RETURN TO DIDDY WAH DIDDY

I suppose that not many people will view Nomadland and get an envee to buy an old van and take to the road, but I felt vagabond stirrings within me after I saw this award-winning movie.

In 1946, just after WWII, my father decided to quit his job as a civil engineer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and travel to "nomadland" to become a gypsy, as he called it. And when he presented this idea to my mother, she, who had been a Golden Eaglet Girl Scout and primitive camped in Alabama as a young girl, agreed that gypsying would be the life to lead. My father sold all our furniture, bought a utility trailer, filled it with camping equipment, and didn't bother to ask if any of his four children liked the idea. We were expected to wander in the western United States indefinitely. I once described my father's decision as a time when I heard all the doors of schools and libraries clanging shut against me.

My father took us to see Marlene Dietrich and Ray Milland star as gypsies in "Golden Earrings," and romantic that he was, he decided that gypsying was the way for all of us to live. My mother became excited about this proposed adventure. So, one warm day in May, after school had let out, we packed a utility trailer with camping equipment and an old trunk from my mother's college days crammed with all the clothes we were allowed to take. We filled a giant jug with water and placed it at my one-year-old brother Harold's feet in the front seat of a '41 Ford coupe, and off we went.

We survived three months on the road and 'though the open road looks appealing to me today, I remember uncomfortable days traveling ever westward, sleeping on stone tables in state parks, bathing in the Brazos River, and eating a barbecued jackrabbit my father had shot one night (illegally). Because I complained that I might never see a school again, he named me "a luxury-loving gal" and continued the odyssey. It ended in busy Los Angeles where he decided to turn around in traffic whizzing by and declared, "We're going home."

The Diddy Wah Diddy experience reminded me that I'm not an intrepid camper, but I like to think I could be. You can Google small trailers on the net and turn up photos of tiny campers for sale that feature everything except bathrooms and visualize crossing the Mohave Desert on a warm day in June. You might quickly return to earth. However, I admit that during these enforced times of isolation due to the Covid virus, travel trailers look enticing.

But… would you go out there in the vast expanse of desert or pass through it to avoid Covid, or seek company and amenities in nomad land at nightfall? Or would you fly on through it like the Flying Dutchman? I reckon you'd have to "keep a 'going," as my Grandfather Paul used to say. (He was one to talk since when he finally located my mother on the Diddy Wah Diddy trip, he encouraged her to come home rather than continue with the odyssey).

 

And so I sit at my desk watching fat robins fly in and quickly fly back out, and return to looking at small travel trailers, then add a second Diddy Wah Diddy trip to my bucket list. Maybe when I'm 90??!!

 

 

THE PINE TREE STATE

"Storm Warning" by Paul E. Marquart

Today's rain and cold temps evoke memories of the winter I spent in Limestone, Maine, many, many years ago. Although I endured below 15-degree weather numerous days during that sojourn, the memory of living in the bitter cold of an old farmhouse clinging to a low hill in Aroostook County makes me shiver. I feel compelled to write that the rugged scenery of that State held some appeal in an aesthetic sense and acknowledge that Maine's license plates advertise it as "Vacationland." Still, I've never regarded it as a place of enchantment.

My former husband and I were part of Army personnel attached to Loring Air Force Base, a Strategic Air Command Base in the town of Limestone, Maine. At that time, the U.S. military suspected that Russian air attacks would be made on America's far northern shores.

Limestone, situated in Aroostook County, boasted mainly bumper potato crops, which began burgeoning in the 1920s. We lived inland and never enjoyed touring the coast country rife with lofty lighthouses (like my brother Paul's painting above) that mariners built along Maine's shores. In Maine's maritime history, these lighthouses, such as Saddleback Lodge Light Station, have been preserved and are a picturesque part of the sea life surrounding the Pine Tree State.

During the era of sailing ships, the direction of the wind impacted mariners' safety. Lighthouses abounded along the rugged Maine coast, each tower operated by a keeper who made certain the light was always burning. Electric lights caused the lighthouse keeper's job to become obsolete; however, sixty lighthouses still stand on Maine's shores.

When we lived in Maine, we were far from the sound of the Atlantic Ocean and near islands, some of them just mossy rocks rising above the waves. However, I always wanted to visit Acadia National Park, and Bar Harbor on the island's eastern tip was a "wannasee" destination. We were confined inland to wooded areas where deer, raccoons, skunks, possums, and ubiquitous squirrels roamed freely.

A major nesting ground for birds, Maine harbors warblers, thrush, wrens, and other birds familiar to Louisianians, but I'd never heard the weird cry of loons that often carried across lakes and ponds that we approached. We welcomed the sight of ducks and herons, our Louisiana water birds. Still, I never got to see the famous puffin shorebird that gathered beyond the mouth of Penobscot Bay on an island bereft of humans and reputed to be noisy with raucous bird cries.

Army duties prevented weekend tours, even as close as jaunts to Portland because my husband seemed to stay on 24-hour alerts, but I had a list — maybe it's now a bucket list — one that Covid keeps me from completing… but when I get my travel plans certified again, I hope to follow Route 1 from Kittery in the south to Madawaska in northern Maine, to buy a sack of those Aroostook County potatoes and Texas pinto beans, both of which kept us alive and well while living in "vacationland" (?) many winters ago. P.S. I gained ten pounds on that fare.

"Storm Warning," a painting by Paul E. Marquart; photographed by Laurel Marquart

RIDGES IN GLASS

Cheniere glass art by Karen Bourque

I have the good fortune of owning fourteen glass pieces created by Karen Bourque, the masterful glass artist of Church Point, Louisiana. Many of these pieces have been photographed for the covers of my books of poetry and now hang on the glass porch of our Celeste residence here in New Iberia, Louisiana, and in the windows of our home on Fairbanks Circle in Sewanee, Tennessee.

 

Karen’s latest glass piece is her interpretation of a Louisiana Cheniere, or ridge, and will be featured in the spring edition of Pinyon Review along with several of my poems. The featured poems derive from Ridges, a book of my poetry that Pinyon Publishing will publish this summer.

 

Karen’s latest piece is a beautiful work of stained glass, Apache Tear, and Kyamite that she created this year. It now hangs on the glass porch of my home here in New Iberia, Louisiana. As I look at the purple sky overhanging a cheniere, I’m lifted out of the Covid doldrums and remember a brighter day's visit I made to Cheniere au Tigre many years ago when three female companions and I traveled by boat to this site.

 

Diane on way to Cheniere au Tigre

Karen’s renderings always evoke strong emotional responses in me. A unique non-traditional glass artist, she creates most of her work in a studio beside the Bourque home that she shares with the former poet laureate and humanist, Darrell Bourque. Before the dreaded Covid caused me and my friends to sequester ourselves, I often visited there.

Karen’s work is featured in the Ernest Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, in a window depicting the Holy Spirit at Christ the King Roman Catholic Church near Opelousas Louisiana, at the Louisiana Book Festival, in an issue of Pinyon Review, and many other venues and homes.

As the maxim reads, “One picture is worth a thousand words,” and this photo of Karen Bourque’s latest rendering affirms that critique. Briefly said, her work is a spiritual experience.