My two sons

 

With Jamie here for two days, followed by Colin for two days, I’ve been thinking about how alike and yet how very different my two sons are. This occurred to me because meal prep for each was so different. For Jamie, I fixed a vegetarian dinner Wednesday—green noodles and squash casserole—and Thursday we had BBQ. They did overlap on that, because Colin suggested he’d stop and bring BBQ and I had to say I’d just had it. So last night, I fixed him salmon croquettes—Jamie won’t touch salmon, wouldn’t have liked the capers I put in them (neither did I—kitchen fail!).

Then I began to think of other differences. Jamie drives a red Lexus sports car; Colin drives aFa huge pick-up that for some reason he has jacked up since the last time I tried to get into it. Jamie lives in an upscale suburb; Colin, on the edge of a small Texas city, virtually in the country. (I have a wonderful picture of the two of them, but I can't find it, so there's Sophie again.)

Of course, they share many similarities. They are, like their sisters, fond of their siblings and close to them. Nothing makes these grown Alter kids happier than a family get-together. But there’s something special between the boys—a loving rivalry that one year prompted me at Christmas to get matching T-shirts that said, “Mom loves me best.” Another year, each one got a tool belt, and they had tool-belt duels in my kitchen. Both are marathoners or have been, literally and figuratively following in their father’s footsteps. And both now, are in their fifties-how did that happen?

Another thing they have in common but don’t is a disregard for time: Jamie is chronically late because he gets involved in something and doesn’t leave it. Colin, on the other hand, never sees a reason to get upset or hurry. He’s the one who, when I get upset about a rude driver, will say to me, “Look at you! Why are you so upset?” Tonight he left a little before five to pick up groceries at Central Market, swing by Lucile’s for lobster rolls, and come home. By seven I called to ask if he was negotiating to buy Lucile’s (he’s in the private equity business). He said no, but he’d met some interesting people at the bar, and he just stayed talking.

Tomorrow, Colin leaves and Megan arrives. It will give me the prompt to think about how my girls are alike and different. They, too, are best friends. Each watches her weight and diet, so I have to be careful with both. Fixing an Asian chicken salad for Meg tomorrow night—an experiment.

Meantime, Colin took Sophie to the vet this morning but was back so fast I couldn’t imagine what he’d done. She got a steroid shot and an order for Robitussin. Dr. Minnerly said her cough is aggravated by the heat and the dust and will diminish if and when we ever get some rain. I can tell she’s better already—unfortunately one thing that tells me is that her bark sounds better, and she is frantically barking at something the neighbor boys are doing. But early this morning she was uninterested in her food; an hour after her visit to the vet, she ate. And I haven’t heard a cough yet. (I did hear some coughing late in the afternoon, but nothing prolonged like it had been.)

A side note on the vet trip: Colin came home and said, “Dr. Minnerly said he has a patient base of 6,000. Do you know what number you are?” and I replied right away, “Two, and number one is inactive.” I had known about second place for a while but did not know the extent of his client list. It’s a milestone of some sort, though I’m not sure what. We moved to the TCU area in 1969, when Colin was not yet a year old, and I’m sure that’s when we started going to University Animal Clinic.

It's like Carshon’s Deli, where Colin has been going since he was an infant. Now, he won’t come to town without a visit to Carshon’s. Today he got himself a Rebecca sandwich. How lovely is it to have all that history, all that tradition built into our lives!

I repeat, as I often do: I am blessed.

Memories of the Star Café

 

Bud Kennedy’s article in this morning’s paper announced the sale of the Star Café in Fort Worth’s Stockyards National Historic District. I’d known about it, but seeing it written up in detail, with a marvelous picture of the dining area, made it all too real. The Star is one of my happy memories. Good friends Don and Betty Boles have owned it for forty-two years. I’d  hate to correct Bud, but I think before that they owned it for a spell, sold it, and then bought it back. And I was always told it was the oldest, continually operating restaurant in Tarrant County. I don’t doubt it.

I’d call the décor funky, but I know Don would object to that. But the place is crowded with memorabilia, even a porch swing hanging from the tin ceiling, the requisite deer head with antlers, a giant beer bottle, and neon beer labels. Signed pictures of celebrities and rodeo stars line the walls, along with a sign that says, “Don’t mess with the neon lights.” Behind the bar and high up a shelf hold more western “stuff,” including an old tricycle that fell on Betty one night. Fortunately, her injuries were minor.

If the décor is funky, the food is delicious. The Star is known for chicken-fried steak (my favorite) and baseball steaks—the latter too big for me to tackle, but they sure do a good rib-eye. They make their own ranch dressing, which tastes better than other I’ve ever had, but the house dressing is an oil, green olive, and cheese concoctions. I don’t know who invented it. Long ago, when Eva, the then-elderly cook, was working at lunch, Wednesday was meatloaf day and friends and I from TCU would go for lunch. And there was always Betty’s own banana pudding.

For a few  years, I ran the cash register on Saturday nights, and oh—the lessons about mankind! I made some friends, like John the postman who loved to talk western history with me and tell me all he knew about Elmer Kelton. I learned to be cautious about a group of people who would cheat you every way they could, like demanding change for a hundred when they gave you a fifty. There were regulars—people who were there every Saturday night, and if I never knew their names, I knew them well enough to greet them as friends. Many were dressed to the nines to go dancing in the honky-tonks just down the street. When there was a national act at Billy Bob’s legendary country music nightclub, we knew the Star would be busy.

So many memories—like the time Betty and I worked from morning to late at night because there was an all-day festival (talk about sore feet), or the birthdays and family occasions we celebrated there—wedding parties during Jordan and Christian’s week-long nuptial festivities, a party to introduce Colin and Lisa as a couple. My kids often chose it for dinner, and I remember Megan saying one night as we sat in the downstairs bar waiting for a table, “I am perfectly happy right now.” Or Jamie begging the kitchen staff one Sunday morning to put an egg on his chicken-fried, even though they had stopped serving breakfast. Or grandchild Maddie at three wandering back to stand by me at the cash register—Betty disapproved of that one.

