DEB CAVANAUGH

China Bound

5/5/2019

I can hardly believe that I’ll be in China in less than a week. This was another opportunity that came out of the blue. Those are my favorites. I feel as though I have been so blessed in my musical life. The only times I have been overseas have been due to an opportunity like this one, a random phone call or email from someone wanting to hire me for an interesting project. And … you know I’ll always say an enthusiastic “yes!”
I’ve been gathering everything I need or want to take with me such as maple syrup gifts for my hosts, a face mask to filter out the severe pollution in the city, an electrical adapter, etc. I’ve met with a few people who grew up in China for some tips on etiquette and more. I have translator and map apps on my phone and downloaded WeChat, the Chinese version of Facebook, which is banned in China. I’m also bringing my mountain dulcimer, limberjack and crankie with me to introduce the school children, teachers and parents to traditional American culture. My sweetie even built me a new crankie that comes apart and folds down flat that I will leave there. Hopefully, they’ll use it on their own, or I will use it again when I return, since they would like me to go back once a year. All in all, I think I’m as ready as I can be except for packing, which I’ll do at the last minute.
I will be posting an online travelogue as best I can while I’m away. You can follow my travels here, but don’t expect anything until around May 12th.

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Tillamook County, Oregon

5/1/2019

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We loved living in Hebo, Oregon with our ever-changing motley crew of intrepid travelers passing through almost daily and our weekly Open Mic gig in Pacific City. Then one day our old friend Clinton arrived with a friend from New Jersey. They couldn’t have come on a better day. Jessie’s elementary school was less than a block away with its little playground, so we went there often. This particular day, I set Justin at the top of the tall metal slide, as I had done many times before, waiting for him to be settled before going around to the bottom to catch him. This time, he stuck his sneakered feet out against the sides to slow himself down where one of them snagged and flipped him over the side and onto his head on the asphalt surface. I saw him falling and lunged for him, catching the toe of his sneaker as he hit the ground.
He was conscious but dazed, and I knew enough first aid to know that I probably had shouldn’t move him right away, although my first instinct was to scoop him up into my arms immediately. Instead, I kept talking to him, asking if he could see me then asking if he could move at all. He was bleeding but had not yet started crying. I was terrified. A grandfather was also there with his grandchild and came over screaming at me about what a bad mother I was because I had not picked him up yet, but I managed to block him out and focus completely on my injured child. Eventually, he started to cry, rolled himself over and started vomiting, so I picked him up and ran home with Jessie keeping up with me.
When we entered the driveway, Paul met us outside. I was covered in blood and vomit and in shock. He was the next one to start screaming at me. He wanted to know what I had done to his child. At this point, I couldn’t even speak, so I just stared at him. Thankfully, Clinton came out and took Paul aside, allowing me to go inside and formulate our next steps which were to get to a hospital as soon as possible. With Clinton there, we were able to leave Jessie at home. We packed Justin into the car and set off on the half hour ride to Tillamook for the nearest emergency room.
We walked in and waited … and waited … and waited, trying to keep him alert and awake. Once I started making a scene, they finally took us in for an x-ray, they handed me a lead vest to wear but nothing for him. When I questioned them, they explained that they didn’t have a child-sized vest and only had one on site. He needed me to stay with him, so they wanted me to wear it. I immediately took it off and laid it over him. I was not impressed with this place so far. Luckily and miraculously, there was no fracture, but they wanted to keep him overnight for observation. Based on my experiences with them up to this point, there was no way I was leaving him there. Under protest, they instructed me to wake him every hour and ask questions such as “what’s your name, can you tell me your abcs, can you sing a song.” We arrived back home at 11 pm.
It had been a very long day, and I was looking at waking every hour for the rest of the night. During that first hour, I finally changed out of my disgusting clothes and showered. Then I woke him, asking those all-important questions and sat down heavily in our recliner to try to de-stress. As soon as I sat, I heard a very distressed “meow” coming from behind the chair and discovered our cat having difficulties giving birth to her first litter. The first kitten was out but she ignored it, so I removed the sac and rubbed her to consciousness. The same happened with the second and the third. I tried to show her what I was doing, but she wasn’t interested. She was having a hard enough time getting them out. So, I spent the rest of the night delivering kittens and waking my concussed toddler every hour while everyone else slept soundly. In all fairness though, all of the adults did check in occasionally throughout the night.
A few days later, Clinton asked us to house his friend Vernon for the summer. They had hitchhiked across the country together, but Vernon was brutally shy and was becoming a burden. Clinton was certain that they would both have a much better summer apart. Paul was a little apprehensive, but I was also very shy and understood. I also figured that if he experienced all of our craziness upon his arrival and was still willing to stay with us, he might fit right in, and he turned out to be one of our closest friends for a very long time.
Unfortunately, all good things seem to come to an end, and our landlord decided to come back much earlier than originally anticipated. We moved to a tiny trailer in a trailer park in Beaver, Oregon, not far from Hebo, made some new friends and enrolled Jessie in her third school. She was in first grade. One of our neighbors kept telling us that our music reminded her of music she had heard at Caffe Lena in upstate New York and suggested that we relocate there. We had no intention of moving. We liked it where we were but the thought stuck.
Then, one day Jessie came home with two permission slip. The first one was giving permission for “paddling” if necessary. Because I refused to sign it, I was called in for a conference with the principal. He had dealt with hippies before and wanted to assure me that, as long as my child behaved, there was no need to worry. The second form was giving permission for Jessie to join “The Good News Club” which would be meeting during school hours. Not knowing what it was, and liking the name, I signed that one. It wasn’t until she started bringing home bible tracts that I realized what the good news really was. Paul lost another job at that time, and we received a large tax return. My parents had also recently moved to upstate New York so, remembering the suggestion of our neighbor, we started packing for the journey east that felt like it took a lifetime.

