I'm watching Ugly Betty, and I'm chagrined that it's a glorified soap opera! I choose to call it a Tela Novela, though, then it's ok. I hate soap operas, so I can't watch those, but a little Spanish Novela, that's ok. I've always hated soaps, they give the most unrealistic slice of life, and there are so many people that try to emulate them after watching Days of Our Lives all week long.
When I was pregnant with Nic, my cousin went to work part-time, and I watched her child. She was hooked on a soap, the old Luke and Laura one. She had to work during that hour, and made me promise to watch it and keep her up to date. Well, I loved her, and I reluctantly agreed... then I got hooked on the darn thing! Even after I stopped babysitting, I kept watching the stupid thing, at least til they finally got married. YUK! what was I thinking???? Never again have I demeaned myself by changing my standards, so I certainly won't do it now. Thank goodness for Tela Novelas!!!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
OK, I've embarrassed my Dad and Grandpa enough for a while, guess it's time to tell a couple stories on me. My daughter is getting ready to leave Arizona for New Hampshire to pursue her masters degree. We were talking yesterday about the plans she's making, for school, work, etc. She made the comment "I can't just show up out there with no place to live!" Huh... well, when I left Prescott to attend BYU, I did very well at applying, sending transcripts, etc. I was 21, and pretty impulsive, so I was very proud that I had took the time to get transferred to a university.
At the time, my folks had moved the headquarters of the ranch down to the Copper Basin area. That meant that we had no electricity, it was too far to run the lines. We had water, but barely. The pipes hadn't been buried very deep, so in the winter they froze and in the summer the little critters chewed into the PVC pipes. More than once I'd be in the shower, all lathered up, when suddenly the water stopped, just dead. Few things are more maddening than trying to wipe shampoo out of your hair, and soap off the bod. Telephones?? Not a chance! We'd drive 30 miles to find a phone usually. Course, we could go to Skull Valley (yes, that's really a town!) which was only 15 miles away, to use a phone at the service station or the store, but heck, then everybody in town knew your business.
Anyhow, it was difficult to make all the arrangements necessary to move to another state, especially when I didn't know anyone. So, I packed up my little Datsun pickup-I had a camper shell, so it held a lot. I drove the 10 hours by myself, enjoying to company and the trip. I cruised into Provo, went to the Administration building at the university, got enrolled, paid, etc. Then I walked down into the campus, wondering where I was going to stay. What! Yeah, I just never got around to getting an apartment before I drove into the city. Well, I didn't have a phone, didn't know the names of any apartments, so I figured I'd take my sleeping bag, and I could sleep in the camper if I needed to for a while.
So, I was walking through the campus, which had more students than the whole town of Prescott had citizens, and lo and behold, I saw about the only person I knew there, walking towards me! Emma was shocked to see me, she didn't know I had decided to go to school up there. Luckily for me, she was moving into an apartment that had room for one more. My thought was, if it was right for me to go there, something would work out, and it did. I figured that worked out well enough, I did the same thing a year later, just cruised into Provo, looking for apartments with a sign out. I got really lucky that time, and found a new apartment complex. I just got into line, paid my rent, they gave me a key and I went to meet my roommates. My guy friends loved that one, I had 3 California cuties as roommates that year. It was a fun place to live.
I've met a few guys that started looking for a place to live when they arrived in town, but not women... most women are more organized than that! Thank goodness my daughter has more sense than I did!
At the time, my folks had moved the headquarters of the ranch down to the Copper Basin area. That meant that we had no electricity, it was too far to run the lines. We had water, but barely. The pipes hadn't been buried very deep, so in the winter they froze and in the summer the little critters chewed into the PVC pipes. More than once I'd be in the shower, all lathered up, when suddenly the water stopped, just dead. Few things are more maddening than trying to wipe shampoo out of your hair, and soap off the bod. Telephones?? Not a chance! We'd drive 30 miles to find a phone usually. Course, we could go to Skull Valley (yes, that's really a town!) which was only 15 miles away, to use a phone at the service station or the store, but heck, then everybody in town knew your business.
Anyhow, it was difficult to make all the arrangements necessary to move to another state, especially when I didn't know anyone. So, I packed up my little Datsun pickup-I had a camper shell, so it held a lot. I drove the 10 hours by myself, enjoying to company and the trip. I cruised into Provo, went to the Administration building at the university, got enrolled, paid, etc. Then I walked down into the campus, wondering where I was going to stay. What! Yeah, I just never got around to getting an apartment before I drove into the city. Well, I didn't have a phone, didn't know the names of any apartments, so I figured I'd take my sleeping bag, and I could sleep in the camper if I needed to for a while.
