Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Bob shows up for his birthday, Jan 3 2012
Monday, November 21, 2011
Martin City Rising - by Parker Bauer
Our tackle was in the car, ready to whack trout, but first we had to find my brother. We drove around the streets of Martin City, Montana - all of them, a two-minute jaunt - without spotting the Martin City Hotel, where he’d said he was living. We decided, or I did anyway, to stop at a bar and ask directions. The bar’s sign shivered on its hinges and a couple of muddy pickups were parked out front.
My wife eyed the place warily. “Well,” I said, “are you my wife or not?” and in we went.
The bar had a sawdust floor, a barmaid who’d never heard of the Martin City Hotel, and a customer with a big luna moth of suds on his mustache.
“You missed Butte a few hours back,” the guy snorted. “Hotels for every occasion.”
He knocked back half a glassful. The barmaid waved him off, then leaked a little smile. “Place up the road’s got rooms this time of year. The Dew Drop Inn.” The name sounded dubious, but I thanked her and said we were looking for my brother at the Martin City Hotel.
The guy fixed one red eye on me. “Listen,” he said, with a note of menace. “There’s no hotel.”
“Who’s your brother?” the barmaid asked.
Now that was a question, far bigger than the whereabouts of the Martin City Hotel. The sort of numbing riddle that sages spring on the unenlightened: My brother, who was he?
Back in the Pliocene, when we were boys, I knew. Bob was me, more or less, and I was Bob. We were four years apart but did everything as one, finished each other’s sentences. We’d sail all day in a cardboard box, our boat, bobbing around on the sea of our mutual imagination.
We grew up, regrettably. Take that adverb any way you want. We hunted and fished together, but now we finished each other’s sentences, full of wisecracks, only as a kind of throwback joke. In our college days I literally lost track of Bob. At the University of Montana he took certain courses in the English department that convinced him he didn’t need a degree to ride boxcars. I was the one who had always loved trains, but it never would have occurred to me to go down to the yards and get on one without a ticket.
I heard about his hoboing and a lot more besides. I pictured him cross-legged in a boxcar gazing out at passing valleys and peaks, cold black rivers, tall stands of ponderosa like the masts of the mythical ark on Mount Ararat. Bob, the Buddha of the Burlington Northern.
Not that the barmaid needed, or wanted, to know any of that. I just gave her his name.
“No kidding?” she said, cocking her head. “Your brother’s Bob Bauer?” She twisted the wet bar rag around her wrist and gave me the once-over. It felt like getting a physical.
But she knew where he lived, it turned out, and drew a map on the bar with her damp finger. My wife was already easing toward the door. The Big Sky meatball weighed in again. “I don’t know nothing about your brother,” he bristled, “but there’s no damn hotel.”
We were halfway outside now. The barmaid leaned on the bar, not done with me yet.
“You just seem so normal,” she said.
_________________
Dusk. We drove past a boarded-up movie theater, the bones of old buildings, following directions. At last we found it, a dusty frame building like any other, no business sign of any sort, but Bob was there. The barmaid was beginning to look like an angel.
Bob roared my name - not simply a welcome, but a sort of annunciation. Then the same, thunderously, for his sister-in-law. “Charlotte!” he said, as if she were coming, with me, in glory.
Bob’s hair was long, not as long as mine but a lot messier. He had a couple of high-ceilinged rooms at the front of the building, with a big window full of snaky unkempt plants. The whole place had a honeyed, weedy odor, issuing from heaps and sheaves of mysterious leafy matter spread out to dry on every horizontal surface, including the bed and kitchen table. Bob gave us the tour, scooping up crumbly sprigs to our noses.
“Mullein,” he barked, theatrically. “Introduced from Europe, grows wild everywhere.” He lifted a pale wooly leaf to the ceiling lightbulb. “Antiseptic, astringent, emollient, expectorant, good for toothache, cramps, convulsions. Perfect for piles.” He twirled another, thin and feathery. “Yarrow - take it in teas for colds and flu, ulcers, abscesses. Stimulates bile, purifies the blood.”
And so on with skullcap and valerian and a dozen others. I wondered why I’d want my bile stimulated, but didn’t ask. In the months since I’d seen Bob, he’d become, somehow, an herbalist. Without seeking it, he’d gained some local renown: cures were claimed. Now he was stockpiling for the ever-imminent Montana winter, amassing mountains of medicinal herbs and drying them here in his rooms, enough for everyone he knew.
He swung open the refrigerator door to reveal jar on jar of greenish viscid-looking stuff. “Salve, just made it last week.” He unscrewed a lid and passed the jar to Charlotte. “Give it a try.”
“What’s it for?” she said.
“Whatever you’ve got. It’s soothing, you’ll see.”
He handed me another jar and I sniffed it. It smelled like the room, weedy and sweet.
“Won’t work that way,” he said. “You’ve got to rub it on.”
I stalled, asking what was in it.
“Yarrow, beeswax, a bunch of good stuff. You got nothing to worry about, it works.”
“Lips?” Charlotte ventured. “My lips are sort of chapped.”
“Lips! Lips! You’re gonna thank me for this.”
She smoothed on a dab and swooned. Zap, a believer. The jar went in her shirt pocket.
Several well-used banjos and guitars stood in a dim corner, as if they were sneaking a cigarette together. Bob was brewing a pot of herb tea, too busy to pick us a tune, but he did plunk a tape in his custom audio system: an eight-track deck he’d rescued from a junk car and wired to an antique console radio, long dead except for the speaker. This strewn-out unit took as long as the tea to warm up, but finally Bob Wills and his Playboys poured out, spry fiddles sparring with the speaker’s electrical pops and snarls. The tea, the distillation of Bob’s latest new life in northern Montana, tasted like the scent of the room, sweet and weedy and slightly suspect, like the salve, like everything else.
Anyway, we’d found him. My brother, whoever he was at that moment. I did have to wonder about that - because what had brought him way up here, I knew, wasn’t herbs. What lured him was logging.
Philosophically, spiritually, anatomically, Bob was no logger. But he’d been reading the Beat poets and liked the sound of the life they wrote about: music, spontaneity, easygoing girls, hitting the road in old cars. The only drawback was, road or no road, the Beats were basically urban types. Bob wasn’t about to hang on the Columbia campus or in Golden Gate Park. The notable rustic exception in the group was Gary Snyder, who wrote poems about working as a logger in the big woods of the Northwest - a Beat with a job.