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Living on the Oregon Coast

4/24/2019

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We settled into our new home quickly. The hippie community was very welcoming. The longtime locals were cautious at best. Paul quickly found work at a restaurant, and I started babysitting for a few children. I had worked doing childcare out of my home in Portland, which was quite an experience at times. Now, I just did it part-time, mostly for trades of freshly caught salmon or homegrown pot. We also had a weekly gig running an open mic at The Riverhouse, a café on the Nestucca River in Pacific City. The place was always packed, and we met some wonderful musicians there. It also taught us a lot about running successful shows. The hardest party about doing these shows once a week was leaving my kids behind. We started out with them coming, but Justin was too little to stay out so late and was a rambunctious trouble-maker, so I had to find a sitter. Luckily, we found a wonderful teenaged girl who lived in a neighboring town and had many younger siblings, so I knew she could handle him. Although he often cried when we left, one evening, Justin decided he’d had enough. He broke away from her as we drove off, running down the middle of the highway screaming, “Mama, come back!” I started yelling at Paul to turn around and go back. My heart was breaking at the sight and sound of my baby crying for me. Paul refused to stop and, when I called home upon our arrival at the café, I found out that Justin had stopped crying as soon as we were out of sight. I could hear him laughing in the background and learned a valuable lesson that night.
        Paul was always one for “bad” jokes and puns, so he started telling at least one joke a week. It was a very popular segment of the show. Many of them were real groaners. After a year of hearing these jokes week after week, folks started getting tired of it and came asking me to do something about it. It was around the same time that Aron Kay and other yippies were pieing political figures such as William Buckley, Phyliss Schlafly, G. Gordon Liddy and many others. Paul really admired the yippies for doing that, so I decided to give the “bad joke of the week” segment a big ending. I knew that Paul would never willingly give it up, so I had a plan to pie him in the face after his joke. Later on, a friend suggested that shaving cream is a kinder way to do it, but at the time all I knew was whipped cream. As he told his joke, I filled up a pie pan with whipped cream and waited … and waited … and waited, while he told more and more jokes. The crowd was getting antsy, and the whipped cream was melting. When he finally finished, I hit him with this pie pan full of half liquid cream. Sploosh! The crowd loved it. Paul was a good sport, and that was the end of “bad joke of the week”.
        One man we met there was a songwriter named Mitt. He was not a hippie. He was a local and had a connection with a local radio station in Tillamook and hired us to record one of his songs in multiple harmonies. There were six of us on that recording. It was my first experience in a recording studio and my first time hearing myself on the radio. I was hooked. One day, he came to the house to jam and met our kids for the first time. Jessie loved to dress her brother up in her old dresses. She even had a name for him in drag, Rubessa. He enjoyed it too, and we saw no harm in it. He was wearing a frouffy, lacy dress that day, toddling around without anything else on because he was potty training. I always found it easier to teach my kids to use a potty when it was easily accessible, so they had a potty where they could see it, not hidden away in the bathroom, and didn’t wear even training pants. This was well before they started making disposable training pants, which in my opinion are too much like diapers to be very effective. The kids were playing around us as we jammed, dancing and listening to the music when Justin fell, and his dress flew up around his face. The look on Mitt’s face, as he realized that we didn’t have two daughters, was priceless.
        We also met a woman flutist, Marla, who lived on a farm with her boyfriend Tom. One Easter, we were invited to an egg hunt at the farm. Most of the eggs were in the barn, so off we went with a whole troupe of friends to find them. Jessie decided that she needed to use the bathroom, so we left the group and started walking back to the house when we were suddenly attacked by their geese. They surrounded us and started trying to bite our legs. Justin was still small, so I scooped him up while holding on to Jessie and kicking at the geese. Finally, another adult came out to help us, and we made it to the house. Jessie’s memory is that I picked her brother up and left her to the strong beaks of those geese. She still reminds me of that. In reality, I was trying to protect both children and could only lift one of them, but we all remember things in our own ways. Another incident at that farm happened when we arrived one time for a visit. They had horses, so there was a metal gate that had to be opened to drive through. Jessie loved being a “big girl” and opening the gate for me. This one day however, there was a curious horse that strolled over as she opened the gate. It startled her, and she screamed, scaring the horse and sending it galloping down the road. Tom came running out chasing the horse almost all the way to the highway before finally catching him.
        Of course, our friends, Patty and Jim were living there as well. They were the reason we ended up there in the first place. Although they didn’t have a farm, they also raised animals and gardened. They bought a lamb, who they named “Buck Burger” as a way to let the kids know that this would someday be food. They were cautioned not to play with the lamb for that reason. Predictably, they didn’t listen and played, not only with the lamb, but with the baby rabbits, too. We would chase them away, and as soon as our backs were turned, they’d go right back. Nothing could keep them away from these cute little babies. One day there was an unusual heat wave, and all the baby rabbits died. We were invited to a delicious dinner that night. Jessie raved about how good the food was and wanted to know what we were having. When Jim told her that we were eating Buck Burger and rabbit, she cried and never ate meat again. It was a hard lesson but one that farm kids have to learn. She was obviously not destined to live on a farm.
        Another man we met was a stand-up bass player named David. He had one of the longest beards I’d seen and braided it in creative ways. He was a gentle giant, and Jessie was fascinated by him. He often joined us in our sets at the café. He was one of the few friends who didn’t have children of his own. There was also a pot farmer and another couple who worked on a dairy farm. We had finally landed in a community where our children had lots of friends, and we were surrounded by like-minded people who were raising their kids in a similar way. I also found out about an alternative school that was there. This was the second time I’d heard about alternative education, the first being in San Francisco in the artist community we were in briefly. As you’ll find out later, the third time was the charm.
        Because our house was so large, we started offering the hitchhikers we picked up a place to stay for the night. We had been well taken car of during our travels and wanted to repay those favors. We were on a major intersection, so sometimes we would see people hitching right in front of the house. Before long, people started knocking on our door saying that they’d heard about a place to stay with a hot shower and a pancake breakfast in the morning. We became so popular that these travelers suggested that we should ask for some kind of payment, so we asked for trades. Some folks did yard work, some did house cleaning, some gave us trinkets that they made, some entertained the kids while I did my own chores. Whatever they wanted to trade was always acceptable. Many years later, I found a pancake breakfast sign in the closet of a big rambling old mansion I lived in. I still have it today as a reminder of that time.
        We had one man from Israel who was touring the US by thumb tell us that he had heard from someone in Ohio that he could find a place to stay with us. Another man was walking from Vancouver, British Columbia to Nicaragua to protest US involvement there. He carried a large silk banner that he had made. I wish I had taken more photos from that time or kept a journal with all of the details. Jessie was fascinated by this unusual long-haired hippie. He explained his journey to her and told her that his plan was to arrive at his destination around her birthday, at the end of the summer. He also said that, if he arrived safely, he would send her a birthday card. Sadly, we never heard from him again. I couldn’t possibly count the numbers of people who stayed with us during that time, and I heard later that when the landlord moved back and we moved on to another place, he had hitchhikers knocking on his door for a few years more. It was a wonderful education for our kids. They got to know such a variety of people from all different cultures, some of whom didn’t speak much English but figured out how to communicate with us, nonetheless. And, they would sing songs and tell stories in their own languages, entertaining my kids for hours.
        Of course, our old friends visited us here, too. One in particular, I will write about next.

