to me to ask. The strange boxes were simply part of the landscape immediately around our house. One of my brothers worked for Harold for a while, loading and unloading freight.

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Deliveries

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The time has always come

somewhere, I suppose, for

who knows what. To whomever

time has come, the what usually

becomes clear on delivery. Time

delivers the goods and the bads.

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It's the biggest shipping company,

with offices in every moment and

deliveries to any place. You look

into a moment, see the package,

open it, and say, "Hey, look what

time delivered. I don't really

remember ordering that."

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

The Stuff That Came His Way

The Stuff That Came His Way

Yes, this is about the stuff that came his way

and his way with the stuff. By barter, whim,

or accident, odd items came my father's way.

An huge green spotlight from a Navy

destroyer. He wired the light, placed it outside,

and shined it on the mountain. Why?

. . .An ornate barber's chair--porcelain, chrome,

and leather. It occupied our living-room for

a year. He called it a "conversation piece."

I did not know what that term meant. . . .

A hand-made cross-bow. A mahogany

nutcracker in the shape of a naked woman:

the legs did the cracking (very funny). An

upright porcelain urinal, which he left outside,

leaning against a cedar tree. Dynamite. Mercury.

A Chickering grand piano, made in Boston but first

sold in Portland, Oregon. A ukelele. Hand-made

skis. An antique mechanical apple-peeler. Square

nails. Antique barbed wire. Petrified wood. A

bona fide jalopy, which he rigged to drive

a big-bladed buzz-saw. Bamboo fishing rods,

wire and pipe of all kinds, and a Chinese nightstick.

The intrinsic value of all these things was immediately

clear to me. That they had arrived and were mysterious

was all the verification I required. My father used some

of this stuff, laughed at most of it, misplaced some, and gave

a lot away to anyone who made the mistake of showing

or feigning interest. "Hell, take it--it's yours," he'd say.

It wasn't theirs. It wasn't his. It wasn't anyone's:

that was the problem. Toward all the stuff, my mother

remained skeptical, cooly tolerant. She liked the piano.

She laughed, once, at the nutcracker shaped like a woman.

As for the rest: it was from her point of view part of a

domain mismanaged with great authority by her husband,

my father, who was a kind of intersection of the Dadaist

Movement, of which he wasn't aware, and Daniel Boone.

I have a piece of cinnabar someone gave him. It's very

heavy for its size. I'm hanging on to it. The piano's in

my livingroom. I'm restoring his Ford pickup. His stuff,

it came my way. Like him, I'm a magnet for stuff.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Mountain Misery and Skunk Cabbage

(image: the plant commonly known as "Mountain Misery," or
Chamaebatia Species: foliolosa)


In the High Sierra, there are at least two plants with over-powering aromas: skunk cabbage (often found in marsh-like conditions but at high altitude) and mountain misery, which seems to grow in the shade and is most drought-tolerant. These plants are serious about the way they smell. They also cause arguments. Some people, like me, like the way they smell. Other people don't. I think people from the latter group gave the plants their common (as opposed to Latin) names.


Plants, Too

Of course creatures fascinated us. Like us
they'd ended up not in Paris or Perth but
in the High Sierra--by accident; or maybe
it was a career-move; who knows? Rattlesnakes,
skinks, lizards, ouzels, kildeers, owls, potato-bugs,
scorpions, deer, periwinkles, bears, raccoons,
bobcats, cougars, water-snakes, hawks,
and company charmed us like wizards.


The plants, too, cast a magic, though, rooted,
they were easier to ignore and less dramatic.
The way milkweed actually bled milk when
snapped, every time: so cool. How skunk-cabbage
(Lysichiton americanus) and mountain misery
embraced you with their odors like a boozy,
perfumed, vivid aunt: wow. Anis-stalks tasted like
licorice. Pine-sap softened by saliva turned
into gum. Take your chances with wild berries:
elderberries, yes; inkberries, no. We climbed


pines and firs, rode them as they
bent with the wind as flexibly as
grass-blades. What was the strangest
vegetation of all? I will say the snow plant,
Sarcodes sanguinea, bereft of chlorphyll.
It was less than creature but more
than plant. One day it would simply arise
beneath a tree in snow, bright red in Winter,
broadcasting a mute allure that suggested
it might not be a part of any timely scheme.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Abyss Estates

(photos: bottom, Bombay Bay, near the Salton Sea, with decaying trailer houses; and, top, an abandoned car + abode, Salton Sea)






For some reason, I've always been intrigued by places created by a reckless leap of the imagination, or of circumstances, and then abandoned, or almost so. Indeed I grew up in such a place, Sierra City, California, now population 225 but, during the Gold Rush, population 3,000. Astoundingly, people were actually considering the possibility of making nearby Downieville (population 500 now) the State Capital. All because of the Gold Rush, a spasm of history.

