Winter Break... They’re baaack!
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If
You Go:
LETTERBOXING is an intriguing mix
of treasure hunting, art, navigation, and exploring interesting, scenic,
and sometimes remote places. It takes to a new “art form” the
ancient custom of placing a rock on a cairn upon reaching the summit
of a mountain.It started when a gentleman simply left his calling card
in a bottle by a remote pool on the moors of Dartmoor, in England. |
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Melanee Evans (left), mother of three and Maryalice Wallis (right), mother of four, home school their children and live in Longview. |  |
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| FLAGS AND DAFFODILS By Alex Whitmen (formerly Louise Heinz Ackerman, a.k.a. Axe Waxman) (artwork by Steve Johannsen) Joan hated flags. Flags – another name for irises — big, floppy purple irises. She had a thing about those tongue-like petals dangling down. I had brought a bouquet from home to decorate my desk. I can see her now through the cubicle glass, holding  the
phone in one hand waiting for her ear, nose, and throat guy to answer so
she could update his telephone directory listing. She was looking right
at me with clear blue eyes, the lids lowered and lashes heavy with mascar
a, giving me the wry face everyone knew. “I hate flags. I hate those !!@#*À*!* things! Keep ‘em out of my sight. If you so much as bring one more flag here I’ll spit right through the glass!” (Translated loosely.) One day, soon after the flag-hating outburst, I took Joan a paper sack full of daffodil bulbs. It was autumn in Seattle, and she was preparing her spring flower beds at her house in Richmond Beach. These were King Alfred daffs, really voluptuous yellow things with nodding heads and wide hollering mouths; surely her flower beds would be the envy of all her neighbors come spring. She promised to plant them the next day. Aha! Here’s the trick: The bulbs weren’t really King Alfred daffodils, but — you guessed it— flags. Not the deep purple variety, either, but that pallid lavender kind with the flimsy inner petals and floppy-down wavers. I imagined her planting these things and then waiting over the cold, rainy winter for beautiful daffodils to grace her garden, watching the green spikes stick out of the ground in the spring, and, little by little, emerging as the most disgusting flower Joan had ever seen. I couldn’t wait to see her face through the cubicle glass, completely Á*?#!@’d. I couldn’t wait! The winter passed as usual. Joan and I called customers, arranged their telephone directory listings, filed service orders, tormented our co-workers, and read galleys day after day, trying to maintain sanity through the tedium with practical and not-so-practical jokes. All the while, I held on to my secret, while the flags lay dormant in Joan’s flower bed. Spring came and Joan announced that the little green spikes were poking through the soil. “Guess what, Lou, my King Alfred daffodils are coming up!” I expressed my pleasure and secretly reveled in my prank. “Great! They’re going to be gorgeous!” I assured her. The season advanced fast, as spring does in Seattle—camellias, magnolias, crocuses, and early azaleas, all drenched in rain. Everyone had flowers to brighten the city and help cure SAD. Daffodils were the cheeriest of all. I knew, of course, that despite her anticipation, Joan would have no daffodils. I could see her, in another month or so, running along the border beds ripping the irises out in a rage, figuring out my trick, and seething at me through the cubicle glass at work. At the height of daffodil season, however, Joan announced that her daffodils were opening, and they were gorgeous. She invited me to visit her house to see for myself. I drove her home and stood in amazement at the beautiful, fully formed, giant King Alfreds standing dew-dropped in her front yard, bright as the golden sun in our dark and rainy season. Daffodils. There was no mistaking them. I was totally bewildered. I thought of divine intervention, since Joan was a devout Catholic. I considered myself a rationalist, which is just shy of aetheism, but I began to wonder if her unquestioning acceptance of miracles had some merit. I pretended no surprise, but instead expressed pleasure that I had given her such a lovely gift, a gift that would last as long as she lived in that house. That ended the affair. My prank was neutralized. Our lives changed. I married, left Ma Bell, raised a family, became single again, earned a degree, earned another degree, became a college instructor, wrote a book, remarried, moved to Spokane, moved to Oregon, moved to Longview, became single again, and, having changed my name several times, moved to Kelso, where I live now. Joan retired from the telephone company and moved to Lacey. Over many years, from 1973 until the summer of 1998, Joan and I kept in touch; what tenacity she had for keeping track of my names and addresses. Yet in all those years, I never asked, and she never told me, how those flags turned into daffodils. In the summer of 1998, however, almost 30 years after the flag-to-daffodil episode, we had a nice visit. I drove to her home in Lacey, where we spent the afternoon remembering those years calling attorneys and architects and dentists and veterinarians to sell them Yellow Pages listings and give good service. The old laughter came back, that wonderful, belly-shaking laughter that used to keep us afloat in a sea of monotony. Joan remembered everything we did and reminded me of some things I wish I could have forgotten. As we started in on our second pot of coffee, Joan became momentarily subdued, lowering her voice as if we had entered a sacred room. We were sitting at her dining room table. “All right,” she said, looking serious. “I’m going to tell you something.” “Do you remember those beautiful daffodils you gave me for my house in Richmond Beach? Did you ever wonder anything strange about them? Like, you know, how they turned out really to be daffodils, when you thought they were going to be purple flags?” “You see,” she said, lowering her lids over blue eyes and tweaking her red lipsticked mouth into a little sneer, “I knew all along. You thought yourself such a famous gardener and took me for some inexperienced city girl who couldn’t tell a tuber from a bulb. . . I knew those were flags all along. So I put them in the closet, bought myself some daffodils, planted them, watched them come up in the spring, and invited you out to admire them. . . You should have seen your face the day you saw those big yellow mothers standing as tall as King Alfred himself and all the British kingdom!” We were pretty creative in those days; we had to be, two free-spirited women confined day after day with rolls of galley proofs and stacks of service orders, and phoning, phoning, phoning. If Joan couldn’t tolerate flags, I couldn’t tolerate boredom. I still can’t. She was the stronger one, often the one to get us back on task. Thank God. We were a good match, and what a great friend she was. Joan, hats off to you, and may your life, now far away in the heavens above, be filled with beautiful flowers — preferably daffodils and no flags.  Alex Whitman teaches English and Spanish at Lower Columbia College. She feels an affinity for the Columbia River, feels a special con-nection to it and knows it well, having walked its entire length in 2002-3. She lives in Kelso. (Photo by Dale Dimmick) |
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calories,
use your “happy feet” to climb the
164 steps to the top of the Astoria Column. The 125-foot column, situated
atop Coxcomb Hill in Astoria, will reward you with breathtaking vistas,
eagles’ nests, and a focal point of interest for several history
lessons.
on
the lower Columbia River, connecting Westport, Oregon and Puget Island,
Washington. Part of the Washington State Ferry System, the ferry is named
the “Wahkiakum,” with
a capacity of 14 cars and 36 passengers. It takes 10 minutes to cross
the Columbia. 