So Bob got a saw; he already had the old car. How much actual logging he did I can’t say. He couldn’t have discerned much poetry in the gnashing havoc of trees crashing down all around. But out in the woods he did meet a luckless logger - a lyrically desperate case it seemed his destiny to help.
The man had gashed his leg with a chainsaw and gone to a doctor, but the wound only got worse. In mounting pain, he lay around at home where the propped-up leg obstructed his wife’s line of sight to the TV set. Several times she threatened to throw him out of the trailer, but then Bob showed up toting a brown bag of herbs. With nothing to lose but the leg, the suffering sawyer let Bob put on a poultice derived from old Indian remedies. The wife, an Indian herself, turned off the TV and watched Doc Bauer at work. In a few days the logger was out of harm’s way, and hers as well - back in the woods, lopping off trees right and left. The word went around. Bob’s reputation was made.
We finished the tea, sitting for a while in silence. Then out on the darkened street a car went by with loud pipes. “They’ve got a law against mufflers around here,” Bob grumbled. The rumbling looped away and faded at last. “I know where we can get some,” he went on now, nonchalantly, as if to his teacup, and I knew it wasn’t mufflers he meant.
It had taken us an hour of herbs to get around to it. Talking about trout, like angling for them, demanded a slow, sidelong approach. It took a ritual of access, devoutly kneeling, the way that courtship used to and religion, in the higher and crankier churches, still does.
Bob told us about the long walk he’d taken lately - the whole sixty-mile length of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. He’d carried his old twelve-gauge Stevens and lived lavishly on herb-stuffed grouse. He didn’t take a rod but did get a look, along the way, at the South Fork of the Flathead River. No one, not a soul, was fishing it. Clear as vodka, and it had to be full of trout. Why didn’t we head on up there, he proposed - just start out tomorrow?
“We don’t want to keep you from working,” I lied.
“You don’t?” he said, flipping off lights for the night. “What kind of brother is that?”
Charlotte spread her sleeping bag on the sofa. Then, with a start, she noticed that one arm of the sofa had a burn hole in it big enough to den a marmot, so she switched the bag around to put her head at the other end. I unrolled my own bag on the floor. Bob, I figured, would clear off the herbs and sleep in his bed, but instead he lowered himself, fully clothed, into his empty bathtub, an enormous old fixture on lion’s feet.
All was quiet except for the distant howling, doleful as lost hounds, of diesel locomotives crawling up the Continental Divide.
“Bob?” I said, after a while.
“Uh huh, what is it?” his voice came back in the dark, booming from the tub.
“What is this place we’re in here, anyway?”
“Martin City.”
“I mean this building.”
“What do you mean, what is it? The Martin City Hotel.”
“Nobody else seems to know that.”
“I know.”
By then I’d forgotten the question, and wondered what, exactly, was in the tea we’d drunk.
_________________
September was a good half gone. Wet weather was coming in a couple of days, the first headlong storm of autumn, but we went.
The dirt road climbed fifty miles through lush west-slope forest, mostly lodgepole and hemlock. A scatter of tamaracks stood in long shafts of last-chance sunlight, shedding their golden needles. A spare tire, bald, rode on the back seat beside me, on lefthand curves wanting to roll on my lap. The emptied beer cans of Bob’s lumberjack summer - Great Falls, Rainier, Grain Belt, Olympia - clanked around our ankles.
His station wagon, a Dodge Pioneer pushing twenty years old, lurched and whined under the burden of its monstrous tail fins. Bob had owned it only a few months and, one suspected, would soon finish it off. It had a pushbutton transmission, and at the slightest change in slope he’d punch a different button on the dash and the shuddering old beast would suck in its breath and shift up or down, either way giving us a good swift kick. “They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore,” he sang out for the twenty-third time.
But trout lay ahead. We were on our way, no looking back. As if to insist on this, the car had no rearview mirror: Bob had hung it over his bathroom basin, where it watched over the lion’s-foot tub and I’d shaved in it that very morning.
The road came to an end where a cluster of pickups and horse trailers was already parked. I imagined a band of outlaw worm-dunkers galloping in on our guileless fish. “Hunters,” Bob assured me. “Horns and meat, that’s all they want.” He was wrangling the woeful spare tire off the back seat. His doors wouldn’t lock, so he’d hide it in the woods.
Under the big pines it was blue-green and cool as we set out on the footpath. Yellow birch leaves, not yet fallen, seemed to float unattached to any branch. Thimbleberry leaves bigger than a man’s hand hovered in high-noon twilight. Bob darted around looking for the berries, more or less edible, but it was already too late in the year.
The going was rocky but he sailed up the trail, Charlotte and I chuffing along behind. We’d just arrived from Florida where the only mountain was Disney’s, made out of styrofoam. Bob had been reading a book by a Tibetan lama who described an esoteric practice called lung-gom: a way of walking very fast, done in a trance. Allegedly the lung-gom adept could ghost over the ruggedest terrain with his feet hardly touching the ground. Bob believed it, and I was in no position, fifty yards back, to do any scoffing.
But then we came to our first sight of the river, a revelation. We stood on a high footbridge looking down. It fit the overall category of river, the way a giraffe was a quadruped, but tell that to the first taxonomist who saw one. I’d never seen a stream so clear. Like a lens, the water focused the stony riverbed far beyond the ability of the unaided eye. So this was the South Fork of the Flathead: pools and long scrolling eddies, lolling along over pastel cobblestones, pink and cream and mint green, that might be two feet deep or twenty.
The first drop of doubt – mine – dribbled into this expedition.
Trout want clarity, like you and me, but this was overkill. How could you catch fish when they were spying on you, every move you made, through the aquatic equivalent of the Hubble telescope? Just standing on that bridge looking down, you felt naked.
And still we had miles to plod, all uphill. Don’t worry, Bob said. He’d brought along a jar of salve.
A pack string with a party of hunters came down the trail, headed home. The blocky brown horses carried no antlers on their loads; the riders looked glum under their cowpoke hats. We stood aside to let them pass and said hello.
All we got back was a grunt.
_________________
Next morning, near our camp, was chilly and gray. I sat on an outcrop that dropped to the river like a set of stairs. A bee settled on my knee and seemed to watch, drowsily, as I knotted on a fly.
Already Bob had disappeared around a bend upstream. The river ran through a winding, voluptuous gorge with walls rising sheer from the water. It was too deep to wade, so he must have found a ledge on the wall to walk on. Downstream looked easier, with chunks of fallen rimrock that Charlotte and I could work our way over without getting too wet.