My favorite time at the Star was late—the café closed at nine, so we though nine-fifteen was late—when people began to drift away, and I saw Betty come down the restaurant with a glass of wine in her hand. I knew then it was time to quit and have dinner. Betty and I usually split something, from steak and baked potato to chicken-fried, but we occasionally deviated. One night I brought a jar of sauerkraut with me, and we had Polish sausage.

I haven’t been to the Star since before pandemic, mostly because I got out of the habit of restaurants. But I will go for a farewell meal. I imagine the Burtons will want to go, and Betty suggested Jean and I go one night. I’m told the staff will all stay—including Bino the cook—and the new owner, somehow connected to the stars of Yellowstone and 1883 plans to keep it like it is. But it won’t be the same.

A PS: I even wrote a short story set in the Star. Rumor always was that it or Miss Molly’s B&B upstairs, was haunted. And I knew that Don kept a baseball bat by the cash register in case of trouble. So I wove a story about a ghost, a waitress with “the sight,” and a baseball bat—one of the few times I ever included paranormal in anything I wrote. Hmmm. It never was published. I’ll have to see if I can find in on my computer.

Y’all really should get on up there and have you some chicken-fried! Go for the mashed potatoes, green beans, and salad with ranch. Top it off with Betty’s banana pudding.

The school book wars

 

The school book wars raging across the country are particularly divisive in Texas. This morning in the Star-Telegram Ryan Rusak, opinions editor, implied the controversy between parents and school boards is a fuss over nothing. I would agree it’s a fuss over nothing, but I do not think those threatening, bullying parents are merely “passionate constituents engaging with the elected officials.” They are totally out of line, and I need to put my thoughts in writing, even if in this blog I am preaching to the choir

From what I read, I gather most of those parents who are fighting are not highly educated and operate from blind belief or perhaps political affiliation. I doubt they’ve read many of the books. By contrast, library acquisition is done by educated, trained professionals with great care and awareness of the content of the books they are acquiring. They do not buy books by the cover or the jacket blurb.

Yes, parents have a right to monitor what their children read, but they have no right at all to dictate what books entire school systems can shelve. I don’t want the reading of my grandchildren restricted by someone else’s fear or religion or political stance. If a parent disapproves of a certain selection, they can discuss a specific title with the teacher and ask that their child be assigned another title. (Many of the titles, on Rep, Matt Krause’s list of 850 suspect books, for example, are not assigned but are available for free reading; on the other hand, some classics on the list are often found on SAT and other tests important to a child’s future.) If they disapprove of the entire curriculum, parents do not have the right in public education to alter the curriculum. They may withdraw their child(ren) to enroll in private school, where their demands may or may not be more effective, or they may home-school.

Threatening teachers and school board members and their families is absolutely not a choice. Anyone who issues such a threat should be immediately charged. Passion is no more acceptable in a school board meeting than it is in a murder trial—it is not an excuse.

But I worry about the children caught in the middle. What of the eight-year-old girl whose Uncle Tom, Dick, or Harry wants her to bounce on his lap. In a book she may learn that this is not okay, and it is not her fault. The fourteen-year-old boy who has strange feelings for a male classmate? He would find that a same-sex crush is a common part of the maturation journey through puberty. The seventeen-year-old girl who is being flattered online by an older man. Books can help her learn about pedophiles and grooming. Children often are reluctant to talk to their parents about sexual questions. If they find information om books, they can, in good circumstances, feel free to take the book to a parent or teacher. The book can spark a much-needed discussion. Children who are kept ignorant of life’s darker side are unprepared to deal with it. And children who are not challenged by books do not grow intellectually or emotionally.

It's an old trope that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. We are seeing that now in banning books and talk of book bonfires and in increased racism. An uneducated society is prey to authoritarian rule—was it not trump who said he loves poorly educated people? Was it not the Nazis who burned books?

 

The Patterns of History

 

Orchard Street on the Lower East Side
maybe about turn of the 20th Century

Dinner on my own again tonight, and I was dithering between shakshuka and scrambled eggs with corn and goat cheese (more about all of that another night) when my computer reminded me that I had signed up for a webinar on tenement kitchens from 6:00 to 7:00 tonight.

Several years ago, I reviewed a book titled 97 Orchard Street, a fascinating history of one tenement building on New York’s Lower East Side. The book traced the history of various families who occupied the building, as the waves of immigrants poured into New York from various countries. First, in the mid-1800s, came the Irish, forced to flee the potato famine. Then, around the turn of the century, refugees from the pogroms and harsh conditions in Eastern European countries, and by 1940 immigrants from south of our border. Little did I realize at the time that 97 Orchard Street and a companion building at 103 were the center of a museum devoted to the study of immigration. Next time you’re in New York, the Tenement Museum at 103 Orchard is well worth a visit.

Tonight’s program was on tenement kitchens and looked at three successive families—the Moores from Ireland and the Rogshefkys from Russia, who both lived at 97 Orchard, and the a single Puerto Rican mother (Romanika?) who lived at 103 with her two sons (97 had by then been condemned). A knowledgeable curator walked us through each kitchen—the first two apartments probably some 325 square feet where conditions were so crowded, children slept in the kitchen. We saw the progression from coal to gas to electricity. Each segment featured a typical dish from the family’s culture—boxty, from Ireland, was a pancake-like dish prepared with grated potatoes, egg, and seasonings. Several viewers commented that it looked like Jewish latkes, and I did think it emphasized the similarity of cultures—many feature their own versions of the same food, with a different name.

The Jewish/Russian dish was cholent, a stew put on to simmer before sundown on Friday and eaten after services on Saturday (Shabbat or holy day) when orthodox Jews are forbidden to cook. Cholent is made mostly of whatever is on hand, and usually includes beans of some kind. In my years of being married to a Jewish man and coming to love the food, this is one dish I never was served or tried to cook.

