October in New England 2009

I just spent several days in western Massachusetts with some of my dearest friends, hanging out, catching up, and attending 3 mighty fine concerts in the Alice’s Restaurant Church, now known as the Guthrie Center. We were the test audience for the 9 month tour that starts in a day or two – the Guthries Ride Again. Last time Arlo hit the road with the wife and kids, his youngest, Sarah Lee, was a little girl. Now she’s all grown up and has two little ones of her own. So does big brother Abe and sister Annie. Cathy has one little girl, but I have a feeling the Guthrie clan isn’t finished yet. All of them, along with “adopted” drummer Terry a la Berry Hall-Guthrie, will be doing shows all across the country, so be sure to see them if they come to your town.

As part of our attempt to have mini-20th anniversary of meeting each other in the Alps reunions as possible (does this sentence make sense?) Judy B. and I posed in front of the church with Sherry Hochman Bouldt. Sherry was a kid back then, and she dragged herself out of a hospital bed to make the trip. Her mom Joyce and Grandma Pauline came too. We all fell in love with Grandma and she let us be her grandkids too.  Here’s Sherry, Judy, and me, photo by Jay Rury:

Sherry, Judy and Shirley at Guthrie Center Oct. 2009

On Friday, Arlo couldn’t make the show because he’d hurt his back. People were offered a refund, but only a few took it. The rest of us enjoyed a wonderful show put on by the Guthrie kids & grandkids – even the littlest one, Sophia, got into the act – in fact, she stole the show. Arlo and Jackie’s littlest, cutest kid, Sarah Lee, took her dad’s role in keeping things more or less together, and a fine job she did! There were too many special moments to include, but here’s a few: The 3 Guthrie sisters singing an old Leadbelly song, “Bring me ‘little water, Sylvie,” Abe’s son Krishna, whom I’ve seen grow up, doing some terrific guitar solos, Cathy Guthrie, who looks like an angel, singing one of the songs from her Folk Uke album (Willy Nelson’s daughter is the other half of the duo, and the songs are not … hmmm … well, there’s adult content and language) – “Sh-t makes the flowers grow” – and the antics of the little ones … Annie’s daughter Jacklyn and Sara’s oldest, Olivia, did a song called “Cousins” and Sophia sang along on “Don’t I fit in my Daddy’s shoes.”

We laughed, we cried, we had fun. The 2nd night, Arlo was able to come on for half the show, walking with the help of a walking stick. You had to look really close to see that he was not feeling quit his best – he’s a trooper and a pro.  The third night, some of the twinkle was back in his eyes, and when it came time to end the show, he sang one encore, and we got ready to leave, then darn if he didn’t start singing another – “This little light of mine” – and then another.  He was smiling when he said goodbye to those of  us still lingering after the crowd was gone. So were we.

Deb Fitzgerald brought a video of her wedding to Arlo’s bus driver for many years, Dennis, who was a dear friend to all of us. We gathered in Sue Schier’s (the flower lady) room and watched it. They were married last summer. Dennis, who worked for the state during the winter, was working 24/7 to clear the roads during a bad blizzard in December, and his big heart just gave out. They did have some years together before they finally married, and I’d never seen him happier. She told us how she would only agree to marry him if Arlo performed the service (he is licensed to do so, but rarely does), and if they could get married in the Guthrie Center church, and that’s what they did. Arlo wore a Hawaiian shirt … As we watched, we laughed, we cried, we had fun. That was the theme for the time we spent together.

Remembering Woodstock

Wavy Gravy is famously supposed to have said “If you can remember the ’60’s, you weren’t there.” That may be the case for you and many others of our generation, Mr. Gravy, but I do remember them, and I was there.  I kinda wanted to be a hippie chick, but my parents were strict, my college, Texas Tech, was in the middle of the Bible Belt, and my husband was a law student at Baylor University, then an Army captain, so my hippie plans didn’t work out for me.

