My Family Story # 10: The Road to Somerset

Helen Allison Giles and Charles Edgar Giles 

Being next to the youngest in my family was not always a good thing, especially during the seven-year period on the farm when I was between the ages of five and eleven.  From my vantage point, then, with no information to guide me other than what I saw and the odd comments from my older brother and sisters, I had no idea the farm was losing money.  My parents went from raising cattle to pigs to raising nothing at all, from growing our own crops, to growing crops for the government, to renting our fields and barn to local farmers, all the while searching for an agricultural formula that would pay the bills.  In turn, our hired hands never stayed long and frequently left our farm in worse shape than when they arrived.  All this seemed natural to me. 

From what I recall, Daddy rarely managed the farm’s business, and, I suspect, looking back, he knew less about farming than Mother and, with his commute, was simply not around to learn how to be a farmer, even if he wanted to be one, which I realized as a kid, he decidedly did not.  He came and went like the sun – up in the early morning hours to drive to Pittsburgh and back in time for dinner by seven o’clock that night.  Ultimately, his income as a commodities broker provided the critical revenue necessary to keep the farm operating, the family in good health, and the profitability to free Mother at night after being alone all day with a newborn baby.     

Jerry was born shortly after I started first grade and almost to the year after we had moved from Linshaw Avenue in Pittsburgh.  No longer did Mother see herself as the farmer’s wife with four children in school out to manage the farm, cut costs, and live on what the farm produced, like her grandparents did so proudly for years when she was child, but, rather, she saw herself as a beautiful young mother, once again.  With her focus on the baby, no longer did our daily chores include feeding the livestock or cleaning stalls and over time we stopped going to the barn at all.

Beginning our second year, we shifted from being an active farm family, like the hundreds of other farm families in Somerset County, to becoming what we really were: the landed gentry living far removed from the urbane world of Pittsburgh.  As kids, free of farm work, our chores focused instead on the house, the yard, and the flower gardens around the house.  Likewise, Mother turned to the city of Somerset, where most of the region’s gentry lived, for her friendships and social activities.  Starting with an art class in the evening that second fall, driving to Somerset soon became a daily part of our lives.

Our farm to Somerset was nine miles and took fifteen to twenty minutes.  Mother, though, was a fast driver and, I bet, could do it in ten.  We became used to the commute and went o Somerset for everything from groceries to gas, from necessities to doctor and dentist appointments to trips to the library and music lessons, from movies on Friday and Saturday nights to the Presbyterian church on Sunday.  At night, Mother drove to art classes, bridge games, and social engagements at the country club; Daddy drove to the community theatre and meetings with the Rotary.  As the years progressed, the reasons to make this drive increased, but the distance never became shorter.    

Mother was a no-nonsense driver and didn’t tolerate distractions in her car, the family station wagon.  Not like in the Falcon with Daddy, with whom we could sing camp songs, or listen to stories of him and his friends growing up in Pittsburgh, or play the radio as loud as we wanted.  In Mother’s car, in an era before seat belts – with Holly in the front passenger seat, Jerry on her lap or beside her between her and Mother, and Charley, Allison, and me tight together in the back seat – we sat, staring out the windows and listened to the radio on low, if on at all, as we charged off to Somerset perpetually late for one thing or another. 

At the top of our lane, we would turn left onto Route 31, the main highway to Somerset from the east, especially for truckers who chose not to pay the toll on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  Quickly we would get on the busy road and breeze past the large state-run cemetery on the right; after burials, after family members and mourners returned to their homes, my bother and sisters and I would run up to the cemetery and take our pick of the flowers from the new graves, filling our house with the mournful scent of lilies and lilacs. 

A mile past the cemetery was the crossroads of Brotherton.  On our side of the crossroads was the Brotherton Methodist Church and, on the other side, the entrance to the Scotts’ farm.  The Scotts had a son my age, if not a year younger.  However, our wildness overwhelmed their family and his parents rarely allowed him to play with us.  I could see him playing in his yard by himself and sometime would stop on my bike.  One summer I got up early and peddled down to the Scott’s barn and helped his dad milk their cows.  Mr. Scott, who invited me to join him when he walked by me talking to his son, was surprised I showed up and, even more so, when I came back after that first morning.   

The Scotts and other local families went to the Brotherton Methodist Church at the crossroads, but our family was Presbyterian.  That same summer, though, Mother enrolled Charley, Allison, and me in the bible camp at the Brotherton church, and it was the only time we ever stepped into its sanctuary – to me, it was just as equally dark and holy, with stained glass windows depicting Jesus and his disciples, as the Presbyterian sanctuary in Somerset.  In the community room downstairs, along with other kids from the area, we learned to make outlines of Jesus’ hands on thin sheets of cooper.  I gave mine to Mother, but, like a lot of inconsequential gifts we gave her, she lost it after a couple of weeks.    

At the Brotherton crossroads, if Mother took a left past the church, the next house was where Kenny Peel’s grandparents lived.  Kenny was a boy one year older than me who lived most of the time in Johnstown, but spent weekends and parts of the summer with his grandparents in Brotherton.  When he was around, he frequently played with Allison and me.  Kenny was street-wise and slick and told us thrilling stories of what he and his friends did in the city and how they would get into trouble.  Allison and I wanted to get into trouble too, but we couldn’t think of what we could do in Brotherton. 