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Moving to the Coast

4/17/2019

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          Fast forward to spring of 1980. We were pretty settled in our home, loving the neighbors on either side of us and thoroughly enjoying the neighborhood. It was spring, and the flowers start blooming early in Portland, with Camelias coming out as early as February. I was still new to gardening on my own and didn’t recognize certain flowers yet. There was a huge bed of something that I had weeded, and this year the plants had huge round buds. I couldn’t wait to see what they were. I knew they had to be spectacular. One day, Jessie came running in, very excited. “Come outside, Mommy! We’re going to have a tea party.” I finished up what I was doing and strolled outside to join her. She had set up a little table with her tea set, a teapot full of water and a large bowl of those same round buds I had been so eagerly watching. I was devastated but put on a smile and sat down for tea. There were a few buds left that turned out to be gorgeous peonies. I resolved to make sure they were undisturbed the following year.
        We were anxiously watching news reports during that time about Mt. St. Helens. This active volcano had been rumbling since March 15th, signaling that an eruption might be eminent. It was certainly due for another. A bulge started showing on the north slope of the mountain, growing larger over the next two months. The big eruption was on May 18th, 1980. The ash from that first eruption blew east, but subsequent eruptions also spewed ash that often came our way. This was a huge inconvenience for everyone. We finally had a car but couldn’t drive in the ash because it would clog the air filter in our car and scrape our windshield if we tried to use our wipers while it was falling. We had to wear masks to avoid breathing the ash. It was a very fine silica, like ground glass, that could give you coal miner’s disease if taken into the lungs. We couldn’t use painter’s masks because they weren’t enough to filter the ash. We had to have the next grade with the foam filters in them. I took the filter out of one and fashioned a tiny mask for Justin, who was just over a year old. We also had to go out a hose it down to create a thick mud then shovel it into large trash bags for the city to pick up.
        The other inconvenience was in going to Saturday Market. We never knew when the next eruption would be, and there were doomsday prophets everywhere downtown holding up signs proclaiming the end of the world had come and we should all repent before it was too late. Being downtown was no longer much fun. A lot of the stalls were closed, and a lot of the buskers had moved on to greener, and less ashy, pastures. Our neighborhood was changing, too. The folks on one side of us, Patty and Jim, were thinking about moving to the coast. They had a community of friends in Tillamook County and were going to join them. We were no longer feeling as settled and getting itchy for another move ourselves, but Jessie would soon be starting school.
        She started Kindergarten that fall, already reading. The school wouldn’t let her read in Kindergarten and had a policy of not having younger children go into older classrooms for advanced learning. I hadn’t taught her to read. She had learned it on her own. Her dad and I constantly read to both kids from the time they were born, and one day, Jessie read a cereal box to me. I couldn’t believe it and thought it was a fluke at first. We went to the library and got out some books I had never read to her before, and sure enough, she could read. I kept up with her learning at home, encouraging her advanced reading while the school continued to discourage it. Needless to say, I was not happy with the school system.
        The other change for Jessie was meeting new friends. Paul and I were pot smokers and had cautioned her not to say anything to others about it. We explained that it was illegal, and that we could get into trouble. The first week she was in school, she came home and informed me whose parents smoked and whose didn’t. She had polled all of her new friends so that she could make an informed decision about who was safe to talk to about it. Ugh! The other issue we had happened the first time she had an afterschool playdate. At our house, we only ate whole foods, no sugar and mostly vegetarian. Her friend’s mother had offered them cookies and Kool-Aid for an afterschool snack. Jessie refused, knowing that I wouldn’t approve then came home in tears because she didn’t have a snack. I quickly explained that the rules in our house around food were just for our house, and when she was away, she could use her own discretion.
        Coincidentally, Patty and Jim had another friend who had a house in Hebo, Oregon, not far from where they would be living, that he wanted to rent out while he went off traveling. Before we knew it, we were moving again. The house was right at the corner of Rt. 22 and 101, a major intersection. We lived next door to the Hebo Inn, known for the two n’s being backwards. It was a nice house, a little too big for us, but it was nice to spread out after living in such small places before. And, there was a little hobbit room upstairs that Jessie thought was very magical. It was a full-sized ceiling, but the door was half-sized, so you had to duck way down to enter. We also had another great yard with a river running on the side. The elementary school, where Jessie would continue Kindergarten, was less than a block away. It had a wood furnace that we didn’t have to use much at all and was a short drive from the ocean.
        The move itself was very stressful. We had accumulated furniture, household goods, clothes and toys and had a Plymouth to move with. We couldn’t afford to rent a truck. Luckily, Amber came to help with her VW bus. She was still learning to drive a stick shift, so she asked me to drive. I was so thankful that Paul had taken both kids with him because we encountered a severe rain storm while crossing over the coastal mountain range, and Amber’s bus had broken windshield wipers. It’s amazing we made it in one piece. It was yet another example of trusting the universe to keep us safe. And we did make it safely. We settled in, got Jessie enrolled in school and soon started hosting a weekly Open Mic at a local café in Pacific City, right on the coast.

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Life in Portland continued

4/10/2019

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Top: Mike and Lars with Paul, Jessie, Justin and neighbors Jerry and Stephen. Bottom: Justin's 1-year birthday

Ray and his burnt out van. I remember taking this photo so I would always remember.

