Jack's Pulpit

Yesterday I led a quick guest tour of the property, including Waterfall #1, Waterfall #5, and "the beach." Sloshing our way up a rill to Waterfall 5, the mud nearly pulled the boots off our feet. I've posted photos and video of our waterfalls, but never a Jack-in-the-pulpit because the last time I was in the right place at the right time to see this awesome dramatic springtime wildflower, I didn't have a smartphone, so we are talking before the year 2008.

Jack-in-the-pulpits are in fact rare plants.

 

Every spring since then I have hoped to see one. While the guest photographed the waterfall, I knelt in the soggy loam to photograph the Jack-in-the-pulpit. At home, after a shower, I looked my photos over. None were razor-sharp; none expressed the Jack's imperial presence.

So today after a morning's work I suited up in bad clothes and trudged back. Rain had fallen overnight so the mud was muddier. I didn't see the Jack. Was it one of those flowers that last only one day? I sat by the rill and let the view settle around me and in five minutes found the Arisaema triphyllum. All by itself. There wasn't another.

Determined to get an expressive photo (the majesty of the thing!) I took pictures of it for half an hour. The flap over its top meant getting the camera down so I could shoot upward. I sat down in the mud. Then lay down in the mud. Mom always said I was determined. And I wasn't about to let you down.

Rainbow Chaser

Thursday afternoon's high winds became a brief thunderstorm about 7 p.m., and as I drove the last lap home across floodplain, a tall, vivid rainbow appeared, visible end to end. Excited, I found and wildly drove up the wrong side of a back road leading to a vista on a hilltop, scrambled out of the car and photographed the rainbow, by then fading. The chase itself was the day's highlight.

There followed a purple and lemon sunset so awesome I thanked God I was alive and outdoors to see it. During some sunsets, I'm indoors, working. It's a crime and I know it. On my one visit to the Grand Canyon I joined the people anticipating and gathering to watch the sunset as an event, as a one-time-only performance, and thought then, "This is the right way to honor a day of our one and only life." Having finished the drive home, I saw the sunset had changed its key, creating a Thomas Kincaid painting of my own dwelling. Sometimes I look at it thinking, "I live here? People can live in only one place. This is my home? The home I've chosen for my one and only life? How -- how awesome!"

When I moved here I was reverent about sunrise and sunset, grasses and moonlight, things that in the city are in artificially short supply. Thursday's rainbow invited me (and everyone) to renew that reverence, and the sunset sent me this letter, written with light.

Undaunted

Emma was born in 1892, and in 1980 I lived in her basement and she gave me a 1940 seafood cookbook pamphlet, me being a Midwesterner living on the east coast where fish was the cheapest food, and I have treasured the cookbook, especially the Fish Roll recipe I made several times to feed hungry me and drug-addled friends, all so mentally ill we stayed out 'til 4 a.m. listening to bands like The Young Snakes and Rubber Rodeo singing songs like "Life Sucks, Then You Die," and vomiting, etc. Emma didn't like when police came to the house looking for "Eric" or whoever. . . "Unexpected guests will not daunt a hostess who knows how to make a fish roll," said the cutline beneath the illustration -- and in honor of those days we used to sleep ("crash") on bare hardwood floors, today having on hand 1.5 cups of  leftover cooked fish and an onion and some parsley in place of green pepper, I got out the cookbook (pictured) and made the frugal fish roll (result, pictured).

I used one of those baggies of Bisquick baking mix. The recipe was supposed to serve 6. In 2019 it serves 3. Great way to make leftover fish appealing.

A daunted hostess? Me, never. In grad school out east, fellow grad students, easterners and Midwesterners, all of us extremely thin, dropped by my place to chat and after a while might venture, "Uh, you wouldn't have, like, anything to eat around here, would you?" Food has always been my second-highest priority, after rent.

The Nest

I fitted out one room to live in and keep warm in while propane prices do whatever they want; just leave me out of it. I will NOT pay a petroleum dealer $1200 for 200 gallons, which is less than half a tank, so I'm conserving. The cabin's thermostat is in this room; it's set at 55. One of my electric space heaters keeps the room at 60 degrees, while the rest of the house is 40-some degrees and due to get colder as tonight's temperatures shrink to 0. Since I turned the thermostat down 48 hours ago the furnace hasn't kicked on even once. I sit on the futon propped up by multiple pillows and work, or watch The Weather Channel, and at night sleep in my wonderfully roomy new brown sleeping bag. Note the Weather Channel's map of how propane prices in the Midwest have risen in one week. Is that a stone fireplace you see in the room, to the left? Yes. Beautiful and nonfunctional. More about the fireplace soon. I'm lucky to be able to make a comfortable nest. There are people with families, seniors, and houses much draftier than mine, or no houses at all, or whose tanks are at 0 and don't have a choice.