Past Kenny’s house, the road went on like a needle sewing farm after farm after farm to its black thread, until, seven miles later, it reached the tiny town of Berlin where at the far end of Main Street our elementary and high schools were located.  Next to the entrance to the schools was a potato chip factory, Snyder’s of Berlin; my memory of recess was the pervasive smell of potato chips frying in the factory's deep vats of fat. 

At the Brotherton crossroads, if, instead of turning left, we took the right, as we often did on our bikes, we would continue into farm country for about a half-mile before the road turned into dirt.  Down a short way an artesian well and a small pond lay hidden in the tall grass.  On the edge of the pond, in the weeds coming out of the water, we would find hundreds of milky white globs of frog eggs.  Cold in our hands and so squishy, I couldn’t help but wonder how many frogs would be born if we left the white globules alone in the water – my brother Charley, though, had other ideas and threw them at us like they were spring’s snowballs.  

Mother always raced straight through the crossroads with all of us packed together in the station wagon.  We now were on our way to Somerset and would quickly pass the Brotherton Garage, the last significant structure on the edge of our farm world.  

The Brotherton Garage was the commercial center of the crossroads; with its three large bays for tractors and farm trucks and two old gas pumps near the office, vehicles of one sort or another from the local area constantly pulled up to the dirty white, wooden clapboard structure.  

The Sikes family lived upstairs above the garage and had three kids in ages close to Holly, Charley, and Allison; their kids often came to our farm to play British Bulldog and build forts in the barn.  At one point, Nancy Sikes, who was Allison’s friend, along with Kenny Peel, who was mine, formed a club with Allison and me, and, together, we ran around our farm, Kenny’s grandparents’ house, the Methodist Church yard, and the Brotherton Garage calling ourselves the SPGs. 

Mr. Sykes was a mechanic in the garage; a heavy-set man with powerful, hairy arms, he was nice enough to us in the apartment upstairs, but not at all friendly when we hung out at the garage.  He always wore dirty, mechanics, short-sleeve work shirts.  Mrs. Sikes, his heavy-set housewife, often watched soap operas on their TV, and every time we came into their apartment, she would be ironing to As the World Turns, Guiding Light, or All My Children.

As kids, if we scraped together enough money, between us we could buy a bottle of root beer, birch beer, or Coca-Cola in the coke machine within the dirty office of the Brotherton Garage.  With no extra money to pay a five-cent deposit for the glass bottle, we would sit on our bikes outside the big bays and share the soda between us, trying to stay out of the way of the trucks coming into the garage and beyond Mr. Sykes’ threats to send us home. 

Inside the small office an old, wooden-frame, plate glass counter partitioned the room in half and separated the red horizontal Coke machine from the wooden desks cluttered thick with papers and receipts.  I remember staring down through the glass counter at the Clark candy bars and packs of Doublemint gum on the glass shelve next to boxes of Lucky Strikes, cans of oil, and black rubber belts for trucks and tractors.  However, what I most vividly recall was the calendar on the sidewall behind the counter.  Somehow I knew I shouldn’t stare, but each month the calendar showcased a busty woman posing in a one-piece bathing suit.  It was enough to distract me into forgetting what I came to buy or even I had friends waiting outside.  

Mother never spent time in the Brotherton Garage.  Never bought a soda and never shared a Clark bar.  She never saw the calendar nor met Mr. and Mrs. Sykes except to call and tell us to come home.  For her, the garage was simply a reminder of how remote we were as we shot past and sped out of our little valley.  

Still, before crossing the first set of hills, we would pass the dirt road where Sadie Moss lived.  This road, on the left, with its haphazard cluster of gray mailboxes on dirty two-by-fours, provided the only access to five log cabins on the distant mountainside.  In the middle of those one-room cabins lived Sadie Moss, an older woman who babysat us for the first couple of years of our lives on the farm.  To me, Sadie came from the earth itself; she was a thin, wiry woman with a face and hands weathered through the accumulation of years of hard work.  She had a high voice with a lilting country accent that reflected the very tenor of the mountains and the surrounding farms, but her instructions were never to be ignored.  I remember too she had gray hair that she kept braided and knotted in a bun on the back of her head. Only when she was spending the night did we ever see it down: it went all the way to her waist and it shimmered like a wave when she brushed it.  Her log cabin, she told us, with a twinkle in her eye as she put us to bed, was where she grew up and it had only a wood stove for heat; given how cold winters were, I would go to sleep wondering how she survived all those years.

Driving through the woods at the top of the ridge, leaving all vestiges of Brotheron behind, we would pass a small, one-room, roadside shack of a bar on the right just before descending into Dead Man’s Curve.  This was the only bar in the area before Somerset or long past our house heading east, and Daddy would stop here to drink and, on occasion, take Allison or me with him.  It smelled of sweat, farmers, and stale beer, and we would crack peanuts from a little barrel at a shaky table while Daddy, looking incongruent amongst all the farmers, drank beer at the bar.  

The shack was just above Dead Man’s Curve, which consisted of a sweeping left turn to circumvent an old, open quarry on the right as we headed down into the next valley.  When Ricky Nelson’s sang “Tell Laura I Love Her” on the car radio, I often thought he died at Dead Man’s Curve, having crashed his car through the guard rail and down into the rock quarry below.  No wonder Laura needed someone to tell her – how could anyone ever survive such a crash!

