:Family Matters

June 29, 2008

I spend a lot of my time downstairs now, mainly because my sewing room is there but also because it is deliciously cool in the summer time. This allows MGH and I to enjoy the climate we like best as he now prefers the tropics while I long for more alpine temperatures—at least in the summer. Needless to say I make good use of the stairs which probably isn’t all bad as it forces me into a minimal exercise mode despite my best efforts to the contrary. So anyway, there I was coming up the stairs and I smell gas. “Darn”, I thought, did I fail to get the burner turned all the way off after fixing lunch”? But on checking I found that all was as it should be but as this finding begged the question of the gas smell I put the thought on the back burner in my mind for further review where it didn’t have to sit long as a few minutes later there came a frantic pounding on the front door which when answered revealed a very agitated young man (everyone now falls into the young category for me even if they are well into their 40’s). Wasting no time on the niceties of conversational openers he desperately blurted out the need for turning off all sources of flame in our house as the main gas line at the corner of our street had just been cut and was just waiting for a spark to blow up the whole neighborhood. I assured him I would attend to this matter as he left yelling over his shoulder to call all my neighbors and let them know as well. Well, at least that explained the gas smell.

After consulting with MGH as to where there might be a flame I headed downstairs to have a talk with the water heater which was in slumbering mode at the moment and resting quietly before the next demand was made on it for hot water which I had decided, due to circumstances beyond my control, I would not request for the foreseeable future. My talk with this servant has always been conducted with the greatest awe and reverence as it carries upon its being numerous warnings/threats of possible disaster if dealt with improperly. So there I was on my knees before it as I once again tried to decipher the instructions posted thereon. Alas, after spending way too much time in this position considering what I should, or should not do to make this haughty genie inoperative I decided that perhaps caution would be the better part of valor in this instance and so decided to wait before taking any action that might precipitate an immediate undesirable result and tackle something more amenable to my ministrations which was the gas fireplace where I was successful in turning off the pilot light.

After dusting myself off, I rose triumphantly and ascended the stairs where I reported my success to MGH before confessing my failure with the water heater and asking for his ideas on how to put it to sleep. I had to veto his halfhearted suggestion that he could go down and attend to the problem himself, which, while I knew it to be true, that he had the skill to shut my nemesis off, doing so would leave him in an untenable position caught between the washing machine and the furnace with the very real possibility of needing a hoist to set him upright when he was finished.

Since I seemed to have reached a dead end insofar as securing the danger of an innocent spark igniting chaos inside, I decided to see for myself what was going on outside. A quick look out the window showed a Cedar City fire truck widthwise of the street right in front of our mail box with a fireman in full regalia standing beside it directing approaching cars away from the area. Since lack of traffic left him with a good deal of time on his hands I went out and asked him what was going on. To my surprise he didn’t seem too worried but explained that Questar Gas was on the scene and in charge of getting the gas turned off to the area and then repairing the break. I told him about the man who had come to our door in a panic and he gave a chuckle and said that it was probably the backhoe operator who broke the line trying to do ’something’ to alleviated the dangerous situation he had precipitated. I thanked him and then wandered off down the road to the corner where there were three or four trucks circled around the hole where the broken line was. Cornering one of the men, who I had observed walking around with some kind of a box connected to a wand which he was waving around close to ground, I began pestering him with questions which he kindly answered even going so far as to check inside our house and garage for gas when I told him of the strong gas smell. He told me that the reason there had been no evacuation of homes in the area was that there was a good breeze that was taking the gas upwards into the air where it dissipated quickly and that the reason the gas smell was so strong was that the odor the gas company pumps along with the natural gas to alert residents of a leak was heavier than air and sinks to the lowest level. Well, that answered that question and much to my delight the necessary repairs were made to the broken line in less than an hour. While it provided an interesting diversion in our RH(retirement home) it didn’t even make the local paper the next day. Ah well, must not have been our neighborhood’s time for its’ fifteen minutes of fame, but considering the alternative it was probably just as well.

Of course all this left me with a turned off gas fireplace. To my sorrow, as I seem to have a predilection for learning things the hard way, I now know, after years of sad experience that it is much easier to take apart than put back together, sigh. However, knowing something and making a correct choice doesn’t always take place as witness my now inoperative fireplace. The knowledge that I didn’t have the skill needed to relight the pilot light sent me outside once more where I again found a helpful gentleman checking the area with his little wand. I explained my problem which resulted in his cheerfully checking out the house once more for any gas that might have pooled inside before relighting the pilot light. He even told me what product I could use to clean the glass front of the fireplace—which I hadn’t even noticed was dirty.

And so I leave you with this thought—while life in a RH often involves years of boredom, inserted here and there one sometimes finds a moment of excitement even if the only person excited by this latest one was me.

