Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West
336
Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West
336eBook
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Overview
This wide-ranging collection of essays and poetry reveals the day-to-day lives and experiences of a diverse collection of women in the western United States, from Buddhists in Nebraska to Hutterites in South Dakota to “rodeo moms.” A woman chooses horse work over housework; neighbors pull together to fight a raging wildfire; a woman rides a donkey across Colorado to raise money after the tragedy at Columbine. Women recall harmony found at a drugstore, at a powwow, in a sewing circle. Lively, heartfelt, urgent, enduring, Crazy Woman Creek celebrates community—connections built or strengthened by women that unveil a new West.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780547347134 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
WOMEN DRIVING PICKUPS
JENNIFER KAYL SOULE Banana Bread and Coffee
Moved by some natural rhythm, they gravitate in midmorning or midafternoon toward one home,
KAREN ARMSTRONG * The Shearing
Cool fog swirled in a chilling wind as I stepped out of my warm car and pulled up my collar. What am I doing here? I thought. The shearer was already busy on a bleating sheep, and thirty more were penned waiting their turn for a spring haircut.
I was there because of my interest in spinning wool into yarn. I wanted to see the whole sequence that started with a woolly sheep in the pasture and ended with a fine hand-spun article. Since I was new to this part of the country, my spinning instructor at the junior college had told me about a shearing at dawn at a woman's nearby ranch.
So there I was, not knowing anyone but determined to help. When I heard, "I need some help with this ram," away I went to join in convincing a large, reluctant ram that he was not going to slaughter, but only to see a nice lady about a new look for spring. The shearer was standing up straight for a minute to rest her back muscles. The talk was quiet and mostly about moving sheep into and out of the pens. But there was also friendly chatter and laughter among people sharing an experience and getting a job done.
As the sun began to break through the fog and the wind slowed, I studied the scene. The entire crew, including the owner, was made up of women doing rough, sometimes bruising, work without a man in sight. This was a new, exhilarating experience for me. I went away from that shearing with a heightened feeling of empowerment, confidence, and companionship I have felt only among women.
To keep the experience alive, I joined a group of spinners, some of whom I met that foggy morning. As we spin, I feel a close bond with these hearty women who so freely share their skills and enthusiasm.
VIRGINIA BENNETT * Object of Affection
Her name struck me first. Someone named Daisy Lou had to be a sweetheart. She resides in Twisp, Washington, a small community in the heart of the Methow Valley, guarded by craggy North Cascades peaks and flowing, rounded foothills. Twisp is a secret place, not written about in travel magazines, and Daisy Lou is the secret heart of Twisp.
Riding her one-speed bicycle from drugstore to post office, health food store to library and community center, then back again, Daisy Lou weaves behind her a silken thread to connect them all. Some ignore her presence and importance, but many friends watch over this short, slightly chunky (perfect for hugging), red-haired, smiling lady as she pedals through the streets.
When I first met Daisy Lou, she slid her dancing eyes my way and asked, "When is your birthday?"
I answered, "February eighteenth. When is yours?"
"February nineteenth," she answered, as though she had already known. But how could she?
Thus began our friendship, amusingly love-filled on my side, often intense and obsessive on hers. She began to call me regularly. She remembered what went on in my life better than I did.
"Where you going next month?" she might ask.
"I'm not going anywhere next month, Daisy Lou."
"Aren't you going to Denver in January?"
She was right. She remembered what I said because what I say is important to Daisy Lou.
Daisy Lou asks each person she meets about important dates: birthdays, anniversaries, children's birthdays. And then she records the day, month, and year in her miraculous memory. Once, at the small office supplies store, when I mentioned that Daisy Lou remembered my wedding anniversary, a woman responded, "Oh, she knows the birthdays of each one of my five children."
Daisy Lou has the town wrapped around her freckled little finger. Everyone responds to her needs. If I don't phone her when I should, the next time I speak to her, she asks with a pout, why not. When I travel, she always says, "Send me a postcard if you can." She has quite a collection.
