6:05 PM, Sunday, after rounding the fence from Bob & Deb’s house and pressing the doorbell.

…

Are you lost?

Come on in then, and I’ll show you the way.

[laughter and a hug]

I’ve missed you—heard you were hurt. By God, I never thought I’d see you tired. But as good a thing as it is to avoid Death, it does result in Old Age, and Old Age does bring its problems.

Have a seat—you’re such a good friend, have done me so many good turns, aworkin’ your guts out, I can hardly say thanks enough.

Walked by the old gas station, did you?

Fifty-six years we ran that, Dutch and me, then with Timmy, you know, the one who scared you to death with his bad driving. I sure miss them. It is so nice to get a visit from someone I can recall. I’m slipping. People come over and say “hi” and talk, and I’m embarrassed that I can’t recall their name and too ashamed to ask. You know, you coach children, then when they get big, you might recall the voice but have a hard time putting a name to it.

Bob, though, what a kid he was, full of life, and a man so full of knowledge—please ask hi what to do about my raspberry’s. Maybe someone can take them for starts. I have not gotten a cup from those plants in years—my own fault for neglecting them. But it’s easier to get them at the market. It’s nice though, that people care. We have such a beautiful valley, this place on the bench under our beautiful mountain; such nice people; by God, we are blessed in our valley—even though the traffic is getting so it is a bother.

I haven’t seen so much as the country as others, only the West Coast from ball playing days. But, the only place that is more beautiful to me than this valley is Chalk Creek. We had 350 acres, very hilly farmland: my father, mother, my two little brothers and me. My father planted grain; wheat and oats. He had threshers come to get out the seeds, because it was a lot. We ran a lot of hay, bound it in small bails, loaded it on the tractor, and brought it to the barn so that the animals had something to eat in the winter.

We raised milk cows, sold the calves, had our own beef, pigs, chickens, sheep. Slopping the pigs was the worst. After we’d slaughter them, you dipped them in scalding water so you could shave the hair off—poor things. First order of the day was milking the cows. You didn’t lay in bed and say, “Oh, I don’t want to get up and milk the cows.” No, you got up and milked the cows. We had a nice garden, grew our own food. There was deer to be got too, occasional bigger game too. You know they all liked grass and we had grass, a very steep property—you didn’t just walk right across it.

We docked our own sheep, the chickens were always good for the eggs and that was a good job for children—just watch out for the darned rooster. They could be mean. Well, they were mean, vicious creatures, just a matter of the mistaking you for a hen or a threat.

One morning, my bother and I were milking the cows and decided it would be more fun to ride them. Well, old Gissle didn’t much care for that, rolled me right off her back and a sprained my ankle. Then, as I was pulling myself up along the rail, something hit me in the back. I thought to myself, ‘My word, what is hitting me?’ It was my mother, whipping me for riding the cow I should have been milking and being a bad example for my little brother who was doing the same.

[laughter]

Oh no, she didn’t use a broom and didn’t have a dedicated whip—thank God. She was a practical woman, reached up and grabbed a green willow switch. That was good enough. She kept telling me to move and I couldn’t. Then when she found out I had a sprained ankle she felt bad and babied me.

We had to drive the cows to the fresh grass. My father disliked me crossing the river in my shoes and creasing them up. We were supposed to take them off and cross bare foot. But this big old cow—old Gissle, was trotting along just fine, so I hitched a ride. That dirty bugger, don’t you know ran at full tilt and then stopped mid stream, dumped me right off, in about two feet of water, up to your hip. My father did not care for that, and Gissle made it to the dinner table right quick.

We had no phone, no one up Chalk Creek had a phone, By God. Makes me wonder today—I spent a life with a phone on the wall, this wall right here that I papered, did the carpentry too, I’m handy like that, or I was—now I have this thing I can barely understand. I like you wishing me happy Mother’s Day and sending pictures from around the country. Don’t think I’m rude for no answering. I just can’t figure this darned thing out!

We had a wood stove and oil and coal lamps. There was an out house that was a good piece off from the one you slept in. We put up our own food for winter. One winter we were snowed in for two weeks. They eventually sent a big machine to blow us out. I’ll never forget that shower of snow blowing a road for us—four miles up Chalk Creek they had to blow us clear. But we had plenty to eat and wood for the stove close at hand—and when you have snow and a stove, you have water.

Eighteen years I lived up Chalk Creek. Then I married Dutch and moved down here. Owning a gas station is hard work. But you meet a lot of people. There was [name forgotten] you probably don’t know him—a big shot politician. Then there was [name forgotten] a famous race car driver from California, won all his races it seemed, the man to beat, and he stopped by often. Doctors and politicians lived up The Canyon and would come for gas and repairs.

One time, after they oiled [paved] the roads, Dutch was in a hurry. So, he hopped on his horse. He won a few rodeos when he was younger and he told me it was his fault for jumping on the horse’s back when it’s spine was still cold—kind of like not warming up your car. But a car doesn’t buck like the devil. That horse threw him off on his face. His entire face on the left side, the cheek, the nose, the forehead and up around to his ear, peeled off and fell like a flap across his face. He went to Doc [name forgotten] and he said, “I won’t touch you,” and sent Dutch to a famous plastic surgeon, who had also gassed up at the station.

It has taken a while, after Dutch passing, then Timmy, then selling the station, and now it being a few years, for me to be able to walk by it without missing it. I’m going on 88 now, and finally, I no longer miss that old gas station.

I used Miss Arla, a lady I do some chores for, as the matriarch of a frontier family in the medieval American fantasy, Wife.