So, I was walking through the campus, which had more students than the whole town of Prescott had citizens, and lo and behold, I saw about the only person I knew there, walking towards me! Emma was shocked to see me, she didn't know I had decided to go to school up there. Luckily for me, she was moving into an apartment that had room for one more. My thought was, if it was right for me to go there, something would work out, and it did. I figured that worked out well enough, I did the same thing a year later, just cruised into Provo, looking for apartments with a sign out. I got really lucky that time, and found a new apartment complex. I just got into line, paid my rent, they gave me a key and I went to meet my roommates. My guy friends loved that one, I had 3 California cuties as roommates that year. It was a fun place to live.
I've met a few guys that started looking for a place to live when they arrived in town, but not women... most women are more organized than that! Thank goodness my daughter has more sense than I did!
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Bootlegging Grandpa
My Grandpa was a bootlegger. Not the Kentucky-born, generational whiskey maker, born to brew in the backwoods. No, in fact, his father was a stern, honest farmer. Grandpa, Edward F. Balmes, also known as Hap, was born in Minnesota, but raised in Arizona. His father, John A. Balmes, homesteaded first in Chandler, then in Phoenix, and Grandpa’s older brother Roy was an honest, quiet and hardworking farmer. Roy’s children grew up in Buckeye Arizona on a farm, and worked hard with their parents. Now Grandpa, he was the black sheep of the family, a bit of a rounder by all accounts, but friendly, outgoing and generally loved by most of his acquaintances.
Well, the Revenue agents didn’t like him much, I’m sure… he thoroughly enjoyed being a bootlegger, by all accounts, and reveled in outrunning or outmaneuvering the ‘revenuers’. A family folklore surrounded those years, that Grandpa went to prison for bootlegging. A little digging brought up the prison record, which listed the charges as ‘petty larceny’, for stealing a barrel of gas. When his daughter Shirley was asked about this, she chuckled and said, ‘Oh yeah! Dad used to laugh about that. He was delivering a barrel of whiskey in Phoenix when the law started chasing him. Realizing he would be caught, he raced into a gas station, dumped the whiskey, grabbed a barrel of gas and raced out. He was stopped shortly after, and the revenue agents mainly wanted his list of customers. Well, that list included certain judges, attorneys, even the attorney general, and he wasn’t about to give them up. Enraged by his lack of cooperation, the agents saw to it that he was sent to prison for stealing 25 gallons of gas, worth less than 5 dollars.’ He spent a year there, in 1924, for a petty offense, not a felony! Needless to say, there were many well placed politicians and professionals that deeply appreciated his discretion, and they remained his friends all of his life.
Hap met his wife when he stopped at a local Phoenix junk yard to find some truck parts. Her father owned the store, and she worked the cash register. She was a saucy, redheaded girl that stole his heart. Shortly after his release from prison, he married Marie Pike, and my father was born in 1926. They struggled to make a living, and for a while Grandpa worked on his father’s farm. He told his wife, ‘We can work there, but don’t expect to be paid for it.’ Clearly, the farming life was not to his liking, and he soon searched for other work.
Sometime after Shirley was born in 1929, Grandpa and Grandma moved to a tiny settlement in Yavapai County known as Goodwin. It was a mining settlement in the rugged Bradshaw mountains. A bad road linked it to Phoenix, which allowed Hap to mosey down to Phoenix with a load of ‘demon alcohol’. That same bad road discouraged many contacts from the outside, like the police or Internal Revenue agents.
Dad and Shirley had many happy memories of Goodwin; catching wild burros and training them for riding, roaming the hills with the few other kids, as free as birds. My dad also has stories of the families living on mining claims, eking out a living. Not all the claims had much ore in them, and Dad spoke of ‘salting’ the mines. When the mining commissioner was thought to be coming, some men, (certainly not MY Grandpa!), would use a shotgun full of ‘color’, either gold or silver, shot into the walls of a mine, to indicate the mines were indeed viable and thus the claims would continue. These people lived there with no electricity, running water, or even a nearby store. Aunt Shirley was always careful with water, claiming that anybody that had to haul water much would never waste it. My Grandma became the Post Mistress there, which brought a certain respectability to the family.