Until August of 1989, when I answered the call from Arlo Guthrie to join him on a trip to Europe to avoid the commercialism and hype of the 20th anniversary of Woodstock. I wasn’t sure what might happen, thinking the other travelers might be aging, microbiotic-eating, shaggy-haired and bearded people with whom I couldn’t relate. I had am image of Arlo as a good guy, a hero of my youth, and I didn’t want to find out he had feet of clay. I took the chance anyway.  Boy, was I wrong on both account!

Shirley, Arlo and Annie, Matterhorn in the background

Thanks to Janet Alley, here’s a photo of some of my fellow travelers. The Japanese tourist, who look variously happy or terrified, weren’t part of our group:

Blundering through the Alps

Some of us tried to plan a 20th anniversary of our escape from the 20th anniversary of Woodstock, but we couldn’t pull it together. Instead, there were mini-reunions at various spots around the country. Here’s a photo of my mini-reunion at the WoodyFest with Judy B., Margaret Barton-Ross, T-Shirt Cathy and me – thanks to Shelley Caldwell for the photoshopping – note, this is still a work in progress:

Judy B., Margaret B-R, T-Shirt, Shirley at the Blundermatterhorn

The trip was the start of my new life. I met some wonderful people who are still my friends, and some I haven’t seen again but remember fondly. I discovered that Arlo Guthrie is who you want to believe he is, no feet of clay. And through him I did get to meet some amazing people – my guru, Ma Jaya, and my guru bai at Kashi Ashram, all of Arlo’s kids & his wife Jackie, a strong and fabulous woman, Kris Kristopherson, Richie Havens, and a bunch of other performers who came to the Indian River festivals in Florida in the early 1990’s. Oh yeah, at Thanksgiving 1989 a bunch of us reunited at Arlo’s Carnegie Hall show, and I got to go backstage, and one of my biggest heroes of all time, Pete Seeger, offered me some popcorn. I even met Wavy Gravy, who was standing in the pond at Kashi that represents the River Ganges, playing a ukelele and singing “The Old Gray Goose She Ain’t What She Used to Be.”   It was a surreal moment, and I’ll never forget it.

Twenty years ago, on the twentieth anniversary of the weekend that would change my life twenty years later (do the math) I was with Arlo & the Blunderites at a little hotel in either Austria or Switzerland. Some of us were sitting outside, when the hotel manager came out and said “Mr. Guthrie, we’re showing the Woodstock movie inside, do you want to watch it?” Arlo declined, but the rest of us decided it was a fine idea. The manager looked at Arlo, his hair now a reddish shade somewhat like a lion’s mane, and said “You know, you don’t look the same.” Maybe not, but he was the same inside, and still is, even though the dark curls are now all gray. Thanks, Arlo, for being who you are and for changing my life in such a good way.

WoodyFest 2009 and Finding New Relatives

I’ve finally recovered from the shock of actually being outdoors in Okemah, Ok. in 105 degree heat – with the wind chill factor, that was about 2000 degrees F! Surely, you say, being from Houston you should be used to that? And I say, “don’t call me Surely” – that joke just never gets old and no, Houstonians, unlike mad dogs and Englishmen, don’t go out in the noonday sun. We rush from our air conditioned homes to our a/c cars to our a/c offices and rarely spend more than a few minutes in the sauna that is Houston from June through September.

Back to WoodyFest 2009. It was special for a couple of reasons – one, it was the 20th anniversary of the trip some of us took to Europe with Arlo Guthrie in his quest to avoid the hype and commercialism of the 20th anniversary of Woodstock. He called the trip Blunderman’s Adventure, because we were all subscribers to his newsletter, the Rolling Blunder Review. Those present for this mini-reunion were Judy B, Margaret B., Annie Guthrie, T-Shirt Cathy, and moi. We couldn’t find anything resembling the Matterhorn, so we improvised, with a lot of help from Shelley C., who wasn’t on the trip but wanted to be. We call it the Blundermatterhorn.

