The Picador’s Horse – a Memory of Spain

20. April 2013 · 1 comment · Categories: Domestic · Tags: , , ,

Jean & La Picadora, Spain 1992 During our last summers overseas, my daughter and I took to camping on our vacations, as the most economical way of traveling and seeing as much of the country as we could. A nice campground in Spain provided the convenience of a hotel at a fraction of the cost, and for a child, the chance to run and romp freely. Guided by a copy of the “guia”, which listed the campgrounds in proximity to various cities, and icons indicating what sort of comforts were provided— pool, shop, hot showers, electricity— and where (km 320 N, carretera # so and so) one summer trip described a large loop through Extremedura, Andalucia and Granada. Blondie’s only dictate about our camping place concerned the availability of either a pool, the sea, or in a pinch, a river in which to frolic. She swam like a fish, and preferred to spend as much time as possible in a bathing suit.

The nearest campground to Seville was several miles distant inland from the city, a dusty tract on a frontage road paralleling the autopista between Cordoba and Seville, grown with trees, and scrub brush, stretching uphill from the entrance. The main permanent buildings were clustered around a pool at the bottom end: a bar with a little restaurant, the managers office, a little store selling small propane bottles, soft drinks, bread and canned goods. A narrow paved roadway zigzagged up the hill, past the pool and bar, past clusters of tent sites and parking places, leveled out of the hillside here and there, looped around the top of the property, where the washrooms and showers, and the water spigots and sinks for doing dishes crowned a little, rocky knoll, and meandered down again on the opposite side. Since it was not actually the holiday season— the month of August— for Spaniards, the campground was all but deserted, and the restaurant not yet open for business. There were a couple of families with caravans on the electrified campsites, lower down the hill, and a couple from Holland on the site next to ours, tent-camping.

My daughter and I had gotten very adept at setting up the tent, and the little gas stove with our cooking pots. We had a couple of folding chairs, and an ice-box, and managed very efficiently, cramming it all into the Very Elderly Volvo’s generous trunk and moving on, ever couple of days— unlike the Spanish, who set up elaborate tent-cottages at some salubrious spot for the month of August, and brought along refrigerators, televisions, pets and all. We had seen cats, birds, dogs, and even a pair of monkeys at a campground near Leon, but the campground in Seville took the cake, because there was a horse.

We came up from the pool, early in the evening, walking up the dusty footpath towards our tent, and there was a man on a dapple-gray horse, exercising the horse among the trees at the upper end of the campground. The man was a wiry little guy, in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, missing half the buttons, and a soft cap pulled over his eyes. The horse was a dainty thing, several hands shorter than Wilson, the horse that Mom and Dad had bought for us to learn to ride, with an elegantly dark gray muzzle, hard-muscled and sleek. My daughter was enchanted, and eaten up with curiosity. The rider as well as the horse were very much dressed down: the light saddle was worn, and the bridle was held together at some points with knots of plastic string, while the rider slouched through some paces, and briefly struck a pose you see in pictures; reins in one hand, fist on hip; glorious, martial and Spanish to the core. Then he waved to us, casually.
“’Ola… como ‘stas.”
“Buenos,” I said with the proper Aragonese slur. “Habla englis? Habla un poco espanol.”
“Si.” He rode up to us, as my daughter asked,
“Can I pet the horse?”
“Si. “ He affectionately slapped the horses’ neck, and it dipped a velvety muzzle to us.
“Mind the teeth,” I said to my daughter. I rubbed the flat part, above the nostrils, and the horse blew out an alfalfa-scented gust, “Pet the dark parts… doesn’t that feel like velvet.” Her eyes were huge. The rider swung down, still holding the reins in one hand, and we began to talk. I cannot now remember sure exactly how the conversation went, only that it was in a combination of fractured English and Spanish. He gave us to understand that the horse was a mare, in foal (he slapped her barrel gently) and that he had been at an equestrian event in Seville. His good friend was the bartender at the campground bar, and his wife was coming tonight with a horse trailer, but he was killing time until then. He had a finca (a ranch) several hours away, and the mare was a proper bull-fighting horse. He proudly pointed out a healed scar on her shoulder, and casually asked if either of us would like to ride for a bit. I demurred, as it had been a good many years since Wilson, and I had been more used to riding without a saddle, but my daughters’ eyes got huge with excitement,
“Si, por favor!” she breathed.
I held the reins, while he gave her a leg up, and showed her how to put her toes into the stirrups. She had only once been on a horse, and twice on donkeys, all three times while someone led the animal around. He handed her the reins, and showed her how to use them to control the horse, while I watched apprehensively as she pulled too far back, and the mare began to rear. Both of us dove for the mare’s nose, while my daughter stuck like a burr to the saddle, not the least bit frightened or out of countenance.