But the water, to me, was way too clear. It slicked along stark and lifeless, not a riser in sight. Would we keep some to eat, Charlotte wanted to know. With all the trouble we’d taken to get here, and everything looking so virginal and pristine, she took it for granted we were going to catch fish.
Full of hope, she sprang from rock to rock flipping a gold spoon, while I threw limp casts and watched the river wash my streamer around. We kept at it half the morning and caught nothing.
Here I was, the big fishing ape who was supposed to have a grip on everything. I gazed at the river gliding past, emptying itself out, and didn’t have a clue what to do next. I wished Bob would come back with the key to it all, and when the day wore on and he didn’t show up, I began to worry about him.
No Bob, no fish, nothing. The river’s lisp swelled in the gorge like surf in a seashell.
Another thing - not that it mattered - we’d run out of new water to fish. Below us the gorge narrowed and the current sped up through the slot, with no more rocks to clamber around on. But where the wall flared out to form the narrows Charlotte spotted a little baseboard of ledge, and before I could compose a solemn essay against the idea she was out there on it. I couldn’t let her drown all alone while I stood and watched, so I was out there with her. Viewed from a distance, this had to be the dumbest fishing scene ever.
On her first cast she hung a fish. She’d crept out on the ledge as far as she could, then stretched her arm and flung the spoon around the flare of the wall, down the narrows, to a pool below that she couldn’t even see. The rod dipped, the line sang like the D string on a banjo, and minutes later she led a lemony fourteen-inch cutthroat back along the ledge to quiet water. I helped out by keeping my mouth shut. She hadn’t known you couldn’t catch a trout in this river, so she caught one.
About that time, Bob came around the bend waving his rod, frantic droplets flying off. He wanted us to come upstream. The footing was slippery and by the time we got to him we were wet to the waist. He was all worked up.
He’d found a good fish, it was rising, and he’d thrown a whole shelf of hardware at it, every sort of spoon and spinner. He held his hands up edgewise around an invisible trout. It wouldn’t hit, but since it was rising he was sure I could get it to take a fly. One thing, though - to make the cast, a long one, first I’d have to get myself out on a midstream rock. “An Errol Flynn leap,” he yelped, lunging and thrusting his rod at a juniper bush.
The trout was in a long, walled pool with a skein of slow currents. We scrabbled to an overlook, but saw nothing rising and sat down to wait. The sky was still dull as daybreak. A clump of harebells hung out their purple flowers on the broken-up rock beside us. It was over, I was thinking, or maybe Bob had only been imagining things - but then the fish began to rise again.
He held my rod while I made the buccaneer leap, barely. The rock was flat-topped, just big enough to stand on, far enough out to separate my back cast from the wall of the pool. Bob reached the rod across the gap. Taking hold of it, I felt like a statue of myself, as frozen as that, and wondered if anyone had ever stood on that rock before me.
I wanted to get it over with, get back to the bank. A good eighty feet away, Bob knelt at the tail of the pool to spot the fish, and I saw, as if from a great height, how absurd it all was. I couldn’t make a cast that far: at best I’d dump one a few yards short, in a heap. Not to mention that my fly, modeled on a dust wad found in a barracks, resembled no bug the trout might be rising to; but it was a bit late, marooned on this rock without my fly box, to be thinking of that.
Bob gave the word and the cast was in the air, ready or not. The whole thing, I felt, was out of my hands. I only knew if the first cast was bad there wouldn’t be another. The fish would spook. And amazingly, weirdly, the line flowed out flat and graphic, farther than I’d managed to cast all morning, hurling the big lumpy fly straight to the trout’s lunch bucket, or so I thought.
“You’re way off,” Bob called out, echoing in the gorge. “Go left.”
The rod seemed to guide my wrist, not the other way around, and made the called-for correction. Like a living creature, the unrolling cast licked at the air three or four rod lengths short of the fish.
“Shoot,” Bob shouted in a sort of whisper, and the last loose yards of line, released from my left hand, shot where they wanted. The cast fell back to the water with a few waves of slack, not a bad thing at all. I never even worked the fly, just let it drift, slowly sinking, straightening out the leader. Nearby, on his knees, Bob saw what I couldn’t, the flash of the trout as it took.
He threw up his arms, then pointed a finger at the fish, and it ran with the fly, ran and ran.
_________________
We ate both trout, with no apologies: in those days the dogma of catch and release hadn’t yet reached that remote fork of the Flathead. It was one of those meals so good, so kingly, you eat mostly in silence. To speak would seem a sacrilege. Charlotte’s fish, not so big, was the true delicacy, but both were delicious. We ate them with our fingers, like communion wafers, no one having thought to bring any forks or spoons in his or her kit. Nor did we have a skillet or scrap of foil. Bob simply broiled the fish on crossed sticks over the fire.
All along I’d been thinking of this outing as totally impromptu. We showed up in Martin City, Bob said let’s go, we went. But sitting there picking the trout bones, pondering our improbable catch - Charlotte’s ledge and Errol’s rock - I began to wonder about that.
The notion came to me, out of nowhere, that Bob had dreamed up everything we did, was still dreaming it as we went along. Somehow, he’d conjured up the trout I caught, found it in that crystal pool where no trout had been. Found it, moreover, for me. The fib about casting to the fish himself before coming to get me seemed as transparent as the South Fork of the Flathead. Any trout that went for my gargoyle fly would have turned itself inside out to grab his spinner.
That was Bob for you. A dreamer, banging away on a banjo, playing out possibilities in his head. Scenes, not schemes. Seeking and finding: letting go and giving away. If all this were a dream, Bob’s, in that bathtub, then the doorway we’d come in by was the Martin City Hotel.
There really was such a place, sort of. Riding up in Bob’s car, we’d passed the Hungry Horse Dam and the ugly lake it made, with barren mud banks: the less said about it, the better, except that some of the dam builders, long ago, stayed in the Martin City Hotel. That was its heyday; so Bob said. Later, when it closed, the locals mostly forgot about it, but the building survived, where Bob now lived. To him it was lore brought to life, rescued reality, part of a lost and found world of boxcars, old music, and herbal medicine.
So, was there really a Dew Drop Inn? I wasn’t so sure about that one, and didn’t necessarily want to know, if the answer might joylessly undo everything I’d just now figured out.
The fire began to spit and hiss; we felt the first cold raindrops. By dusk we were back at the car, rolling the spare out of the woods, and the rain was turning to sleet. Later that night it would snow. Bob’s wiper blades were shot, so he rigged a worn-out work glove on the blade on his side, and we headed down the mud-slick road. He tapped out a tune on the pushbuttons - Drive, 2, Low, Drive, 2, Low - while the glove waved across the windshield, flourishing the middle finger. A yellow leaf skipping in the headlights led the way.