An elementary school teacher revealed to me that she was sitting in a faculty lounge one day when Daisy Lou walked in and greeted everyone. When she departed, one woman said, "You know, she calls me every night," to which each person in the room responded, "She calls me every night, too!" The group concluded that Daisy Lou must call thirty people each night. "No wonder," my friend remarked, "she only talks for five minutes."
One woman in Twisp said to me, "I don't mind Daisy Lou calling each night. To me, she represents the epitome of a small, tightly knit community. Daisy Lou never would have been allowed to live on her own in a big city. She would have been institutionalized years ago."
After that, I began to observe how Twisp watched over Daisy Lou. Fran, the postmistress, asked, "Virginia, will you ask Daisy Lou to wear her helmet when she rides her bike? I know she will do whatever you ask her to do." Now Daisy Lou wears her red helmet as she pedals up and down the streets and across the busy state highway. (I worry about that highway; so many people hurrying through do not know our Daisy Lou!)
She has many caregivers — some hired, some volunteers. Daisy Lou picks up the mail for the library, and the librarian helps her select books on horses, cowboy poetry, and California. Daisy Lou shows her gratitude by threading plastic beads onto stretchy string, forming necklaces for each of her friends. In New Orleans, women are given strands of gaudy beads for baring their breasts. In Twisp, women are given necklaces for showing their hearts.
Daisy Lou loves to have someone sit on the floor with her and look through her photo albums or watch a video. I love the beauty and simple longing of this woman in her mid-sixties, who wants nothing more from life than to have a friend spend time with her.
Daisy Lou is prone to obsess on one person within her world, and she set her fancy on me. In terms of time spent and love shared, I've never given her as much as many others in the community, but when I moved from the valley, she was devastated. Her friends and caregivers were worried. They told me that for the first winter I was away, she sat in her house, on the floor, creating from her red and white Legos a replica of my new house (from pictures I'd sent) and waiting for my phone calls. I tried to call often, and I sent her cards and letters. At Christmas, I sent her toys.
A concerned family member, trying to help, suggested that I cut myself off from Daisy Lou. Although it made some sense, the thought hurt me. I made many long-distance calls to her family, friends, and caregivers asking if this was a good idea, but I finally decided that I could not do it. I am in Daisy Lou's life for the long haul.
As I was building a new life in California, I received many postcards and calls asking me to write to Daisy Lou. I explained to each person that I did call and write Daisy Lou often. Yet Daisy Lou had told all her friends to ask her Virginia to write, and the blessed people of Twisp took the time to let me know. They are the heroes of this story — the folks in Twisp, where Daisy Lou remains, safe and cared for, a symbol of old-fashioned community and family.
MARIAN D. PETERS * At the Line Dance Café
As on each Monday afternoon in the Senior Center dining room,
CAROLINE ARLEN * Posse to the Rescue
The doorbell rings. It's Jake. Who's Jake? Hell if I know. He just shows up in his unbuttoned plaid shirt, with gold chains tangled in his hairy chest. He removes his crisp white cowboy hat and grins. "Howdy. Seen you move in."
I stuff my blistered hands in my pockets. "You watched all that?"
"Yeah, I live over there." He points to the duplex across from mine. "Just moved here from Florida. I have my own business." He puts his hand up on the door frame above my head. "My psychic told me you'd be coming." Jake lets out a sputtering little giggle, then wipes the spittle from his mustache. "You're a Gemini, right?"
"No, a writer."
His brow furrows.
I say, "Listen, I gotta unpack."
He gives me his most practiced smirk. "See ya 'round, then."
When the doorbell rings the next morning, it's Harvey, the plumber. "Gotta crawl under your house, ma'am. Landlord sent me to fix the water heater." Harvey looks at the mudroom, gathers up piles of strewn clothes, and dumps them on the living room floor. Harvey is short and stocky but kind of flattened, as if he is the product of millennia of genetic adaptations to crawlspaces. He tightens his yellow bandanna around the top of his head and disappears through the trapdoor.