The dish for the Puerto Rican woman was a rice pudding—sorry the name escapes me—made with coconut milk, and the process of making coconut milk was painstakingly described. You did not just go to the local grocery and buy a pint. The dish also had several seasonings, including what looked to me like a lot of cinnamon. Again, this demonstrates the link between cultures—several viewers chimed in to say that rice pudding was a staple of their Jewish backgrounds.

This program interested me partly because I’m interested in American history but more because increasingly my food interest is on American food, and I well realize that our culinary traditions involve a lot of the melting pot—we have absorbed and incorporated from the many immigrants who have been welcomed to our shores. No better illustration exists than the popularity of Mexican cuisine which may have first moved into Texas (and in many instances become Tex-Mex) but has also moved throughout the country.

It struck me as I watched that one of the lovely benefits of retirement is that I am free to dart down this rabbit hole and that. When I read the news in the morning, if a particular item interests me, I can take the time to search out more information on the internet. So it was tonight—I wanted to watch this, and I could easily take the time out from what I meant to accomplish tonight. My deadlines are my own.

Supper? I had a ham and cheese sandwich. I’ve got another dinner on my own this week and will have to decide between inventing shakshuka for one or those scrambled eggs. Hmmmm.

 

Texas, Chicago, and Me

 

The house of my growing years

Last night I was reading the opening of Jacqueline Winspear’s memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing, when I came across the passage where she talks of the land of our growing and how it is filled with meaning for each of us. Place, she writes, gives our lives meaning. For me, the place of my growing was Chicago, and for many years I thought I’d put it behind me. After all, I reasoned, everyone I knew there had either left or died. But it turns out I had not put it away from me.

I have lived in Texas fifty-six years, long enough I always feel to be considered a native. My careers as author and publisher have been inextricably entwined with Texas, and yet real Texas natives, those born on the soil, have not-so-subtle ways of reminding one that you are an outsider. In the seventies, there was a Born in Texas movement. You could sign up at booths in shopping malls and, for a fee, get a certificate and a T-shirt. While registering my four children, I felt a pang of jealousy. And there were other T-shirts that said, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as soon as I could.” Folklorist and award-winning author Joyce Gibson Roach and I used to do a dog-and-pony show where she talked about how being a fifth-generation Texan impacted her work, and I followed with “Notes from a Newcomer.” I wish today I had those notes, but they are buried in an archive somewhere.

Aside from fleeting thoughts, Chicago only came into my consciousness a few years ago. After five or more years writing and rewriting, I published a longish historical novel, The Gilded Cage, about Cissie Palmer (wife of hotelier Potter Palmer) who was one of if not the first woman to combine great wealth with philanthropy. The subject came to me first as an assignment for a children’s book. As I wrote, Chicago’s colorful history of the late nineteenth century came tumbling back into my mind—the Great Fire, the Civil War, the Haymarket Riot, Marshall Field and his store, the stockyards and the meat packers, Pullmantown, and, of course, the Columbian Exposition. I was wrapped again in my love for and familiarity with Chicago’s South Side.

And then, in 2016, my four grown children and I spent several days in the city so that I could show them where I grew up. Their reaction filled my heart with love—they exclaimed over my childhood home (sort of a red-brick brownstone that they, expecting poverty, estimated at over a million in worth), the elegant nineteenth-century houses of Hyde Park, the gray grandeur of Rockefeller Chapel and the other buildings of the University of Chicago. We dined at Berghoff’s and Rick Steves’ La Fontera, took the historical tour of the Palmer House, stayed in a suite overlooking Lake Michigan and the North Shore—I could gaze at the lake and fill something inside me that had too long missed that lake. It was, though short, perhaps the most memorable trip of my life.

In 2019, some unknown spark prompted me to move beyond Texas and write about Chicago in an entirely different vein—a contemporary cozy mystery set in Hyde Park, the neighborhood of my growing. And now I am, slowly, working on a sequel to Saving Irene, to be titled Irene in Danger. And I know, though a Texan most of the time, a part of me never left Chicago, and I carry that magnificent city in my heart.

Maybe Winspear’s insight will spur me to get serious about that memoir that I keep in the back of my mind. “Memories,” she wrote, “appear in flashes of light,” and I think that is what my memoir would be—not a connected, continuous narrative, but flashes of memory as they came to me.

A quiet and safe Fourth of July

Fireworks in Fort Worth

The pool in Blanco

It’s a quiet Fourth at the Alter/Burton compound. Jordan ahs gone off with her high school girlfriends for a weekend at a rental house in Blanco. The house they’ve rented has a wonderful view of the Hill Country and a smashing swimming pool, which would be important to them as they like to lie out. (My granddaughter recently said something to me about laying around, and I quickly corrected her that it’s lying around—but I can’t correct these girls.)

I truly admire Jordan and her friends for remaining so close in the years since high school. I won’t give away their ages, but trust me—they’ve seen more than one high school reunion. Yet these are the women she would turn to first in moments of joy or crisis. And I am most fond of each of them.

Meanwhile, back in Fort Worth, Christian, Jacob, and I are having a quiet but satisfactory time. Jordan charged Christian with taking care of me, and he’s most attentive. Lucky for him though I am over whatever bug I had and do not require as much attention or sympathy. Today I read most of the day, because I have a book I agreed to review, and I figured the best way to go after it was to get it done. So I devoted the day to it.

It’s a book about two women traveling through France, seeking the stories of women in various small cities and towns about food and family and how they survived World War II. I enjoyed it, especially the family stories and the recipes. One of a man who was separated from his mother as a child by the bombing of Paris and how that affected him as an adult. Another about a woman whose family had a farm. Of what they ate, she said, “We didn’t have to diet,” as she described sometimes having one potato for a family of five. Even in these difficult times in America, I don’t think we can truly grasp the hardship of Europeans during that war.