Driving across the farm land of the next valley was like crossing a pastoral ‘no-man’s’ land between tiny Brotherton with its farm-centered life and the vivacious influence of Somerset, the largest town in the area, with its court house and law offices, its hospitals and doctors’ offices, its post office and county library, and its downtown movie theater, drug stores, and retail stores, and, like an artery of the heart, it’s access to the Pennsylvania Turnpike with hotels and restaurants surrounding the turn-in to the toll-road.  

Crossing this agricultural valley, we could see off in the distance cars and trucks on the turnpike speeding to Pittsburgh, a route we knew from countless trips to baseball games or special events, such as when the Pittsburg Pirates won the World Series, or when we shopped for clothes at the Kaufman’s Department Store downtown, or when we visited Daddy’s mother when she lived in the Presbyterian Home.  The other direction was the way to Philadelphia, where our Uncle Tommy and Aunt Nelda lived.  Allison, Charley and I traveled to Philadelphia every summer to visit our aunt and uncle who lived in a split-level house in the suburbs, and Aunt Ned would take us to battlefields, the liberty bell, museums, gardens, and zoos.  We loved Aunt Ned and Uncle Tommy, and when they visited us on the farm at Christmas, their car would be full of gifts and food and our time together would be magical.

Closer to Somerset Mother would slow down as we went past the State Police Barrack on the left and then speed up again as we drove past the state hospital on the right.  This facility was not a typical hospital, like the Somerset Hospital or the Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh; rather this hospital was fenced in and centered on a hillside far from the highway.  The complex consisted of four very large, brick dormitories, each with a central entrance and five long rows of dark windows on either side.  Holly told us it was a hospital for insane people; Charley said this was where Allison and I belonged and swore it was where Mother and Daddy found Jerry.  I didn’t know what to believe, but I never saw anyone on the grounds and only a small smattering of cars in front. 

I often thought of who might be staring out those dark windows, counting the number of times we drove past; in my mind it was never a kid like me but always some crazy old person who likely would be buried some day with grey, horrible flowers in the cemetery near our house.

Shortly after the police barrack was the turn off to one of the two Howard Johnson service areas located on either side of the turnpike.  Later, when Mother was desperate for money, she worked the night shift at the Howard Johnson on our side of the turnpike, but that was near the tail end of our time on the farm.

By this point countless small brick houses and manufactured houses with yellow plastic siding indicated we were approaching Somerset.  Quickly we would zoom past these nameless homes and shoot down a short hill into the beginnings of the city.  Before us lay a mile-long stretch of shopping centers and tractor dealerships on the right, including the A&P grocery store, always an important stop for Mother before returning to the farm, and beauty parlors and insurance agencies on the left. On the right, too, was the Old Farm Drive-in; here waitresses roller-skated to our car and delivered hamburgers, French fries, and chocolate milkshakes.  Though this was something we rarely did with Mother, we could convince Daddy to take us after going to the hardware store or the Ag store for dog food and other supplies.    

At the bottom of the hill another major road merged from the left onto our road.  Often, rather than drive the strip into Somerset, we would take that sharp fork and head back out of the city.  This highway was the direct route between Somerset and Berlin eleven miles away; for us, it was the road to the Somerset Country Club a mile down the pike and a key destination for many of Mother’s runs. 

That second winter Mother and Daddy joined the Somerset Country Club to give Daddy access to Somerset's wealthier citizens and, in the summer, so we could swim in the club’s Olympic-size pool under the watchful eyes of the town's college-age lifeguards.  Of course, the nine-hole golf course and the large clubhouse with its dark, manly bar, its active dining facilities, and its banquet hall complete with organized dances, holiday parties, and bridge tournaments, only added to the membership.  For mother and daddy, it was like leaving behind the dull and frustrating world of the farm for a life of sanity among normal people, people who enjoyed manhattans and martinis, who owned sailboats and went skiing, who could dance the twist, and who purchased the latest color TVs and princess phones for their kids. 

I hated Somerset, the Somerset Country Club, the suave and sophisticated Somerset members and their Somerset children, all of whom we had absolutely nothing in common.  I hated the social life Mother and Daddy now conceived for themselves and us far from our farm, the SPGs, Berlin, and the Crossroads of Brotherton.  I knew, even as the one who was next to the youngest in our family, with no understanding of the outside world other than what I saw and heard, this new life, a life into which we now were thrust, would grow and fester and be like a open sore that refused to heal until long after Mother and Daddy's relationship disintegrated and we were gone.   

****

   

Pudgy Me 19: Sophomore Letdown, Nazis, Miss America's Boobs, and the New York City Marathon

My wife wants to know why I consider this my sophomore season when I have been running for three years.  At the moment, though, I am lying in my running clothes on the long-end of a sectional couch.  I am staring at the stucco ceiling in my den and fanning my index fingers in front of my eyes. 

My wife doesn't run and, therefore, it’s easy to see why she doesn’t get it. 

My first year I was so overweight, I didn’t think of it as running at all; rather I experienced a bodily disaster.  To be kind, perhaps I could call my start a pre-season of sorts, but, in truth, how could it be a pre-season if I couldn’t even jog around an indoor track without doubling over and dying?  (Spread-eagled out on the mat; zumba instructors running for water and a defibrillator; over-weight women and frumpy old men staring down at my twitching form; “See what happens if you walk too fast,” I hear one say.)     