A ruckus of clanging tools and verbal abuse ensues. After a while, I realize someone is knocking. It's a woman, probably in her mid-thirties like me. "I'm Fran," she says. She is large and sturdy, with short-cropped hair. "Uh," she says, then laughs, and her eyes sweeten. "Well, I want to say 'Hi, I'm you're new neighbor.' But also, Lilly says she heard something strange under the duplex?"
"Plumber."
Harvey sticks his mud-caked head out of the trapdoor. "This is a goddamn mess down here!" Fran says goodbye with a wriggle of her fingers.
Harvey walks into the furniture-crammed living room, straightening his yellow bandanna as if that's the only thing off about his appearance. "I tell ya," he says, "with so many outsiders swarming into Durango, developers are just throwing up these garbage pails for buildings."
"Sorry," I say, opening the door for him.
"Hey, you didn't build it."
"No, I mean for moving here."
He holds a mud-caked hand up to his mouth. "Just get divorced?"
I nod.
He says, "Want to meet me at Farquahrt's for happy hour?" I breathe in but can't think of how to respond. There is a clump of rotted dirt on his bottom lip. He says, "Okay, maybe another time."
The other half of Jake's duplex is owned by a woman named Kat, a high school English teacher, but you wouldn't think it by the language she used against her flat tire the other morning. I often pass Kat as I'm going down to our mailboxes at the bottom of the road. She is a little gal with a determined walk and the focus of a baseball pitcher; she rarely sees anything but what's straight ahead of her.
One time I notice she's crying, so I touch her arm. "What's wrong?"
She says, "I lost the stupid key to my stupid mailbox." Then she laughs. "But it's not just that. My cat got into a fight, and I can't afford the vet bill. And my roof's leaking. It's just all the shit, you know? And having to deal with it alone."
"I can pick the lock," I offer, and she accepts. Kat's got huge blue eyes, slightly reddened. A messy ponytail of blond hair sticks out of the top of her head like a fountain. If the saying "cute as a bug's ear" ever applied to anyone, she'd be the girl.
Kat repays me with a bowl of homemade chicken soup. I've never had homemade chicken soup. We eat on her floor. She says, "My ex got the dining set." Then she looks over at me and laughs. "Isn't it all so strange? I mean, nobody wants to be alone. But here we are, two hot babes eating chicken soup on my floor."
I say, "We could visit Jake. I bet he has furniture."
Kat chokes on her soup.
At night, the temperature plummets as the autumn sun weakens and sets. I long for the warmth of a person; a real voice. Not the phone voices of my friends back East who think I'm crazy for moving here. Or of family, so questioning and concerned.
It's Friday. Happy hour at Farquahrt's is the place to go, people say — people like Kat, whom I've met but am not yet friendly enough with to be invited to join them. I'll go there alone. Yes, I will. It's a matter of survival.
At the mailboxes Saturday morning, Kat pokes my arm. "Saw you at happy hour. Those guys were all over you like stink on fish. I believe you're the catch of the day."
"Yuck."
Kat laughs. "There are so few women in Durango, the men go crazy competing with each other for the new ones. Try to enjoy it."
When the phone rings a few weeks later, I think it's my landlord calling for the December rent, but it's Todd. Who's Todd? He says, "I'm the guy who was standing by the rail at Farquahrt's. In the black tank top? Black cowboy hat. Sort of stank of horse manure."
"Oh, yeah." I laugh.
We go to the hot springs. He looks kind of funny wet. Big, tanned arms hanging off a pale, hairless chest. Water glistens on his red beard.
Todd's actually heard of James Joyce, and even, yes, remembers, yes, the Penelope chapter in Ulysses. I dip my head back into the hot water. Yes. The blackness around him steams.
Jake rings my doorbell the next morning. He's wearing a T-shirt cut just above his hairy navel. "I saw him," Jake says, ominously. He looks past me into the living room, then grabs my wrists. "Did I tell you I own my own business? I own Miami real estate. You could give up nursing!"