I let out my breath… my god, she was at home as if she had been born in a saddle and ridden every day of her life. She sat proud and fearless, all of ten years old, while the mare’s owner jovially called out a reminder to keep her elbows in. She nudged the mares’ flanks with her heels, and the mare obediently walked ahead— no gentle old plug kept for a children’s easy ride, but a working, bullfighting horse, but then she had ever been the most fearless of children: not heights, not barking dogs, not strangers or the deepest of water had ever held terror for her.

She rode that horse all over the upper part of the campground for two hours, at a walk, trot, even essaying a short gallop or two, while the Dutch couple and I watched, and the mare’s owner kept company with us. We all drank sangria in the twilight and talked in English and Spanish about horses, and what we had seen in Spain, and where we lived. Occasionally, as my daughter went by on the dapple mare, he called out encouragement and praise, and reminders about keeping elbows in and heels down, and I wondered where on earth and by what genetic predilection this skill had come from, appearing in full flower. People are not supposed to be instantly good at something, this was like watching a kid go to a piano for the very first time, and belt out a Goldberg Variation, or diagram an obscure and complicated mathematical theory the first time they pick up a piece of chalk… but there she was, instantly at ease, better than I had been after weeks of lessons.

Where are those talents hidden, and how many revealed by an unexpected coincidence? How often does this happen with parents, watching their children suddenly take to the air and fly on the wings of that talent, while we stand on the ground and watch. For me, it was that time in a campground in Spain, when my daughter took the reins of a bullfighting horse, and never once looked down.

My First Book

08. April 2013 · 2 comments · Categories: Domestic, Uncategorized

OGWAA - Cover.BMP
… is now revived in a Kindle edition. I didn’t republish it when I moved from Booklocker to Watercress Press, as it is very short, and composed mainly of blog entries that I wrote about my eccentric family for the blog “Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief” over a period of about five years. Those entries were very well received by readers, and so I was begged, over and over again, to make a book out of them. So I did, and then I really got into the swing of it and began writing novels.

There are print copies of Our Grandpa Was an Alien still knocking around – but eBook seems to be the thing at present. So, here it is; the book of which my mother once said, made her and my father seem much more interesting and charming than she thought they really were.

Log Cabin Days

16. February 2013 · Comments Off on Log Cabin Days · Categories: Domestic, Old West, Uncategorized
Eggleston House, Gonzales - two-pen, dog-trot house

Eggleston House, Gonzales – two-pen, dog-trot house

Among the books in my tall stack to read to provide background for my books about the pioneering days in Texas was one with the very dry title of Texas Log Buildings; A Folk Architecture … which proved to be a bit more interesting and informative than it looked at first glance. I am a sucker for knowing how things are constructed or put together; good, especially when I needed to write a description of putting up a log house, as in Daughter of Texas. Little details like how many days it would take to build one, what size it would generally be, and the layout… these small details count.

Period log and stone farmhouse at Becker VinyardsPreviously, the one description of the process that I could bring readily to mind was Little House on the Prairie, but it turns out that Pa Ingalls was not building that cabin to much of a standard. He may not even have been all that skilled as a carpenter, but since he was working on it mostly by himself, and in a place where the swiftness of getting a roof of some sort over his family counted for everything… allowances were made.

That was almost everyone’s first and most urgent need, upon settling on a new grant or homestead, that and planting some kind of crop in the ground; building a cabin, to meet immediate shelter needs. This book differentiates very clearly the difference between a log cabin, and a log house. A log cabin was small, twelve to fourteen foot square, windowless, with a dirt floor. They were scratch-built, hastily assembled to use as a temporary dwelling place, whereas a log house was larger, permanent, and much more carefully constructed; even quite elaborate as to comforts. For much of the 19th century, at least in Texas it was a matter of some embarrassment to still be living in a log cabin after a couple of years; rather like living in a trailer would be. In fact, many log houses were covered with siding and paint as soon as their owners could afford to do so. If they had lived in a little cabin before building the permanent house, the cabin was frequently reused as a smoke-house, or a stable.

Comfort - Corner of old log cabinPace Little House and a whole raft of western movies, I’d always visualized such houses and cabins built out of the whole, rounded logs, with simple interlocking half-round notches (called a saddle notch) cut close to the ends, and about a foot or so of the log hanging out beyond at the corners, rather like a ‘Lincoln-log’ house. This method of construction turns out have been employed by the relatively unskilled and/or those  in a tearing hurry. The majority of Texas log structures were built of timbers which had been at least roughly shaped on two sides, and carefully notched at the ends to make a square corner. With the exception of part log, part dugout shelters built in far western Texas, where trees were scarce, most log structures were also raised off the ground on corner piers, to prevent rot and termite infestation, and to take advantage of air circulation.