Grandpa owned a trucking business, and made some income by dismantling mining equipment, hauling it to another mining site, and then rebuilding the whole thing. My Dad remembered driving that truck to Phoenix with a load of ‘hooch’, because Grandpa figured the cops wouldn’t suspect a kid of hauling alcohol. Now those are the ties that bind, huh?! Many years later, in the 60’s, Dad and Grandpa owned a ranch in the Cordes Junction area, with Hap and Marie living there. We kids had to sleep in the basement when we visited. I still remember the bar down there, complete with a Coor’s waterfall ad. It was a nice big picture of a moving waterfall and the Coors logo. What was really unusual, I suppose, were the slot machines living down there too. I remember the penny and nickel slots mostly, because Grandpa would often give us a few coins to play with. Back then the family insisted the bar was just a hang out for friends. But- they lived far off the main road, a perfect place for a little ‘friendly gambling’. We came to realize he never really gave up his ‘wicked ways’! I know that while the bar remained, suddenly the slot machines were missing, and questions about them by a curious little girl were blithely ignored. I imagine somehow they were warned the law was getting wise to their basement enterprise, and got rid of the evidence before they got busted…. At least that’s my version of it, who knows what the reality was, because no-one ever bothered to tell us kids.
My dear Grandpa! While to some he may have been a ‘hardened criminal’, to us he was delightful. He always had candy for us, and would set all of the grandkids in his old jeep and drive slowly over the bumpy dirt road for the ½ hour drive to the nearest gas station. There he would allow us to pick out an ice cream cone or soda pop while he chatted with the owner, filled the jeep with a little gas and tell us stories all the way home. “Once upon a time and not two times, when I was a little girl” was the way he started every story, and believe me, he had lots of them!
I was 11 when he died, and I still remember the funeral. A Mormon Bishop, a Catholic Priest and a Minister all presided at the funeral, and many of his old political friends were there as well. Easily 500 people attended, from all walks of life. I saw rough looking ranchers and miners, more refined ‘church going’ people as well as the professionals from many walks of life. Grandpa had many friends, as well as many that respected and feared him. Now I’m sure there were many that would have loved to get his old bootlegging recipes, but if he shared them, it was only with his wife and son, who of course would never use them…..
Well, the Revenue agents didn’t like him much, I’m sure… he thoroughly enjoyed being a bootlegger, by all accounts, and reveled in outrunning or outmaneuvering the ‘revenuers’. A family folklore surrounded those years, that Grandpa went to prison for bootlegging. A little digging brought up the prison record, which listed the charges as ‘petty larceny’, for stealing a barrel of gas. When his daughter Shirley was asked about this, she chuckled and said, ‘Oh yeah! Dad used to laugh about that. He was delivering a barrel of whiskey in Phoenix when the law started chasing him. Realizing he would be caught, he raced into a gas station, dumped the whiskey, grabbed a barrel of gas and raced out. He was stopped shortly after, and the revenue agents mainly wanted his list of customers. Well, that list included certain judges, attorneys, even the attorney general, and he wasn’t about to give them up. Enraged by his lack of cooperation, the agents saw to it that he was sent to prison for stealing 25 gallons of gas, worth less than 5 dollars.’ He spent a year there, in 1924, for a petty offense, not a felony! Needless to say, there were many well placed politicians and professionals that deeply appreciated his discretion, and they remained his friends all of his life.
Hap met his wife when he stopped at a local Phoenix junk yard to find some truck parts. Her father owned the store, and she worked the cash register. She was a saucy, redheaded girl that stole his heart. Shortly after his release from prison, he married Marie Pike, and my father was born in 1926. They struggled to make a living, and for a while Grandpa worked on his father’s farm. He told his wife, ‘We can work there, but don’t expect to be paid for it.’ Clearly, the farming life was not to his liking, and he soon searched for other work.
Sometime after Shirley was born in 1929, Grandpa and Grandma moved to a tiny settlement in Yavapai County known as Goodwin. It was a mining settlement in the rugged Bradshaw mountains. A bad road linked it to Phoenix, which allowed Hap to mosey down to Phoenix with a load of ‘demon alcohol’. That same bad road discouraged many contacts from the outside, like the police or Internal Revenue agents.
Dad and Shirley had many happy memories of Goodwin; catching wild burros and training them for riding, roaming the hills with the few other kids, as free as birds. My dad also has stories of the families living on mining claims, eking out a living. Not all the claims had much ore in them, and Dad spoke of ‘salting’ the mines. When the mining commissioner was thought to be coming, some men, (certainly not MY Grandpa!), would use a shotgun full of ‘color’, either gold or silver, shot into the walls of a mine, to indicate the mines were indeed viable and thus the claims would continue. These people lived there with no electricity, running water, or even a nearby store. Aunt Shirley was always careful with water, claiming that anybody that had to haul water much would never waste it. My Grandma became the Post Mistress there, which brought a certain respectability to the family.