As for food, my comment is that the French sure ate a lot of rabbit—in rillettes (I think that’s a paté) and stews and other dishes. I have had rabbit once—chicken-fried—and liked it, but like many Americans I am leery of looking at a bunny and then finding it on the dinner table. The French apparently have no such compunctions, and I’m not sure why I do. We eat chicken, don’t we?

Back to the mundane. Christian and I decided on take-out fried chicken tonight. We chose a nearby restaurant, but friends told Christian the chicken was really spicy. He knows I don’t like that, so we settled for the Cook Shack—I had a good chicken sandwich and cole slaw but not the fried pickles I wanted. And I still have a craving for good, old-fashioned, bone-in fried chicken. When quarantine is over—will it ever end?—I’m going to Drew’s Place, where they serve soul food, including fried chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans. Meantime, this was good.

Christian is spending evenings watering my new grass. The rain we hoped for has not materialized and is now not predicted for a couple of days. Like taking care of me, watering the grass was one of the things Jordan charged him with while she is gone. Woe to him if she comes home and finds brown spots!

So ends an unusual Fourth. I found it hard to feel celebratory today. I’m too upset about where my country is, with a pandemic killing thousands of my fellow Americans and racial unrest being fueled by the man who is supposedly leading us. America today is not the country of my dreams—I pray that we will be able to reverse this and begin the long, slow climb back to greatness, a new kind of greatness that leaves behind some of the problems that got us where we are today. But we need a totally new administration to do that.

Putting good memories into fiction

Palmer House loobby

In the fall of 2016, my four adult children and I went to Chicago. It was a pilgrimage for me—I wanted them to see where I grew up. We stayed at the Drake Hotel, epitome of luxury when I was a Chicago kid, we toured my Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhood, they gawked at my childhood home (a sort of red-brick brownstone built in 1893—I had always stressed the modest means of my family, and I guess they thought I grew up in a shack), and we ate at fantastic restaurants, mostly on the near North Side. It was a trip that made memories I will treasure forever.

One highlight though, for me, was lunch and a tour of the famed Palmer House Hotel, now a Hilton property. I had researched the hotel for my “big” Chicago novel, The Gilded Cage, which is fiction loosely based on the life of Bertha Honoré (Cissy) Palmer, one of the first women to combine wealth with philanthropy. Cissy’s husband, entrepreneur and robber baron Potter Palmer, built the hotel as a wedding present for his bride in 1871. Within weeks, the city of Chicago burned, taking with it the hotel. Potter Palmer rebuilt, and for a few years the Palmers and their two sons lived on the top floor.

In the 1920, the original structure was rebuilt into a 25-floor hotel. For well over a century, the Palmer House has provided luxurious splendor in its public areas, oversized private rooms, and sumptuous meals. It has hosted the rich and famous – Mark Twain spoke at a reception for General Ulysses S. Grant (related by marriage to the Palmers) and Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland were among the entertainers who performed in the Grand Ballroom.

museum

The Palmer House is the only hotel I know of with a museum and an on-staff historian who gives daily tours. Historian Ken Price presides over a tiny, glass-walled museum tucked away in the mezzanine and overflowing with memorabilia—menus, hotel bills, signed celebrity photos, newspaper clippings, portraits, books, even ashtrays and a teapot. On his daily tour of the hotel’s public spaces, Price takes visitors to the Grand Ballroom, the Red Lacquer Room, and, of course, the lobby where he is quick to point out the Tiffany chandeliers. Afterward, there is an informal discussion in the museum.

I loved every minute of it, and this week I’ve been able to weave that experience into my work-in-progress, a culinary mystery set in Chicago. The Palmer House fit into my plot as though I had planned it all along, and I’ve had fun mentally replaying that tour, sitting again in awe in the lobby, ogling like a teenager just off the farm.

Is it a stretch to put the hotel in the mystery? I hope not, but you’ll have to tell me when Saving Irene is released, probably in September or October. Meantime I have memories to savor.

Red Lacquer Room

Chili on a chilly night

Jordan has it firmly fixed in her mind that there’s a connection between wintry weather and chili. Let there be the slightest forecast of snow, ice, sleet, even freezing rain, and she issues a call for chili. So far, today’s predicted storm has missed us, though it’s darn cold and damp. In the TCU area, we had a sudden burst of rain early this morning and a slight brush with sleet in the late afternoon. But storm or no, all the chili fixin’s are on my worktable.

Christian usually makes our chili. He’s an excellent cook and, unlike me, studiously follows a recipe. He likes to experiment to the point that I’m not sure he’s used the same chili recipe twice. But Christian is entertaining clients at the rodeo every night this week, so I am the default chili maker.

Me? I just make it the way I always have. No recipe—just onion, garlic, ground meat (I’d love to have chili-grind venison but that is not to be), diced tomatoes, beer, and chili powder. If we need more, I’ll just add some more tomatoes or tomato sauce. Oh, and beans, added just before serving but given enough time to heat.  We like to garnish it with chopped red onion, grated cheddar, and sour cream. Terlingua folks would shake their heads in despair at my chili which violates all kinds of rules.

I do know about Terlingua chili. My neighbor goes to the Original Chili Cookoff every year, even judges some events, and is a chili purist. He has criticized my chili mercilessly, calling it “stew, not chili.” But I can one-up him, because I have written a whole book about chili.

Texas is Chili Country explores the origin of chili—no, it’s not Mexican. In fact, food scholars in Mexico are fairly disparaging of it. Truth is it probably traces back to Native American cooking and the pemmican they made using what they could forage. Today’s Texas chili probably originated at some trail drive chuck wagon where the cook or cousie, as he was called, threw some peppers into the stew. The first public appearance of chili came in the 1880s when the chili queens of San Antonio sold their wares on various plazas in that city.

Chili was sold in solid bricks in the early twentieth century and was popular because it was filling and inexpensive. But it was also damned as the devil’s food in some areas, specifically McKinney, Texas. Then came canned chili. True aficionados denounce canned chili but even chili guru the late Frank Tolbert found a few brands acceptable. The most famous of them all is Wolf Brand, and the fascinating story behind it includes real wolves and the fact that a Spanish-speaking grocer saw the wolf on the label and thought it was dog food.

