Pouring rain. I’ll just leave it at that.
What happened yesterday? No blog… up at six twenty and the power was out. Called the power company to see what was up. “Oh yeah. We’re working on the transformers down town, should be back on in less than two hours. Power comes back on at about three thirty pm. No problem. I made the most of my day. I had lunch with my buddy Norm, then took Dot on a training mission. Which is both good and frustrating. The second I put the little rope on her she becomes “Dottie the Obedient.” She does everything I ask. Sit, Come Stay. Jump. Lay down. Heal. No problem…. Instantly. The rope is about twenty feet long. I take it off and she goes nuts. Well, she still follows me around and she licks me on the cheek without warning. Last night she had a major case of the zoomies and I put her in her crate, he goes in willingly. But Jan doesn’t like her to be in her crate. But she hates to have her have the Zoomies inside. This leads to tension between husband and wife. Dot just watches us argue with her big dopey tongue hanging out. Then I had to go get ready for my own Zoom thing so I left Dot with Jan. All I did to get ready was to finish reading Heather’s book, comb my hair and worry for about a half an our. Figure out how to get on the zoom channel and we did it. Which was fun. I didn’t see the “chat” function until it was over. I couldn’t tell how many people tuned in or what they were thinking but I always assume people want me to shut up and let Heather talk more. It worked out well I think, because I like Heather and her writing. She was doing me a favor by inviting me on what was supposed to be her tour event, so it was easy to turn the spotlight on her.
I had been reading Of Bears and Ballots by Heather most of the day and in fact had been thinking a lot about her. Heather writes obituaries in Haines for their local paper. Yesterday I went to the graveside service for Patricia Bickar. Pattie was the mother of a friend of mine name Brian Bickar. Brian is a wild one. His father was Porky Bickar who was the father of the great April Fools joke of putting a large pile of tires on top of Mt. Edgecumbe and setting them on fire, so that it looked like the old volcano might be erupting on April 1. It was quite a famous joke. He was quite a famous jokester. He died quite a long time ago. Brian worked for his dad. Many years ago. Jan worked as a glazier in the glass shop next door to Porky’s shop and she got to know Brian. I always suspected that Brian had a crush on her. Which I didn’t blame him for, he was always a gentleman. He brought her cookies and treats he had baked himself, she liked Brians, style: kind, considerate, giving fattening gifts sending the right message. Brian worked for his dad, working on heavy equipment and chainsaws. Brian was always filthy, which Jan thought was kind of funny, because when Jan and I first met and I was working with stock, I was always filthy and it was the biggest blockade from getting together with her. It took me weeks of scrubbing to get my first kiss. This is something I didn’t tell Brian.
The point being…. Pattie was an honored high school math and science teacher. Porky was a classic logger and a redneck. Also a hard drinker. Porky would testify against every environmental initiative and was vocal in the bars in his anti Greenie opinions. They had three children. I don’t know the daughter at all, other than what Brian tells me, Brian has been taking care of Pattie who died last week of complications from Alzheimer’s. Brian lost what was left of his dads business in a bad divorce and probably some bad judgement of his own. But besides taking care of his mom, he took care of his own son when needed, and took care of friends, by bringing them food, or making lunch for their kids when health or legal problems interfered. Brian had legal problems of his own at times, but he is smart and kind and I always liked his sense of humor. Brians brother teaches biology at Smith College back east. He has a phD. and when he spoke at Pattie’s service yesterday he did a terrific job, because he has a good eye for the telling detail and a funny anecdote that fills in a person’s life. This is the same talent that Heather Lende has when she works on obituaries. You don’t have to describe everything about someone, just recognizing the telling details that their friends remember is often just perfect. Those telling details are like little haiku’s of people’s lives.
He told how Pattie like to travel all over the world, but he found it irritating because he would be anxious to get from point to point when he traveled, but Pattie would talk to everyone in the seat next to her, whether it would be on a plane a bus or a underground train, and at the end of the ride she would end up exchanging information with the person, promising to get together again in the future.
She was generous. She baked for there church but she was also competitive. If there was a bake sale she wouldn’t just bake a pies but would bake fifty pies. Once she baked fifty-two pies because she had heard that another woman was planning to bake Patties fifty customary pies so Patricia just added two.
She was the first woman to join Rotary in Sitka and she ran the Duck race for many years. She went on the trip to Pennsylvania in the sixties and wanted to go to Rotary but the local branch didn’t allow women at the time.. Pattie negotiated an invitation to lunch because she was a Sitka member in good standing, and years later when she went back they were accepting women to which she was quite proud.
Now, I have a confession to make. I didn’t know Pattie that well. I knew her from around town. I saw her when Brian took care of her and I’m sure I ate her pies, and had said hello to her at the library, but the truth was I was kind of scared of her because I wasn’t a big fan of Porky’s. I liked his style all right but he had said some pretty mean things during the Timber War days. We were just on different sides of a lot of controversies. I sensed too, knowing Brian that he wasn’t an easy father either, but today I wished I had known Patricia a little better. She was clearly very smart and forward thinking. She valued education. She must have had a deep well of kindness and understanding to pass on to her family. I’m sure she had flaws as well, maybe like mine: prejudice against people who you don’t have the courage to get to know better.
I’ll have to do something about that when this pandemic gets over.
Leaves nodding in rain
trees whipping their limbs around:
a wild summer dance.
jhs
Here is a recording of me reading the short story Asphodel by Eudora Welty, I did it in two parts.