SUMMER TIME

Summer months remind me of vacations when I was growing up in Texas. Daddy was the only breadwinner and for many years he had a three-week paid vacation. Beginning the year I turned ten, we spent those three weeks, usually in July or August, traveling.

We started near home with Arkansas. I still have fond memories of those beautiful Ozark Mountains, picnics by the rivers or creeks throughout the state, and sleeping in clean, cheerful nine-dollar-per-night motel rooms. Though those vacations eventually extended to cover forty of the then-forty-eight states, those early trips remain my favorite.

I guess my parents were brave. Over the years, they set off in an assortment of vehicles packed to the gill with clothes, food and kids. There really had to be a method to packing for all of us to enjoy three weeks away from home. And the eating alone was a miracle.

Mama prepared for hungry people. Daddy built a special box for the food that fit in the big trunk of those 1950 Fords. We weren't vacationers with a lot of money so we had to economize in some way. That's where Mama's culinary techniques came in.

With the grocery box and a large Thermos(TM) cooler, she managed to prepare cereal for breakfast each morning after we ran out of her delicious homemade cinnamon rolls and a variety of sandwiches with greens and tomato salad for lunch (dinner in the South). Sometimes diner (super in the South) was a treat--fried chicken or meatloaf or hot stew in some samll town cafe or, if we had a motel with kitchen, a homecooked meal. Once we stayed in a small town in Kansas in a cabin that offered a grill; Mama served an assortment of meats--hotdogs, hamburgers, large sausage--along with fresh corn-on-the-cob grilled in the husks over those hot coals. And for dessert and snacks, a huge tin container was filled to the brim with large homemade oatmeal-raisin cookies among other kinds. Somehow that "cookie jar" never seemed to empty until the last day of vacation; I now realize mama kept filling it with bounty from bakeries along the way.

My love of history and travel began with these trips. The experiences are still valuable, the memories sweet. In the Ozarks, I discovered trout fishing, quilts for sale hanging on porch railings and friendly mountain people. In Tennessee I saw what coal mining did to a town--turning the houses, the grass and men's faces black with soot. In Washington, DC I learned about our nation's glorious history and at Wounded Knee I saw it tarnished.

My thirst for travel and knowledge hasn't ceased. I've vacationed in all the fifty states and half of the world, prowled through museums, gallerys and antique stores, stopped to read historical markers along strange roads, and tasted the food of many diverse regions.

I haven't got anything planned for this summer but the roads are beckoning. In October I will hit them again and continue my quest--to never grow too old to be enthusiastic about learning through seeing new places and new people.
****

Where would you travel if you could go anywhere inthe world?

ASK ME NO QUESTIONS:CHAPTER 12

As I said several days ago--my that day was a long one between blogs, wasn't it?--my muse has finally opened a new line to a book I have been working on for longer than I want anyone to know. This book is about a woman hiding out in a small Mexican village from both the mob and the FBI. When Rafael MacKenzie comes into her life in the dead of the night, she has no way of knowing whether he is friend or foe. But when he comes to her after being stabbed in a local night club, Callie takes him in.
*****
Scrap. Scrap.

Rafael pulled himself out out of a deep sleep. Some inner radar told him the sound had come from downstairs. He vaguely remembered Callie leaving to do the marketing, something about gauze and tortillas. He couldn't remember if she had been gone a minute or an hour. But his instincts told him something about the noise wasn't right. It was stealthy, not careful. Cautious, not done by a woman attempting not to disturb a sleeping man.

Someone--not Callie--was in the house.

Biting his lip against the urge to grunt at the soreness, Rafael quietly rolled out of the bed onto the floor. Praying to God the floor didn't creak, he slowly crawled over to the chair where Callie had placed his clothes. Observation training kicked in even when gripped by pain. He had seen her place his gun in the holster beneath the piled up garments.

Slowly, silently, Rafael lifted the gun out of the leather holster, then pulled himself up using the chair for balance. He leaned against the wall that would momentarily shield him from view if someone came into the room. His senses stretched to the limit, his heart pounded loudly in his throat, and his body on alert, strained, waiting for action.