Certainly, it was not like a year later, my first winter when I actually was running, and long distances too, having marked on my calendar an upcoming half-marathon scheduled for March.  That winter large black hawks (or were they buzzards) circled overhead to support me, and packs of wild dogs (or were they wolves) sought to show me the way.  Yes, it was a fairy tale, and, in training, I was like the Gingerbread Man.  Catch me if you can!

That was then.  However, this is now.    

Now, as I struggled through my second winter and months of icy conditions and unseasonably frigid weather, I see the cold, harsh, back-country roads of North Carolina for what they really are: cold and harsh, and I am --

“--just not into it.” I explain to my wife when she asks why I am flat out on our couch and not running instead on such a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, our first warm Sunday in months.  

“There's something wrong with me, but I don't know what it is," I say, "Somehow and from somewhere out there,” -- I point to the serene, sun-filled cul de sac beyond our window -- “I contracted a bad case of sophomore let-down.”

I peak over at my wife nestled in on the other end of the couch.  She doesn't react to my diagnosis and remains focused on her knitting.  She is watching a Nazi documentary, but I bet, she was totally surprised when I slunk into the den, threw a throw pillow against the far arm of the sectional couch, and flopped down.  I told her earlier I was going running; Sundays, most times, are my long-distance days, and today would have been perfect, that is, if I wasn't dying!    

“Jeez, I’m tired all the time and anxious too,” I say, listing my symptoms, "and, if that's not enough, I constantly eat chocolate chips: chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip ice cream, even chocolate chip bagels -- and worse yet: chocolate chip toast, chocolate chip club sandwiches, and chocolate chip tuna salad, heck, you name it and if it has chocolate chips in it, I'll eat it -- oh, and we're out of chocolate chips too! -- But does that sound a man who has long to live?”

Karen continues to knit while watching the Nazis.  She doesn’t look at me, but her needles are twitching.  I look over at the television: hundreds of screaming people run in and out of buildings, up and down the streets -- they are much more motivated than me.   

“I think,” Karen announces, her eyes focused down on her long, silver knitting needles so comfortable in her hands, “I think, you're nervous; you don’t know whether to run in a race this spring or prepare for the New York Marathon.”

Ah, the New York City Marathon.  Once again, the topic of this particular marathon -- the monster in the room -- has been raised! 

The NYCM, I call it, though it sounds like a medical procedure, is this November, and I have been waiting all winter to learn if I’ve gotten in.  I qualified for the race last November and submitted my application within the very first hour of the very first day back in December, but I think my entry fell all the way down to the bottom of the pool, which consists yearly of approximately 80,000 runners I am told, of which only the top 50,000 are chosen. 

After months of agonizing over it and whining about the whole thing, it is clear to me: I applied too soon; I won’t get in.     

“I'm not nervous,” I counter with a huge sigh.  “I could lie here all spring and still have time to prepare for the marathon, even if, by chance, I am accepted, which I won’t be.  I mean, how much effort does it take to run around New York City?”

“Actually,” Karen says, “A lot – twenty-six miles through the seven boroughs of New York.  That sounds pretty tough.  Aren’t there a bunch of bridges involved?”

“No, I’m told they bus you over the bridges.” After all, I calculate with my fingers: 50,000 runners all at once on a bridge, wouldn’t that shake the hell out of China? 

“I read on the webpage,” I say to her, “you run to a bus stop and when the bus arrives, it takes you over each bridge.”

“You did not.” she responds.  “You better be prepared to run over bridges if you want to run the New York City Marathon.”

“Hmmm,” I say.  “I’m not worried about any stupid bridge.”  

Not a twitch in response from her.  How can she continue to knit as I lay dying?

“Besides they ferry us,” I tell her, changing my answer.  “They run ferries from Staten Island, where the race starts, to Brooklyn or the Bronx – past the Statue of Liberty and Sing-Sing.  I just have to run and catch the ferry.”

“Sing-Sing, don’t you mean Ellis lsland?  You better study the route,” my wife says.  “You don’t know a borough from a burger.”

 “Well… why do I care?  I told you, I’m not running in the New York City Marathon.  My chit is stuck to the bottom of the pile.” 

“Listen,” I say, “When Miss America selects the names for the race, she will never be able to reach her hand far enough into the barrel to scrap my name off the bottom. Her big breasts will get in the way."

“What?”  Karen looks up at me, at last, from her knitting.  Her face twists into a scrunch.  “What are you talking about?”

“You know.  Donald Trump and Miss America.”

“You’re saying, Donald Trump has Miss America pull 50,000 names out of a barrel?”

“Yes, with 80,000 chits it takes a month, but that’s Miss America’s number one job.  She does it in Atlantic City so people will gamble while they watch her.   She wears her bathing suit and everyone stares at her boobs.”

“Where do you come up with this stuff?”

“It’s true.  Donald Trump owns Miss America.  He has a gambling casino in Atlantic City and flies every night by super-helicopter with Miss America to his apartment in Manhattan.  After all, this is the Big Apple NYCM.”

“And I suppose,” Karen retorts, “They meet up with Billy Joel and the ghost of Frank Sinatra at the Algonquin Room and announce who will run.”

“Well.  Not the Algonquin Room, but somewhere in the Empire State Building next to Times Square and that ice skating rink with the Christmas tree.”

“Rockefeller Center, you mean?” she asks.