The Recipe Box Collection

 Housekeeper Debbie and I spent two days cleaning and winterizing the Divine Cabin, now 85 years old with cracks in the foundation big enough to stick my hand in, and to fix them I emptied my cobwebbiest closet of boxes packed during my move here 12 years ago, unsealed the boxes to see what to throw out, and found, carefully wrapped in Taste of Home Magazine pages from 2001, my cherished recipe-box collection, mostly of tin and manufactured between 1950 and the 1970s, many of them by Ohio Art Company of Bryan, Ohio, maker also of tin toys.

If bought at yard sales or on eBay a box might yet be crammed with some homemaker's recipe cards, newspaper clippings and notes, telling an intimate story of her household and her kitchen, heart of the home. And the heart of the kitchen is--it must be--the recipe box! I have made some of their recipes, such as Orange Chiffon Pie. Many recipes, reflecting their era, require canned soups. My mother owned the same box as the red one pictured, and I laid out for you a sample of the unknown former owner's recipes: a clipping on how to make Arthur Treacher-style fish and chips; a handwritten recipe for 24-Hr. Salad, on its reverse a handwritten recipe for "Chicken Cha Cha," a dish credited to Della Reese, the singer; and a note saying "Calgon & water - mix to remove wallpaper." Just visible inside the box: "Potato Chip Cookies."

My brain's pleasure center lights up seeing their colors and imagining their stories, and I welcome the recipe boxes (the only items I have ever actively collected) back wholeheartedly into my daily life.

Midwestern Graffiti

Back East where I used to live, when a car window or a truck was dirty or dusty as they so often are in late winter, people wrote vivid and highly creative obscenities on it so that in traffic it could offend absolutely everyone.

The tone of such things in the Midwest is so mild and different--so Midwestern--it makes me laugh. Frequently the classic "Wash Me" appears. Whereas out East you might read on the passenger side of a dusty van that its totally innocent owner would do a sex act for a stated amount of money, here you see "I Love You" or "Go Cardinals" or "Jesus saves" or peace signs. I took this photo in a parking lot while the owner sat in the vehicle, and he/she didn't even try to call the police on me. It's just that relaxed.

Drought's First Casualty

I heard "CRAACK!" and turned just in time to see this fully-leafed branch from the huge twin oak peel off and land, completely blocking our only access road. Thank God I wasn't under there and my car was garaged. My neighbor and I were now trapped so I phoned the handymen at once. They said, first thing in the morning. With time to inspect it I tried to find out what had gone wrong with a branch that looked healthy.

What looks like interior rot is the tree's heartwood, and in any tree it's dead already, having done its job. As you know, a tree feeds itself through the wood just beneath the bark, and its concentric rings are what hold it up. It's like a hollow metal pole; its strength doesn't depend on its core. I didn't see real rot. And a sick or bug-infested branch wouldn't have such healthy greenery.

It was, however, a horizontal branch on a very old tree, richly weighted with other leafy branches, after two consecutive years of severe drought. In June we didn't get a full inch of rain here (the city got a bit more than we did). Our towns cancelled Independence Day fireworks for the first time ever because of the fire hazard, and I hope the kids shooting off fireworks for fun aren't doing it anywhere near our dry-as-dust woods and fields.

Where the branch peeled away

Next morning the handymen chainsawed the branch and also amputated the branch from the redbud across the lane that broke beneath the weight of the oak branch. The twin oaks must be among the oldest trees on the property; they are 80 feet high at least and a glorious sight as you drive up toward the house. Branches do fall from them sometimes, but usually only dead ones. Hope not to see any more like this.

Welcome to Utopia

Carol invited me to stay with her at the Poet's House, 404 Granary Street, in New Harmony, Indiana, population 800, founded in 1814 by the Harmonists, Germans who came to the then-wilderness on the Wabash River to establish an ideal society. They built cabins the first winter and brick dorms that still stand. These progressives believed in honor, sharing, hard work, friendship, education, and going to heaven -- everything good but sex. Men and women lived in separate dorms. Those already married could live together but chastely. The Harmonists' experiment failed, but they built a fabulous church that their leader saw in a dream, a brewery (try the beer from their recipe, Harmonie Bier), a granary, a workingman's library and a town with prayers and poems posted along the cobbled, tree-lined residential streets and at its famous Inn and gardens and Roofless Church and two labyrinths -- symbol of the city. It's all about beauty and spirit and views of cornfields. Everything there becomes art. Above is the Poet's House living room, showing the simple look that is typical (the flooring is poplar wood; through the doors is an herb garden); a photo taken in a oversized chair sculpture near the Inn. And the more-than-awesome "bier" from the 1816 recipe, available only at one cafe, called Sarah's; I will drive six hours round-trip to get another one. A wonderful and refreshing visit. They need to move this town to Missouri.