Scrap. Shuffle. Scrap.

Close.

Rafael located the sounds. Earlier, drawers of the living room end tables had been pulled out, chairs moved about, lamps picked up. Now whoever--a man from the heavy sound of his movements--was in the kitchen, sliding open drawers, tugging sticking cabinet doors open and muttering to himself. There was only one place he hadn't checked.

Rafael clasped the gun tightly when he heard faint footsteps reach the stairway. At almost the same moment he heard another sound--a key in the front door.

Callie. Dios. She'll walk right into him.

***

It's over 100 degrees here in lovely San Diego County, California and the muse has been hiding out--in the regrigerator probably. She sticks her head out now and then to yell some odd thoughts at me--something about contests to be entered, teaching outlines to be written, and tomatoes to be watered before they go up in flames.

WRITER'S EYE

"You don't have anything if you don't have stories.
- Leslie Silko

In pursuit of the idea of being a writer, many of us forget the reason we started writing to begin with. I started at the age of ten for several reasons. I had read everything in the school library and decided to write my own stories was one reason. But the main reason was that I could climb to the top of a mulberry tree and hide behind the leaves where I ignored mama's call to do chores. All the while, I was pursuing my need to write.

Over these many years I have gone through the usual phases of writing for self. Once I thought I could make writing a fulltime career--with all the visions of grandiose that idea contains. How wonderful it would be to "make it big." I soon realized that was an unrealistic dream. Writers abound. Markets have dwindled. And I learned something about my true motives--money is not the most important thing to me.

A "real writer" puts her heart into every line she writes, no matter how big or small or lack of, payment. I know writing is an art and it requires time, patience and, for me, most of all it demands a love for the craft.

There have been "gaps" in my writing path. Times while working and raising a family that I was a "closet writer." For many years my job required a great deal of technical writing and, unless that is your love, there is no greater turn-off to the other creations of pleasure than to write manuals or descriptions to accompany photos or articles on how-to repair a radar system or some such engineering creation.

Somehow along the way I lost my writer's eye. In the past five years or so I have developed that long unused skill again. I notice the moon and it's many shapes, the multicolored beauty growing in the area where I live, and the smell of pines, call of mallard ducks, and the rush of the river at my favorite campsite. I listen to people. I tune into real life.

These observations are made note of--in my journal or a small notebook I always carry. Or in the margins of something I am currenty working on. Words, phrases, notes--used in the new burst of creative writing projects I involve myself in.

The love for writing, not for fame or fortune, is once again the reality. My writer's eye is determined to keep me on the path to success--whatever I decide the meaning of that word is for me--for I am a writer, someone who cares enough to put words on paper.
******
Write at least a page on a project you've put aside. Tomorrow I will share my page with you.
I

DOWN THE DRAIN

"You can never go down the drain." (Mr. Rogers)

Our beloved Mr. Rogers was speaking to children when he reminded them not to fear--in this case, pulling the plug while sitting in the bathtub--but he could have been speaking to me these past six weeks or so. I have felt like I was going down some big drain, water all around me, pieces of drift wood or seaweed clogging up the way, wondering if I was paddling against the tide.

That's the way I feel when I am not able to devote myself to writing. I did a pretty good job while on vacation in early June: I wrote several stories on a novel, typed up half of the July/August issue of my Soul Sisters inspirational newsletter, drafted two articles and outlined a proposal for a nonfiction book I've had in mind for months. Then the muse got all tied up in life.

July found me busy with volunteering while a friend was back East babysitting her first grandchild. Vacation Bible School came along last week--fun but exhausting. I managed to get off four pieces to a contest, write two articles for my church newsletter and then my writing slid off into the mud. Or the water in that drain.

I promise you I am not so far down that drain yet that I can't work my way back up, readers. I will try to speak to you more often, keep cool in this unseasonably hot weather for San Diego County, CA, and keep my promise to write a chapter a week on my novel.

I've taken the first step--my butt is stuck to the chair--I never was one who could write standing up.

******

Do you remember any other thing Mr. Rogers said that seemed to be meant for you?