"I'm not a nurse!"
As he lets loose a high-pitched giggle, I close the door.
I'm on the porch drinking beer with Fran and her roommate, Lilly, when Todd comes to pick me up. We go to a seedy bar outside of town and play pool for shots of tequila. When Todd's drunk, he says, "You really shouldn't hang out with your neighbors."
"Why?"
"They're lesbos. This is the West. Traditional values. I mean, I'm pretty open-minded myself, but in a small town like this, you gotta worry about your reputation."
When we leave, it's snowing. My heart meets the lightness of it. It's my first winter outside a city and sooty, unnatural snow, in about ten years. When Todd pulls into my driveway, I ask him in. He wants to see my office upstairs. My bedroom is also upstairs. I know where we're going.
As I lie with my head in the depression beneath his shoulder, someone pounds on the door. I sit up and look out the window. Jake stands in the fallen and falling snow, looking up at my bedroom. He takes in a deep breath, then rams my door.
"Shit," Todd says, putting on his pants. "It's my wife." Jake rams the door again.
"Your wife?"
Jake rams the door again. This time the door hinges give out, and the thud of wood and Jake reverberate up the staircase. When Jake runs into my bedroom, Todd ducks into the bathroom.
"Get out!" I scream, and grab my gun from under the mattress. Jake runs back down the stairs. Todd opens the bathroom door. I turn the gun on him. "That applies to you, too."
The next morning, I lean my unhinged door in the area of the doorway and slip out to get my mail. Fran and Lilly, a lithe girl, are shoveling the porch. "Thanks," I say, walking tentatively across the slick boards.
Fran leans on her shovel. "We don't know how to be tactful about this. But if you need help with your door ..."
"Just ask," Lilly finishes. It's early morning, and already her eyeliner has smeared her pink cheeks. She sticks her snow shovel into the bank, barely impacting it, and tosses off about a teaspoon of snow.
I go back into my condo to grab my tool chest. As they help me rehinge my door, the snow keeps falling, thick. They glance back at it as if it were evil, but I think, Bring it on. Coat me.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Crazy Woman Creek"
by .
Copyright © 2004 Gaydell Collier, Nancy Curtis, and Linda M. Hasselstrom.
Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents Introduction: Beyond Crazy Woman Creek, by Linda M. Hasselstrom xvI, WOMEN DRIVING PICKUPS Jennifer Kayl Soule, Banana Bread and Coffee 3 Karen Armstrong, The Shearing 4 Virginia Bennett, Object of Affection 4 Marian D. Peters, At the Line Dance Café 6 Caroline Arlen, Posse to the Rescue 7 B. J. Buckley, Superior Laundry, Sheridan, Wyoming 13 Tamara E. Rogers, Right Place, Wrong Time 14 Mary Frances Renstrom, Casserole Culture in Highlands Ranch 14 Celeste Havener, Patchwork for Baby 17 Melinda Green Harvey, Wonderbra Soldiers 17 Diane Molleson, Picking Peaches 18 Anita Tanner, Run Toward Suffering 20 Susan Minyard, Watch the Big House Burn 22 Ruby R. Wilson, Room for a Small House 25 Shaun Anne Tangney, The Hippie Central Library Fest 26 Janie Tippett, Rhino Rump, Chicken Palace, and Kindness 29 Diane Kesey, Waiting to Dance 30 Meghan Nuttall Sayres, Where the River Bends 31 Phyllis Dugan, Far-Flung Neighbors 32 Pat Frolander, I Suppose It Was the Food 35 Patty Zeigler, Bound 37 Pamela Ramsey, Soakers Unite 39 Sureva Towler, No One Baked Cookies 41 Barbara M. Smith, Boomtown, Babies, and Strawberry Pie 42 Gail Rixen, No Treasure in Bismarck 44 Nancy Kile, Grab Your Shawls, Girls! 