Log dog-trot cabin, at Old Fort Martin Scott

Log dog-trot cabin, at Old Fort Martin Scott

Logs were prepped before construction, either by rough-hewing — cutting a shallow straight face on two opposite sides, or “planking”— cutting a thick plank out of the center of the log. In a very small number of cases, each log would be square-hewn, on all four sides, resulting in a heavy, square beam. More usually, only the bottom log— the sill, and the topmost, the “plate” which supported the roof rafters would be squared. These logs would usually be the largest; if the structure was to have a wooden floor, the sills would be mortised, with the floor joists lap-jointed into them. Sometimes a third sill would be added, for extra support.

A log house went up pretty fast, apparently, once all the timbers had been cut and prepped: the book gives an estimate of two men working two days for a fairly simple, square (single pen) structure, and three men working three days for a more elaborate one.
Roofs were usually constructed with the gable-ends on the sides of a two-slope roof, with pairs of rafters lap-jointed or mortised together at the roof-ridge, at about a 45-degree angle. Long laths or slats run cross-ways between the rafters. Most log houses were roofed with cut shingles. Porches and sheds attached at a later date would usually have a shallower roof line, described as a “witches’ hat” in silhouette.

Doors and windows were cut in the walls after basic construction was completed. They were neither large nor numerous, since cutting them weakened the structure. The carpenters would set wedges into the spaces between the logs to prevent them sagging, and cut vertically until the desired size was reached. Then a door or window frame of planks would be nailed or pegged into place to stabilize the cut logs. Another reason for having a minimum of windows in many parts of Texas, especially in the early days was the ever-present danger of Indian attacks. A number of houses from that time actually had so-called shooting holes, two or three in each wall. Windows were secured with wooden shutters; before glass was available, filled with oiled paper or thin-scraped oiled rawhide, which admitted some light.

In all but a handful of log houses made from carefully fitted hewn timbers, there was a gap between each log which needed to be filled in order to make the house weather-tight. Since so many houses would have been built with new timber it was necessary to allow for shrinkage and warping, as well as the natural taper of the logs. The gaps might be filled with thin slats nailed or driven into place, flat pieces of stone and mortar, or clay mixed with animal hair, straw, or moss… or just plain mud. In a house built of logs which had been roughly hewn, bark left on the top and bottom helped the chinking material adhere to the rough surface in between logs.

About the most common floor plans for log houses in Texas was called a “dog-trot”, or “dog-run”; two single-pen rooms with a covered but open breezeway in between. Sometimes each room had it’s own fireplace; but many house built after the Civil War did not have fireplaces at all, since metal stoves had become so widely available for heating and cooking. Quite a few houses originally built with fireplaces, were retrofitted with stoves and the chimneys and fireplaces removed. Larger windows were cut when glass became cheaper and more widely available.

In later years, many log houses were added on to, or covered with siding; after all, there was a whiff of poverty attached to living in such a house, and sometimes it is hard to tell with a casual glance, that there is a log house underneath the siding and plaster, the porch added at the front, and the shed kitchen on the back. Having read this book, I am resolved to look very carefully at the oldest neighborhoods of some of the small towns around where I live… knowing that there may be a log house, lurking in the heart of suburbia.

For Valentine’s Day – True Love Lovers

14. February 2013 · Comments Off on For Valentine’s Day – True Love Lovers · Categories: Domestic, Random Book and Media Musings · Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

So not being really a romance writer, and having pretty much washed out of the lists of matrimony personally, I still have managed to write about romance … mostly by pulling in a little bit of inspiration from here and there from real-life couples. For instance, the main romantic couple in my first book, Dr. John and Elizabeth in To Truckee’s Trail were inspired by … you’ll never guess. Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning! A married couple, wildly, passionately, crackers-in-love with each other after twelve years of marriage – why not? The romance doesn’t and shouldn’t end at the altar, but it should go on. I rather liked the Victorians, by the way – they weren’t nearly as prudish as they’ve been painted, nor were their emotions quite so stifled. Robert fell in love with her through reading her published poetry – and lest that sound rather stalker-ish, it worked out. They married blissfully, although she was an invalid and several years older than him. They went off to Italy and were more or less happy for the rest of their lives together, just as I imagined Dr. John and Elizabeth to have been. Men and women alike poured out their souls in letters and poetry, and they weren’t ashamed or repressed in the least, especially when it came to a good manly weep or putting down on paper how they really, really felt.

I didn’t particularly have a literary model for the central romance and tragedy in the Adelsverein Trilogy – that between Magda Vogel, the immigrant German girl, and Carl Becker, the former soldier and Ranger. I did think at first that it might be one of those sparkling Beatrice and Benedict-type confections, where they poured witty scorn at each other, and only later realized that they were in love. There did have to be a romance, of course – between the daughter of an immigrant family, and a representative of the country they were coming to – bridging the two worlds, as it were. But I just couldn’t make it work in that way; Magda turned out to be rather humorless and stern, and Carl was just too reserved. I did recycle the Beatrice and Benedict angle for the romance in the third book of the Trilogy; with Peter Vining and Anna Richter. They both had a sense of humor, and were quite aware that their sharp teasing of each other amused the heck out of anyone who had the luck to be in the vicinity.

