Good Stories for Mama's Day

My mother, Dorothy, and grandmother, Kate, circa 1913 Havre, MT.

My mother, Dorothy, was a good story teller. I believe it was a family tradition that traces back to Ireland on my mother's side. She also possessed a psychic ability, or at the very least a superstitious tendency that she inherited from her mother whose parents were both from the Emerald Isle.

I never knew my grandmother, Kate, who according to family lore would turn around and go home if a black cat crossed her path. She birthed 10 children in Havre, Montana. Nine survived. Seven boys and two girls. My mother told of laundry freezing on the clothes line and the earthen floor in their home that was heated by a coal-burning cook stove.

One morning at the age of 13, I had just returned from my morning paper route when my mother confronted me in the kitchen. "I had the strangest dream last night," she said. It was one of many meetings between us where I felt a special confidence, as though what she was telling me was a secret or important message.

"I heard a voice," she said, "repeating, 'Father Ronald is dead. Father Ronald is dead.' Followed by the number 51."

Her hazel-colored eyes beneath dark eyebrows peered straight through me, to the point where I was hearing the voice in her dream, her words echoing in my mind. I visualized a script of repeating numbers floating through dark space... 51, 51, 51.

A day or so later we learned that her brother Ronald, a Jesuit priest, had died of heart failure. He was 51.

On another occasion, my mother approached me with intriguing news. "Judy Garland has married Mark Herron. He may be your cousin." That was like telling me he was my cousin.

Judy Garland was the girl Dorothy in the movie, The Wizard of Oz. She became an actress, singer and entertainer who was married five times to different men, Herron being her final husband at the time of her unfortunate death at age 47.

I do have a cousin named Mark Herron, whom I finally met years later, but he was never married to Judy Garland. But it was a good story.

My life opened to a new world when I was 8-years-old and my mother introduced me to the Pomona Public Library in the town where I grew up.  I found a children's section that was full of books about interesting people. I got hooked on reading biographies of famous Americans, although they were all men.

I went through the whole bookshelf: Davy Crockett, Francis Marion, Lewis and Clark, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, Henry Clay, Daniel Boone and more. That's where my love for books began and I thank my mother, who always had one or two open books laying around the house.

There's nothing like a good story, but a good mother beats it all. Happy Mother’s Day, Mama!

Some Things Never Change

Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel (Laurel and Hardy) with their miss-sized pooches. Circa 1930

Cameron was not a dog person as a kid. Four-legged creatures made him nervous. He was born that way. Not with four legs but with an aversion to animals. They bugged him. 

Growing up he also didn't like sticky things, flies in his milk or the taste of pizza. Everybody likes pizza, but not Cameron. When he was first offered a slice of pizza pie, he gagged. “That's not pie," he said.

He would stir his Cream of Wheat until every lump was gone. It had to be smooth like a milk shake. The tiniest bump bothered him. He would take his spoon and squash it as if it were alien invader.

The only animal he tolerated was horses. He enjoyed watching them run and gallop on TV with cowboy and Indian riders shooting, whooping and hollering. But he didn't really know much else about horses. In fact, the first time he rode a horse at a riding track, he got sick and threw up.

Probably because he asked to ride the fastest horse, named Midnight. He had heard friends talk about the speed and thrill of riding Midnight. He climbed up and into the saddle and sat there like he was on a bench waiting for a bus. When Midnight took off, Cameron bumped up and down like a jumping bean on a hot skillet.

After that, he took horses off his list.

He didn't understand the process of learning how to ride a horse, or that maybe his taste buds would change as he grew up. He just banished things with the words: "NOT DOING THAT AGAIN."

He was "cut and dry." "Plain and simple." 

When his parents brought home a small puppy with shaggy blond hair and little brown eyes, he was intrigued. He liked petting the soft fur of the dog, which his mother named Blondie. But he did not like the chore of house-training Blondie.

This meant putting newspapers on the floor where Blondie was supposed to do her duty. Cameron didn't care for that, especially cleaning up afterwards. He didn't realize that his mother did the same thing with him when he was a baby and wore diapers.

Cameron was clueless.

But miracles do really happen and people change along with everything else. We call it "growing up." We all learn to adjust, or not. Some continue to act like children with their little hang-ups and trantrums, whether it's out of stubbornness or arrested development.

Cameron's big change came as an adult. He inherited a large Malinois breed dog when his friend Patrick, moved into an apartment and could no longer keep it. The dog's name was Finston. He was extremely shaggy with straw-like fur as thick as a polar bear's coat. Finston shed so much fur that Cameron's place looked and smelled like a barn. But it didn't bother him. He had adjusted and developed the sense of caring or compassion, although he was never compatible enough to marry or live with a roommate.

In the late morning after the fog lifted, you would see Cameron and Finston walking together across the railroad tracks and down the hill into Capitola Village.

"Hey Cameron!" the local fishermen would shout.

"Howzit! Buddy, or Billy or Jimbo!" Cameron returned the salutation, depending on who called him. 

"Finston's lookin good!"

Cameron's face wrinkled into a big smile, as he thought to himself how uptight he used to be back in the day. Now he's actually recognized for his dog. He had become a dog person.

"Oh yeah,” he replied. “But I gotta keep him on a leash. It's a damned police state down here. No doubt about it."