45 Kathy Hunter, Warm Hearts, Cold Reality 46 Mary Lou Sanelli, Standing in Line at Aldrich’s Grocery 50 Maureen Helms Blake, A Light Shawl on a Cool Night 51 Lou Dean, Echoes on the Wind 53 Dixie Partridge, Cliff Dwellings: Mesa Verde 57 Darcy Lipp-Acord, Path to a Small World 58 Colette Knutson Gjermundson, Simply, Soul Soup 60 Katy Paynich, After Moving Away from 610 63 B. Lynne McCarthy, Have Cattle, Will Travel 65 Kathleen Rutledge, Women of the Journal Star 67 Jeannie P. Smith, Valley Essential: Gladys Smith 69 Gretchen Ronnow, Old Women’s Domain 70 Robin Barkley, Mine Shack Memories 71 A. J. Harnish, Well—You Told Me To 72 Denise Banker, Surviving at Great Cost 73 Tracy Wang, From Canton to Spearfish 74 Cheryl Anderson Wright, The Brown Sofa 77 Shelly Whitman Colony, Feeding the Spirit 77 Twyla Hansen, At the Greasy Spoon 78 Ruth Harper, Vagina Dialogues on the Road Trip 80 Kim Potts, Shelter for Each Other 81 Jean Vertefeuille-Cutler, Champagne Toast at Midnight 83 Norma Thorstad Knapp, The Logging Bee 84 Jane McGarry, Wood Ash on the Wind 86 Carolyn Dufurrena, Nevada Firestorm 87 Ashley Coats, Women in Pickups 90 Doris Bircham, Gifts from Our Hands and Hearts 91 Jane Kirkpatrick, To Dance with Grace 91 Jennifer Graf Groneberg, Tupperware Therapy 94 Margaret Benshoof-Holler, Banding Together in San Francisco 95 Janis Russell-Wilson, Concert of Energy 97
II, HALLELUJAH AND A SHOW OF HANDS Lucy Adkins, Writing into the Storm 101 Anne Fantaci Clement, Too Busy to Be Church Ladies 102 Maura T. Callahan, How Do I Thank . . .? 105 Claudia F. Manz, We Four 106 C. S. Pederson, A Haunting Experience 109 Yvonne Hollenbeck, Rejuvenating the Clearfield Hall and Me 112 Shannon Dyer, TheWolf Pack in the School District 113 Willo Boe, The Non-Musicals Sing Their Last Song 116 Sarah Byrn Rickman, Fifty Years of Potluck 117 Cleo Cantlon, The Woman Who Didn’t Fit In 119 Sana Amoura-Patterson, Wednesdays at Walgreens 120 Sister Hildegard Dubnick, OSB, A Couple of Nights Before Christmas 121 Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Why We Still Sing When Other Choirs Dissolved 123 Judy Ann, Savoring the Circle 124 Lisa Heldke, Perching 126 Helen M.Wayman, Hallelujah! Faith Circle! 129 Hillary Barton Billman, Bingo Babes 130 Sureva Towler, I’m Afraid I Can’t Attend the Next Meeting 132 Bernie Koller, Concerning My Hutterite Cousins 133 Wanda Rosseland, Straightforward and Unafraid 137 Barbara Jessing, The Spite and Malice Sewing Circle 139 Beth Paulson, A Square of Winter Light 140 Goose E. Fedders, Speak, Throw Up, or Die 141 Marilyn Dorf, What It Took 143 Kelly Madigan Erlandson, You Always Start with a Baptism 145 Pat Ogle, with Bess Arnold, The Brotherhood of Railroad Workers 146 Jo-Ann Swanson, Our Ladies of the Farm 148 Dawn Senior-Trask, Convergence of Horse-Crazy Women 149 Linda Aldrich, Hook and Turn 