Another great historical romance happened between two very real people, and which I put into Deep in the Heart; the marriage between Sam Houston and Margaret Lea Houston, which initially horrified her family and dismayed his friends. Some of them gave it six months, tops. He was twice her age, twice and disastrously married before, had a reputation of being a drunk, a rake and a reprobate, and being the hero of Jan Jacinto and the President of an independent Texas  just barely made up for all of that. Marry a gently-bred Southern girl barely out of her schoolroom? Everyone confidently predicted disaster – and everyone was wrong. They were devoted to each other. She had a spine of pure steel, unsuspected under those fashionable Victorian furbelows.  For the rest of their lives, whenever they were apart – and they were often separated, since Sam Houston spent much time at his official duties as a senator in Washington DC, or campaigning for office – they each wrote a letter a day. Margaret Lea bore and raised a large family of children, made a comfortable home for him whenever he was there to enjoy it, made him stop drinking and eventually to be baptized. His very last words included her name.

And my final real-life romance inspiring a romance between a couple of my characters is that of the painter Charles M. Russell, and his wife, Nancy – who, like Margaret Lea, was very much younger than a husband who had a bit of a reputation. Half his age, a bit prim and self-contained, Nancy also had steel in her spine – and she was a much better marketer and business agent than her carefree cowboy artist husband. C.M. Russell lived for art, and likely would have been no more than locally known as a wrangler-cowhand who had a talent with a paintbrush, but he made a partnership with Nancy, and she put him on a wider artistic scene. And that is the angle for one of the romances in the current book – between a young prospective professional artist, and a woman with a head for business. Because it all isn’t just love – it’s a partnership between a woman and a man, each filling in each other’s lacks and supporting each other in a mutual endeavor called life.

Kitchen Toys

07. February 2013 · Comments Off on Kitchen Toys · Categories: Domestic · Tags: , , , , , , ,
Trissie the cat, resting in the Nesco Roaster Oven & Slow Cooker

Trissie the cat, resting in the Nesco Roaster Oven & Slow Cooker

A news story in an English tabloid rather amused me today, as it listed the top ten little used kitchen appliances which might (or might not) be in the average English kitchen. Being the owner of a house with a painfully small kitchen, but one who still enjoys cooking – from scratch, yet – I will plead guilty to owning some under-used gadgets. Of course, at one time or another, things like the slow-cooker got a great deal more use. And before we began experimenting with the paleo-style diet, we did get a lot more use out of the bread-making machine. But at lease we can plead that we did not waste money on purchasing most of the underused gadgets. In some cases, we bought them second-hand, or at rummage sales, and so paid mere pennies, compared to the original price.

Looking down at the list, though – I wonder how some of these gadgets aren’t used more. I mean – a blender? I use the blender all the time, and the food processor, too. From the top of the list – a toasted sandwich maker. That’s one I don’t have, although I think my daughter had one, living in the barracks. And my father was very fond of making sandwiches in the stove-top non-electric croque-monsieur iron. A George Foreman-type grill is another kitchen tool which apparently 17% of English purchasers never use again – which is sad as I would really like one, especially the model which has the interchangeable, dishwasher-safe grill plates, and which can either lay out flat or be used as a Panini press. I do have a rather nice little one, picked up on sale at Williams-Sonoma; nice to use, a bear to clean afterwards, though. Kitchen scales – unused by 16%? Say what, then? Sorry, I have a cheap little one which I use all the time, and would love to replace it with a nice Victorian-style antique one with the interchangeable weights. Juicers are unused at the same rate as kitchen scales, but it’s a good and healthy thing that this means 84% of English owners of juicers are using them regularly. Bread-maker (also going %16 unused in England); we plead guilty to several, all of them bought at yard or rummage sales.

They seem to have been the gadget of choice for wedding presents, about fifteen years ago; they’re everywhere at second-hand sales, and usually barely – if ever- used by the original recipient.
Hand-blenders are next on the little-list, at %15 unused. That is one I don’t have, or even thought about buying. Seems kind of pointless, when I have a selection of balloon whisks handy. And finally, rounding out the little-used list, at %14 percent – a coffee machine. I don’t have one … for the very good reason that I don’t drink coffee. Lately though, the very high-end cappuccino machines seem to have taken the place of bread-making machines as the go-to gadget for up-scale presents, so my daughter – who does drink coffee and is known as the Queen of All Garage Sales – looks forward to seeing them available at thrift shops and yard sales.

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