“Yes, which is next to the Empire State Building.  And don’t forget Mayor Koch and Grete Waitz – they’ll be there, and, I bet, John McEnroe is involved somehow too, not to mention George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees.  In fact, did you know the race ends in Yankee stadium, and we all watch the Yankees play Boston for the two-hundredth billion time?  You’ll see, it’ll be a five-second segment on NBC News with Brian Williams.”   

“Oh yeah?  I thought you told me it ends in Central Park.  You don’t know the first thing about this race.”  Karen shakes her head and goes back to her knitting, adding:  “Well then, what about Bob Dylan?  Isn’t he involved?”

“No, not Dylan.”  Jesus, I have to explain everything to her.  “He hangs out in Woodstock with the Band and Lou Reed.  They run Ultra marathons in the Adirondecks, you know.”

“Adirondecks?  Isn’t it Adirondacks, like in ‘the Adirondack Mountains’?”

“No, it’s like in ‘Windex.’  Adirondecks.  The Adirondecks are famous for their chairs.”

“Are we still talking about the marathon?”

“I’m not talking about the stupid marathon because I won't be selected.  We’re discussing my debilitating sophomoric disease.”             

“Then, Hon, what is it?  Why are you experiencing your little let-down?”  I can hear it in her voice, she is tired of this conversation.  She looks at me from over the top of her glasses and pauses her silver needles in mid-stitch.  I now have her full attention.

Okay.      

Did I mention, my wife knits washcloths and only likes the color white?  We have a growing pile of white washcloths on the coffee table to go along with the many more piles of white washcloths that I moved temporarily to the front of our books on the bookshelves here in the den.

My wife is a cottage industry unto herself.  We just need a thatched roof and a bunch of sheep coming in and out, and we would be a perfect, pre-industrial revolution couple.  Of course, then I wouldn’t have time to run.  I would be focused on my cow and my turnip patch.  Maybe buy some magic beans… 

 

I like the white look for the den, but I definitely don’t like Karen's full-frontal one-on-one stare, especially when she reaches over to the remote control and puts the screaming Nazis on pause.

Okay.  I have to say something.   

“I think it’s my weight.”  I say.  “I can’t run the New York Marathon.  I weigh too much to run, and I lack motivation to lower my weight once again…” 

I grit my teeth because I know this will cause a reaction.

She looks at me like I am crazy. 

“How much weight have you gained?” she asks slightly sour.

Here it comes:

“ – And, before you answer, just let me say this, Buster: it better be a lot or I'll reach over there and stab you.” 

Why is she pointing her needles at me? 

Why can’t we discuss this like sensible adults? 

I look down at my feet, wishing now I taken the time to put on my running shoes, maybe even steel-toed boots.  I have a vision of silver knitting needles sticking into my feet, like tiny little flagpoles, nailing me down to the couch.

I am fifteen pounds heavier than when I ran the Chicago Marathon in the fall.  Ten pounds, more or less, from what I weighed at the end of the racing season. 

I decide, rather, I should respond by being less specific, more general, more approximate if you will… 

“I am thirty pounds heavier.” I say to see how she will react.

“You are not,” she says.  “No way.  One more time you’re exaggerating.” 

First of all, I don’t exaggerate.  I embellish. 

“Well, okay, maybe not thirty pounds, but close.”

“How close?”

“Close enough.”

 

“How close is that?”

  

“Closer than I want to be.”

“Literally, I will stab you right in the eye if you don’t tell me.”

I can see it now, there I am at the New York City Marathon, the very same one that I won’t get into because of Miss America’s boobs.  “Look people,” the race announcer broadcasts at the finish line as we enter Yankee Stadium, “see the blind man with the sewing needles sticking out of his eyes, watch him feel his way past the statues of Babe Ruth and Ted Turner.  Only in New York, people, only in New York!”

Okay.  Okay.  Back to reality.  Why do we, as a society, resort to violence so quickly?”

Now, finally, this is an appropriate topic to discuss with my wife while prone on the couch on a glorious Sunday afternoon watching a bunch of Nazis on TV…

“Hey, keep your damn needles to yourself.” I say as an introduction to my discourse on violence, but she doesn’t allow me to get started.

“--Get up, you old bum!” she says.  Then, by god, she reaches over and stabs my thigh! 

“Yikes!  Hey, that hurts!  Jesus Christ, have you no sympathy?”

So now I’m up and running… 

…in spite of my sophomore letdown diagnosis.

And with every stride I take a surge of blood squirts from my knitting-induced wound and splatters the road in front of me.

 She’ll be sorry, the Nazi, when I need an ambulance to get home. 

The next day I get an email in the hospital from Miss America.  I am lying on a gurney in the emergency room with my leg in a thick white cast tied to the ceiling.  A tube recycles my blood still squirting out of my leg back into my neck. 

“You have been selected,” Miss America writes, “to participate in the New York City Marathon.” 

“Well, what do you know,” I say to the orderly who washes my bottom with a white washcloth my wife donated for the occasion.  “Well, what do you know.”

“P.S.,” Miss America adds, “My boobs aren’t that big.”    

****

   

Notes from the Field: Coto Brus, Costa Rica

Costa Rica.  Back from a day spent in the Coto Brus canton, the county in which our Las Cruces Biological Station is located.  We sit in the dinning hall of our field station discussing the insights and ramifications of what we saw and experienced today.  The small group I am with consists of several board and staff members and most of us are amazed and somewhat surprised by what we learned.  Our focus has been and continues to be on tropical biology, but the “real world” issues presented today are suddenly vividly before us, no longer world away but rather just a few kilometers down the road within the canton.