Therefore, the Salton Sea and environs intrigue me. It's a salty sea (or immense lake), as one might imagine, created by spillage from the Colorado River. Developers built houses around it and in nearby communities like Bombay Bay. This area is essentiallyin the desert of the far Southeast corner of California, but because a lake sprang up there, developers and promoters moved in quickly. Basically the whole thing fell apart. The area is like a bizarre modern ghost town, although some people do still live there, and bless their hearts.

Apparently, however, the Salton Sea is also home to extraordinary species of birds and other creatures, so much so that the California Legislature has attempted to provide money to save the Sea, whatever that means, and whatever that entails. Apparently one problem is that it's too salty now. There's at least one fine documentary on the place, and then a relatively recent movie was shot there. I think Val Kilmer's in it.



Abyss Estates

The salesman said, "Sir, this is a truly unique property.
People--I'm talking philosophers and poets--have talked
about it for years. Now you have a chance to buy a piece of it.
What's that? Yes, technically, you will disappear after you
take possession. Fascinating, huh? In our business, we
call it 'going all in.' It's a gambling term. But the sense

of privacy is unmatched. . . . Certainly, take your time
to decide. However--and I say this not to pressure you--
only a few parcels remain. You just don't see property
like this every day. But take your time. It's a big decision.
I can get you into Abyss Estates for 10 per cent down.
This thing's going to be an equity-machine. It's the Abyss.
I mean, there's no place like it, sir."

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Clothing

In the house we lived in the longest in the Sierra Nevada, the main living quarters were on the second floor, which also had a porch. My father attached one large pulley to one of the porch-posts and another to a pine tree a hundred feet away. Then he threaded a cable through the pulley-wheels, and my mother used this to dry clothes on. It remains the longest clothesline I've encountered, and of course my father had not calculated how much strength was required to push the loaded line out and pull it back, so some strength was required of my mother and us. Children of the Great Depression, my parents owned an electric dryer but almost never used it.


I have not done so yet, but I'd like to track down the biochemical and olfactory-biological reasons why clothes dried outside by breeze and sunshine universally smell so appealing to people. I would hazard that cotton thusly dried may smell especially good. With regard to the odor of the dried cloth, what do the sun and the breeze do that a machine-dryer doesn't?

This has all been a circuitious introduction to a poem about clothing, except the poem has almost nothing (but at least something) to do with this drying business I've been discussing. --So it goes with poems, introductions, clothing, and blogs.



The Clothing


Laundry in a basket still wore
some of sun's expenditure
and breeze's perfume.

Eventually, we put on these
washed things. They led us
back out into sunlight, into
lakes of air. We wear

the repetitions of our days,
dress our bodies with our ways,
fold clothes of our woven

consciousness, put them
in closets of memory, hang
them in dreams, where they
re-costume themselves
in carnivals of synaptic light.

People from an old civilization
called Time sit beside a slow
river, rubbing wet cloth with
stones, paying no attention to
the gods who splash and cavort
nearby, who rise from the river,
and cloth themselves in sky.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Ballad of the Micro-Town

[the photo is of Sierra City, California, population 225, elevation @ 4,250 feet above sea level]





Ballad of the Micro-Town


The mountains round that town are sheer
Massifs of stone. The town
Lies glinting like a coin below.
The river carves a frown.

I grew up there, so it was all.
It was the world to me.
That it and I were less than small
I'd learn eventually.

To have grown up in a small town
Is such a micro-fate,
A shrunken destiny, at best,
A morsel of time's bait.

If you are from a micro-town,
Bravo to you from me.
Our origins have blessed us with
Well known obscurity.



Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008

Headline: "Hans Is Hick, Says O.E.D."

. . . So I have this poem about being a hick. Being a hick, I titled the poem, "Hick."

Before I posted the poem, I wanted to check on the etymology of "hick," something I should have done as I was writing the poem; oh well, you can't think of everything.

I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary online (which constitutes a kind of Shangri-La for hicks who are also nerds), and here is what I found:


a. An ignorant countryman; a silly fellow, booby. Now chiefly U.S.



1565 HARDING in Jewel Def. Apol. (1611) 529 Be it that Hicke, Hob, and Hans, of your Sects haue impudentlie accused him.

Source: OED online.



I was not surprised that the first definition of the first noun-version of "hick" is "an ignorant countryman" or "a silly fellow," although "booby" came as a bit of a surprise and has different connotations for me. Nor was I surprised that, once having jumped across the Atlantic, "hick" pretty much changed its citizenship.

But then I look at the first cited example of "hick" ["Hicke"] in print, and I find that my first name is lumped together with "Hicke," so that a Hans is apparently and officially a Hicke! How fabulous is that?! And apparently some hicks impudently accused somebody of something. I can see how hicks might be regarded as impudent, especially in Britain.