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July 4, 2008

It’s the 4th of July and just in case I might have forgotten that fact the local unit of the National Guard has just fired three shots across the bow of our fair city which it does every year at six in the morning. I hear this most years because of a propensity, as I age, to find myself wide awake if not bushy tailed at the most gosh awful hours imaginable unlike MGH who seems to get the best sleep of the night in the early hours of the morning long past the time when most are up and about the process of answering the bell. (This is a man whose high school football coach told his players that every hour of sleep before midnight was worth two after and being of a believing nature, at least where sports are concerned, followed that advice until he became an old man. It isn’t that he doesn’t believe it any more, because he does but his aging body asserts its self more and more and makes demands that must be answered so much so that what once was now makes way for what now is forcing him to renege, for awhile, on this truism.)

Of course there were the farm years when getting up early was always a given irregardless of holidays as there were always chores to be done and when they involve the care of a milking cow even being sick doesn’t end the responsibility as the she and her compatriots will stand in the barn yard and bellow their displeasure with you for not showing up to relieve the pressure that is building in their respective udders that increases by the minute and if mama cow isn’t happy, ain’t nobody happy on the farm.

But then being responsible was a given in the Gano family. I can remember when we first moved to Iowa a time when dad became so dizzy from the Menier’s disease that plagued him that he literally fall face down to the ground between one step and the next as he was walking. I was there when this happened to him once when mother and the rest of the family was in Arizona settling some bit of unfinished business and I had been left to be his ‘helper’ and as such was out in the barnyard walking beside him as we headed off to do some chore and one second I was trotting by his side and the next he was flat on the ground. Pretty scary stuff for both of us but he managed to get himself up and after explaining to me how his sense of balance was at times so precarious he could not keep himself upright he asked me if I thought I could handle the rest of the chores by myself as he needed to go lay down. (He was such a reserved man who rarely complained or talked about or even admitted that he was having problems that I know it must have pained him greatly to admit that he wasn’t well.) About all that was left to be done was the watering and having watched him do it many times I figured I could do that with out too much trouble. Boy did I learn a thing or two as the water had to be hand pumped up from the well into the water tank as that was before dad installed an electric pump which greatly simplified the process and allowed us to keep more animals as the need arose. Do you have any idea how many gallons a thirsty animal can drink? Well neither did I until then. It was fun the first several minutes but soon became a nightmarish experience as I kept pumping and pumping and pumping and the animals kept drinking and drinking and drinking.

Holidays for farm families were working days and our family was no exception. Our livelihood depended on caring for the animals and crops that provided our income. So it really didn’t matter if the rest of the world took the day off for celebrating we on the farm were pretty much conducting business as usual. Dad would do his best to spend some time with us if he could free up an afternoon and I can remember more than once being on pins and needles as the hours ticked away waiting for him to finish up what he was doing so we could go into town for the festivities being celebrated there.

The Flake family brought a lot of their Arizona cowboy history with them when they moved their cattle operation to Iowa and that included a home grown rodeo who’s participants generally consisted of the little group of transplanted Arizonians that had settled around them with a few of the local residents who came to watch and cheer them on. I can’t say that the quality of their roping or riding was that great but they had a lot of fun trying among other things to rope calves or barrel race and since they weren’t affiliated with any national group they didn’t mind giving a participant extra chances to get his rope around a slippery calf. I stood in absolute awe of Doreen Flake when I learned that a scar on her face came from a bull riding attempt on her part. (I could be wrong about how she got the scar but I was still impressed with her as she competed right along with her brothers Wendell and Darrell. As horse crazy as I was at that time I can remember watching and wishing that I could participate.)

I always hoped that Dad would get involved and show off some of his skills, or lack of them, as the rest did but his cowboy days were something that he seemed perfectly willing to leave behind him except for his cowboy boots. Once in awhile we could get him to tell us stories about his past which I found romantic but thinking about it now makes me wonder if his life wasn’t pretty hard scrabble consisting of long hard days with out a whole lot to show for the effort. I can remember him telling us that during the depression their meals consisted of milk and bread for breakfast and bread and milk for supper and glad to have that. I think for him obtaining a college education and moving away from the world of his youth was emancipating and he had little desire to return to his very humble beginnings. How humble you might ask? Well if I understand the story right his family lived for awhile in a tent which was built on a wood base that dad told us his mother kept so clean you could literally eat off of the floor.

What would the 4th of July be without fireworks? Here again our parents showed their conservatism as we weren’t allowed to have anything that really could do much damage but mother always had several boxes of sparklers for us to light which we would excitedly wave around in large circles of light as we danced around the darkened yard. I know that doesn’t sound like much excitement compared to today’s extravaganzas but since we were blissfully unaware of what we were missing we made the best of it and enjoyed ourselves just as if we were gifted with the best the world had to offer and you know what, looking back I’m not so sure but what we were.

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