Chili really came into prominence in this country with the development of cook-offs, a development directly credited to Tolbert, although there had been low-key cookoffs before he planned the 1967 event at Terlingua. You see, Tolbert had a new book, A Bowl of Red, and the first cookoff was a publicity stunt for the book. It was also a circus, with outrageous characters in costume and debatable judging. It's gotten better over the years.

Cookoffs are now big business nationally, with strict entry qualifications—participants must win local contests to qualify. Two rival organizations sponsor annual events—the Chili Appreciation Society International and the International Chili Society. For fifty-four years, the Tolbert family has organized the “Original Terlingua International Championship Chili Cook-off.” The other one, they claim, is a johnny-0come-lately. 

But fully half the book is taken up with recipes that I collected from sources far and wide, and if the Terlingua folks are upset about the beans in my chili, I hope they don’t read these. Cincinnati chili is served over spaghetti; Skyline, an eastern brand that markets several prepared packages, incorporates cream cheese; one recipe includes three kinds of chiles, espresso, dark chocolate, and anchovy fillets among other ingredients. Greaseless chili is for those watching their cholesterol, and Zen chili is for those… uh, with Zen inclinations. You can make white chili, lamb chili, low-cal, vegetarian. And there are recipes for related dishes like chili pie and Coney dogs. There’s no end to the possibilities.

But you know what? Our plain and basic chili tonight was darn good.

Haircuts, tigers, and the Alamo

The difference a haircut makes is amazing. This morning, it was still chilly although sunny, and I was in a bit of a funk, reluctant to get started on a long day of work broken only by a two o’clock haircut and dinner with a friend. But then Rosa, the wonderful lady who keeps me from looking shaggy, called to say she could come by around nine instead of two. I managed to get my hair washed but she found me lazy otherwise—bed unmade, dishes in the sink. But that haircut turned my attitude around, and the whole day was better than I expected.

Sophie got a haircut a week or so ago. She had been having terrible allergies, and I could hear her wheeze and that wet breathing that scares you when you hear it in a child and worried me for my dog. She was also sleeping a lot. But after the haircut, she is a new dog—lively, allergy-free. I truly believe she was carrying around dust and pollen in that shaggy coat.

So in my next life I’m either going to be a hair stylist or a dog groomer. Such a good service they do for us.

Something appalling that I read this morning: there are only 3,000 tigers in the wild, while there are 5,000 in captivity. No, most of them are not in zoos and wildlife preserves. They are in people’s back yards. Estimate is that 2,000 are in Texas yards. Sorry, folks, but that’s an atrocity. Those magnificent creatures deserve to run free and should not live their lives in cages in back yards. Thank goodness, zoos are doing a better job these days of keeping animals in a so-called natural environment, but even that is less than ideal. The virtue of zoos is their breeding programs, which save many animals from extinction. I can’t begin to understand why someone would want a tiger in a cage in their backyard. Probably people who think life isn’t complete without an AR15.

Today is the 183^rd anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, which means, among many other more significant things, my book about the Alamo should be out by this time next year. I’ve seen several posts about this anniversary, and they all show pictures of the chapel. But that is not where the battle was. It took place in a building, now restored, adjacent to the chapel, called the long barracks. In the public mind, though, Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie swung their rifles in hand-to-hand combat on the roof of the chapel. Truth is, the chapel was in such disrepair at the time of the siege that it had no roof. When the U.S. Army occupied the building as a storage depot, in 1847, they put in the roof and added the familiar rounded arch or hip at the center.

Today I read an article that demonstrated how popular that style is in commercial and residential properties in Fort Worth, many dating back a century but probably few if any pre-dating the Alamo roof. So the assumption is that loyal Texans copied that feature, probably as a tribute or way or honoring the history. If you’re in Fort Worth, take a look, for instance at the Livestock Exchange. I suppose the same imitative style can be found in other Texas cities.

Take a minute too to think of the men who died defending the Alamo. As I’ve found out in my recent research, it’s not the simple heroic story most assume it is, and its ramifications are felt, good and bad, in Texas to this day. History lives on.

Some doggy memories

Do you remember the dogs of your childhood? I do—a wild and lovable female collie mix inappropriately named Timmy, an English cocker with a less-than-sweet disposition, a gentle and genteel collie called “Sister” for some reason.

A recent thread on Facebook is bringing back bittersweet memories of my years with Cairn terriers—and giving me new memories to savor. The oldest daughter of old friends posted a picture of the house her dad lived in as a child. The house later became the first osteopathic hospital in Fort Worth—the ground floor was the hospital, and a surgeon and his family lived on the second floor.

For the family who initially posted, the thread led to an online reunion with the descendants of the two Hispanic women who had cared for their father when he was a child and whom he loved very much. Talk about bittersweet memories.

But another part of the thread led to a discussion of the several buildings occupied by Fort Worth Osteopathic Hospital until its demise in 2004. By then I had worked at the hospital, been married to a surgeon, divorced, and moved on with my life. But the thread connected with a friend who also worked there and then morphed into a thread about Cairn terriers because Ellen, the woman, and I met when she bought a Cairn from me.

And then, as these things do, the thread twisted back to the original family of kids—because they too had one of my Cairns—named Jody, because it combined my name with that of my then-husband, Joel. And then the memories of Cairns came flooding back.

As I child I read the book Greyfriars Bobby, about the Edinburgh dog so attached to its master that he refused to leave his grave. Mistakenly all those years I thought Greyfriars Bobby was a Carin—he was a Skye terrier. But I determined to have a Cairn—and we ended up raising and showing them, not that we were ever great successes at either. But we had one champion, and I recall someone telling me outright that the judge was interested in the dog’s legs not mine. I remember Jemima and Bitsy and the cute male with the bent tail who died from chewing on a wicker basket (always a cautionary tale for me).