T-Shirt, Shirley, Margaret, Judy, Connie

Did I say this was special for 2 reasons?, No, it was really 3 reasons.  While some of us were quietly sitting in the audience at John Flynn’s kiddie show:

Flynnettes at rest - Judy, Shirley, Connie, Nancy

Connie – it would be Connie, always the instigator, starting making arm motions to go with John’s song “Love takes a whole box of crayons.” Of course we had to join in, and John, either totally amazed by our skill and talent or so he could get us out of his line of sight, announced that the audience was about to witness the first performance of the Flynnettes, and next thing you know, there we were on stage!  We’ve been waiting by the phone for John or his booking agent, T-Shirt Cathy, to call and let us know when we’ll start touring with him, but so far, we’ve heard only the sound of silence. T-Shirt, we thought you were our friend!

Nancy, Connie, Judy, Shirley and John Flynn

Now for the third special thing that happened. Thanks to this blog, I was re-united with a relative who’d been lost from the family for a long time. Scott, my first cousin Marilyn’s son, had decided it was time to come home again, and he was searching for information about both his mother’s and father’s side of the family. He discovered my posts about my mother’s first husband, who died in WWII – his great uncle on his dad’s side, and found that we were related on his mother’s side, and he reached out to me. He also noticed I go to WoodyFest, 100 miles from his home in Oklahoma City, so we arranged to meet there.  Out in front of the Crystal Theater (at that time it was the Cry Theater, the other letters being burnt out) a beautiful young lady came up to me and I knew it was Scott’s wife Valerie. We hugged and cried and then Scott came over – 6′4 and the spitting image of his great-uncle Hulbert Robertson, and we hugged and cried some more and then we went into the Crystal to hear Rob McNurlin. I whispered  to Scott that my good friend Rob was a fine Christian clean-living fellow, and then Rob,  that dog, did a song about a chihuahua. Oh Rob …!

Rob McNurlin - he looks so innocent!

We stayed around to hear Annie Guthrie, who was a cute teenager on that Blunderful trip to Europe and has grown up into a lovely and talented mother of two. Then my new-found kin and I took off for lunch and some intense family bonding.

Shirley, Scott, Valerie and Woody

Valerie, Scott, Shirley Christmas in July

A good time was had by all. Valerie and Scott took care of me like I was a little old lady – in a good way. I kept trying to prove I wasn’t. All was well until we got to my motel. I got out of the car, started to step up on the curb, and fell flat on my face.  V & S rushed over, sure they’d killed me, and I brushed it off – “I meant to do that to show you how fast I could get up.”  Somehow I think they didn’t believe me. Val & Scott, it was a pleasure and an honor to spend time with you, and welcome back to the family, I love you both.

Finally the show was over and it was time to return to the Real World. As we headed for the cars, we ran into the fabulous David Amram, who hung out with Woody and Jack Kerouac and folks like that, and boy, can he tell some stories!  Here we are:

Judy, Shirley, David, Chuck and Connie

I remember a time when I couldn’t see why I’d ever need e-mail, and a couple of years ago when the library staff had to learn the new stuff the kids were doing, I scoffed at Twittering and Facebook and other toys that seemed like a waste of time. I’ve gotten over that feeling. Through my blog and Facebook, I’ve connected or reconnected with relatives, some I’ve never even met in person, old, old friends – hey David and Barbara, I’m talking about you and made a lot of new friends.

That silver-haired daddy of mine

It’s been 62 years since my dad and I spent our first Father’s Day together. I was tiny, red-headed, and precocious (I started walking at 7 months, yes, that’s the truth, several witnesses who weren’t even related to me swear it’s so!) and Daddy was tall and handsome and strong, with jet black hair and high cheekbones proclaiming his Choctaw heritage.

Now I am big and my knees have gotten a bit wobbly again, and my red hair has turned to dark brown with a few artful silver streaks. My dad’s hair is now a beautiful silver, but at 88, after years of hard work as a farm boy and a sailor who went to war, he’s no longer tall and strong, and he has finally admitted he can’t do what he used to. He walks with a cane, and uses his handicapped hang tag even when Mother’s not in the car. He forgets things, but never people, never us, especially not Mother.