Christ Episcopal Church
Ironton, Ohio
October 21, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
The Mountain Rag Revue 1985-1986, Bob's columns, from Susan Roberts
from Susan Roberts:
The Mountain Rag Revue 1985-1986
In the spring of April 1985, no doubt at Charlie B’s on a Friday or
Saturday night the Rag was conceived of. Granted it probably involved
some shots of dark Puerto Rican Rum and a few brewskies but atmosphere
is everything. Like any fertility rite there are genetics involved and
in this case it consisted of four Aries, one Leo and a Libra with a
ratio of two of the female gender and four of the male. All that fire
and hot air to boot and Mountain Rag Revue was on its way.
The first two issues of the RAG as it became known fairly quickly
were overseen by all of the six pairs of eyes, in various ways. It
really was too many cooks in the kitchen and by the second issue
things cooled. The Libra moved off to work somewhere else, two of the
Aries broke up, which involved molten lava and flames and well, life
went on. But by September I was stoked up again to get things moving
even if I had to do it all by myself. Yes, I am one of the Aries, no
doubt the big mouth who after the third shot of rum said, “Hey, let’s
start a paper.” I’ve been known to come up with brilliant ideas on
more than one occasion and all of it without the benefit of the real
experience, and my experience at that point in time was minimal. I had
learned the art of cut and paste, written a bit, loved fiction, loved
poetry and found myself forging head long into becoming a publisher,
editor, ad saleswoman, and copy editor along with being a waitress,
cook and mom. Life is to be lived, is it not!
So the RAG revived its puny little head and I went into production
during the fall and spring of 1986. All total I think nine issues were
created although I seem to be missing an issue in which I interviewed
Gary Snider (it’s true!). I have most of the ragged copies, now
twenty-five years old and much mulled over. Back then I was the novice
par excellence, crazed with the printed word, wild and obviously not
the best typist in the world. I’m pretty sure the first two issues
were typed on my old Remington typewriter set up on the kitchen table
between meals. The kitchen table then became my lay-out space three
days before print time. In fact, it was during this time that I was
introduced to the computer and that actually complicated things,
because I wasn’t very good at that either.
In rereading some of those old copies I realized that some of the
artists interviewed had passed on and that some of them were still
around, now famous, and still making art. I found myself laughing at
stupid stories raw and half baked, rediscovered poets I have long
admired, and found myself remembering the streets and people of
Missoula, lively nights at Lukes, the Top Hat and Charlie B’s and my
days as a waitress at the infamous Tropicana Cafe. So I began the
process of reviving a very creative, bold endeavor in which I learned
immense amounts about publishing, human relations, who I was, who I
wasn’t and decided to put it out there again, all cleaned up and
shiny.
I can only thank the three Aries, one Leo and the Libra for their
willingness to go along with my hair brain idea and I can see from
this view point twenty-five years later that creativity is a living
thing, which grows, wanes, lives on and moves on. Enjoy!
Sincerely, Scarlett Remington Aka Susan Faye Roberts
On the Herbal Trail
By Bob Bauer
At its best, the pursuit of herbs takes me to river bottoms, woods,
mountains, and meadows. I haven’t had serious problems with grizzlies,
rattlers or mistaken identities of poisonous plants. It’s in the
man-made environs that my herbal treks often take a dangerous turn.
This time was at the natural food/herb store and the mission was to
find the right stuff for Mexican chorizo, a spicy breakfast sausage.
As I walked in the door, Carrot Blossom half smiled and waved at me
from the cash register. Above the overture by Ravel, I heard her soft
voice speak into the intercom. “Our herbalist friend is back again,
Erica. Con out and give him a hand pouring out the oil or whatever he
needs for his experiments. Remember the last time…”
“Not to worry, my lassie,” I interrupted, “this time I’m only here
for a mere handful of spices. No messes this time, I promise you.”
Erica came out from the back room, none-the-less, and followed me to
the shelves of herbs and spice jars.
“I think I see everything that I need. Nice crushed red peppers, just
like the pizza joints use. Cumin seed…garlic…hum, no paprika.”
“A shipment of herbs just came in today, I’ll go back and try to find
you some,” she thoughtfully volunteered.
That left me to scoop the other spices into bags. “To heck with this
little scoop,” I said, “I’m out to make he-man portions for the
Tropicana Café.” I cupped my hands and held a big scoop of crushed red
peppers under my nose. I breathed in deeply and convulsively coughed
it all back out. Seeds were picked up by the wind and bounced off the
shelves of spice jars like thousands of searing hot machine gun
bullets. My eyes turned red and filled with tears as I ran into the
bathroom coughing. I filled the skin full of cold water and dunked my
head into it, overflowing half of it onto the floor. I got a grip on
myself as my face cooled down a bit. I took a leak and headed back out
to clean up my mess, temporarily leaving the water puddles on the
bathroom floor. I was in luck, Erica wasn’t back yet with the paprika,
giving me time to clean up the mess I’d made. I’d promised them I
wouldn’t trash their store up this time but I was already off to a
grand start of it. Holding my breath, I got to work scraping up the
crushed red peppers. My eyes were burning again and I was in the
middle of a string of cuss words when the burning sensation began in
another place. Oh my God! My private parts were catching on fire. Just
touching them in the commode had transferred the heat. I could only
think about going home and jumping into a bathtub of cold water. Laid
back customers were blissfully pushing their half-size shopping carts
around and I was about to break into a blind panic in the middle of
all this tranquility. Jesus Christ, I thought, I wish she’d get back
with the paprika, I need to get out of here. Unable to stand it any
longer I headed back to the bathroom just as she was coming out
through the swinging doors.
“I found the paprika. But do you…”
“Anything you say, I’ll be right back.”
Working in a near frenzy, I managed to take off my pants and shoes to
straddle the sink of cold water, flooding half of it over the floor.
Relief came over as the water cooled and contracted my inflamed parts.
I could have stayed there for hours but I headed back to where I had
left Erica. She was trying to hold her breath and clean up the
peppers.
“Uh, sorry Erica. Let me take care of that.”
“Thanks, anyway, but I’ll clean it up.”
I was red from heat and embarrassment.
“Well, in that case, do you have a mop hanging around anywhere? You
see, while I was in the bathroom…”
“That’s okay, I’ll take care of that, too. I scooped you a bag of
chilies and your paprika is there beside it,” she said.
“Well thanks.”
