FOR ANNE SAYWELL, A BIT OF BIRD’S-EYE SPEEDWELL OR VERONICA PERSICA)

Blue-eyed Veronica

Today is a balmy February day, much like spring (72 degrees), and the sudden birth of flowers assures me that we’re going to enjoy the last weeks of our Louisiana sojourn. One of the small, winsome plants that have appeared near our home is thriving in a pasture for horses across Darby Lane here in New Iberia, Louisiana. 

“It’s probably too small to mention because it isn’t dramatic enough,” my botanist friend Vickie Sullivan declared. But I like this tiny blue flower called Veronica persica (Bird’s-eye Speedwell) because it isn’t a “show-off” plant. Linnaeus named the plant after St. Veronica, who appears in early Christian legends as pitying Christ on the way to Calvary and wipes his face with her handkerchief, which then receives a miraculous true image of his features.

Veronica persica has been naturalized in the US from Eurasian sources, and it seems to like horses because it grows almost under horse’s hooves near the golf club on Darby Lane. The sight of it causes me to lighten up a bit today. Yesterday, my dear British friend, Anne Saywell, passed into the “Also World” (as Sister Elizabeth of Convent of St. Mary calls the hereafter), and I was sad most of the day. 

I recently wrote a blog and published a photo of Anne Saywell that showed her in a beautiful sweater she knitted. Anne was someone I befriended in 1974 while living in Ahwaz, Iran, and we kept in touch for almost fifty years. I can’t say I “kept up with” because Anne and her friend, Maureen Allchin seemed to always be aboard cruise ships. They spent several months doing an “around the world” tour during the last decade of Anne’s life. A trip to Bulkington, Wiltshire in England was on my bucket list when Anne suddenly developed stomach pain, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and died 24 days after diagnosis.

I’m publishing Vickie Sullivan’s photograph of the beautiful tiny flower mentioned above as a small tribute to Anne Saywell, an outstanding executive in the administration of Girl Guides in England, a talented craftswoman and gardener who loved fun and games and blessed her friends with enchanting wit. She also possessed a gracious plenty of loyalty to anyone she befriended during her long life. I hope she has a good view of the Veronica persica from her new perch in the “Also World.”

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

A RAINY DAY RIDE

A rainy Louisiana day seems to be the ideal time to write about trips most of us can't take because we can't be exposed to people who may have the dreaded coronavirus. However, I pulled out a small stack of old Ford Times (a now-defunct publication) I'd ordered a few months ago and engaged in a pretend trip via "A Slow Train in Tennessee" that made a round trip to Harriman, Tennessee on the Tennessee Central Railway, circa 1956.


The trip was a full-day, round trip train ride that began on First Avenue in Nashville, Tennessee, cost the traveler $6, chugged through the Cumberland Plateau, slowly, ever so slowly, and stopped only for food since the train had no diner. The painting* that accompanied the Ford Times article reminded me of a train ride I once made from Ahwaz, Iran, in the southern desert province of Khuzestan to Tehran, Iran. I spent an entire night looking down at deep valleys and wondering if I'd come to a plunging end on the narrow track that snaked through the Elburz Mountains.


I enjoyed the Ford Times issue that included an article about the Tennessee Central Railway and a sudden stop a TC train made in Baxter, Tennessee back in the mid-1950s. As it chugged into the station at Baxter, an aged Model T pulled up to the station on three screeching tires, and an old-timer climbed out, explaining that he'd had a puncture of a tire that he'd "only used five years," and three tires would do for a while. He ran over to the train and handed a smoked ham to the conductor, who promptly handed the breathless old-timer a sack of plug tobacco in exchange. The train pulled out, resumed its slow speed, and chugged down the mountain on the Cumberland Plateau. I assume the old-timer made his three-tire journey home, probably grumbling about the puncture of a five year old tire but enjoying a good "chaw" along the way.


Although this article refers to the Tennessee Central, I thought about another slow ride I'd made from Atlanta, Georgia to Lynchburg, Virginia on a train that inspired the question, "Have you ever 'rid' the old Southern?" That ride included a group of young adults from Emory University in Atlanta who sang oldies like "Dinah won't you blow" ALL night to entertain my restless daughter who traveled with me.


A slow train ride during a gentle rain would be a prized experience for me right now, and I'm wondering if the old Southern is still operating? Probably not. The latter incident took place when Stephanie, my oldest daughter, was three years old. She's now sixty.


*Painting by Corydon Bell in Ford Times, April 1956

DUCK—CHICKEN SOUP?

I was eating a baked Cornish hen today, and the scent of it caused a Proustian event — the smell tugged at my memory of another poultry event I experienced while sojourning in Iran back when… My reminiscence involved Isabel, a tiny Portuguese woman who lived next door to me in Melli Rah subdivision — a woman who helped me overcome the first stages of culture shock. Her remedy for all forms of culture shock: paint walls. Five layers of white paint appeared over sickly green walls that an Iranian decorator had thought would please U.S. expatriates suffering from culture shock.

Isabel, the Portuguese neighbor, helped me paint away this condition of culture shock, and when I told her I wanted to repay the favor, she just shook her head and said in her enchanting  voice: “By George, just bring me the chicken soup if I ever get sick.”

A few weeks later, Isabel began to suffer from symptoms similar to a flu bug traveling through Melli Rah subdivision and telephoned me: “Go to the Ahwaz Super and bring back a big chicken,” she instructed. 

