Kings Walk (El Camino Del Rey) in Spain

The last time I did any serious climbing was about seven years ago when I got within 1/2 mile to the summit of Angels Landing (you can see pictures here if you’re interested; just scroll down) in Zion National Park, Utah’s most visited park. At that point, and after hearing about the challenge just ahead which was a ledge just wide enough for one person to pass at a time, I decided to wait for the more adventurous in my group in the relative safety and shading of the rock ledges 1/2 mile below. Sometimes you just have to know your limits, and that was mine!

Then someone sent me this video which makes Angels Landing look like a hike for babies by comparison. Watching the video gives me enough pause; you’d never catch me actually doing it. This one is for crazy people if you ask me, but it’s fascinating as well. There are actually huge portions of the trail missing and people still pass through! You have to see it to believe it.

It’s El Caminito Del Rey in in El Chorro, near Álora in Málaga, Spain, built for King Alfonso XIII [1886-1941]. The name is often shortened to El Camino del Rey. After four people died there in two accidents in 1999 and 2000, the local government closed the entrances; however, as you will see, it doesn’t stop thrill seekers. I hope my hang-gliding son-in-law sees this. He’d probably love a challenge like this.

This version (there are longer ones) was uploaded to YouTube by klaver13belgium
 

Dusting off the Outhouse Trivia

After a lazy weekend of what Hubby calls ”fiddlin’ around,” I did manage to get some reading done, plus I baked some brownies he could take to the board meeting of the “Forum for Questioning Minds” he had to attend while I stayed home writing this, the kind of things “questioning minds” really want to know. Friday when I was dusting I found this old book about American outhouses I’d bought  several years ago at the Spring Mountain Ranch State Park in Las Vegas with plans to read it . . . someday. 

The glossy cover of The Vanishing American Outhouse, by Ronald S. Barlow would catch not just mine, but the eye of anyone who enjoys weird and unconventional reading material, especially anyone who has ever had to actually use one in his/her lifetime, and those folks are dwindling in number each year. In addition to the photographs, many in full color, it contains privy plans outlined with full particulars and issued by the U.S. Surgeon General of 1928.  

I learned quite a bit poring through its pages, even without much said about Thomas Crapper, whom every trivia buff recognizes. For instance, Lem Putts, who specialized in the early 1900’s at building outhouses in rural America offered the following reasoning in answer to the question of should the door open inward or outward? on page 24 of The Specialist.

“It should open in! This is  the way it works: Place yourself in there. The door openin’ in, say about forty-five degrees. This gives you air and lets the sun beat in. Now, if you hear anybody comin’, you can give it a quick shove with your foot and there you are. But if she swings out, where are you? You can’t run the risk of havin’ her open for air or sun, because if anyone comes, you can’t get up off the seat, reach way around and grab ‘er without gettin’ caught, now can you? “

Another thing to think about from the old days: When people traveled by automobile before modern highways and roadsides proliferated with McDonald’s and other fast food and rest stops, where did people do it when they had to go? People like my father who found themselves driving to Jacksonville with four children in the car to visit the aunts were known to park the car on the side of the road. Then whoever couldn’t hold it ’til we got there hightailed it to the wire fences between the highway and woods, hoisted him or herself over and squatted behind the biggest tree or fattest palmetto bush he or she could find.

But that was on the backroads in rural Florida. In the big world of busier highways, there were actually outhouses to accommodate larger numbers, as many as six at a time, shown in a picture in the book. MEN or WOMEN were painted on the front doors by sign painters who made their living traveling with their paint cans and brushes. These public service toilets were sometimes equipped corn cobs, which could be arguably dubbed the original “colored” toilet paper by virtue of their natural–not dyed–colors of red, white or green. They sound scratchy, but if they were freshly dried, corncobs were relatively soft, and slightly preferable to the second choice of old catalogs. The black and white pages worked better than the slick, colored pages. 

And what about  prisoners in jails? Where did they go? Well, when a prisoner had to go, he would call out “take me to de potty,” and then special sheriffs assistants would take them to the outhouse and wait while they did their duty, and then bring them back. Naturally these assistants soon became known as “De Potty Sheriffs” which, according to Privy, Outhouse, Backhouse, John by Wellington Durst evolved into the “Deputy Sheriffs” of today.