“Before you leave, Doc, got any cures for a headache?”
“What you need is for me to take a long vacation. I’m going to pay
for this stuff and leave immediately.”
Winter Foraging
I could hardly sleep from the chill in the house and the wind
pounding against the windowpanes. Wishing that I had one of those
Santa Claus style pajama hats, I got up shivering to stoke up the fire
and brush my teeth. No luck. The pipes are frozen.
I huddle by the crackling wood stove thinking about my hunting chums.
Right now they were probably slipping into their woolen paints and
suspenders and were happy as larks. This was the kind of weather they
love. It was too miserably cold even for the snow to fall but it meant
that the deer and elk would be moving during the day so they could
comfortably “road hunt” in their four wheel drive pickups and blazers.
Herb hunting is my preference and not in sub-zero weather. But what
was I to do? I’d go crazy if I didn’t get out foraging during the
unfathomable Montana winters. So what if the plants are wilted and
dead and their roots bound in the frozen ground. I was determined to
bring home the herbal bacon, and like my friends, do it “road
hunting.” My old Plymouth is a junker but the heater works and as long
as I didn’t take any chances going way out I’d be safe from the cold.
After fixing some breakfast, I put on my coat and boots. Stepping
outside I grimaced and went to try and fire up my rig. Priming the
carburator several times, I managed to turn the engine over and get it
running. While it warmed up I hurriedly taped some plastic over the
broken rear window and ran back inside to call up Susan.
“Hey baby, how about dinner tonight a-la-Kim Williams. I’m going to
stalk the wilds of Missoula.”
“It’s cold enough to freeze a Polar bears ass Bauer. You must be nuts!”
“Nuts are what I’m after. Before it snows a foot and covers them all.”
“Sounds terrific, but we’ll probably have to fix some noodles or
something for the kids. You know how they are about wild things.”
Wild things phooey. Kid’s now days never want to eat anything that’s
creative, spicy or different. Still I would try. “Okay,” I said. “See
you at six. I gotta get going my car’s running and I’m low on gas.”
The old heater was working like a champ as I pull out of the
driveway. I turned off Russell onto Third and follow it to the elegant
Clark Fork Station. Choke cherries thrive there along the river bank
and herbs like burdock, yellow dock, mint and nightshade are plentiful
in the summer time. Now I was after juniper. They grow all over town
but these particular ones were laden with ripe blue berries. They were
planted by the entrance and looked to be a shrubby horticultural
version of Juniperus Communis.
I fondle the boughs and the ripe berries fall into my sack below
leaving the immature ones behind. Engrossed in my task I am startled
by a middle age couple in ski clothing.
“What are you doing?” the woman inquires.
“Picking juniper berries for gin,” I lie.
“Oh,” she said confused. “Well I hope you don’t mind my snooping.”
“That’s fine ms. And I can’t tell a lie. I’m going to use these
berries to season a marinade sauce and turn sauerkraut into
daintiness.”
“Oh,” she said again. “Well thank-you. Do you know if the bar is open?”
“Not until five. No one’s around and that’s why I am. Before noon try
the Oxford or Charlie B’s.”
They walked away still not seeming to understanding anything except
that the bar was closed. I hope the reader is making sense of this.
You, see juniper berries make an excellent seasoning through they’re
never seen in a spice in. Use them sparingly however because their
potent taste. They are delicious added to a marinade for meats,
particularly venison and duck. I’ve been told it is exquisite on pork.
The flavor finds its perfect combination with sauerkraut. Try baking
short ribs with kraut and add about a half dozen juniper berries for
something beyond the imagination of the palate.
The Indians sometimes made a straight mush of them but the taste
would be too bracing for most modern people.
My teeth are chattering so I add a few twigs to my bag and get back
into the car. The needles don’t make a bad tea if they are well dried
to evaporate the volatile oils. Compared to the current commercial
teas with their teddy bear labels and sophisticated soda pop taste
juniper displays an honest woodsy flavor.
I leave the station and drive over the Orange Street Bridge glimpsing
floating ice. “Man it’s cold,” I thought, “but the hunt must go on.” A
minute later I park by the Poverello Center. A group of cold looking
people are already lined up waiting for the free lunch doors to open.
I wave and open the gate to the front yard. My jaw drops open. The
lawn has been raked. I am on my hands and knees crawling around
searching under the shrubs when the supervisor comes out. “What the
heck do you think you’re doing fella? We don’t allow no one that’s
drunk to eat here.”
“I’m not drunk. I’m looking for walnuts and who the hells idea was it
to rake the lawn anyway?”
“It was my idea, the city wants us to clean up our image.”
“Well a person could starve around here.”
“Lunch begins in five minutes, chum, and there’s plenty for everyone.”
I crawl around a little longer and find about a dozen that the cruel
rake missed. “Better than nothing,” I think walking back to the car
and admiring the two beautiful walnut trees. Black walnut trees re
rare in the west. They are native to the Eastern and Midwestern states
and are treasured for their beautiful hardwood. The nuts have a
distinctive flavor unmatched by any others. Each time I pick them I’m
reminded of the smell of them stored in my grandmother’s cellar.
Next stop was the Orange Street Olie’s for gas, coffee and a world
famous hot dog.
“Hey guy,” said the perky cashier with a Pattly LaBelle hairdo. “How
come you’re not buying the usual six pack? Getting old?”
“Getting classy is more like it. I’m heading out Mullen Road to pick
the cuisine of the elite. I’ll bet you never tasted a watercress
sandwich here on the North Side.”
I pass the Holiday Inn and the rendering plant and it begins to feel
like I’m in the country. Snowberries grow alongside the road. This
year they are plumb and plentiful, a sign of a hard winter according
to the old timers. Nature provides extra food for the animals they say
and the weather is proving them correct. I drive several more miles
and park on a gravel road by the spring. What an oasis on this frigid
day! The green living watercress covers the bottom for twenty yards
and there and there are no cattle around to taint it. I pinch a stalk
and pop it into my mouth. The taste is peppery and good. There will be
no scurvy for this kid. I pick a mess of it and hurry back to the car.
Further down the lane I spot several wild rose bushes with their rose
hips enduring on prickly branches. Technically speaking, the hips are
the seed pods or fruits. They have a core of small seeds and cling to
the plant all winter long making them beneficial to foragers and wild
life alike. The picking is a little painful as the briars scratch and
the cold wind stings my hands but it is a reasonable price for this
excellent fruit. They are both tasty and high in vitamin c as well as
other vitamins. People use them in jams, jellies, soups and pies. I
enjoy them in a winter time tea along with tonic herbs such as yarrow,
mullein and mint.