Saturday Market was an amazing place full of local color. We played there every weekend, often both Saturday and Sunday. Because we were busking, we often received some unusual and very cool gifts, like our music pipe. One day, we were playing our usual varied selection going from jazz and blues to country to Zappa, the Dead and Joni Mitchell. A long-hair stopped and listened for quite a long time. After we finished “Friend of the Devil,” he came over and slipped a non-descript brown zippered pouch in our case. It looked well-made, and pouches are always useful. We smiled and thanked him. At our lunch break, we went to the nearby park, as usual, and picnicked with the kids. Paul reached over and opened up the pouch then looked up at me with wide eyes. Inside was a beautiful handmade pipe. It had a cherry bowl and a small ebony piece separating it from the elk antler stem with scrimshaw etched on it. Also inside the pouch was a paper describing the materials used with directions for cleaning it. “Take a bass E string, heat it until it is glowing red, then push it through the stem. Listen for the sizzling sound.” We dubbed it our “music pipe,” and I still have it today. That same day, we were filmed for a TV special to be aired in Japan. Paul and I chuckled to ourselves when they came in for a closeup as we sang the line, ”Living on reds, vitamin C and cocaine …”
We always packed a lunch and ate in the park. The homeless people also hung out in the park, and my kids would share their leftovers with them. Then they would hang out and visit. We knew them all, and they knew us by name. To my kids, they were just friendly people, though once in while Jessie would remark that some of them smelled bad. One time, my parents were visiting, and we took them downtown for a tour. In every doorway, some homeless man would sit up and greet us. My mom, whose dad was homeless I was to find out much later on, turned to me, a little horrified, and said, “Are these your friends?” “Well, yes. Kind of,” I replied. Those same men did me a great service a year later when Mount St. Helens erupted.
We met people who would turn out to be wonderful friends forever, including Clinton. Clinton was a Yale student who decided to take a year off to travel the country. He was learning to juggle and decided busking was not only a good way to hone his skill but maybe he’d also make a little money. He had met the Karamazov Brothers and learned a little from them. Now he was in Portland and had no place to stay. During our travels, Paul and I had stayed with many different people and were always willing to put people up. Clinton asked if he could pitch a tent in our yard. Of course, we said yes. After a little while, I noticed that he was coming in to use the bathroom more than seemed usual. I finally asked him about it. It seems that, although he was making a little money here and there, he wasn’t making much and had been living on the fruit growing on the trees in our yard – mostly plums. I insisted that he start having his meals with us, which he did. There are lots of wonderful stories that include Clinton as he became one of our best friends.
Amber and I reconnected, and Paul never stopped bringing random people to the house. We now had a wide assortment of friends, including musicians who we jammed with regularly. It felt like maybe we were settling down for a change. One day, Paul brought home a couple of German young men visiting the US. They spoke very little English but were able to communicate enough for us to find out that they were studying construction and were looking forward to touring the cement factory in Portland. They thought that Portland cement was made in Oregon and asked us to set up a tour for them. The man I spoke to at the factory told me that they were not the famous Portland cement place, but Lars and Mike didn’t care. They came to tour a cement factory and were determined to do it. They had already gone to Portland, Maine with the same result. The fellow at the factory was thrilled to be giving his first tour ever, and they were satisfied. They stayed with us for a week during which they spoke to my kids in German, telling them stories and singing German children’s songs. In the book, I will relay another very funny story about their visit. All in all, it was a great experience for all of us even with the language barrier.
Another couple that we knew were Pam and Mark. They knew that Paul and I never got out without my kids, and they had gotten to know them. They told us they eventually wanted kids themselves. There was an all-day concert coming up with The Grateful Dead, David Bromberg, Allman Brothers and more. They offered to babysit, so that we could go to the show together. I was reluctant because Justin was so clingy, but I also desperately needed to go out as a free adult. I pumped plenty of milk, and I knew Jessie would be there, too. Justin adored his sister. He cried when I left, and I did, too. Paul assured me all would be well. After about an hour into the show, my milk started flowing. I assumed it was because I was thinking of him. But it didn’t really stop. This was before the days of cell phones, and there was no access to a phone in the middle of this big field. After a while, I started to feel panicky and insisted that we go home. Thankfully, Paul was reasonable about it. We’d been there for a few hours already and had seen the bands we were really attached to seeing. We got home and walked in the house to find Mark walking up and down with a screaming baby while Pam was reduced to a puddle of tears on the floor. Justin had been screaming the entire time I was gone. So much for getting a break.
Then, one day Paul brought home Ray. Ray was also traveling around the country after a tragic breakup with his long-term girlfriend. He was broken-hearted and broke. He asked if he could stay while he found a job and saved enough money to make it back home in the Southeast. Of course, we said yes … again. However, this time we regretted it. Ray was a closet Christian but didn’t live as a Christian. He was pushy and selfish, the polar opposite of Clinton. He would think nothing of eating all the food in the refrigerator and try to make us feel guilty when we called him out on it. One day, I caught him proselytizing to Jessie, giving her a child’s Bible and scaring her about the fires of hell. I lost it at that point and, after screaming at him, told Paul he had to go. He’d been working and never gave us anything, so I knew he must have plenty of money for his drive home.
A week later, he asked Paul to go out for a farewell drink. Hooray! He was leaving early the next day. He packed his van with all of his things and off they went. When Paul walked in the door without him hours later, I suspected that something had gone terribly wrong. Apparently, the van wouldn’t start so Ray decided to pour some gasoline into the carburetor, which was in the cab in this Chevy van, and accidentally set the van on fire. An hour later, the burned-out shell of his van was towed to our driveway. He lost everything, including all of the money he had saved. Normally, I am a very generous and understanding person, but I insisted he find another place to stay. He’d already been with us for a miserable month, and I knew I couldn’t put up with him for even one more day. He moved on, and life resumed with way less stress.
Next up ... Mt. St. Helens and another move.