Grandpa owned a trucking business, and made some income by dismantling mining equipment, hauling it to another mining site, and then rebuilding the whole thing. My Dad remembered driving that truck to Phoenix with a load of ‘hooch’, because Grandpa figured the cops wouldn’t suspect a kid of hauling alcohol. Now those are the ties that bind, huh?! Many years later, in the 60’s, Dad and Grandpa owned a ranch in the Cordes Junction area, with Hap and Marie living there. We kids had to sleep in the basement when we visited. I still remember the bar down there, complete with a Coor’s waterfall ad. It was a nice big picture of a moving waterfall and the Coors logo. What was really unusual, I suppose, were the slot machines living down there too. I remember the penny and nickel slots mostly, because Grandpa would often give us a few coins to play with. Back then the family insisted the bar was just a hang out for friends. But- they lived far off the main road, a perfect place for a little ‘friendly gambling’. We came to realize he never really gave up his ‘wicked ways’! I know that while the bar remained, suddenly the slot machines were missing, and questions about them by a curious little girl were blithely ignored. I imagine somehow they were warned the law was getting wise to their basement enterprise, and got rid of the evidence before they got busted…. At least that’s my version of it, who knows what the reality was, because no-one ever bothered to tell us kids.
My dear Grandpa! While to some he may have been a ‘hardened criminal’, to us he was delightful. He always had candy for us, and would set all of the grandkids in his old jeep and drive slowly over the bumpy dirt road for the ½ hour drive to the nearest gas station. There he would allow us to pick out an ice cream cone or soda pop while he chatted with the owner, filled the jeep with a little gas and tell us stories all the way home. “Once upon a time and not two times, when I was a little girl” was the way he started every story, and believe me, he had lots of them!
I was 11 when he died, and I still remember the funeral. A Mormon Bishop, a Catholic Priest and a Minister all presided at the funeral, and many of his old political friends were there as well. Easily 500 people attended, from all walks of life. I saw rough looking ranchers and miners, more refined ‘church going’ people as well as the professionals from many walks of life. Grandpa had many friends, as well as many that respected and feared him. Now I’m sure there were many that would have loved to get his old bootlegging recipes, but if he shared them, it was only with his wife and son, who of course would never use them…..
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Halloweening
So Halloween now starts in September, and least at the local Walmart store. Actually, there were a couple rows of Halloween stuff in the gardening section, but also Christmas junk too. Christmas!!! And they dared to move my precious gardening items out in order to start marketing the better-selling holidays. I'm disgusted!
The Halloween push is on in full now, scary movies and documentaries on TV, yards decorated with cobwebs and skeletons- it's such a lovely holiday... This makes me remenisce about my Halloweens past. We lived 5 miles from our nearest neighbors, so it was a 1/2 hour drive down a bad dirt road to the closest trick or treating. Needless to say, no one came trick-or-treating to our house! When we were young, we'd rush from house to house, all dressed up. Except, our mom was creeping down the road in the car behind us, determined to let us do Halloween, but not ready to let us out of her sight.
In high school, the most fun was to meet at the local Dairy Queen with our friends. We'd bring dozens of eggs, and joyously hurled eggs at all our friends, or anyone else throwing them. We were pretty good about not throwing at outsiders, who wouldn't appreciate it, but boy did we have fun trolling the streets of Prescott with a group of guys in the back of the truck, hundreds of eggs in tow, and trying not to get plastered ourselves. Today that would get us arrested, back then it was just good fun. However, we didn't throw at everyone, just active participants, so maybe that was the difference. We'd slide into the car wash every hour, scraping the egg off the truck, and each other. Oh yeah, wet Tshirt contest, practically. In those days no one minded me in a wet Tshirt, today they'd run screaming down the road!
My kids Halloween was a little different, but not much. We lived out of town, and only had 2 neighbors to visit. We had the old 2-story farmhouse at the top of a hill, and it was haunted, so not many trick-or-treaters came by, just the 2 neighbors. If there were more kids, I could have really made it a spooky looking place, and I bet our resident ghosts would have been happy to make it creepy! Anyhow, we'd pile the kids in the car, but when they were little, the razors in candy scare was huge, so we went to the School Halloween carnival for years, it was safer. One year, I raced home from work, threw dinner together while I was putting costumes and kids together, made them eat something 'wholesome' and tried to think of my own costume, on the run. I was still dressed for work, feeling frantic and frazzled, when it came to me... I put on mismatched heels, way too much makeup, ratted my hair up and slapped a sign on my back- FranticMom. I got some pretty funny looks from the front, and a few chuckles when they passed me.