It is a difficult sentence to parse, that first citation. Does it mean, "Given the fact that Hicke, Hob, and Hans of your group (Sects) have impudently accused him, ...."? Or does it mean, "It is a fact that Hicke, Hob, and Hans [bumpkins all?] have impudently accused him"? Or does it mean something else? Hmmm. At any rate, Hicke and Hans appear cheek-by-jowl, to use a bit of a hickish term. (I wonder if Hob has anything to do with hobo. I shall need to return to the O.E.D.)

The second version of "hick" as a noun is the same thing as a hiccup, but I've almost never, if ever, heard it used that way. And "hick" can also be a verb, meaning to hiccup--but is extremely rare, methinks, unless the Brits use it that way.

Hick vs. Redneck: I think a hick is just a person from the country--a person with distinctly rural roots, whereas a Redneck, I think, may be more likely to be a person from the rural American South, to be white (with a red neck), and perhaps to come with more stereotypical baggage--in reality or by perception. I believe the first time I saw "red neck" (referring to white Southern rural folk) in print was when I read All The King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren, in high school, although I had heard the term before, of course. I found the narrative to be captivating, but I haven't read the novel again. I liked the movie-version with Broderick Crawford but not the newer one with Sean Penn.

What are the characteristics of a hick? I mention a few, by implication, in the poem below. But before that, here's a brief list:


1. A hick grew up in a very small town. Is anyone who grew up in a very small town necessarily a hick? No, but growing up in a very small town dramatically increases the odds of a person's being a hick.

2. A hick almost always comes from a working-class family. Is everyone from a working-class family a hick? No. Most people from working-class families in Boston or Atlanta, for example, probably aren't hicks. The combination of very small town and working class has a lot to do with one's being a hick.

3. A hick grew up accustomed to certain eccentricities, which only later were discovered (by the hick) to be eccentricities. Other people don't do it or say it that way, the hick learns. Who knew?! The hick learns that the world is full of "other people."

4. People change; education and re-education (the second sounds so menacing) are possible; nonetheless, in spite of undergoing transformations, a hick will still never quite fit in. Something hickish, however minor, still this way comes. A hick is often an accidental non-conformist, and s/he may have heard the term "non-conformist" somewhat later in her/his life than other people heard it in their lives.

5. A hick is easily impressed by almost any "new thing," but at the same time a hick is suspicious of people who think they are important (and a hick may in fact loathe his or her own self-importance); a hick combines naivete and skepticism in unexpected ways.

6. A hick is likely to display some awkwardness in social situations, even if the awkwardness is slight. The hick may or may not be aware of the awkwardness but in most cases is aware of it but is powerless to stop it or may, in fact, decide not to stop it--out of habit or stubbornness or mischievousness.

Contrary to popular opinion, hicks are not necessarily uncomfortable in cities. They do, however, tend to navigate or negotiate cities idiosyncratically. They may abruptly ask strangers for directions or use unusual landmarks, for example; or they may take circuitous routes. Non-hicks do not like to travel with hicks, for a variety of reasons, in most cases.

But many hicks do enjoy urban centers. They may find the behavior of urban dwellers risible, however. Hicks, for example, tend to be amused by New Yorkers' need to appear extremely busy, important, and eternally, perpetually Late for an Important Appointment. Of course, New Yorkers, in order to survive, have learned to wear the mask of someone who is allegedly busy, important, in a hurry, impatient, and From New York, even if, especially if, they are Not From New York--and may, in fact, be hicks passing as urbanites! The horror!

For the record, I grew up in a town that allegedly had and has a population of 225. During most winters, the population seemed more like 125. The town is in the backwoods of California's Sierra Nevada. The town is called a city. "Sierra City." Clearly, a hick named the town. To be fair, I must acknowledge that during the Gold Rush, briefly, Sierra City had a population of about 3,000 miners, but it was more of an encampment, and 3,000 does not a city make.

My family lived almost in the center of town, in a house my father had built, but here comes the telling, almost Dickensian, hickish detail. When I was six years old, my father announced that Sierra City was becoming "too crowded"[actually, its population had remained static], so he moved us all about a mile outside of town, built another house, and felt more at ease. I don't recall his inquiring as to how any of us had responded to the transition. He assumed we all agreed that in spite of what the Census suggested, Sierra City had indeed become "too crowded" and that we, too, had reacted negatively to this "crowdedness."

In any event, here's the hick (or Hicke, or Hob, or Hans) poem:



Hick


He grew up assuming others
had a right to speak
before he spoke.

He grew up in a region
named Not Really.

He eats too fast in restaurants,
walks too slowly in cities,
does his own repairs.

Elegance makes him claustrophobic;
opulence, morose.

The entitled fascinate him.
He watches.

Shown evidence who he is and
what he does might
matter, he doubts it.

I know him: he hangs on
to worn-out things too long,
for at his house of fears,
someone’s always about to
break in and confiscate it all.

The grin—too broad. The stare—
too intense. He embarrasses me.
There he is—hanging back,
watching. Oaf.

from The Coast Starlight, copyright 2006.