Earlier that morning.   We drive past the upscale regional hospital and into the hustling streets of San Vito, the judicial seat of the Coto Brus canton.  On a side street we stop at an open garage/warehouse and get out of the small bus we call a coaster.  We stand on the edge of the street, and I look for a medical facility or even a doctor’s sign, but nothing catches my eye.  Instead, I see my host leading our small group into the garage/warehouse tight against other storefronts and warehouses lining the street.  I realize, then, in following the group down the cracked cement drive and into the open room in front of us that this garage has been converted into a medical clinic.  The room in which we gather together, as the sounds and fumes of cars pass by out on the street, is a waiting room with cheap plastic chairs in a semi-circle off to the side; it is also a loading area for the clinic’s activities with boxes and paraphernalia scattered on the floor.  Posters on the wall are in Spanish and another language I don’t recognize (the language of the Ngobe Bugle Indians, I am told), but I don’t linger to study the words and instead join our group who I can see are feeling very much like outsiders clustered together while our host talks to a receptionist behind a small desk near the plastic chairs.  Heavy set women, Indians in long colorful but well-worn dresses, men in tired t-shirts and faded blue jeans are staring at us as we stand in the room; the men appear to be smaller than most Costa Ricans, but have a look of having lived several lifetimes.  The women with their long black braided hair and dull lifeless stares, sitting in the chairs or standing to the side, provide no sense of hospitality or friendliness, and, when we are led by an assistant further into the warehouse, past several makeshift offices to a conference room in a back corner of the building, the Indian women follow us with their humorless eyes, neither questioning why we were there nor embarrassed to be openly watching us. 

The conference room is defined easily by the old cement blocks of the building’s two outer walls and the thin timber framing of the two inner walls, which, within the room, are covered with maps of the Coto Brus canton.  The room itself has one long table surrounded by more plastic chairs.  On the table is a power point projector facing a screen on one of the inner walls.  The overhead lighting is not that bright, but strong enough for us to study the maps after the assistant departs. One map, in particular, depicts the mountainous county, or canton, of Coto Brus with numerous coffee plantations identified with gray squares.  It is clear from the map there are not many roads leading to the plantations and the towns and villages are somewhat isolated from the regional hub of San Vito, the largest town in the canton.  I count sixteen different Red Cross markings mostly in the towns but some near the more-distant coffee farms too.

A rustle outside the door takes my attention, and it opens with two Costa Rican men entering the room. The one who is clearly in charge, steps up and introduces himself as Dr. Pablo Ortiz: he is the head doctor of the region and the man we have come to see.  Dr. Ortiz is likely in his early sixties, he is not a tall man, slightly overweight, but not obese; he is wearing an open, short-sleeved shirt with a red-checkered print that appears both lightweight and comfortable; he has a close, reddish-beard and a friendly face; his eyes are alight with laughter from, I suspect, many well-told stories. Fortunately, he has an excellent command of English, and he is both charming and gracious as he introduces himself to each of us in our party. 

The second man, Dr. Ortiz explains is the number two doctor in charge of the clinic, but he tells us his English is limited.  This man appears to be about ten years younger and, though we are told his name as each of us shakes his hand, I quickly forget what he said and focus instead on Dr. Ortiz who is looking at the map we were studying.  The second doctor moves over to the projector and begins connecting it to his laptop. 

Dr. Ortiz invites us to sit in the yellow plastic chairs around the table and says his clinic is charged with providing health-care services for the undocumented, migrant Ngobe Bugle Indians crossing out of Panama to pick coffee in the region’s surrounding plantations.  The number of migrants entering Costa Rica for the harvest season starting in late October is substantial, likely, nearly 200,000 people, and during the coffee season, which typically runs through March, the canton swells to a population doubled in size.  In truth, his doctors don’t know exactly how many Indians come into Costa Rica, he tells us, as the border between the two countries is fairly open, and the Gnobe Indians not crossing at the three points-of-entry between the two countries, can walk into Costa Rica without any official papers anytime on trails through the farms abutting the boundary or through the unexplored forest protecting the upper watersheds of the Talamanca Mountains.  This reserve is an international park Costa Rica shares with Panama, known as La Amistad, and is the largest protected area in Central America. 

As a result of the relatively open border, Dr. Ortiz says simply, providing health care services for the migrant Indians is a significant challenge.

Dr. Ortiz proceeds to narrate a power-point presentation his colleague has prepared for us. It isn’t long before we realize that the slides are showing us the horrific working and living conditions of the Ggobe Bugle people, with the laws of Costa Rica overseeing their welfare frequently ignored: children in the field by six-years-of-age, adults working seven-days-a-week from sunrise-to-sunset, no social services provided for the children by the farmers or any governmental agencies, pregnant teenage mothers picking coffee until they go into labor, and everyone living in horrid shacks, called “batches.”  Dr. Ortiz says the sanitary issues on these farms is appalling, yet often the Indians cross the border not just to earn their annual income picking coffee but also to take advantage of Costa Rica’s national health care system.  Even so, his doctors are seeing a 50% child mortality rate with average families consisting of 4.6 children.  Between unmarried mothers, alcoholism, child and wife abuse, tuberculosis, HIV, and parasitic-diseases of one sort or another, it is difficult to reach the Indians with the health care services available to them and, when they do, often the Indians don’t trust what his doctors and nurses have told them.  The simple medicines and training that might prolong their lives or allow them to live easier lives, though now available to them in the canton, such as through his clinics, are out of reach both physically and psychologically through distance and distrust. 