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Single Parenting and Busking

4/3/2019

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Not the one I used but similar enough

Shortly after this difficult birth, Paul found out that his dad was dying of cancer. He’d always had a stormy relationship with his dad and wanted to try to have a better ending, so he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for a month and a half to be with him in his final days. Justin was only a month old and already very attached to me. The absence of his dad solidified that attachment, as I quickly became more of a supermom than I already was. We still had no car and very little money, so taxis were out of the question, and everything was just too cumbersome for a bus. Because of the cloth diapers I was using, it was impossible for me to lug both children and huge loads of laundry to the laundromat more than a mile away, so I washed our clothes in the bathtub, boiled the diapers on the stove and, because it was winter in the rainy Northwest, hung everything to dry in the living room. I had a Tupperware device that looked like a plunger with multiple cups that had holes in them for hand washing clothes. That helped, but it was an endless job. I felt like a pioneer woman. After three or four weeks of this, my parents, who rarely helped out, finally took pity on me and sent money for disposable diapers which helped a lot. Now I only had to worry about the muddy clothes from playing outside in mud instead of the snow I’d been used to.
        Meanwhile, I was still recovering from the bruised ribs that occurred during my pregnancy and now had massive back pain. I found out years later that the back pain was due to that same pregnancy. Not only did it bruise my ribs, but my scoliosis, which had been managed earlier in my life had started progressing again. But for now, I was a single mom with two kids to care for, and I had to just push through the pain, though there were days when I struggled to even get out of bed and had to depend on Jessie to mostly care for herself. Justin was a clingy baby, so it was easiest to wear him all the time in spite of the discomfort. I wore him while I did my house cleaning and cooking and while I spent much needed time with his sister. I would shower as quickly as I could while he lay in his crib screaming and refusing to be entertained by his sister. When Paul finally returned, Justin didn’t even remember him and was very shy, refusing to be held by his own dad.
        Grocery shopping was easier because there was a little Chinese grocery store just a couple of blocks away that was an easy walk. They had great produce, and I could buy tofu, which I had recently discovered, in bulk from the back room. I would go knock on the window and hold up one finger or two. The worker would bring it out to me with a big grin, obviously thrilled that a Caucasian was buying tofu. Once, in very broken English, a woman asked me how I cooked it. She was stunned when I told her I used it in spaghetti sauce and said she would try it. One day, I stuck Justin in the front pack and put on my framed backpack to go buy some food. As usual, I bought more than anticipated and had a full heavy pack on my back. As we were walking along, Jessie saw a flower and insisted that I lean down to smell it. As she reached for me to push me further down, I lost my balance and fell onto my back. I quickly realized that I couldn’t get up from this position. The pack was so heavy that I also couldn’t roll over. I was stuck like a turtle on its back. Jessie tried to push and pull me to no avail. I had no idea what to do and felt like a complete fool, plus it was very uncomfortable. We were on a shortcut that was a dead-end road with very little foot traffic. After what seemed like an eternity but was just under an hour, someone came walking by, and Jessie ran up to him asking if he could please help her mama, which he did. Thankfully, I never saw him again.
        Once the weather turned nicer, we got to know our neighbors and really enjoyed their company. Before that, I felt very isolated and had started plunging into depression again. The constant gray skies and rain didn't help either. Now, I saw the neighbors every day. I also could go out walking in a more pleasant environment without the cold rain and sometimes icy conditions. There were children on either side of us that were similar in age to my kids, and they got to be great friends. There were Jerry and Stephen on one side and Shard, Baird and Lucy on the other. Stephen and Lucy were both babies, and Jerry was Jessie’s age. Shard and Baird were older, but Baird and Jessie enjoyed playing together. One day, the two of them came racing into the house. Jessie was always a big talker. She even talked in her sleep so much that it often kept me awake until I got used to it. This day, she rambled on frenetically, jumping up and down and waving her arms. I couldn’t understand a word she said and kept trying to get her to slow down. Every once in a while, she would run back and forth until she was out of breath then start up again. Eventually, I found out that she was telling me about this great snack they just had … coffee beans!!! They had gotten into the jar of whole beans when no one was looking and had a feast. Their pockets were even full of them. She did this once more with a neighbor across the street, only this time they ate a bottle of children’s vitamins.
        The other thing that changed, once the weather got nicer, is that we went back to busking. We had done it in California and occasionally on our way across the country. In Portland, there was a weekly market, “Saturday Market.” We soon became fixtures there along with many other buskers. We brought the kids along and made it a family outing. Justin was sitting up now and would sit in the guitar case playing with the money. He never ate it but often threw it back out at people. This was a great hook, and folks often put even more in. Jessie was also getting older and wore her flowing long hippie skirts, dancing around while we played and sang, drawing a crowd with her cuteness. We met the most amazing characters there. There was Tom Noddy the Bubble Man and Artis the Spoon Man. They spent summers in the Northwest and winters in Florida, making a good living performing on the streets. They’ve both been on television numerous times, and you can find them online. Artis taught Jessie her very first string figure, even before she learned Cat's Cradle. There were jugglers and magicians, there and was always a hammered dulcimer player who drew the biggest crowds playing the same four or five tunes over and over again. There was also a hippie woman walking around with a basket on her head that held pot cookies. Most of the kids didn’t realize what they were and often followed her around begging for a cookie, but she had her standards and only sold to those she knew were cool. All of the performers knew each other, and we were quickly invited into the “inner sanctum” – the smoking room in the back of an open warehouse.

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A Move, a Cat And a New Baby