We spent this Father’s Day at the hospital in Dallas, watching over Mother as she struggled to breath, lungs filled with fluid, trying to tell us between gasps for air that she was fine now and wanted to go home. When I got the call Friday morning, I left Houston not knowing if she would still be with us when I got there, but somehow she made it through yet another crisis. Each time I left the hospital, she’d tell me “Don’t let your daddy come back with you, he’s too weak and shaky, make him stay home and rest.” Well, my silver-haired daddy is weak in body, but not in spirit, and I wasn’t able to sneak away without him one single time. I told her “he’s going to keep trying to take care of you as long as he can stand up and walk, and maybe even after that.”

“I know, but I worry.” She worries, because he does forget things, and he stumbles, and his trips to the grocery store 4 blocks away sometimes take 3 hours. After spending all these years taking care of others, he is finding it hard to let go.

They have not had a perfect marriage – there were some rough times among the almost 65 years they’ve spent together – but in these last “Golden” years they have become an inseparable unit. I do know my dad has been in love with Mother since he first saw her eighty years ago, and he’s never stopped. I suspect Mother never stopped grieving for her first love, lost in the war, but she made a good home for all of us, and now she can’t imagine being without Dad.

We made our final visit to Mother at the hospital and I dropped Daddy off at home. As I drove away, he stood in the yard waving goodbye, his silver hair shining in the hot Texas sun. I knew in a few hours he’d hobble out to his car, drive back to the hospital, and sit, mostly dozing, by Mother’s side until the sun began to set. Tomorrow he’d go back again, and the next day, and the next, as long as his legs will carry him, he will be there at her side. He’s a good man, that silver-haired daddy of mine.

Dad & me Oct. 2009 - 65th wedding anniversary

My father

When is a retreat an advance?

I went to a writing/yoga retreat near Belton (Texas, for my Yankee friends) last week , met some great people, made a few pitiful attempts to re-start my long-lost yoga skills, and did some inpsired writing.

Before I went, my friend Robert asked me why it’s never called a “yoga advance.” My witty answer – “er, uh, because we can’t advance until we retreat and get ourselves together?” I thought about that question and realized, by the end of the session, I’d said a true thing. My zest for writing has been flagging, and I needed something to get the creative juices flowing again. The Universe, as it is wont to do, lead me to just the right place.

I learned about Patricia Lee Lewis and her writing/yoga workshops by accident (do I hear someone say “there are no accidents?”) Someone on my writing listserv posted a link to a retreat in Wales, wistfully saying it would be great to go to something like that. I clicked on the link, and low and behold, I said to myself – I KNOW that place, I saw the house at the top of the hill when my Welsh friend Steve Jones took me and my half-sister Gwen to visit St. Non’s Chapel. St. Non was the mother of St. David, patron saint of Wales, and St Davids is the city near Carn Llidi where Gwen’s father died in a plane crash in June, 1943. I knew I couldn’t afford another trip to Wales, but I decided to write Patricia and tell her about our story. Somehow I felt she’d want to know.

St. Non's Chapel, Wales

I got an e-mail from her that said, in part, “when I read that he (Gwen’s father) was from Comanche, I wept. My grandparents were from Comanche.” That was only one of many coincidence we shared, and we both knew we had to meet. When she said she and Charles MacInerney (yoga teacher) were holding a retreat at Belton I was elated. Belton fits the budget. It is also the town where my great-great grandparents, Elisha E. and Ruth Wilkinson Stewart, were pioneers in the Republic of Texas days, and I knew it fairly well. In no time at all, my credit card was in my hand and the arrangements were made.

Some of you may not believe it, but I am a very shy person, and going into new situations where I don’t know anybody usually scares me out of my wits. This time, I had no fear at all. I knew I was going to were I needed to be, where I belonged.