I guess I had forgotten though how I spread my Cairn joy, until the son of my friends posted, “You spread a lot of joy with your doggies.” Funny the way that networks form, and the way that memories come and go. For  Facebook doubters, this was an example of the good that network can do.

Time for chili

There’s a definite fall tinge in the air, a touch of cool in the early morning and even by early evening. I’ve taken to shutting my patio door except in the middle of the day, and I’ve finally mastered turning on the heat so I can take the morning chill off. In the wee hours this morning, we had a storm with good rain and truly impressive thunder. It was okay, because I was protected by one small, black dog who first barked at the thunder to scare it away and then slept right by me to keep me safe.

As we say in Texas, it’s chili weather. Fitting that Christian fixed chili tonight—a recipe he cobbled together from this one and that. I gave him one from the New York Times that is really complicated. Billed as a combination of chili and gumbo—the combination made me curious. Christian said he didn’t have time to do it tonight, and he couldn’t find the one from my book he wanted to do. It’s Dan Hogan’s chili, and I swear it has everything in it but the proverbial kitchen sink. What Christian made, his cobbled together version, was good and hearty with just enough spice. He complained he couldn’t find his red pepper flakes; I told him I was just as glad.

In case you all didn’t know, I did a book on chili a few years back. Texas is Chili Country is a history of the dish—no, it’s not from Mexico, an attribution Mexicans consider an insult. It began in the cow camps of West Texas. And no, it doesn’t have beans (Christian’s had beans tonight, and truthfully, I like them).  A lengthy chapter discusses the two chili cookoffs, which are about to take place next weekend in Terlingua, along with the reason that remote spot was chosen. This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the original chili cookoff, started as a publicity stunt by the legendary Frank Tolbert and his sidekick, Wick Fowler. It was more hijinks than serious, but these days chili is serious business—at least in the original cookoff. Not so much at the CASI cookoff. Chili cookoffs are not for amateurs—you have to win local contests to qualify. Anyway, you can read all about it.

And then you can prowl through pages and pages of chili recipes—seems everyone on the planet has their own recipe. These days you can cook fat free chili, vegetarian chili, chili with turkey and other meats alternate to the beef that started the whole thing. Fascinating what peple come up with. Shhh. Don’t say I said it, but chili is one of those dishes you can cook blindfolded without a recipe.

Pardon the sales pitch, but you can find the book on Amazon or from Texas Tech Press

Aside from the hearty chili and an interesting dinnertime discussion of childbirth with Jacob, it was a long Sunday. I so often have a much better social life during the week than on weekends, and sometimes long Sundays lull me into speaking out on Facebook among other things. I did today and found myself embroiled in several discussions. To my delight, my Megan chimed in a couple of times but once it was to second someone’s suggestion that I clear myself of haters. I think it’s a Facebook thing—people I know are not on my “Friends” list respond. Someone suggested they are bots—something else for me to learn about. At any rate, I continue to speak out because I think it’s important. Misused as the term is these days, I think speaking out about our government is patriotic (45 wouldn’t agree).

Sanitizing the South

All across the South there’s a move to take down Confederate statues. They are symbols of a dark blot on our history—slavery, the plantation system, an era of extreme human bondage, cruelty to humans. I do not believe that these monuments were built to terrify blacks, as one editorial this morning claimed, but they were built to glorify men who today we do not consider heroes. That they have become rallying points for hate groups probably means that they should come down. But I view that destruction with sadness. It’s like trying to erase history.

The plantation system, with all its inequities and unbelievable cruelty, helped shape the South as we know it today—a region most of us recognize has a rich heritage of literature, music, art, food, and manners. The Civil War, fought to preserve slavery or that culture (depends on your point of view), shaped our country in ways we can never fully appreciate. It moved us beyond slavery to the land of equality our forefathers wanted. To remove those statues is to attempt to remove history, and we can neither erase nor rewrite history. Those men who fought for the Confederacy were part of the great war which molded us, albeit they were on the wrong side..

Let them stand today as reminders of the schism in our country, the positive outcome of the war, the progress we have made toward being civilized. The hate groups that rally around these statues (with tiki torches, no less—how inappropriate is that?) are beyond the understanding of most of us. But rather than spend money, effort, and time taking down statues, let us direct our energies to combatting hatred in our country. What can we do to reach out to those people, understand them (there probably is no understanding), help them change and rid themselves of anger? If I were convinced tearing down statues would help, I’d be for it. But I think it will only further enrage them—that is, of course, why they were in Charlottesville, to protest the scheduled teardown of a statue of Robert E. Lee.

If we sanitize the history of the South we might well begin to look at other parts of the country. The cowboy myth of the American West wasn’t particularly violent, but the clashes between settlers and native American were awash in cruelty on either side, unbelievable barbarianism and cruelty. Shall we destroy statues to pioneers and Native American leaders, besmirch Daniel Bowie and others? History has given us a re-interpretation of Custer’s Last Stand, one in which the general doesn’t come out well at all. Can we not apply that lesson to the South without destroying monuments?

And what about New England? Those Puritans could be extremely cruel and insensitive to those who didn’t think as they did. Shall we ban The Scarlet Letter from school reading lists?

When we try to rewrite or erase history, we start down a slippery slope. Surely, we can be more constructive. I am proud to be an American and proud of our heritage. I decry those who would pervert that heritage and use it for hatred. But, as a literature and history student, I want to preserve our history intact.

This was hard to write and didn’t come out the way I wanted at all, but I have done my best. Many of my colleagues and good friends will disagree vehemently, and I understand that.

Where’s your safety pin?

I had been searching in my mind for some clever internet campaign that would contribute to the idea of countering hatred with love and kindness—and along came the safety pin campaign. I wish I’d thought of it, because it’s a terrific idea.