3/26/2019

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After our move to Portland, the first thing I did was find a midwife. Luckily, there was a midwifery school in town that sent me three women to assist with my homebirth. I was looking forward to this new adventure. Everything was falling into place. We had wonderful neighbors on both sides of us with young kids that Jessie could play with, and all three houses were set far off the main road on our own little dirt road in a gully so that I didn’t worry about her safety. Each of the three yards was ¾ of an acre, and Jessie was thrilled to have a huge area to play in with new friends on either side. There were fruit trees and lots of flowers in the back creating a virtual wonderland for the kids.
        We moved in November, and I was due to have my second child in the beginning of February. Our friends Debbie and Steve, who had traveled across the country with us, were living in Portland, so we quickly reconnected with them. It was wonderful to have them around. Debbie agreed to come over for the birth to support Jessie during that time. She was also going to help out afterwards but ended up not being able to get the time off from work. Amber and I were still estranged, so Paul and I started trying to make new friends. I also started collecting things I would need for our household and for our new child. Because we were newcomers, there would be no baby shower or hand-me-downs. There also wasn’t much time left, so I had to be creative and move fast.
        When we first moved in, the house itself was a mess. It looked as though the previous tenants had pets that they didn’t monitor very well. They also hadn’t cleared out the debris from their move, so we had our hands full. When we made the original deal, they told us they’d like to leave us their cat. They didn’t think he would make the move well. We both loved cats and had them as pets before, so of course we agreed. Leon was the biggest cat I’d seen up to that point. He was slate gray, scarred and feisty but was great with Jessie. He would let her pick him up and carry him around with his hind legs hopping along behind. He never hissed or scratched her, and we grew to love him. However, initially, we weren’t so sure.
        Once we got the house all cleaned up, we realized that the major mess was mostly due to Leon, that huge gray tomcat who refused to use a litter box. I’ve always been very good at training cats, but this cat was stubborn. Finally, I insisted that he live outdoors for a while until he could learn his manners. He was not happy about that and always tried to sneak in. One middle of the night, we heard the sound of repeated banging in the bathroom. We ran in just in time to see a final head bump by Leon as the bathroom window broke and he jumped through sitting there meowing at us. We called the previous tenants, who we thought were his owners to come take him back and found out that he had originally come with the house, and they were never able to break him of the habit of shitting in the house. Funny that they forgot to mention that little detail. We replaced the window, kept him outside during the day and in a box at night. We learned to ignore the howling, and he eventually learned to go outside when he needed to. He would meow at the side of the bed, usually in the middle of the night, to be let out – most of the time. I have to confess that there was one night, when our power went out due to a transformer, when Paul lost it. We’d heard a huge pop, and Paul went around with a flashlight to investigate. Much to his astonishment, he stepped in a fresh pile of cat shit and slid across the floor, landing in it on his back. I got up just in time to see him drop kick the cat out the front door. That was the last cat mess we had to deal with. Leon finally learned.
        Leon was not always home, though. He would frequently disappear for days and days at a time. One day, Jessie and I were taking a walk when we saw him at another house. He came running over, purring and rubbing against our legs. We wondered what he was doing so far away. An older woman came out and started calling to him … by a different name. He looked up at us, gave a short meow and ran to her, purring and rubbing against her legs. I went over and asked her about our cat. She insisted that he was her cat. We soon discovered that Leon had three other homes that he visited regularly. Each of us had wondered where he disappeared to so often, and now the mystery was solved. He’d figured out how to game the system. I often wondered why he put up with my insistence that he obey the rules of the house, but apparently the house was his because when we eventually moved, he disappeared and stayed behind. Our neighbors told us that he came back soon afterwards and moved in with the new tenants.
        There must have been something about that house because not long afterwards, we got a cute little white puppy that we named Cola. We weren’t going to make the same mistake as we had with Topaz and checked her feet. This was going to be a small dog. She was small alright but was nippy and barked a lot. She was also very difficult to house train. Paul insisted that we get fish, too. And of course, a fish tank had to have snails to clean the sides. Before long, we had a tank full of snails and no fish, but the sides were free of algae. Now, here I was 8-months pregnant with a 3-year old, a street-wise tomcat, an obnoxious little puppy that liked to nip at our heels and a stinky fish tank so full of snails you could hardly see anything else. Paul was working long hours, so I was mostly on my own. This was no longer my dream home, and I spent a lot of time outside in the yard or going on adventures with Jessie.
        Finally, on February 4th, I went into labor. Everything was arranged. I had support for Jessie while I was in labor, three midwives, and Paul and Debbie both had arranged for time off from work. With their help, what could possibly go wrong? Plenty! I had carried higher than I had with Jessie, and my ribs were very bruised from all the kicking during my last month of pregnancy. My legs were also swollen, and I could barely walk. At the last minute, Debbie’s boss decided not to give her any time off, so she was only around in the evenings. Paul’s boss also decided that he could get time off for my labor and delivery but no time after the birth. On February 5th, when I was still in labor, his boss accused him of scamming him and sent a co-worker over to check up on him. In the wee hours of February 6th, after 10-hours of transitional labor and the midwives threatening to take me to the hospital, I finally birthed my son. Justin had been facing in the wrong direction and eventually turned around while in the birth canal. I was exhausted and was facing being alone with my two children and my still badly bruised ribs while my support team went back to their jobs.
        One fascinating part of my labor was when Jessie would not go to bed the night Justin was born. She was crying that she wanted to see her brother be born, but it had been many late nights, and she was exhausted. Debbie couldn’t console her, so I went in to see what I could do. Although I was in full-blown labor at this point, my labor stopped completely while I comforted and sang to her. It started back up again as soon as she was fully asleep. We had promised that we would wake her when it was time, which we did. I’ll never forget the look on her face as she stroked my brow and told me, “I know it’s hard work, Mama, but you can do it.” She was awed by her brother’s birth and insisted that she had helped. She certainly did.
        Now, it was my turn to be exhausted. I was facing caring for a toddler and a newborn on my own. There was no meal train, no friends stopping by, no rest for me, just business as usual. That next morning, Paul set out a breakfast for Jessie that she could get herself and bring into the bedroom so I could try to rest. She finished up and brought her dishes back to the kitchen, grabbing books and puzzles that we could enjoy together. Just then, Justin woke up and started to cry. “I’ll get him,” she said. “No, please don’t. He’s still too little,” I replied, struggling to get up as quickly as I could as she raced for the cradle whisking him up and out and dropping him onto the floor. Uh-oh, I knew I was going to have my hands full.

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Washington State and Timberline Lodge

3/20/2019

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Mount Adams

We finally arrived in Husum, Washington where my best friend, Amber, had just had her first child named Harvest. Amber had been with me for the birth of my first child, and now I wanted to be there for her. She was living in an old farmhouse on the side of Mount Adams with a beautiful view of the mountains. Her daughter was beautiful, of course. Her relationship with Harvest’s dad was not so beautiful, and he was mostly absent, leaving Amber to take care of everything by herself. Unfortunately, at that time, Paul and I were not the best house guests. There was no indoor plumbing, and Paul really didn’t know how to deal with that, so he made quite a few mistakes that added to the tension already in the house.