By the end of the first evening, we all pretty much felt like friends, and we were ready to learn and have fun doing it. Patricia has a gentle teaching style, developed in part by her experience in grade school with a teacher whose cruel comment crushed her joy in writing for years. She had written what she thought (and what was) an excellent story. The teacher wrote on the paper “did you really write this?” When Patricia figured out the teacher doubted that she could have written such a fine piece of work, she was deeply hurt.

Our writing exercises, always started with a little meditation and a prompt of some kind, were read aloud to our group. All stories were treated as fiction, all comments were about what was good. I read my efforts without my usual crippling fear that someone would make fun of it, or say something cutting – things that have happened in writing groups before. And the writing – as soon as the group leader said “go”, I’d put my pen to the paper and the words would flow, with no effort on my part. Some of the stuff came totally out of the blue, like my poem about sleeping with the pool boy, and some of it, I realized, came from deep inside where it had been waiting for me to bring it to life.

By the end of our four days together, I knew I’d been through something important and extraordinary, and met new friends who will go on to become old friends. Joel, you dog, you, you make me grin! And Doris, my friend from lifetimes past. Drew and Elizabeth, it just melted my heart to see the two of you sitting on the park bench reading MY story aloud to each other! Madeline, you are one fine cook. Bonnie, you are a dear. Lisa, come on over to Rice and we’ll do lunch. Charles, you can teach me yoga any time and I just might learn to love it again. To all of you, and especially dear, long lost sister Patricia, thanks for being you.

Here’s the link to Patricia’s website:

http://www.writingretreats.org/About/

and here’s the one to the retreat in Wales. The photo is of St. Davids Cathedral, and in the far right background you can see part of Carn Llidi. Patricia has promised to take her class on a pilgrimage to see the memorial to Lt. Robertson and his 3 fellow crew members, and their story will live on.

http://www.writingretreats.org/Retreats/International/index.html

Here is a photo of my Welsh friend near the retreat center:

Steve Jones and Shirley Wetzel in Wales

Comanche, Granddaughters, and Writers

In my last post, I mentioned my granddaughters, remembering them as babies rolling in the bluebonnets. I also mentioned Comanche, and posted part of my novel in process. That made me think of writers I have met, like Kinky Friedman, who has a small cameo in the book, and Earl Staggs, because he is a great friend of my dear friend Kaye B., and Jeff Cohen, who I first “met” online because of our mutual interest in autism, who writes some of the funniest mysteries around, and Chris Grabenstein because he writes a series about two wonderful characters who protect a small town on the Jersey shore, as well as a darker series about an FBI agent and another series for kids, and I happen to have pictures of all of them on my latest photo cd – I HATE to delete my special photos. So this seemed a good time to post some of those photos. Here goes.

Amber of the Jungle

Autumn the Hilarious

Earl Darlin' and me

Chris Grabenstein and me again

Jeff Cohen and still me

The Next Governor of Texas

Kinky Friedman and me in a choke hold - but he really does like me

Kinky's Right- or is it Left?-Hand man Jeff Shelby

Comanche County Courthouse

Saloon where John Wesley Hardin shot the sheriff of Brown County, but he did not shoot the deputy

Tiptoe Through the Bluebonnets

Last Saturday I traveled out to the countryside with some friends for the Annual Viewing of the Bluebonnets, and a good time was had by all. This is a Texas ritual to celebrate our all-too-brief spring season. Families pile into their minivans and SUVs and drive toward Austin or San Antonio to view the marvel of the wild flowers. On every country lane, cars line the roadside as families and young lovers pose in the fields of blue for the obligatory photos. It’s a fine time of the year, celebrated by poets and writers like J. Frank Dobie, who said that “no other flower—for me at least—brings such upsurging of the spirit and at the same time such restfulness.”