If you wear a safety pin, you say without words to people you meet, “I’m here for you. You’re safe with me.” A lot of Americans are living in terror right now, bone-shaking, gut-clenching terror that makes them cower and dread. Muslims, Jews, women, gays, African-Americans, Latinos—any of the target groups of Trump-style hatred. I hear for instance that the director of immigration—whatever his correct title—is preparing plans to begin deportations the first day of the Trump presidency. Imagine for a moment you’re a Latino born in this country but your aged parents are illegal, though they’ve paid taxes and been contributing citizens for years. That my friends is terror. Or the Saudi who was beaten to death because his skin was the wrong color…or the gay beaten within an inch of his life. Remember that poem, “First they came for the socialists….” It seems unbelievable but it can happen to any of us.

So wear your safety pins. Show those living in fear that you support them and are there for them. It’s not your call whether or not you think the fear is justified. To those suffering from it, it’s very reeal.

I like the story behind this current safety pin campaign. It originated in the Netherlands during Nazi occupation when people did not dare speak up. Instead they wore safety pins—men tucked them under the collar, while women generally pinned them on the inside of their hems. I suppose at the right moment they flashed these surreptitiously to give reassurance and comfort.

We can do no less. A small step but an important one.

Two incredible stories

Some people have incredible stories to tell. A recent blog asked writers when they would retire from writing. Like a lot of others, I replied with a sort of blah "I can't not write." But a response today stunned me. A woman wrote that she had published the last of three memoirs three years ago--at the age of 97. She's spent the last three years trying to market them, but it seems to her young people aren't interested in her past. Yet she lived through five years of the Russian Revolution as a child, then the Great Depression, and two World Wars. Such rich, fascinating stories she must have to tell. I cannot imagine young people not being interested--but then I realize to my own children, those things are distant memories. They don't realize the impact they had on the world, an impact that affects their lives today. I just looked--she has several books on Amazon. I'm going to order one, and after I've read it I'm going to write her. Her name is Nora Percival, and she will a 100 next week. She's threatening to write a book about being a writer of books no one wants to read. I would have to tell her how wrong she is. Want to read her story of escaping the Russian Revolution? http://fw.dnslink.com/?domainname=amazon.com&seedterm=amazon&publicid=43f59b77-9ecf-46eb-bf7c-3af1e1893438
The other story is far different but equally touching. Janie Emaus, an author/friend (we share a publisher) writes a column for the Huffington post (how did she get that wonderful assignment?) and did a post that speaks eloquently of the difference between marriage and friendship--and the importance of the latter. Her husband had a lifelong friend he did everything with--ball games, beer drinking, all the things that men do together. When her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the friend was there, in the hospital, by his home bedside. A year later the friend developed a much more serious health problem. Janie and her husband moved him into their home and have been caring for him, although they either have or soon will lose him. But Janie tells the story so much better than I can. Read it yourself: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janie-emaus/marriage-and-friendship_b_5892894.html
I am in awe of both these women--and Janie's husband and his friend. The old cliché is that God never throws more at you than you can handle. Their strength and resilience is amazing. I guess God knew that.

Murder and Mystery in Brooklyn

Please welcome my guest, Triss Stein, a small-town girl from New York state's dairy country who has spent most of her adult life living and working in New York City. This gives her a useful double vision of a stranger and a resident for writing mysteries about Brooklyn, her ever-fascinating, ever-changing, ever-challenging adopted home. Brooklyn Graves was published by Poison Pen Press in March and is second in the series, after Brooklyn Bones. Triss is active in both Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and is on the board of the MWA NY chapter. Welcome, Triss!

 

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Judy has kindly invited me to write a guest blog as I am blog touring for my new book, Brooklyn Graves.

This is the second book in a new series about Brooklyn, after Brooklyn Bones. Though I have lived in Brooklyn for many decades I am not a native. Believe me, there is a difference, and the question I am asked most often is how I came to write a Brooklyn series. It is a multi-part answer.

I grew up in New York, the state ( really upstate - near Canada) but I had many relatives in New York, the city. It was not the big bad city to me; it was a goal. I planned to have a bachelor girl apartment there someday. Clearly, I was influenced by Doris Day movies, but I did live in New York, the city, as a young woman.

I worked for the public library system in Brooklyn, and they liked to move us around to different neighborhoods. Even then, it seemed to me those neighborhoods were a lot like small towns. People didn't say they were from New York or even Brooklyn; they said they were from Red Hook or East New York. They might even say they were from a mini-neighborhood or project - Ditmas Park or Linden Houses. They maybe went into the big bad city (that would be Manhattan) once a year.

When I started thinking about a new mystery series, it seemed to me that no one was really setting mysteries against the background of ordinary life in New York. Most of us don't walk the mean streets, trade in drugs, join youth gangs. We have jobs, families, local issues, though they all have a special New York flavor. Or at least we like to think so.

By then I owned a home in Brooklyn, had my own neighborhood, raised my daughters there, and sent them to public schools. I had a small garden! Could I write a series about that, set in different neighborhoods where their infinite variety of history, culture, quirks and - of course! It’s a mystery series - conflicts? And crimes old and new?

My heroine is an urban historian in training whose work gives her a reason to ask questions that - sometimes- people don't want to answer. In Brooklyn Bones, the setting is her own neighborhood (and mine, not by coincidence) gentrifying Park Slope, and her own house, where an ugly secret is uncovered during renovation. In Brooklyn Graves, the setting is a Brooklyn landmark, beautiful Green-Wood cemetery, where there is history, memories, and art worth serious money. And of course, there are living people with needs, desires and conflicts.

The next one will be about a tough neighborhood, then and now, that has produced generations of criminals and boxers. After that? Who knows? I'm never going to run out of Brooklyn stories.  If you would like to see some odd ones - wild parakeets and Winston Churchill's mother (yes, she was a Brooklyn girl) - my website has a tab for Brooklyn Fun Facts. http://trissstein.com/brooklyn-fun-facts/com Those are stories I haven't figured out how to put in a mystery. Yet.  