Timberline Lodge

In addition, we needed to settle somewhere, so he went looking for work. He finally found a job at Timberline Lodge, a ski resort on Mount Hood that had been built by the WPA during the Great Depression. FDR wanted to give artists and artisans employment, so he put them to work building this spectacular lodge. There are murals, wood carvings, tile work, stone work and much more. It is a beautiful work of art. There is snow on the mountain all year round, so it’s a popular place for skiing, even the Olympic teams have trained there. In order to get to work every day, he had to live there in the employee housing. However, he couldn’t bring his family, so Jessie and I stayed behind seeing him only on weekends.

We had a wonderful leave taking the night before he left for the lodge. At one point, I warned him that there might end up being another baby on the way. We both decided that would be fine and not much later, I was absolutely sure. In all of my pregnancies, I never got morning sickness. I always felt healthier than ever before. This one was no different. I would occasionally feel a tiny upset, but it was never very uncomfortable and didn't last long. However, my emotions were raw. Here I was living in a very stressful environment with a 3-year old and expecting another baby. We didn’t have our own home yet, and my husband was living on another mountain. Sometimes I would drive to visit him on a weekend and very rarely, he would come to Husum. Neither of us wanted to be there any longer, and we weren’t really welcome anymore either.

Zig Zag Inn

Eventually, we moved into a motel at the base of Mount Hood. We had two rooms and a bathroom for a weekly rate. There were other people living there, too. Finally, Paul found us a tiny cabin in the village of Zig Zag. This cabin also had two rooms and a bath but was even smaller than the motel rooms. But at least here, Jessie and I could walk to the Post Office and the little health food store for some socialization.

Hippies that we were, we loved knowing that our address was Zig Zag, Oregon. But that was the extent of the perks. I was very lonely and becoming more depressed every day. There were no neighbors, and I had no friends here. After a short while, Paul lost the job at the lodge and had to go looking for work in Portland. On one hand, I was relieved. I was going to be having a baby and had decided to have a home birth after the fiasco of my first hospital birth, and the clock was ticking. I needed to find a midwife. We hoped that we could move to the city soon.

Our car had broken down, and we had no money to fix it, so Paul spent the next few months hitchhiking to and from Portland for his job. He would leave at 4 am and get home late at night. Once again, the time we had together, which was very little, was spent fighting. And I wasn’t the best mother to Jessie at that time. I became so depressed, it was difficult to get out of bed. I had to force myself to read to her and play games, but I made sure that we went for our walk every day to and from the Post Office and up and down the little road we lived on. I forced myself to put on a good face, but she could tell that things were not the same.

We finally met a couple who lived on our road, only two cabins away. They invited us for dinner one night where I ate tofu for the first time. They cooked it in spaghetti sauce. They had friends visiting who were living in Portland and looking for a place on the mountain near their friends. How synchronistic! We were looking for a place in Portland. We were each paying $350/month rent and decided to just trade houses. Each of the landlords were pleased, so we moved to 10605 East Burnside Avenue when I was almost seven months pregnant. In addition to all of the other stressors, Amber and I were not speaking, and I missed my friend. Luckily, enough time had gone by from when we had dropped off Debbie and Steve after our nightmare of a trip, that we reconnected with them and started a new life in the city.

The new house was wonderful. We didn’t have access to the back rooms with the washer and dryer, but we now had two good sized bedrooms, a large living room and eat-in kitchen and a huge backyard. The house was set back off the main road on a little dirt cut away with another house on either side of us. Our neighbors were great with kids of their own, so we ended up taking down the fences between our yards giving all of the kids free rein of a lot of land. We were right on a main bus line making it easy to get anywhere we wanted. We were ecstatic! We were ready for this next phase in our nomadic life.

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On the Road Again

3/12/2019

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Wind River Canyon, Wyoming

One of the friends I had while living in Connecticut was a woman with the same name. That wasn’t unusual. In fact, Debbie was such a common name, I had multiple friends named Deborah or Debbie for short. This particular friend was looking for a change. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend who had fallen in love with someone else and moved away to be with her instead. When I told Debbie that we were planning to move back to the west coast, she asked if she could join us. She was one of the few people around whom we felt comfortable having our child, and we realized that it would be good to have another driver with their contribution to the fuel expense, so we said okay.  A few days before we were due to leave, her ex-boyfriend decided that he had made a mistake and wanted her back. She begged us to let him join us. After much back and forth, we finally agreed. I was worried about the fact that he had broken her heart which was still feeling raw, and we were going to be trapped in a car with them. Then there was the fact that there were now four adults and a small child, with all of the belongings we could manage to fit, in a Plymouth Valiant. Paul, always the optimist, assured me that all would be well. Boy, was he wrong.
          The trip was stressful even before we started on the road. We had a couple of meetings during which Debbie and Steve argued. We finally told them that one of the conditions of continuing on with us was that they agree not to argue in the car. So, they often took it outside. The car was packed so full that even the floor in the back was packed right up to the seat, so whoever was in the back had to sit cross-legged. Jessie was in the back with two adults, and I hoped that whoever was back there would help keep her occupied. That didn’t work out the way I’d hoped.  Steve decided to bring along his comic book collection. They were all encased in plastic sleeves and worth a lot of money, so he didn’t want anyone but himself touching them. Tell that to a two-year old. Not only was there constant tension between him and Debbie, who didn't actually fight inside the car, as per our agreement, now he fought with our two-year old in the car over his comics during the entire trip. He also ate sardines on the road, stinking up the car, making everyone nauseous, and there was no reasoning with him. I wanted to drop them off somewhere and let them find their own way, but Paul was insistent that we needed their monetary contributions and their driving abilities.
          When we got to Ohio, they wanted to stay for a few days and visit with a friend of theirs. We wanted to keep moving and had a friend in Kansas City, Kansas that we wanted to visit. We dropped them off in Ohio and drove to Kansas. The plan was for them to hitchhike and meet us in Kansas City by a certain date or we would go on without them. I hoped that they would decide not to come or would come too late and we’d be freed from this burden. Just as I started to breathe a sight of relief, because the rides had been in their favor, they showed up right at the last minute, so we had a full compliment once again.
          Paul and I wanted to get to Washington State, where Amber was waiting for us, as quickly as possible, but Debbie and Steve really wanted to see the Grand Tetons. We were traveling in May, and I knew from past experience that there was often still snow in May, but there was no deterring them, so off we went to Wyoming. We hit a snowstorm and ended up spending the night in a motel, an expense that we hadn’t expected or prepared for, but it turned out to be a good thing since Jessie had picked up some stomach bug and vomited all night long. By the time we reached our destination, I had a constant headache and was running on fumes from lack of sleep.
          We had a lot of grand adventures during that trip including a trip to Wind River Canyon where Jessie was picked up by the wind and carried off, causing her dad and I to chase after her, finally grabbing her foot as she went sailing through the air. We connected with old friends along the way and finally made it to Husum, Washington where Amber had just had her first child.  That was the most stressful trip we made, including one to come a few years later that, although it was stressful, there were lots of fun elements that kept us going. This one didn’t have a lot of fun.  Even Paul, who was very easy going with friends, had enough by that time, and was starting to fight with Steve. Once during the trip, I thought they would actually physically fight but thankfully, we were able to avoid that. We did manage to stay friends with Debbie and Steve, after a little time went by, and grew to really treasure that friendship.  They were both a big part of my first two children's lives. I'm so glad to know them.
          I’ve been taking these blog posts, expanding upon them, adding details and more stories and turning them into chapters for a book. I’ve been wanting to write a book for a long time and just felt overwhelmed by it. Where do I start? What do I write about? Now I figure I’ll write different themed books. One will be about my travels, maybe about my childhood, teaching, who knows. This first one will be “Recollections of a Hippie Mama.” I only have a few photos from that time, but I will include some of those as well.