Soon we are engaged in a vivid two-hour discussion with Dr. Ortiz and his colleague pointing to county maps, highlighting recent statistics, and describing in detail what their doctors, nurses, and aides are doing to combat the very real problems facing the Gnobe Bugle.  The doctors, paid by the government of Costa Rica, are brutally honest with us and end their presentation with a request for our organization help them work with the Indians.  “Even such simple matters,” says Dr. Ortiz, “as teaching the Indians how to use condoms or why they should wash their hands coming out of the fields would make a difference.” 

 “- Let alone,” he says, “helping the Indians look for the symptoms of malaria, dengue fever, Tuberculosis, and ringworm within their families.”  

Dr. Ortiz ends his presentation with a statement about the black rubber boots we have seen Costa Rican farmers wear throughout the country; the same rubber boots our own researchers and their field hands employ in the forest at our research station: “If only we can provide Indians with rubber boots,” he laments, “it would be better than them wearing their thin sandals and having their children go barefoot.”

“Why,” I ask.

“Parasites,” he responds, shaking his head, “from the soil in the fields.”  

Afterwards, before leaving the conference room, the small group with whom I am traveling take up an impromptu monetary collection between us for the doctors, and though somewhat embarrassed at how little money we are able to raise between us, we give Dr. Ortiz about $120 dollars to continue the clinic’s work, promising him we will do more when we get back to the States.  He is gracious in accepting our unexpected gift and says he will give it to his colleague who will put it to good use.

Back on the street after walking past the openly staring Indians in the waiting area, we marvel at how little we knew about the canton and the ongoing health care crisis being fought on a daily basis from farm to farm.  Our research station over the years has focused, rather, on biodiversity issues and restoration ecology; after all, we are a conservation organization that has spent more than thirty years in Coto Brus establishing a permanent station for scientists and students to conduct research on the impact of the fragmented forests of the region – fragmented due to the county’s two historic activities: growing coffee and raising cattle.

I have been told that as late as the 1950s, much of Coto Brus was a mountainous highlands covered in forests.  The Costa Ricans who chose to live in this area before then, like the homesteaders in the U.S., carved their niche out of the forest and lived relying on their own resources.  In fact, the stories of the incredible struggle that people in this region would go through to get outside supplies or receive medical care, such as for broken bones, gashes, various illnesses, or problematic births, are oral histories of tremendous hardship, with mules and wagons with large wooden wheels carrying the injured or the infirmed miles down narrow mountain passes to the Pacific lowlands where bush pilots, radioed ahead, could land their small planes and fly their sick passengers to the hospitals in San Jose. 

I am told too that many of the family-owned coffee farms established in the Coto Brus canton between the late 1800s and the mid-1900s was on land given to them by the Costa Rica government; land offered to the coffee families of the central valley near San Jose simply to stop Colombia, prior to the creation of Panama, from claiming more and more of Costa Rica’s southern border.  It was during this period when the relationship between the plantation families and the Gnobe Bugle Indians began.  The Indians willingly and in mass moved north each year to pick the red coffee bean   

After World War II, in the mid-1900s, the government of Costa Rica made a concerted effort to open Coto Brus beyond the coffee farms.  The United Fruit Company at that time was exploiting Costa Rica’s southern Pacific lowlands growing banana and palm oil for export, and with a large shipping port in Golfito coming into its own, a labor force was needed to handle the expanding agricultural activities of the south, and, importantly, to extract the valuable hardwood timber of the southern highlands. 

I read somewhere that giving the land to displaced Europeans as a way to populate area (and cover up the harsh impact of the logging) proved to be irresistible to thousands of Italians who moved into the Coto Brus canton.  However, by the late 1960s, the logging companies were gone, the Italians had settled into an economically depressed area, and the canton was reduced to a patchwork of coffee fields held by a few families, degraded pastures available to all, and the landless seasonal passing of the Gnobe Indians. 

My organization’s focus beginning in the early 1970s was to study the impact of the changing ecosystems of the area.  No one in our organization had ever looked into the plight of the indigenous people of the south.  Rather, we knew about the impact of landscape changes on moths and butterflies and the role of bats as pollinators, but not about the large and historic role the Gnobe Bugle Indians play in the canton.               

Our coaster pulls up to the sidewalk and we climb on board.  Our day is not nearly done.  Soon we leave the little town of San Vito and are driving deep into the canton, well off the primary roads.  I can see it is clear we are in coffee country as acres of coffee bushes cover the hillsides on both sides of the road.  It isn’t long before I realize too we are on private land and the coaster is taking into the heart of one long-established coffee plantation.  We drive past the coffee production barns and up to a beautiful Swiss-style manor with flower boxes full of blooming colorful flowers and gorgeous flower gardens beside the vehicle on both sides of the lane. 