I head jubilantly back to town with only a stop at the grocery store
left. Wheeling down the aisles I pick up steaks, bread, ice cream,
cream cheese, Worcestershire sauce, garlic and a jug of Carlo Rossi
Pisano. Please excuse my domesticity but I like a few extras when I
fix a wild meal.
And wild it was going to be. Susan jumped for the Pisano as I emptied
the bag. “Hold it,” I order. “That’s for the marinade sauce.”
“Can we get sauced too?”
“Okay, just let me take some for the steaks.”
I poured about a fourth of it into a pan and added garlic, onion
slices, and a dozen juniper berries. I steep the concoction then cool
it outside before immersing the steaks in it. I begin work on the
sandwich spread while Susan works on the jug of wine. I put about a
cup of watercress in the blender along with a package of cream cheese,
a quarter cup of butter, some mayonnaise, a half teaspoon of
Worcestershire sauce and salt. After blending it all together, I put
it outside to cool and go looking for the hammer. In a few minutes I
have the walnuts open and the meats separated.
The steaks are nearly ready so I begin on the rose hips. I put them
in the blender and add just enough water to cover them. I strain the
seeds from the beautiful red pulp and return it to the blender adding
ice cream, milk and sugar. Presto, rose hip milkshakes.
While the steaks are frying I make up the sandwiches using white
bread for the kids since that is what they like and I am determined to
make them like this meal. I make sandwiches for the adults with rye
bread. I chop the walnuts and add them to the watercress filling and
spread it over the bread. I remove the steaks from the stove and set
the table with two rose hip milkshakes, four watercress sandwiches,
two steaks and two glasses of Pisano.
“Dinner,” I call to the kids.
“What’s for dinner? Ama asks making a face.
“Wonder Bread sandwiches and milkshakes.”
“Oh, boy!” she exclaimed.
The dinner was a success. The children like the milkshakes better
than Mac D’s and the sandwiches were fit for the most pretentious of
bridge parties. The steaks had taken on the delicious flavor of the
juniper berries.
“It was wonderful Bob. That was the most unusual streak I’ve ever
had. The kids loved it too, but I don’t know how healthy they will
stay on white bread and milkshakes all the time.”
“What are you talking about? With all those greens, walnuts, and rose
hips there were more vitamins and minerals than they’ll ever get until
they drop out and become organic hippies …or physically superb
yuppies…or whatever’s going to be next.”
Susan yelled into the other room asking the kid’s to turn down the
phonograph. It was their favorite record, The Snot Puppies. Well,
maybe they won’t become hippies or yuppies but watercress is a good
start to where ever.
On the Herbal Trail
Jody went into a full howl and moments later a whitetail broke out of
the cottonwoods and headed toward the river. Bouncing along like a
pogo stick, the little beagle bounded through the snow in pursuit. I
tried to catch her but it was of no use. My beer and sloth body was
heaving as I arrived at the channel just in time to see the deer and
dog crossing the ice. They disappeared into the next county.
“Come back here you little swine.” The stubborn dog paid no attention
and her yelps soon faded into the distance. I would have been content
to let the mutt chase the deer to china but unfortunately it belonged
to my girl friend’s seven year old daughter. So, disregarding all
common sense, I decided to try and cross the fragile ice and follow
her tracks. My first tentative step broke the surface and I crashed
into the river. I gasped for air and cursing scrambled up the bank
soaked to my chest.
“To heck with the cur!” I screamed and left Jody to fend for her
self. I needed to get home and warm up before I caught pneumonia.
Nearly frozen, I tramp back to the car and guess who is wagging her
tail to greet me? (Author’s quotation is censored).
Back at home I begin filling the bathtub and climb out of my wet
clothes. I lay in the hot water for fifteen minutes and then climb
out getting into some warm long johns. Feeling weak I decided to
concoct a hot cup of herbal tea.
At times like this my primal kinship with healing plants is recalled.
I smell and sense the power of dried flowers and leaves.
Ritualistically, I crush them in my fingers and sprinkle them into a
simmering teapot. Nature, my severe teacher, becomes my benign
rescuer.
There’s good evidence that some type of rite was used clear back to
the time of Neanderthal man, at a burial site in a cave, his bones
were found heavily scattered with flower pollen grains. The corpse had
apparently been heaped with flowers. Perhaps they were used merely as
funeral ornamentation but identification of the grains led
anthropologists to believe that these were pharmacopia. All of these
grains are from plants that still flourish in Irag and seven of the
eight are still used by the local people in dozens of different ways.
Marshmallow is used as a mucilaginous remedy for the stomach or
throat. Ephedia, also found amidst the bones, is now used by modern
medicine as a cardiac stimulant. And yarrow, used by this herbal
correspondent sixty thousand years later, makes a potent tonic for
colds, fever and frigid dunkings in the Clark Fork River.
Fortunately, I had collected and dried their aromatic white flowers
and leaves in July. They were stored in a jar where they generally
remain until the iceman cometh. Then they become the antidote for most
of my winter aliments.
The first time I usually drink yarrow teas is in the fall when the
first cold spell catches me off guard and later when the northerly
elements try to knock me down.
In my kitchen I add some wild mint and let the tea steep. The mint
mellows and compliments the strong bitterness of the other. When it
becomes a dark brew I take my first sip. I feel something rush clear
to my fingertips something like the exhilaration from a shot of
whiskey. Thus in an enigmatic and vibrational way, the herb embraces
the weakened organism immediately, and the healing constituents enter
the blood stream soon after.
I drank the team throughout the day and ten add several more herbs
the next morning. Rose hips for their vitamin C content, stinging
nettles for their tonic and lung astringency properties and mullein
for its soothing effect to the entire respiratory system. All of
these, I had gather, dried and stored earlier in jars. Of course,
it’s a little late to find them now. The next best bet is to buy them
at Butterfly Herbs on Higgins Avenue. Somehow herbs from the store are
never quite as potent as the one’s you collect yourself but Scott at
Butterfly does a good job of finding quality plants.
Thanks to herbs, I made it through the river incident in pretty good
shape. Now that the weather in Missoula is warming up I’m confident
that I’ll stay well if I don’t fall in the river again. What I’m
looking for now is an herb to strengthen my eyesight. This fog is
getting hard to see through….
They Chew Horseradish Don’t They?