151 Joanne Wilke, Cindergals Never Looked Back 152 Virginia Bixler Cassells, The Hobo Mark Swooshed 155 Margaret Eaton Johnson, Endurance in Harmony 156 Grace E. Reimers Kyhn, The Caring Cleveland Club 156 Barbara A. Engle, A Good Thing to Do 157 Mary K. Stillwell, The Circle Dance 159 Dorothy Blackcrow Mack, “I Bring You the Gift of My Dying” 160 Elizabeth Keough McDonald, The Ramah Farmers’ Market 163 Janis Russell-Wilson, Forecasting the Future of Food 164 Christine Valentine, Down Gravel Roads 166 Carolyn Dufurrena, Woman Sculpted of Stones 167 Bonnie Andersen, Making Room for Jesus and Buddha 168 Anonymouss, What I Hate Most About You 171 Donna Applegarth Mentink, Pickin’ Chickens 172 Diane Josephy Peavey, Watch Where You Step 173 Jane Wells, Comments from the Crow’s-Nest 176 Kathleen Gotschall, Rodeo Moms 1777 Normaaaa Nelson Duppler, When the World Split 179 Betty Downs, Tuesday Tea 181 Sue Hartman, Choir Practice at the Bongo Lounge 182 Marianne Hoffmann Woeppel, Popcorn in the ER 185 Ruth Daniels, Old Woman with a Mind 186 Geraldine Connolly, Electric Avenue Books 187 Kathryn E. Kelley, September 12, 2001 190 B. J. Buckley, Funeral Meats 191
III, COWGIRL UP, CUPCAKES Lora K. Reiter, Weeders, All 195 Sheila Vosen-Shorten, The Communion of Saints 196 Jackie Pugh Kogan, Desert Filament 201 Sophie Dominik Echeverria, The Far Side of Maple Street 202 Bette-B Bauer, Quilting a Dissertation 206 Marjorie Saiser, The Living, the Warm 207 Leslie I. Brown, The Elegance of White Things 209 Danny Bergin, Celebrating Mass in a Nightgown 212 Christina Hutchins, In a Time of War 214 Karen M. Berry, Stitching My Life Project 214 Marcia Hensley, I Like It That Way 216 Laura Hawkins Grevel, Leaving Sad Town 218 Janet E. Graebner, Silent Renewal 222 Faye Eggert, More Alike Than Different 223 LoRee Peery, Ongoing Sustenance 224 Mary Alice Haug, Tapestry Woven of Stories 226 Phyllis M. Letellier, Your Sister’s Keeper 229 Edith Rylander, Ghost Dance II 229 Michelle M. Sauer, Feeling North Dakota and Looking California 231 Emilie Hoppe, Things I Would Not Miss 232 Katherine Mann Galey, Stretching Friendship 235 Mary Lode, Alone, Not Lonely 237 Consuelo N. Smith, Tortilla Round 238 Mary Sojourner, Slot Mamas 240 Dorothy Blackcrow Mack, Crone Circle: Grandmothers Giving Wisdom 241 Stacy Gillett Coyle, United Methodist Fellowship 243 Kay Marie Porterfield, Beadwork 244 Laurie M. Greig, Colorado Ritual 247 Ellen Vayo, Cowgirl Up, Cupcakes 248 Jeanne Rogers, Re-entry: Homeward Bound 250 Liesel Shineberg, Liesel, You’re a Good Christian 251 Pearle Henriksen Schultz, Sonnet for My Grandchild 254 Mary Zelinka, Never Silent Again 255 Kayne Pyatt, The Drumbeat Continues 256 Nancy Curtis, Checkup, Checkout 258 Phyllis Walker, Plant Sale Grows Roots 261 Patricia Wellingham-Jones, One Panel of a Quilt 263 Page Lambert, One Word at a Time 264 Barbara Wallace, Dealing Uno and Life 267 Ellen Waterston, Anaconda Copper Dreams 268 Kay E. Konz, Where They Know My Name 269 Lydia Gonzales, La Mujer y Su Cultura 272 Susan Minyard, On Watermelon and Stout Roads 272 Charlotte Babcock, A World Apart 273 Evelyn I. Funda, Belongings 274 Gaydell Collier, After Word 276 Contributors 279 Acknowledgments 297 Credits 298