I am big on obituaries. I think they are a beautiful way to sum up someone's life, in a way that leaves them fondly remembered or vilified or whatever the case may be. I think in most cases, it's the first time someone is being recognized for how neat their life was. I read this recently: an amazing life.
Jim Quivey, 85, passed away February 14, 2011. He was born January 28, 1926 in Columbus, OH. During the Depression, Jim's parents, James and Nona, moved Jim and his sister Jean to Pittsburgh, Pa., so they could obtain employment at a large dairy farm. Jim served as an Army 101st Airborne paratrooper in 19944-45, during WWII. He was stationed in Germany. While attending school in Pittsburgh, Pa., he met Margaret Dolinar; they were married in 1947. Two children were born from this union: Linda and Dennis.
Jim's life was the greatest after they moved to Oelrichs, SD, and he started raising draft horses at 57. For him to go to the field and work with 10 broke horses was the greatest time imaginable. In his mid-60s they had a total of 18 head of work horses.
In 1994, Jim was involved in a terrible accident at Crazy Horse Monument near Custer, SD with a wagon and team. Jim was thrown out of the wagon when the seat broke, and he was run over by the heavy wagon. The wheel pinched his spinal cord, leaving him with no feeling or control in his left leg. Two days after the accident while in the hospital, his aorta ruptured, requiring a five hour surgery and 19 units of blood. If there had not been a doctor and EMTs visiting the monument and a heart specialist visiting the hospital in Rapid City, his buckboard would have remained empty. After beating all odds at 72 years young, he won some more life.
Jim was a person who enjoyed working with kids and horses to help them learn. Whether it was learning how to harness them, lead, ride or drive them, he always had a new protege who was learning how to handle horses... He would have an electric blanket over his weakened legs, and a generator running in the back of the wagon. Jim was never one to sit and watch life go by, so he started a business called Jim's Carriage Service. He would hire out to drive a carriage at weddings and a horse-drawn hearse at funerals. Anyone that has ever hauled around a team and a wagon know it is not an easy task for a young and agile person, needless an elderly man with two legs that didn't work real well. It was a tough decision for Jim to sell the business, but he knew it was too physically demanding to keep it going.
On his 80th birthday he decided he was going to sky dive from 10,000 feet, which he did successfully just to prove he could. He would take trips to Florida driving all the way by himself at 79, 80 and 82 (he could barely walk at the time)...The doctors were always amazed by his determination, and the nurses always made sure he had a plate with special homemade cookies... One time they asked him if he had someone to check in on him. Jim quickly responded, I have a neighbor that checks in on me every morning. Little did they know the "neighbor" was a horse that came up to the window every morning.
While pulling the hearse at a funeral...it was a tight squeeze through some of the spots in Rapid City, SD, but Jim could park a team of horses better than most can park an economy car... A common sight was Jim in his scooter driving to the buggy so he could climb up there and take hold of the reins. Jim knew his days were drawing to an end, so he traded a funeral home his horse-drawn hearse for doing his funeral services. He is survived by his sister...daughter...etc... two Belgians and nine Suffolk draft horses.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Life Long Love
"There is such a thing as lovesickness for good horses and mules, and for this there was no cure. People who operate machines know nothing like it. This creaturely love can keep one interested all day long in every motion of a good team or a good saddle horse. And not only all day long, but all year round and all life long."
-Wendell Berry
-Wendell Berry
Saturday, April 9, 2011
When times got tough, my pioneer grandmothers would've told me to buck up.
"My great-grandfather left New York state in the early 1800s bound westward. His adventures have come down by word of mouth in our family. He married a wonderfully brave woman who went with him to the wilds of Michigan, where they operated a trading post. Great-grandmother never saw a single white woman during this period. She bore several children without the comforting presence of another woman. One day her husband went into the forest to hunt, and he never was seen again! No one ever knew whether he met with a hunting accident or died at the hands of Indians. It must have taken great courage for Great-grandmother to pack her belongings and begin the long, dangerous trek back to Wisconsin, alone except for the children. She was an old, old woman when she died and my aunts can remember stories of how she clung to her worn Bible to the very end-- perhaps because it gave her strength and courage through her terrifying adventures."
--Mrs. Leonard Kristiansen, Nashua, IA
"Father was gone for the day when Mother saw a herd of wild, stampeding cattle bearing down on their frail little shack and the precious garden she had tended so lovingly (not to mention the tiny twins in their double cradle and the two-year-old daughter watching out the window). She snatched a red-checkered tablecloth and ran toward the garden waving the cloth. The herd separated and went on either side of the house, missing it and the garden. Mother was deeply grateful for deliverance!"