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A Year in Connecticut

3/7/2019

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When we arrived in Connecticut, after finishing up my parents’ vacation with them in New Hampshire, we immediately hit up the local bar for a gig. It was a huge success with all of our friends showing up to support us. Of course, we were convinced that this was our big start, so we set up housekeeping in Connecticut. My parents were thrilled. They would have their only grandchild close by. Now, you have to understand that my parents hated my husband. He was not who they had envisioned for me. He was a long-haired hippie who had been on the road since he was 14 and had whisked me away hitchhiking across the country. But at least he had married me when I got pregnant and provided for us, so they began talking to him on our return.
        That doesn’t mean that things weren’t still tense. My parents were very conservative Republican, and my dad was quite influential in town. They knew that we smoked pot, which was a very big deal at that time. They also knew that we were very radical politically, and that was an even bigger deal. As a result, my daughter (Jessie) spent a lot of time with them by herself. Unfortunately, my sister was 16 years younger than me and became jealous of this interloper. She had been close to me before I left. Now I came back with a baby. How could I abandon her like that? At that time, they were both young enough that it was manageable, though that changed years later. Also, my mom still had a young child at home and wasn't available as often as I had hoped she would be.
Meanwhile, I took Jessie on walks around the neighborhood every day. We visited the firehouse which was only a block away and walked to the library. There was the park where I had gone to school with swings and slides. We also walked to the nearby vacant lot every morning. She called it the meadow. We would run and play, picking wildflowers and watching the butterflies. After a few rainy days, when we were unable to visit the meadow, we noticed that our apartment was vibrating - a lot! The dishes were rattling, and things were falling off the shelves. We finally got a sunny day and walked over to the meadow only to find that it had been transformed into a rock crushing operation. I looked at Jessie, worried at what her reaction would be. She looked up at me with awe and said, “Look Mommy! Now we can go to the mountains!” And we did, every morning. Luckily for us, they only worked in the afternoons and evenings.
        None of our friends had children yet, so it was difficult for us to acclimate into our old group of friends. Many of them were wonderful, but we just couldn’t go out on the town every night as we had in the past. We did have a babysitter that lived in our building and hired her until we discovered that she was stealing our pot and getting way too high while watching our child. Jessie was not in school, and we didn’t go to a church, so it felt impossible to meet other young parents. We also struggled with finding other musicians to play with. In California, we'd had a full exciting life where we'd grown up a lot and changed our views on many things. Now, we were back in a conservative environment where many of our friends had not changed at all, still living the high life with no responsibilities. We were quickly becoming dissatisfied with our current environment.
In addition to those struggles, making a living in Connecticut was just as hard as it had been when we left. The cost of living was high, and we were unskilled workers. Our friends, who had come out en masse to support our music soon tired of it and went their own way. Paul worked two jobs while I tried my hand at different jobs … a school crossing guard and a school bus driver. Ugh! Although I could bring Jessie with me to both of these jobs, they both turned out to be horrible.
        As a crossing guard, I was often the target of curses and had to jump out of the way of cars trying to run me down, sometimes while the kids were still crossing. Even with my little sign and vest, there was just no respect for that during rush hours. The school bus job was just as bad. I drove a short bus, bringing Jessie along for the ride. There were still no seat belts back then, and I was refused an aide. I had one girl who removed every item of clothing one at a time, throwing them out the bus window as I drove. Jessie soon learned to do that, too. By the time I reached my destination, I would have two naked girls. I had another girl who tried to run out of the bus every time I stopped to let someone on or off. I would open the door and lunge for her, holding her while she kicked and flailed at me and whoever was getting on or off. Once she got away and I had to flag down a passerby to chase her down and bring her back because I couldn’t leave the bus unattended. It was a zoo! Time and time again I requested back-up, but no help came. For a short while, the mom of a boy on crutches rode with me in the mornings. But that was short lived as he only needed the ride until he was off crutches.
        I finally gave up the bus driving job because they got tired of me complaining about the lack of an aide and decided to put me into the bus that drove to the projects. The woman who had driven that route before me had been attacked by the students and ended up in the hospital, so there was a vacancy. They assured me that I shouldn’t worry because they had now installed a radio, so I could call for help if needed. Although I enjoyed driving the buses, and mostly enjoyed the kids, that was the end of my bus driving career.
        Meanwhile, Paul was working nights at a high-rise private club as a chef and daytimes as a school cafeteria cook and manager. He had Sundays off and slept most of the day. Life had gotten very stressful there. We fought for much of the time he was awake, and my mother was once again starting to try to run my life, which was one of the reasons I had left originally. We realized that we needed to get out of there … again … so we started to plan the next move.

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China Bound

Tillamook County, Oregon

Living on the Oregon Coast

Moving to the Coast

Life in Portland continued

Single Parenting and Busking

A Move, a Cat And a New Baby

Washington State and Timberline Lodge

On the Road Again

A Year in Connecticut

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