Threatening Sky

In our corner of eastern Missouri we're all still so shell-shocked by the tornadoes that tore a concourse off the airport last year and flattened Joplin last May that dark skies here unnerve us, just a little. People drive faster, heading for home. I've found out, traveling out west, that you have to live in a place for several years to be able to read its sky. But there's nothing like the ink-and-indigo colors of a Midwestern storm about to unzip the firmament and unleash torrents of rain, which are then pulled into silver ingots by the wind. An Iowa painter named Grant Wood, in some paintings, captured this kind of Midwestern sky and the strange sunlight often paired with it. Facing southeast on Highway F about 6 p.m.

The Middle West

Fall is Church Supper Time in rugged rural Missouri; praise the Lord for ham, potato salad, slaw, green beans, white beans (savory not sweet, just as I would make them; my friend Ace ate two plates full); best homemade applesauce ever, coffee, iced tea and homemade desserts, served by the friendliest Midwesterners. Ace asked the dessert table people special permission to eat two desserts (lemon pie; pumpkin pie sans Reddi-wip). Cost of meal $9 for adults; I bought. Some churches charge only a "free will offering." Note "The Middle East" biblical-era and modern maps tacked up behind the people; obviously Bible-study material. The most important part of any church is its basement. Rather go there than any restaurant.

Do you ever attend church suppers in your area? People were so glad to see us strangers they showed us photos of their grandchildren. This particular church is far out of the way, in the remains of a tiny town alongside the train tracks. In fall the Catholic church raffles off a live pig; I never buy a chance because I'm afraid I'll win. Another church has a whole-pig roast, and yet another church an awesome pork sausage dinner; that's the one they pour you a glass of milk at table. In spring, fried fish at Lenten church suppers is so good it just about converts me.

Th*ngs Demetrius Used to Say

• "I'm so glad people are much more polite to me than I am to them."
• "I speak on the phone. Others yack on the phone."
• "Quit asking; I can't just pull it out of my a**"
• "What kind of a sheeny outfit are you people running here, anyway? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."
• (When asked why he did not clean the bathroom) "I don't perceive it as dirty."
• (When asked if he would throttle a baby bunny) "Only if it was bothering me."
• "Bring me food."
• "I did not call you stupid. I said, 'Why are you behaving stupidly?'"
• "Everyone should wake up in the morning and ask, 'What can I do for Demetrius today?'"

Bring Back the Wooden Picnic Table!

At Dickey Bub's a patient man named Lowell looked at the long and rusty 1/4-inch-wide wood screw in my outstretched palm and said, "Sure I'll find it for you," and we walked all the way to the rear of the store, where I had never been, and searched little segmented drawers full of gleaming wood screws, and finally he said there wasn't a correctly sized wood screw with a rounded top but I could use a flat-top and screw it in with pliers. I asked for a matching nut, because I'd seen some screws with nuts in the picnic table, and Lowell did not laugh at me, and gave me matching washers. They're sold by weight. I got four to fix my picnic table. The little bag of wood screws cost me 89 cents. I thought this was marvelous.

This old picnic table predates my living here. There's one that stays protected on my screened porch, but this one has always stayed outdoors getting shabbier, wobblier, wetter, more termite-eaten and pecked at over 10 years, and I tugged it across the lane last year and it nearly fell apart, and in 2011 either I fix it or have no picnic table, or have to buy a horrid new plastic one. Starting out so ignorant I barely knew a wood screw from a sheet-metal screw, I replaced its ancient iron nails with shiny new wood screws, C-clamped its one splitting leg, reinforced its wiggly support beam (is it called a joist?) with one of the big new wood screws, drove some finishing nails in from the top, and it aint a neat job but it's sturdy now and has a future. Ends of its legs are rotted and uneven, and I don't know how to fix that, but it'll hold Midwestern picnic food, and I was smart enough and strong enough to have stored its matching benches in the garage every winter so they're just fine, so y'all come. It's under the twin oaks near the fire bowl now.

Ma and Pa

Both these people started out in difficult circumstances, on farms without amenities, and because of The War, got shaken up like dice and scattered far and wide, far from home, through the Midwest, and now in retirement. But -- give them lounge chairs, and they are at home just about anywhere, and enjoy watching Jeopardy and Dancing with the Stars. Ages 75 and 91.