I was in the hills at last. Four long days on the Greyhound bus were
nearly over and, man what a trip. First there was the long stop in
Belgrade to eject the drunk. “On to Valley Forge,” he roared as we
departed the little town. Then there was the night in the Billings
depot waiting for the roads to clear, the rubber eggs in Fargo and
Burger Kin in the Wisconsin Dells. Exhausted in Chicago I was
beginning to hallucinate, William “The Refrigerator” Perry was
tracking me into the restroom. In Indian, a passenger was blaring,
“SHAKE YOUR GROOVE THING,” on his tape deck.
Thankfully, the bus was nearly empty as I cruise the final stretch
through the highlands of Southern Ohio. There were green patches of
mountain laurel and Christmas fern animating the dormant landscape
along with ramshackle homes, dog houses and chicken coops clinging to
the hillsides as laundry, coon hounds and fighting cocks walking about
yards. A sign proclaims we should keep the Sabbath a Holy Day and
painted on a rock: Elect Sheriff Howell For Law and Order. I was
almost home for Christmas.
Settled on the Ohio River, Ironton is another little town that
industry deserted and time nearly forgot. There’s a restaurant called,
“Mom’s”, a dozen beer and wine carry outs, a few markets, a
Woolworth’s and the in the hills all around the most remarkable herbs
flourish such as ginseng, yellar root (golden seal) and spicebush.
In the winter, however, this Herbin’ Cowboy had to change his
diversions to other things like visiting his family, drinking Iron
City Beer, and listening to bluegrass and revivals on the radio.
Finishing off my first case of Iron City Beer I drove over to
Goodrich’s Market for more sauce. It was misty and cool. Next stop was
the Twilight Zone. The faded market stood where the pavement ended and
the cobblestone began. Inside was an eclectic hillbilly story crammed
with old wooden shelves and merchandise hanging off the ceiling. There
were jars of picked beans that the old lady canned herself. I found
dust covered bottles of Wildroot Cream Oil, Dr. Caldwell’s Senna
Laxative, and long strips of sassafras bark tied into bundles. Finally
in the beer cooler I found something I hadn’t had in years, Meniger’s
Horseradish. I ambled to the counter with beer, sassafras, hair tonic,
laxative, prickled green beans and horseradish.
“Where do you get the sassafras bark? I asked the elderly lady.
“There’s an old fellar that lives out in the country. He brings it in
once a year.”
“How’s Joe Meniger, the horseradish man doing?”
“He’s still a-working away, usually up on the levy a diggin’ roots
when the ground ain’t froze.”
“Well, thanks a lot. Can’t wait to try your beans.”
“Hope you like ‘em, honey.”
I decide to look for Mr. Meninger and find him right where she said
he’d be -- up on the levy, slowly digging roots and putting them into
a bushel basket.
“Hello Mr. Meninger, remember me?”
“Yer the feller that’s a-livin’ out west, ain’t ya?”
“Yep,” I said with my most affected cowboy drawl. “I’m back to visit
my family and collect herbal lore.”
“Take this shovel then, and I’ll learn ya some.”
The plot measured about fifteen by sixty yards. At one time it was
planted in rows but by now the horseradish had scattered everywhere.
The roots spread faster than Mormons it seems. In nearly every shovel
full I came up with slender white rootstalks.
“See how you keep a-breakin’ the root off at the end,” he said.
“Those will com up again.”
I dug out one that had half a dozen side roots. Joe took it and broke them off.
“I tie these smaller roots into bundles and store them underground
for the winter. Come spring, I’m gonna dig me a new garden, uncover
these, and plant em in rows. They’ll be a couple of inches across come
autumn. Not all crowded and skinny like these roots.”
I continue digging as Joe talks. “Now if I was away all summer, I
could still come back and tell what kind of year it was just by
looking at the roots. If they grow deeps its been a dry year and if
they’re shallow roots with lots of these side roots, its been pretty
wet. I’m retired now,” he continued. “But I’ve been raisin’
horseradish for seventy years. I wouldn’t be doing it now if I didn’t
like it. It don’t hardly pay.”
The basket was nearly filled with the long pungent roots. After
washing they would be ready for grinding. The roots don’t take on
their characteristic taste or smell until then, but during grinding
it’s hard to be anywhere near. The vapors fill a room like a botanic
version of tear gas. Meninger uses a very large electric grinder
vented by a twenty inch window fan. Once in awhile, gusts of wind will
reverse the air flow and Joe has to beat it out of the room or his
face will have turned red like an angered tomato.
The final step is to add white vinegar and fill the jars. Besides
selling to the markets in Ironton, his son-in-law sells to his
co-workers in Dayton.
You can see that there is a lot of effort in making this condiment
and you’re probably hoping that I won’t start a wacked out narration
on making it yourself. They sell it in stores, right? That’s right but
if you are the type who liked to east sausage with it and enjoy
watering eyes and your nose running, then homemade horseradish is for
you. I’ve been hooked ever since making my first batch. I discovered
that there is a difference between the six month old cultivated roots
and the old mangy ones that grow wild. The younger ones don’t have
time to develop the same commanding bite.
Your first step is learning to recognize the wild plant. A member of
the mustard family, it is a tall coarse plant two to three feet high
with foot long basal leaves clustered around the stalk. The tiny white
flowers bloom May through July. The positive identifier, however, is
the fiery root. They sometimes get so big and gnarly that I can almost
believe the hillbilly who said, “A root will keep growing till the
judgement day.”
Horseradish is likely to be found growing almost anywhere that has
ever been settled. I’ve found it in pastures, around farm buildings,
and along railroad tracks. I even know of a patch in downtown
Missoula. It’s behind the deserted Smith Hotel between Railroad and
Alder. Perhaps it had been planted by a lobby chef. In any case, once
it is established it never goes away.
To make your own horseradish, start by scraping off the worst of the
drk outer skin. This only develops on the older roots. Now find an
extension cord and hook up a food processor OUTSIDE. If you don’t have
a processor for chopping, use a hand grater instead. Your eyes are
going to smart either way. Finally add enough vinegar to make a pasty
consistency. (Don’t use apple cider vinegar, health fanatics; it turns
it a sickly brown and tastes like mustard candy). Jar it with a tight
fitting lid and refrigerate, it will keep almost indefinitely.
Medicinally, horseradish has many uses. The most practical is merely
eating it for its extraordinary rich in Vitamin C. It has saved many a
scurvy-plagued individual living on non-fresh, salt-preserved rations.
Also, it’s a stimulant to the appetite and the digestive system, which
could use a little help with the typical accompaniments of hot dogs,
salami, etc. Not surprisingly, it replaces mustard plaster for aching
joints and limbs. It will also rid horses and children of worms, if
you can get them to eat it.