I was so excited when we moved to town, I'd finally get to hand out candy for Halloween! The first year I bought bags of candy, had a cute mega-bowl to put it in, a few decorations on the porch, and anxiously awaited the coming hordes. I was a little nervous, because our house sits back off the street, but hopefuly the kids would come. HAH! Even with the porch light on, nobody showed up! Course, our house has a long dark, gravel driveway with no lighting. My hopes were dashed, not even the older kids had the nerve to walk down that driveway with no idea what was at the end, you can't see the house at all from the street. So, my hopes of a real Halloween are dashed again. But I sure enjoyed using up all that candy! Now, out of the Mommy phase, but no grandkids coming to trick or treat, we just hang out or go out to eat, it's just not the same as a fun Halloween, but not as frantic either. Maybe some day we'll have a house that gets trick or treaters, but David said he's not moving again, so that's just a dream, I guess. Anyway, Happy Halloween!
The Halloween push is on in full now, scary movies and documentaries on TV, yards decorated with cobwebs and skeletons- it's such a lovely holiday... This makes me remenisce about my Halloweens past. We lived 5 miles from our nearest neighbors, so it was a 1/2 hour drive down a bad dirt road to the closest trick or treating. Needless to say, no one came trick-or-treating to our house! When we were young, we'd rush from house to house, all dressed up. Except, our mom was creeping down the road in the car behind us, determined to let us do Halloween, but not ready to let us out of her sight.
In high school, the most fun was to meet at the local Dairy Queen with our friends. We'd bring dozens of eggs, and joyously hurled eggs at all our friends, or anyone else throwing them. We were pretty good about not throwing at outsiders, who wouldn't appreciate it, but boy did we have fun trolling the streets of Prescott with a group of guys in the back of the truck, hundreds of eggs in tow, and trying not to get plastered ourselves. Today that would get us arrested, back then it was just good fun. However, we didn't throw at everyone, just active participants, so maybe that was the difference. We'd slide into the car wash every hour, scraping the egg off the truck, and each other. Oh yeah, wet Tshirt contest, practically. In those days no one minded me in a wet Tshirt, today they'd run screaming down the road!
My kids Halloween was a little different, but not much. We lived out of town, and only had 2 neighbors to visit. We had the old 2-story farmhouse at the top of a hill, and it was haunted, so not many trick-or-treaters came by, just the 2 neighbors. If there were more kids, I could have really made it a spooky looking place, and I bet our resident ghosts would have been happy to make it creepy! Anyhow, we'd pile the kids in the car, but when they were little, the razors in candy scare was huge, so we went to the School Halloween carnival for years, it was safer. One year, I raced home from work, threw dinner together while I was putting costumes and kids together, made them eat something 'wholesome' and tried to think of my own costume, on the run. I was still dressed for work, feeling frantic and frazzled, when it came to me... I put on mismatched heels, way too much makeup, ratted my hair up and slapped a sign on my back- FranticMom. I got some pretty funny looks from the front, and a few chuckles when they passed me.
I was so excited when we moved to town, I'd finally get to hand out candy for Halloween! The first year I bought bags of candy, had a cute mega-bowl to put it in, a few decorations on the porch, and anxiously awaited the coming hordes. I was a little nervous, because our house sits back off the street, but hopefuly the kids would come. HAH! Even with the porch light on, nobody showed up! Course, our house has a long dark, gravel driveway with no lighting. My hopes were dashed, not even the older kids had the nerve to walk down that driveway with no idea what was at the end, you can't see the house at all from the street. So, my hopes of a real Halloween are dashed again. But I sure enjoyed using up all that candy! Now, out of the Mommy phase, but no grandkids coming to trick or treat, we just hang out or go out to eat, it's just not the same as a fun Halloween, but not as frantic either. Maybe some day we'll have a house that gets trick or treaters, but David said he's not moving again, so that's just a dream, I guess. Anyway, Happy Halloween!
Monday, October 22, 2007
Good friends
I just added a link to Julie Hutchins Greer's website, www.julzhutch.com. She's an amazing artist, and one of my best friends. I've always been in awe of her talent, and now that I've figured out how to add websites to my blog I want to share her art with everyone. Plus I want to brag about her- she was chosen as an 'artist in residence' at the Grand Canyon, so she will be painting a mural there in November for several weeks. I don't know where it will be yet, other than the South rim, on a building somewhere. I'll add that information when I know more.
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