I, too, have stacks of photos of frolic among the bluebonnets — with my first love, in my college days, with my new husband, later with our sons as they grew from babies to young men with loves of their own, and later still with tiny baby girls in bright sundresses …

Here’s me in the bluebonnets

Somewhere near Brenham

And here’s another photo:

Somewhere near Brenham

Shirley in the bluebonnets

Shirley in the bluebonnets 2009

and there are some nice pix on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebonnet#Gallery

and you can find plenty of bluebonnet photos on Google

Here’s the second chapter of my Eternal Work in Progress, A Death in Comanche, which expresses my own feelings about this time of year. Enjoy.

I ambled north on State Highway 36, breathing in the beauty of the late spring day. The fields were covered in bluebonnets, interspersed with bright patches of scarlet, pink and yellow, Indian Paintbrush, buttercups, Texas primrose. The soft breeze sent ripples through the flowers like waves on a vast inland sea. It is the time, as A.L. Morgan put it, “when the sky falls on Texas.”

It’s a common misconception that Texas, at least the southern half, doesn’t have four seasons. That’s wrong. Our Fall Leaf changes every year around Thanksgiving, and winter usually shows up for a day or two in late January. Sometimes the temperature plummets to below 32 degrees. The rest of the time it’s summer, except for a few weeks in March and April when the temperature is perfect, the humidity is low, and every roadside, yard and vacant lot is covered in a riot of flowers both wild and tame. For that brief time, Texas is Heaven.

General Phil Sheridan, Military Governor of Texas after the Late Unpleasantness, is reported to have said, “If I owned both Hell and Texas, I’d live in Hell and rent out Texas.” A good many Texans wished he’d done so, but that’s another story. Even General Phil might’ve liked Texas if he’d gone there when the bluebonnets were in bloom.

Me, I love it. It’s my favorite time of the year, when the world renews itself and Mother Nature puts on a fine show. I felt that I, too, was beginning again. Highway 36 was my yellow brick road from an unhappy, turbulent past to a tranquil, worry-free future in the town where I was born. The best-laid plans …

Fabulous Blog Award

My dear, dear sweet friend Kaye Barley gave me this award today!

Here are my favorite Fabulous Bloggers:
1. http://cousinnancy.blogspot.com/
2. http://meanderingsandmuses.blogspot.com/
3. http://billcrider.blogspot.com/
4. http://www.fourdogmom.blogspot.com/
5. http://heydeadguy.typepad.com/heydeadguy/

5 addictions: 1. Blue Bell Ice Cream 2. Chocolate in any form 3. All my Facebook friends 4. Arlo Guthrie – his music, his family, his Blunderite fans, and his self 5. reading

Fabulous Blog Award

Death and Taxes

Nothing is inevitable, as they say, except death and taxes. We all pay our taxes to support our democratic government, right? Well, apparently everyone may get taxed, but if you’re high enough above the huddled masses you may get away with not paying them – unless you get picked for a top government post.

Enough of politics, what I really came here to talk about is the one part of life that IS inevitable – death comes to us all. One drawback to getting older is that many of our friends and loved ones, as Kinky Friedman so poetically puts it, start “stepping on a rainbow.” I’m not for sure about what happens to them after that, but I’d like to think they go to a very nice place and reunite with everyone they’ve ever loved, including their dogs and cats and other assorted pets, except snakes. I HATE snakes. And all the pain and all the regret and all the unfinished business they had on earth will be forgotten.

Why this gloomy topic, you ask? Let me tell you — In the last 2 months I lost two people who were very dear to me, and I’ve been wondering where they are now and if they’re okay. They were two very different people, but they were both part of my family – one by birth and one by choice.

I met Dennis Lachappelle almost 20 years ago in an Indian restaurant in NYC. A group of people who were mostly strangers to each other had gone to Europe with Arlo Guthrie, who wanted to avoid the hype and commercialism of the 20th anniversary of Woodstock, and we were having a reunion at Arlo’s Thanksgiving show at Carnegie Hall. Arlo treated us all to dinner after the show, and I saw Dennis sitting by himself, looking kinda lonely and shy. That’s the last time I’d ever think of him as shy. He was Arlo’s bus driver for many years, and he and some of the people from the trip and people we met later at Arlo gigs truly did become family – complete with feuds and fusses like all families, but with lots of love too. At one of Arlo’s October concerts at the old church in Great Barrington, he said that a lot of people in the audience had started out coming to the concerts to see him, but now we came to see each other and he was secondary to our get togethers. He was right.