There! Now that I’ve told you more than you probably ever wanted to know about outhouses in general, don’t you feel smart? In fact, as one fairly bursting with random and unnecessary trivia about all kinds of subjects, I propose some television producer, an up-and-coming Merv Griffin of tomorrow, come up with a new game show that might use all these useless bits of knowledge.

Let’s say the winning $128,000 question ($64,000 adjusted for inflation–I’m not greedy) is How many  baths did Queen Isabella of Spain have before she died? You’d watch me on a show like that, wouldn’t you? Maybe I’ll be back with the answer after another weekend of reading, or another google search. Or you could just look here and find out for yourself. There’s so much more stuff out there just waiting for me. Or perhaps another book in my personal library. But It will just have to wait, I guess, until I dust again!

We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!

When I first saw this video it reminded me of the old movies from the l950’s and earlier. I know I got some of my original ideas about men/women relationships from those movies. For instance, women never shouted. If you get upset with your husband, then while you’re talking with him face to face you simply whirl your body around dramatically and show him your back while you tell him what’s wrong with him.

Then at dinner parties the men retire to the drawing room and drink whiskey and smoke cigars, while it’s not at all clear what the women did now that I think about it. In Grandma’s house the men went to the porch and the women retired to the kitchen to spend an hour or two cleaning it up after taking all morning to prepare the meal which took all of 10 minutes for the men to eat.

So while the 2 minute 20 second video makes the rounds of email forwards as a poke poke joke to say to women everywhere “women know your limits,” I look at it and think, “Wow! We’ve come a long, long way.” See what you think:

Ellisville #2 - Bloomer

Over a year ago I began what I called a “book draft,” which simply means a rough first draft of what may eventually become a book. It is based on the truth as I remember it from growing up in Northcentral Florida in the 1940’s and ’50’s. It’s a way to set down certain things that may change in the final markup — that is, IF and WHEN I ever decide to actually make it into a book. No. 1 begins with how Sister Margie might have come to establish her church in Ellisville. Here’s #2, about one of the many colorful characters of my childhood. Anyone who may havemissed the first installment and is interested can find it here: Ellisville #1

********************************************************************************************

There are those people from long ago when cameras weren’t so accessible that made such an imprint on my memory that, even though I don’t have a single photograph, they’re still perfectly vivid in memory in spite of the intervening years. Coming to mind immediately is Bloomer H***. Now if only I can paint a word picture so that you can see him too, without forming rash and possibly erroneous opinions.

You’ve heard that every village has an “idiot.” Well, Bloomer was Ellisville’s, and I have a perfect comparison to help you draw your own picture. Fix in your mind a picture, almost any picture, of George W. Bush. There! You have it. Bloomer was  a little older and less groomed than  our 43rd president, but he had all the mannerisms. Please don’t think I make this comparison to malign Bloomer, nor even Mr. Bush, but it’s simply the best way to describe him.

He wore an incessant grin everywhere he went. Put a beat up felt wool stetson on his head, one that has been worn many years, taken off his head many times to show his respect for women and elders. It has a hole worn in the tip of the crease, and the edges of the rim where his hands touch it are darker than the rest of the hat. See the stained spittle in one corner of his mouth? Snuff. When he opens his mouth to smile or speak you’re treated to more tobacco stains. Notice how his eyes aid his mouth in a smirking grin. He always seems to be hiding something, but you’re not sure what. A joke he’s remembering? Or could it be his knowledge of all those bodies hidden in the backyard? Not to suggest it came from any of these, but it might have. That’s Bloomer.

There were other odd things about him. He walked everywhere, would show up at the most unlikely of places, even the church once, although he was always alone and disappeared just as quickly as he appeared. You’d see him walking along the grassy shoulder of U.S. Highway #1 that runs north and south the length of all the eastern United States. Rumor had it that he was afraid of automobiles though no one knew why and refused to step inside one.

My father stopped and offered him rides many times as he drove the 13 miles from the farm into Lake City. Bloomer would always tip his hat and lean into the driver window to pass a few pleasantries, but always turned down the ride. No, he’d rather walk he’d say. It was a fine day for it. After a little more idle chit chat Daddy would drive on, even when it was drizzling rain outside. I remember being very curious about him as I gazed back through the back window of our car watching him fade from view. Daddy would drive on, his conscience appeased, because he’d offered, hadn’t he? You couldn’t make somebody get in out of the rain, now could you?