First Hummer of 2010

Approximate arrival date of my hummingbirds is usually 24 April. But I'm so eager to see them, so hopeful, I filled and hung the hummer feeders last week. I understand that if fed they will return to the same location every year -- that's why I call them mine. These little birds -- I don't know what it is they give me -- their elegant hovering and pivoting, their dainty honey-sucking, their small throaty communications -- maybe it's because I never saw one until I was way grown up, or because this is the first place I've lived that has attracted them.

Anyway, it's a ritual, and now I have a relationship with them, and every April I wait for them like a 13-year-old girl.

Stuck in the house yesterday because of pollen so thick it yellows the tablecloth and coats the inside of the car, I was talking on the phone about 10 a.m. when I saw a male rubythroat hummer at the feeder and went wild like a 13-year-old girl. MO Conservation calendar, which is sort of an almanac, designates the 25th as their arrival date, but here was one in the 19th. But I haven't seen him again, and he may have been passing through. But now I know mine must be on the way. Made fresh nectar for them: 4 parts water to one part white sugar. Combine and boil, then cool and serve.

Dinner is Served

Knights of Columbus barbecued in the parking lot by the ballfields today, and at dusk I got my dinner there, and would like to share it with you, so here it is, the Midwest's finest meal: Barbecued chicken with sauce, corn on the cob, cole slaw dressed with oil and vinegar, and baked beans (not too sweet. I like to slice a jalapeno into them).

Leave the city. Y'all come on over for dinner -- I'll buy you your own dish of barbecue, just like this one -- and you will know true bliss. Say grace first! ("Mumble mumble thy bounty, mumble our Lord Amen.") Happy first day of summer. I love your company. To my British and Aussie readers: This is what we eat in America.

Midwestern First-Date Advice

A third drink before dinner shows a lack of respect for oneself AND one's date. At such piggish behavior, put $10 on the table and leave.

Men, don’t wear sandals. Midwestern men have notoriously scary feet.

Men, dive for the check and refuse to let the woman pay. Since you’ve just met, the woman has no other way of telling whether you valued her time and company. (No Midwesternista is a feminist on the first date.)

Women, carry enough cash to pay the check in case he “forgot his wallet.”

Don't wrap up the catfish bones to take home to your cats.

There’s no turnoff like a dinner date who explains that he can’t walk very well right now because a thousand-pound hay bale fell on him.

Women, cleavage shouldn’t look like tonnage.

Something bigger than a breadbox in a car’s back seat – a cooler, pet carrier, cardboard file-boxes, child seat, tools, fishing gear -- shows that there's something in your date’s life that’s far more important than you’ll ever be.

Black Blue Butterfly

Trying to ID this butterfly for you, I googled "black butterfly," "black with blue," "black with iridescent blue," and more. For crying out loud, it's not considered black or blue -- it's a "Red-Spotted Purple" butterfly, Liminitis arthemis astyanax. About 3.5 inches across. Photographed today in Gray Summit, Missouri. Quite common in the Mississippi Valley -- and to the east. But the feeling it gave me was not at all common!

Midwest Scarce on Hummingbirds

No hummers. Day after day, I watch my three feeders. Usually they're buzzing with five or six dive-bombing rubythroat males and elegantly costumed females. But not this year.

Online "bird boards" in Missouri, Indiana, and Ohio, report the same scarcity this year. Hummingbirds appeared in Missouri as usual, around the 24th of April. But everyone's usual customers aren't coming to nectar feeders. Normal hummer activity is reported only in one remote rural area of Missouri.

Nobody knows why. Speculation about the missing hummers ranges from: the Midwest's extended winter (although hummers can survive freezing temperatures); flooding (confusing the hummers as they migrated from Mexico); a natural, cyclic decline in the population; a sinister, pollution-related population decline; and, because there's plenty of flowers the hummers don't need nectar feeders.

I miss them very much. If hummer activity picks up I will let you know.

Backwoods Beachfront

You wouldn't know by looking, but this house was once a beachfront house, and it's sitting on a fortune.

Aeons ago a shallow lake covered the Midwest, and of course it had a beach. Its sand got weathered by wind, not water. The result was a vein of 99 percent pure white St. Peters silica sandstone, five miles wide, running from Minnesota down to to Missouri. My house perches right on it.

The cliff got detonated for road widening in 2002. Where it's been in the open air for some years, oxidation and water has turned the sandstone gray or red. Not far away there's a silica mine. In 50-lb. bags the old beachfront goes to make glass, chinaware, white paint, municipal water filters, and, coarse-ground, it's sold to make sand traps on golf courses. I like it just the way millions of years have left it.