Dennis was a part of our family, even after he stopped driving the big red bus and started working for the state, driving snowplows in the winter. He always had a big smile and a bear hug for us; he rarely got angry, and when he did, he exploded for a brief moment, then got over it in an even briefer moment. He’d always wanted a family, and children, and he finally got that wish a few years ago when Deb “Fitzi” Fitzgerald came into his life. They were married at the old church last summer, with Arlo performing the ceremony. It should have been the beginning of a beautiful life – they should have had many more years together – but one evening in early December, after driving the snowplow almost 24/7 for days, he called his boss and said he wasn’t feeling too well. He never made it home – a co-worker found his truck at the side of the road, and called for an ambulance. Dennis died in the hospital, his big heart worn out trying to help others. He was that kind of guy.

Mary Hart, my first cousin, was a gentle soul, quiet but determined and resourceful. Her mother was many years older than mine, and she was 13 years older then me, so I didn’t know her as well as the cousins more my age, but when I started getting interested in our family genealogy she was right there to offer me all the help I could ask for. She’d worked in big cities, Dallas & Houston, until they just got too big for her, and she returned to our hometown, Comanche, Texas. She started helping out at the library, and before too long she had become a vital member of the staff. About a year ago, after feeling bad for a long time – she never liked to make a fuss – she went to the doctor and found out she had advanced lung cancer – no, she wasn’t a smoker. She called her brother to get her house ready to sell, put all her affairs in order- that was easy, she was always orderly, and checked into the hospital. She went into hospice care a few months later. When we visited her, she was matter of fact, upbeat, ready to go, and made us promise there would be no funeral, no memorial service, no hoopla after she was gone.

I’ve become friends with the Comanche librarian, Margaret Waring, who loved Mary like a sister. She said Mary left a note for her friends and family that said:

“Message from Mary: I love you all, AND NOW I FLY!”

When I started this post, I didn’t realize I might be closer to taking flight than I’d thought I was. My doctor had some tests run, and it seems I have a heart problem. It’s something that can be managed and treated without any drastic measures, but still …

Songs about flying:

I’ll fly away

Don Conoscenti – go to the right side & click on The Other Side:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=16775309

Poems about flying:

High Flight

By Pilot Officer John G. Magee Jr.

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings …

Goodbye, dear Dennis, sweet Mary, I hope you are flying high now. As Arlo Guthrie’s song goes, My old friend, I’ll see you again … now you’re just around the bend, my old friend

And I will see all those dear to me … when it’s time for me to take wing and join them

Welcome home, soldier

Taylor's Chapel

November 11, 2008: on a bright, sunny day, friends and relatives of 2nd Lt. Hulbert H. Robertson came to the little country cemetery at Taylor’s Chapel, near Comanche, Texas, to honor one of their own. In one of my early posts, “Gone but never forgotten,” I told the story of how my half sister Gwen and I went to England and Wales to visit her father’s grave at the Cambridge American Cemetery, and to see the mountain in Wales where he and three other crew members died on 4 June, 1943. Our mother had known little about the circumstances of his death, until the day Steve Jones came into our lives. Steve, a Welsh firefighter, hang-glider, mountain climber, scuba diver, aviation historian, and one of the world’s nicest young men, wanted to honor the Americans who died in accidents in Wales during WWII. He studied and researched and contacted family members to share what he’d learned. Gwen and I took two trips to the UK, first in March 2004, and again in June 2005. Steve and his lovely companion, Sabina, took excellent care of us. In 2005, Steve arranged a memorial service for the crew members near Carn Llidi, the site of the crash.