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And here's the blurb for Brooklyn Graves--

 

 A brutally murdered friend who was a family man with not an enemy in the world. A box full of charming letters home, written a century ago by an unknown young woman working at the famed Tiffany studios. Historic Green-Wood cemetery, where a decrepit mausoleum with stunning stained glass windows is now off limits, even to a famed art historian.

Suddenly, all of this, from the tragic to the merely eccentric, becomes part of Erica Donato’s life. She is a close friend of the murdered man’s family and feels compelled to help them. She is arbitrarily assigned to catalogue the valuable letters for an arrogant expert visiting the history museum where she works. She is the person who took that same expert to see the mausoleum windows.

Her life is full enough. She is a youngish single mother of a teen, an oldish history grad student, lowest person on the museum’s totem pole. She doesn’t need more responsibility, but she gets it anyway as secrets start emerging in the most unexpected places: an admirable life was not what it seemed, confiding letters conceal their most important story, and too many people have hidden agendas.

In Brooklyn Graves a story of old families, old loves and hidden ties merges with new crimes and the true value of art, against the background of the splendid old cemetery and the life of modern Brooklyn.

 



 

 

 

The Company Store

Please welcome my Wednesday guest, Catherine Dilts, who writes mysteries set in the mountains of southern Colorado and here gives us an informative glimpse into the early days of the mines that pepper the mountains of that area. I for one hope Catherine will turn from contemporary and write about the Ludlow Massacre, which I'd never heard of before. Here' s Catherine:


The grimy faces of young boys emerging from a mine stared at us from a poster in the Western Museum of Mining and Industry. My daughter told her middle child, “If you lived back then, you’d be marrying one of those boys. Soon. Then you’d have babies. That’s all you’d get to do.”

My granddaughter seemed unsure whether she should believe her mother. As we would learn that evening, a coal miner’s wife in the early 1900s often had a bleak, hard, and short life.

I became a member of the museum last summer. My fiction has gravitated toward stories involving modern day prospectors and gemstone mining. The WMMI is a good resource, plus they offer free programs, like the February lecture on Social Life in Western Mining Camps, presented by Associate Professor Fawn Amber Montoya.

Colorado is known for gold and silver mining, but the state is also rich in coal. Over a century ago, coal camps dotted Southern Colorado. The Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I) dominated the region, controlling the mines, the mills, the trains, and the towns.

In the early 1900s, workers flocked to the CF&I mines. Many were immigrants, lured to America with promises far exceeding reality.  A survey from the time listed over twenty different ethnic groups, with English, Spanish, and Italian as the predominant languages. At Ludlow, one of the tent mining camps, this diverse population got along quite well, playing music and singing in the evenings. Professor Montoya’s description of camp life was one of harmony.

The mining companies hired teachers, more to train future workers than to educate the children. Both boys and girls attended school starting with kindergarten and ending by sixth grade. They learned practical arithmetic needed by miners, farmers and laborers. The only library consisted of whatever books the teacher happened to own. While children learned to read and write, their parents were typically illiterate.

This sign warns that you are entering a uranium mine area with possible open shafts and tunnels and possible radioactive radon gas. It cautions visitors to stay on the existing road. [Note the handkerchief over Catherine's face.]

One photo showed eight-year-old boys dressed in mining gear. They weren’t working in the mines. Not yet. They were participating in a career field day. My oldest granddaughter just turned thirteen. A boy that age would have one year of childhood left before going to work.

What about the girls? They married young and started families or worked as domestic help. Most women didn’t live past the age of forty-five. Dying in childbirth was common. People had large families with the expectation they would lose two or three children.

Working conditions for those “men” aged fourteen and up were shocking. Life expectancy was between forty and forty-five. Men died in mining accidents or from black lung caused by coal dust.

In 1913, just before the start of World War I, miners began striking in what became known as the Colorado Coalfield Wars. They demanded relief from the dangerous conditions and from the near slavery resulting from low wages and the requirement to shop exclusively at the company store. The miners even had to pay full retail price for the coal they had dug out of the mines.

The mining camps were often tucked into canyons, where the entrance was easier to control than a camp on the open prairie. Armed guards supervised who came and went. Handy when you wanted to keep union organizers out.

After months of escalating violence, on April 20^th, 1914, mine company employees in National Guard uniforms were ordered to evict the striking Ludlow miners from their tent city. The miners fought back. Fourteen hours later, seventeen men, women, and children had been murdered. Some died when their tent city was burned to the ground. News of the massacre spread, inflaming workers around the world to strike in protest. 

Despite the outrage, not much changed for many years after the Ludlow massacre. The strike had been broken. World War I started. Miners went back to work in the same conditions. Eventually the United Mine Workers and federal laws changed the mining industry.

What grim, terrible times. And yet Ms. Montoya described an interview with a woman who had grown up in a coal camp. Most of her memories were of the epic baseball games and team rivalries between the different camps. Life wasn’t all suffering. 

After the company town monopoly was broken, people could live and shop where they wanted. Mining companies sponsored baseball teams and picnics. At one, a contest offered a prize to the heaviest lady. The women consented to a public weigh-in to determine the winner. In another, the woman with the most children won shoes for the entire family. Those were definitely different times.

I found it interesting that happy memories prevailed for the former mine camp resident. I wonder what my granddaughters will remember from the lecture. The hard life of a coal miner’s wife or Grandma attempting to sing “I owe my soul to the company store” on the drive home?

Here’s a link to the lyrics: http://bit.ly/1hHTVj2; You can learn more about the museum at: http://www.wmmi.org/

About Catherine Dilts

Catherine Dilts writes amateur sleuth mysteries set in the Colorado mountains. In her debut novel Stone Cold Dead – A Rock Shop Mystery, business is as dead as a dinosaur, but when Morgan Iverson finds the body of a Goth teen on a hiking trail, more than just the family rock shop could become extinct. Catherine works as an environmental scientist and plays at heirloom vegetable gardening, camping, and fishing. Her short fiction appears in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Visit her at http://www.catherinedilts.com/