-- Ella Besaul, La Mesa, CA
--Mrs. Leonard Kristiansen, Nashua, IA
"Father was gone for the day when Mother saw a herd of wild, stampeding cattle bearing down on their frail little shack and the precious garden she had tended so lovingly (not to mention the tiny twins in their double cradle and the two-year-old daughter watching out the window). She snatched a red-checkered tablecloth and ran toward the garden waving the cloth. The herd separated and went on either side of the house, missing it and the garden. Mother was deeply grateful for deliverance!"
-- Ella Besaul, La Mesa, CA
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Trust
My mare was fresh, having not been saddled in several weeks. We loped along and her ears swiveled at each shadow, leaf twitch, and flicker along the trail. The ground cut away, the river charged 70 feet below. Above, the cliff top stood bare against the outline of a mountain behind.
In the trail ahead, several bathtub-sized boulders had tumbled from the thawing, strewn across the path ahead. It was passable, I could see at a glance, but it was not the trail my mare was familiar with from the fall before. She hesitated, just momentarily. Was it a horse-eating rock? Was there a wolf behind it? Was it a trap, a trick, a carefully-disguised predator? She is not a spooky horse, but when alone, any horse will consider a change on the trail twice before approaching. I sat calmly, ready for her decision, broadcasting my confidence and asking her to trust me. We broke to a trot, our bodies moving in unison, as I allowed her to consider her options.
My dog, an exuberant puppy, loped onward. Rocks! He seemed to say. This looks like the perfect place to lift a leg! Maybe a coyote has been here! What kind of scents might be on these rocks?! He leapt over the first one and began hurriedly investigating.
Immediately, my mare changed beat. I sensed her decision and together we moved back into a lope, stepping through and around the boulder field without hesitation, ears and neck calm, forward, and focused. A little predator, a little dog-- she saw his movement around the rocks and understood she could trust the puppy to judge the danger of the unfamiliar scene. She, a prey animal, trusted the predator's decision.
Every instance of her higher intelligence and decision-making capabilities reinforces my life's choice to work in this field, with these horses. I just wish I could communicate these little miracles to the citified humans that are sent down my path..
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Native Wisdom
A memory from 2001, traveling through the Pacific Northwest:
We followed a coastal highway, letting the lay of the land dictate the direction of the car, until we spotted a grey arch rise from the water: a whale! We drove slowly, watching her swim and rise, blow and pause, between the great pines. At each turnout we would stop and watch her journey. We lost sight of her when the bay opened up, and she left us.
We came to a small logging village, quite rough-looking, within the bounds of an indian reservation. There was a small museum a few blocks off Main Street, and we stopped. Following our visit I bought a choker made of shells, and asked the cashier how much tax was. The native woman snorted. "Tax! We don't pay tax," she said. "The government has taken plenty enough from us!"
We followed a coastal highway, letting the lay of the land dictate the direction of the car, until we spotted a grey arch rise from the water: a whale! We drove slowly, watching her swim and rise, blow and pause, between the great pines. At each turnout we would stop and watch her journey. We lost sight of her when the bay opened up, and she left us.
We came to a small logging village, quite rough-looking, within the bounds of an indian reservation. There was a small museum a few blocks off Main Street, and we stopped. Following our visit I bought a choker made of shells, and asked the cashier how much tax was. The native woman snorted. "Tax! We don't pay tax," she said. "The government has taken plenty enough from us!"
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
Brutal Histories
Murder? Even attempted murder? Not out here! With only a few thousand souls, surely it's not an something that happens very frequently out here on the rural western slope. I believe the last murder in Crawford was over water rights in an irrigation ditch at the turn of the century. But with an attempted murder last week in Hotchkiss and a homicide this week in Paonia, things are looking downright ugly. Perhaps it's just cabin fever. Being as entwined in history as I am, it brings to mind the most famous murders in this part of the territory...