I hadn’t learned how to drive a shift auto and had to borrow my daughter’s six-speed bicycle to make the necessary trip to the grocery. I had no idea about the speed at which the bike should be set, but it must have been “quick, the chicken soup,” because I didn’t have a chance to pedal. The super speeder flung me down the pock-marked street in 120-degree weather, and I came to an ungraceful halt, over the handlebars, and into the jube near the supermarket. Fortunately, I was unharmed and went in the market to claim a chicken.

I remember that earlier that morning I had gone to my tin desk facing the street and penned a column entitled “Persian Poultry Pretty Paltry” for the Daily Iberian, the newspaper of note in my hometown of New Iberia, Louisiana. I’d been writing an “In A Persian Market” column for several months, and when I looked in the freezer at the market, I knew why I had written the column about Iranian poultry. Chicken Little appeared to be a shriveled version of the chickens raised in America, and worse still, she was frozen solid and would take some thawing before I could cook a pot of soup and bring it to Isabel.

When I returned on the super speeder bike and delivered the bird, Isabel took one look and burst into laughter. “I might have known not to send a Louisiana Cajun to the store for a chicken,” she said. “You Cajuns think that the only kind of fowl is a duck.  That is a duck — an Iranian duck — but still a duck, you rotten neighbor.”

No, I didn’t die of embarrassment. I hired a taxi that took me to the bazaar and found a real chicken, (still a bit undersized), then made soup. By early afternoon I was able to take the requested "cure for all ills" in a large pot to Isabel’s bedside. The following day, Larry, her husband, washed and returned the pot. A week later, I became sick with a flu-like illness, and Larry asked to borrow the pot, “perfect for making chicken soup,” he said. Evidently, Isabel had no trouble finding a chicken and boiling it — she brought me a steaming pot of soup. She also returned my large, American-made vessel. However, after I recouped, Isabel fell ill again, and I made another pot of soup for her. 

In desperation, Larry cleaned and returned the pot and complained. “I know you girls have the greatest intentions to cure one another,” he said, “but I think you’re passing the germ back and forth in the pot of chicken soup. Maybe you all are really cooking sick ducks, but for good health’s sake, please don’t try to doctor one another.” 

So, Isabel and I turned off the stove and, voila, we regained good health. And I haven’t had homemade a la Iranian/Cajun, Chicken/Duck soup since we returned to the States. Maybe we just needed a genuine Louisiana fowl from Gueydan, Louisiana — Duck Capitol of the World. 

Drawings by Diane Moore

TANKS AHOY

I have a close British friend of over forty years standing whom I befriended during my sojourn in Iran in the 1970’s and with whom I still correspond. She left Iran shortly after the Iranian Revolution erupted and now lives in Bulkington Wiltshire, Great Britain or the United Kingdom or whatever designation is appropriate for what I used to simply call England. Anne is a few years younger than I am and much younger in spirit as you will discover from reading this blog. Not long ago she emailed me explaining that she had made a bucket list (which includes many risk factors) and was trying to “tick off” items before she reached 80 years of age. 

At the top of that list was her desire to drive a tank. Don’t ask me why because she was only a few years old when WWII occurred, and she wasn’t old enough to remember tanks lumbering through England. Anyway, her good friend, the Rev. Maureen Allchin, photographed the tank venture, and Anne forwarded a few of the photos just before she boarded a cruise ship bound for Iceland and Greenland where she promised to wave at me — her favorite gesture associated with her friendship with me, the armchair traveler. This year, she waved from the Arctic Circle, and the year before last, she waved from an around-the-world-in-several-months cruise.

Anne taught me to drive a Paykan automobile with a stick shift on the floor when we were together in Iran because she was the only human calm enough to ride with me through neighborhood roads in Ahwaz. These roads had what seemed to be a dip every other block. I would drive into the dip and pull out with loud gear grinding; however, Anne sat beside me, calmly imitating the Queen’s wave as I startled passersby who glimpsed the Paykan disappearing in the dips noisily and re-appearing with even louder grinding noises. But after three lessons with Anne, I was able to drive alone over the bridge that crossed the River Karun and visit with her on the other side. If you’ve ever had a Brit for a friend, you know that you do what is expected of you and you do it with good humor. 

An example of Anne’s wry humor written during the 1980’s: “Sarah was given an indescribable plastic wind instrument for her birthday. So we spend our afternoons following the score of ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ and ‘God Save the Queen.’ (Yes, ‘God Save the Queen’ from this indescribable plastic wind instrument). Wouldn’t you like for her to cross the pond and bring it with her for a long visit?”

I always look forward to Anne’s e-mails from wherever she is waving. The tank episode was slightly shocking to me, but it’s probably in line with Anne’s indomitable spirit. While we were in Iran, she talked me into joining a party of twelve children and four adults from the congregation of Good Shepherd Church in Ahwaz on a train bound for Tehran’s Garden of Evangelism (described in my books, Iran in a Persian Market and Sophie's Sojourn in Persia). The trip took sixteen hours, and most of our ride took place during the long night that we wove in and out of mountain tunnels on a narrow track between 7,000 - 9,000 ft. high that overlooked deep ravines in which I could see no bottom. Anne slept through the entire trip.

To return to the tank, I’m not sure what items are left on Anne’s “Perils of Pauline” list, but I wouldn’t be surprised if skydiving wasn’t close to the top.

Photographs by the Rev. Maureen Allchin