Fast forward to 2008. Mother had always had a wish to put a memorial to Hulbert in the cemetery where his parents, grandparents, and other family members rest. Mother is now 87 years old, so we knew the time had come to fulfill that wish. The monument was purchased, and we put together a program for Memorial Day. Various problems and delays caused several postponements of the ceremony, and those planning to go probably began to wonder if it would ever happen. Then it did, and everything turned out just fine.

Our cousins Beth and Sharon set up a table for the scrapbook of the trips to the UK, the box with the flag from Hulbert’s funeral and his insignia, and a small blue tin with pieces of the aircraft and a rock Gwen and I had gathered on Carn Llidi, along with a copy of the story. We placed flowers on the marker, and I put an American flag on one side of it and a Welsh flag on the other. The stage was set, and it was time for the next part. Because I know how to research and write and speak (reluctantly) in public, I was chosen to do the talking. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but I opened my mouth and the words came easily. I talked about his early years, his family – he was the baby of a very large family, and they all adored him — and his desire to serve his country. He was, to all accounts, a brilliant young man, and he applied to West Point. He met all the criteria, but the slots alloted for his county had already been filled. He decided he and Mother should just go ahead and get married, and they did, at the Robertson’s old dog trot cabin. Shortly after the wedding, a letter of acceptance to the Naval Academy arrived, but married men aren’t eligible to attend. Mother says he didn’t care, he wanted to fly, and that’s what he did, first as an enlisted man, then as a 2nd Lt. He went to Barksdale Airfield, La., to train as the navigator of a B-26 Martin Marauder named Lil’ Lass.

One of the best parts of the ceremony was when I told the story of how the crew flew from Louisiana to Texas for a training run and did a flyover of Hulbert’s family home. His father was on his tractor in the field, and when he saw the big warplane flying low, he knew who it was. He got off the tractor and put his hand over his heart. They went on and flew over my mother’s parents home too. This was not something the Army encouraged, but fliers often made their own rules. When I finished the story, two or three of the relatives chimed in and said their homes had been buzzed too. Hollie Stewart, son of Hulbert’s sister Wilma, said the plane was so low he could see the crew in the cockpit. That brought some levity to the ceremony, as they remembered what a cutup Hulbert was and what fun it was to see that big plane cruising along at treetop level, waggling its wings at them.

My part was done, and I asked Michael Robertson, son of Hulbert’s brother Eugene, to read a poem written by a Canadian RAF pilot in 1941. He died, as did Hulbert, in an accidental crash a few months after writing this ode to flight.

HIGH FLIGHT

By Pilot Officer John G. Magee Jr.

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlight silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.”

Chance Pruitt plays Taps

At the conclusion, Chance Pruitt, a student at Comanche High School stood on a nearby rise and played Taps. A professional bugler could not have done it better.

Dec. 10: I just came across this quote, and it seems to fit the occasion

” When the flag is unfurled, all reason is in the trumpet. -Ukrainian proverb “

Taylor's Chapel

Tears turned to smiles as we took photos and exchanged hugs, then went to the church hall for more photos and refreshments – thank you, Carol and H.R., for all you did for us. Other Robertson relatives who came were Charles Stewart, Sharon Beck, and Beth James, children of Hulbert’s sister Loez, Kathryn and Lola, daughters of his sister Doris, H.R. (Hulbert Robertson) Helm, son of his sister Marie, and Gwen’s daughter Becky.

Velma Hornsby, Gwen Robertson Scoggins, and other Robertson relatives

Hulbert’s great niece Margie, a major in the Air Force, had arrived late because the general had a project for her. Even though it was short, we had a nice visit with her anyway. She was wearing her uniform to honor her uncle. As we were leaving, she went down to the cemetery to pay her respects. I’m sure he is very proud of her.

Velma Hornsby, Gwen R. Scoggins and other relatives

Welcome home, soldier.

2nd Lt. Hulbert H. Robertson 1943