The plantation owner, a heavy-set man in his late 50s or early 60s has been waiting for us: he drives up to the coaster in his green four-wheeler and jumps out of the vehicle.  He introduces himself as Roberto Montero and is very gracious in welcoming us to his farm.  He has a large belly that is barely contained within his white shirt, tucked tightly into his pants.  He has a short beard and is wearing a baseball hat promoting Peru, which he said he just visited for several weeks.  His eyes too are full of fun and vigor, and from his demeanor, it is clear he is the man in charge.  Unlike Dr. Ortiz back in San Vito, Sr. Montero is less concerned about introductions and, as we surround him, he quickly explains that his great-grandfather established the family’s 700+ acre farm.  The farm abuts both the open border with Panama, which he points to the forested hills southeast of us, and La Amistad, which he turns and points to the forested hills to the north of us, but, from what I can see as I turn 360 degrees, all the hills surrounding us are forested in a thick, dark shade of green – while immediately before us, contrasting against the lighter-green yard, is a potpourri of birdlife and plant-life thriving within a colorful collage of shapes and movement. 

Sr. Montero assures us he is the largest organic coffee farmer in the region and is very proud of his exceptional, shade-grown, organic coffee currently being sold throughout the U.S.  However, with the coffee season recently completed, his migrant pickers have moved further up into the central valley to pick the fields there.  They will return to Panama later in the spring.  His permanent workers at the farm, rather, are producing dried fruit: bananas, mangos, pineapple, etc.  In fact, he says, he has a huge contract with the U.S. company Costco which requires everything to go “right” in generating the necessary fruit to meet his new obligations.  He tells us he isn’t worried though, as he loves the pressure.  His workers, he says, are very loyal and will help him meet this challenge.  

His farm, he explains, is self-contained: he has his own hydro-electric plant, school for his workers children, church, grocery store, and the mandatory soccer field and no one gets onto his property without his approval.  He is both the “mayor and the “town planner,” and the “judge and the jury.”  In fact, he assured us, government officials rarely come to inspect his operation.  A board member in our group asks him about the working conditions of the Gnobe pickers and their children and his eyes arch upward.  He says authorities have talked to him, but he has told them that the Gnobe children don’t work in the fields; they come across from Panama with their families to play and vacation from school.  There is no need for inspections.  His workers, he stressed, whether local Costa Ricans, permanent Gnobe Indians who have chosen to remain in the area year-round, or the migrants, documented or not, want as much work he can give them, and, as a result, they make more money on his farm than they would doing almost any other job in Coto Brus, the second poorest county, he reminds us, in Costa Rica.    

With that, he suggests we take a tour of his dried fruit factory down the hill below the manor.  The coffee season is over, but the dried fruit business never ends.  Sr. Montero opens a door for us along the side of an old red barn, and we enter large semi-sanitized rooms with what appears to be hosed water covering the floor.  “Walk carefully,” he says and tells someone in Spanish to squee-gee the floor in front of us.  Quickly workers appear who push away the standing water.   

We walk past rows of Costa Rica women standing on both sides of a long assembly line wearing white rubber boots, white surgical masks, and white hairnets.  They are cleaning tray after tray of baked bananas: removing sticks and peels from the recently cooked fruit, cleaning the trays so that only the dried banana remained.  Men in another room, we see further on are wearing the same white-colored masks, hairnets, and boots; they are taking hundreds of fresh bananas out of boxes, removing their peels, and slicing the fruit into bite-size pieces.  These pieces, subsequently, are spread out onto trays and stacked into large carriers to be rolled into walk-in ovens and baked for the women to clean. 

All of the dried bananas, once thoroughly cleaned, explained Sr. Montero, are stored into thousands of large bags in a deep container, eight of which are required to be filled each month to satisfy the Costco contract.  The large containers, Sr. Montero said, will be trucked to Golfito and shipped to San Francisco where they will be inspected again before being bagged into colorful individual-sized bags and sold in Costco stores throughout the U.S.

This had turned into a year-round business for him, he says, and requires thousands of boxes of bananas, pineapples and mangos to be trucked from the lowlands to his plantation in Coto Brus, where hundreds of his workers put in twelve-hour shifts six-days-a-week to meet the contract.

“When coffee season is in full swing, it must be crazy here.” I comment.

Sr. Montero laughs and says I should come back next fall when the coffee plant is operating at capacity and the dried fruit plant will be running full as well.  The number of pickers, workers, trucks, and containers will be mind-blowing.  “You can join us!” he says enthusiastically, adding as the gracious host that he is in opening his farm to us: “But for now, let us go enjoy the lovely lunch I have had prepared for you in the manor.” 

We are hungry and agree.  The workers watch us as we walked past on their wet and slippery floor; their black pupils, like large empty saucers, staring lifeless between the white hairnet and the mask. 

Whether or not Dr. Ortiz and the government-employed health-care workers can get onto the property to talk to the undocumented Gnobe Indians, let alone the workers, is a question I want to ask, but instead, I choose to keep this to myself.  At the time we are being served a four-course lunch looking out over a beautiful yard of bougainvillea framed against a mountainside of dark-green, primary forest; I can smell the rich fragrance of tropical flowers through the open windows of the manor and feel the light breeze.  Rather, with our pockets empty from our meager collection earlier that morning, an uneasiness tempers our appetite as we listen to Sr. Montero mention how much he likes the new pope who will bring the Catholic faith back to the people, how priests rotating through the area give mass in his church once every two weeks, how much he prizes his four Lipizzaner Stallions he will show us later that afternoon, and how he looks forward to his upcoming month-long trip with his wife and friends to Easter Island.

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