In the back seat, I would feel relieved as well. I knew without being told that Bloomer didn’t take regular baths. I was also aware of the whispers and innuendos. How he abused the blind and deaf sister he lived with, Drucilla. Used her life the wife he never had the voices whispered. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but I knew it couldn’t be good because of the way the fingers tried to hide their tongues as they said it. Few other than Mrs. Guthrie had ever seen this mystery sister.

Mrs. Guthrie was my 7th and 8th grade teacher. She must have known the real truth about Bloomer and Drucilla. But she was an outsider from Tennessee, an educated and opinionated woman, married to the Principal of our school. It was in reference to her that I first became aware of the expression about women wearing the pants in the family. As long as he could have his pipe in his mouth and tell his stories to us in general assembly, Mr. G stayed pretty much in the background. On the positive side she liked me, was one of the few who encouraged me to write. No one else had National Geographics on her shelf or taught us to paint with tempera and buttermilk. Because of her I discovered art through posters of Old Ironsides.

Naturally I thought, and still do, that she was a wonderful teacher. Even if she did put on airs a bit. Even if she did decorate her house with carpets and tailor made drapes. Even if she painted one wall of the dining room a different color from the rest. And especially in spite of her insisting you should have no more than five decorative items on the mantle above the fireplace. We had way more than that, and one of them was a institution sized fruit can holding dried corncobs soaking in a kerosene bath to use for quick starting fires every winter morning in the unheated farmhouse we lived in. 

Some accused Mrs. Guthrie of pushing everyone else’s needs aside in order for her own two daughters to always come out number one. They won many so many local competitions. The truth is, her daughters were two of the few who didn’t have to work. They were allowed to concentrate on piano and violin lessons. They were pretty with complexions seldom kissed by sun except at the beach. Their fingers were polished and bore no trace of corns or calluses. 

I look back on this with a lot more clarity now. In time I would face my own challenge of raising my own two daughters in a world clearly slanted toward the males in society. I tried hard to instill in them the idea that they were just as good, just as capable, as any boy or man, and should never put themselves in second place in their personal pursuits. I assured them they could do anything any boy could do except pee standing up!

While Mrs. G did not fit Ellisville’s mold for country women, no one I knew other than she ever actually saw the home conditions of Bloomer and Drucilla. It is true that I only saw the situation with the eyes of a child who at the time didn’t question authority. I admit I never asked enough questions at the time even though one of my grandmothers thought I asked too many. Many of the things I “remember” may be only impressions whose truth could be challenged. I accept that.

The story I have pieced together, however, years after asking my mother one of those “whatever happened to so and so questions” was that Bloomer and Drucille were members of a very well to do family from Jacksonville, and had been brought to our community to live in a little cabin tucked away in the woods for reasons I’ve never discerned. Perhaps so they wouldn’t be an embarrassment for their family, he being “not quite right” and she being both blind and mute. Remember, those were still the days people locked away their not quite bright and physically disfigured children in institutions.

This much I know to be true. Mrs. Guthrie went by regularly to give Drucilla baths and she often shared food with them. And regardless of how the people of Ellisville regarded Mrs. G, I believe that even as a child I was a good enough judge of character to trust that if the rumors were true, she would have reported it to the authorities. And a whole community of people who professed to be God loving, God fearing Christians would never have sat quietly and let this happen, right? And something would have been done, right? Please, if there’s a God in heaven, let this be the truth.

 

Afternoon Stroll in the Big Apple for Pizza Lover

New York being one of the most picturesque places in the world, not to mention a great place for people watchers, what could be more fun than a “wordless Wednesday” walk in the Big Apple?

What could be better than something to drink, a loaf of bread, and thou? (my apologies to Kahlil Gibran)

Who says “art” is found only in a museum? 

Ah, the loveliest of cheeses! (There seems to be some not-so-subliminal suggestions forming inside my head right here on this street!)

All roads eventually lead to Rome! (Or at least a great pizza experience!)