A single father became enraged with his child, and gave him a good beating to set him straight. Sometime in the night, the boy died of his injuries. The man woke the boy's grandmother, who they were living with, and forced her at gunpoint to start a kettle boiling. Hot water, lye, everyone in those days knew how to render soap out of hog fat. Why should human fat be so different? The man chopped up his little boy into pieces, and the woman boiled all night to turn him into soap. Exhausted from his efforts, the man fell asleep. Enraged by her grandson's murder, the grandmother took up an axe and killed him while he slept. Since the pot was already boiling, she proceeded to chop him up and drop him into the soap kettle as well! Being of lesser strength than the man, the body wasn't chopped quite finely enough, I'm afraid. Sheriffs looking for the missing man discovered bits of bone in grandmother's hand soap... which eventually lead to the truth coming out. In a very early instance of a jury taking mental illness into account, the woman was institutionalized, rather than jailed, for her part in the murders, at least according to Muriel Marshall, historian and author of Where Rivers Meet. Although this recent Montrose newspaper article says she was jailed: http://www.montrosepress.com/articles/2010/03/24/opinion/columnists/marilyn_cox/doc4ba97a85a3181875348535.txt
Soap murder... I was once traveling through Washington as a young teenager, and we stopped at a beautiful state park with a large, terribly deep lake and mountains on all sides. I remember sitting at a lovely picture window looking out at the deep lake, enjoying a steak at an old dinner club dating back to the turn of the century (I remember it was steak because I was a vegetarian at the time, but was absolutely ravenous from hiking all day and decided I could make an exception). While dining with my family, I read a story printed on the menu about a young woman who worked as a waitress at the lodge many years before. A story like this one tends to stay with an impressionable teenager with a love of history: A young wife disappeared in the 1930s, and while her husband claimed she'd run off with another man, her family was suspicious because she never again contacted them. Years later, a body wrapped in blankets and tied up with ropes was found floating in the middle of this enormous lake. The body was floating not in a state of decomposition, but completely saponified-- turned to soap! The cold depths of the water had acted on the fats in her skin to slowly turn her entire body in an Ivory bar, and as we all know, Ivory floats. Matching dental records identified the woman as the missing waitress, and her husband was tried and found guilty. I thought that was true justice-- she was just waiting for the ropes and weights holding her to the bottom to decay, so she could float to the top and point one pretty white finger at her abusive husband. Here's the whole story:
http://skullsinthestars.com/2010/10/31/the-lady-of-the-lake-a-scientific-ghost-story/
It occurs to me that both of these crimes, as well as the two this past week, were domestic abuse. Both this past week involved estranged husbands committing violence on their wives. I don't know that the pioneers really had it any better than we do today-- surely, alcoholism was rampant, near-poverty conditions caused incredible stress on marriages and families alike, and the extreme work load would've caused such exhaustion that a lack of judgment was likely. Yet, nothing makes it easier to accept when it happens so close to home.
A single father became enraged with his child, and gave him a good beating to set him straight. Sometime in the night, the boy died of his injuries. The man woke the boy's grandmother, who they were living with, and forced her at gunpoint to start a kettle boiling. Hot water, lye, everyone in those days knew how to render soap out of hog fat. Why should human fat be so different? The man chopped up his little boy into pieces, and the woman boiled all night to turn him into soap. Exhausted from his efforts, the man fell asleep. Enraged by her grandson's murder, the grandmother took up an axe and killed him while he slept. Since the pot was already boiling, she proceeded to chop him up and drop him into the soap kettle as well! Being of lesser strength than the man, the body wasn't chopped quite finely enough, I'm afraid. Sheriffs looking for the missing man discovered bits of bone in grandmother's hand soap... which eventually lead to the truth coming out. In a very early instance of a jury taking mental illness into account, the woman was institutionalized, rather than jailed, for her part in the murders, at least according to Muriel Marshall, historian and author of Where Rivers Meet. Although this recent Montrose newspaper article says she was jailed: http://www.montrosepress.com/articles/2010/03/24/opinion/columnists/marilyn_cox/doc4ba97a85a3181875348535.txt
Soap murder... I was once traveling through Washington as a young teenager, and we stopped at a beautiful state park with a large, terribly deep lake and mountains on all sides. I remember sitting at a lovely picture window looking out at the deep lake, enjoying a steak at an old dinner club dating back to the turn of the century (I remember it was steak because I was a vegetarian at the time, but was absolutely ravenous from hiking all day and decided I could make an exception). While dining with my family, I read a story printed on the menu about a young woman who worked as a waitress at the lodge many years before. A story like this one tends to stay with an impressionable teenager with a love of history: A young wife disappeared in the 1930s, and while her husband claimed she'd run off with another man, her family was suspicious because she never again contacted them. Years later, a body wrapped in blankets and tied up with ropes was found floating in the middle of this enormous lake. The body was floating not in a state of decomposition, but completely saponified-- turned to soap! The cold depths of the water had acted on the fats in her skin to slowly turn her entire body in an Ivory bar, and as we all know, Ivory floats. Matching dental records identified the woman as the missing waitress, and her husband was tried and found guilty. I thought that was true justice-- she was just waiting for the ropes and weights holding her to the bottom to decay, so she could float to the top and point one pretty white finger at her abusive husband. Here's the whole story:
http://skullsinthestars.com/2010/10/31/the-lady-of-the-lake-a-scientific-ghost-story/
It occurs to me that both of these crimes, as well as the two this past week, were domestic abuse. Both this past week involved estranged husbands committing violence on their wives. I don't know that the pioneers really had it any better than we do today-- surely, alcoholism was rampant, near-poverty conditions caused incredible stress on marriages and families alike, and the extreme work load would've caused such exhaustion that a lack of judgment was likely. Yet, nothing makes it easier to accept when it happens so close to home.
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