I would like to propose a new use-for teenage boys in cow towns that
are experimenting with snoose. This purely a macho rite as anyone is
bound to puke out his guts on all initial attempts. Just a pinch
between the cheek and gums says a moron Dallas Cowboys halfback will
prevent these impressionable youths from dying with transplanted PVC
throats. They should be instructed to substitute with the omnipotent
condiment. What better way to prove your manhood than by
simultaneously breathing, chewing and holding back the tears.
Back on the road again for the return trip to Montana Meninger’s
horseradish patch was just a fond memory. We were approaching the
Wisconsin Dells and I was prepared for the Burger King having seen one
of their commercials in Ironton. Say the password -I’m not Herb- to
get a double cheeseburger for only ninety-nine cents. Who said riding
a Greyhound can’t be fun.
Upon arrival I hurried out of the bus and got into the food line.
Within seconds it was my turn to order. I choked when the most
beautiful Nordic blonde I had ever seen asked, “May I take your order,
sir?”
“Uh----high on herb-----uh-----so what’s the beef-----I mean,”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have the special when the bus is in.”
“Well just give me a Whopper,” I said composing myself.
At my table, the hamburger looked worse than usual for fast food. No
sweat I had a jar of good old Joe Meninger’s horseradish in my
knapsack. I shoveled it on about half an inch thick. Meanwhile, I
spied my Swedish Goddess cleaning the salad bar. She was talking to
another worker and looking my way. Ah, she’s finally noticing my
rugged good looks. I strain my ears to hear her sweet voice.”
“These buses really get the weirdos, ya know. Look at that one over
there. He cries every time he takes a bite. I’m not taking the bus to
the Springsteen concert, I’ll fly to Chicago!”
Burdock Root
You have probably noticed the burdock plant because of its large
jungle like foliage and have perhaps mistaken it for rhubarb. It may
show up in any moist area including your yard if, like myself, you
leave some areas undisturbed from the tyranny of the lawnmower.
A Eurasian native, it has spread nearly everywhere in America thanks
to its large burr-like seeds which stick to anything but a plastic
raincoat. People, game, and livestock have carried it to pastures,
woodlands, alleys and vacant lots missing only the chemically
protected suburbs of Shaker Heights and Malibu. This successful
extension of the invader plant is proof of Doc Bauer’s Theory of
Survival of the Most Obnoxious.
However, as you’re pulling those hooked burrs from your hair and
clothing stop and consider the wonderful medicinal properties that the
seeds possess. They’re an excellent diuretic particularly for water
retention and kidney related toxemia. For those maladies remove the
seeds from the sticky chaff with a rolling pin or blender and winnow
in your hands. A half teaspoon boiled in water two or three times a
day is the right dosage.
The roots are more commonly used medically and now, since the foliage
has wilted and died, it is the best time for digging them. It is
widely used as a blood purifier meaning that it will hasten the
excretion of waste products in the blood stream particularly when
there are resultant skin eruptions. A teaspoon of the dried root
boiled and then simmered for twenty minutes is taken twice daily. Due
to its diuretic effects, the second cup is best taken well before
bedtime. It is also an excellent drink in conjunction with fasting as
it helps to maintain peristalsis and prevent blood acidity.
I first sampled the edibility of burdock at a “hippie” party in the
early seventies in an old parked trolley car on the south side of
Missoula. After a plate of millet and groats I was the first to go for
a nice sugary slice of rhubarb pie. I took a bite, made an ugly face
and ran through the sliding doors to spit it out. I hadn’t bee rhubarb
at all. The gal who made it had mistaken burdock for rhubarb despite
the fact that the stalks lacked the characteristic and showy redness.
Of course we missed some details in those days in our endeavor to get
the whole picture.
Now there’s an outside chance that the pie might have been palatable
had she peeled the rank skin off the stalks. They are edible when
peeled and cooked like asparagus.
Burdock is a biennial. The roots from the first year plants are very
good if dug in June or early July. Boil the root in two waters with a
pinch of soda added to the first. Many people including myself feel
the most delectable dish comes from the bloom stalk of the second year
plant. These must be gathered when the flower heads are starting to
form and like the leafstalks are peeled of their bitter green rind.
Prepare the same as the directions given for the roots.
The Japanese make a dish from burdock root and carp that I’d rather
die than eat. It is called Koi-Koku and is used by athletes and
dancers. It is purported to surpass any of the “energizers” that are
going around the professional locker rooms these days. Its strength is
due to the combination of the most yin (acidic) among fish and the
most yang (alkaline) of vegetables. Make sure the gall bladder is
removed from the carp then cut it into one-half inch slices – head,
scales, fins, guts, everything. One third the amount of burdock root
are shredded and sauted in oil. The carp slices are then added on top
and the heap is covered with water. This is simmered until the carp
disintegrates. Add miso and water then simmer a couple more hours
until done. Eat hearty gladiators!
If any of these medical or culinary recipes arouse your interest,
remember that burdock is readily available to the forager in Montana.
And I’ll add that the carp are getting very prevalent in Canyon Ferry
Reservoir, which is further proof of Doc Bauer’s Theory.
The Mountain Rag Revue 1985-1986
In the spring of April 1985, no doubt at Charlie B’s on a Friday or
Saturday night the Rag was conceived of. Granted it probably involved
some shots of dark Puerto Rican Rum and a few brewskies but atmosphere
is everything. Like any fertility rite there are genetics involved and
in this case it consisted of four Aries, one Leo and a Libra with a
ratio of two of the female gender and four of the male. All that fire
and hot air to boot and Mountain Rag Revue was on its way.
The first two issues of the RAG as it became known fairly quickly
were overseen by all of the six pairs of eyes, in various ways. It
really was too many cooks in the kitchen and by the second issue
things cooled. The Libra moved off to work somewhere else, two of the
Aries broke up, which involved molten lava and flames and well, life
went on. But by September I was stoked up again to get things moving
even if I had to do it all by myself. Yes, I am one of the Aries, no
doubt the big mouth who after the third shot of rum said, “Hey, let’s
start a paper.” I’ve been known to come up with brilliant ideas on
more than one occasion and all of it without the benefit of the real
experience, and my experience at that point in time was minimal. I had
learned the art of cut and paste, written a bit, loved fiction, loved
poetry and found myself forging head long into becoming a publisher,
editor, ad saleswoman, and copy editor along with being a waitress,
cook and mom. Life is to be lived, is it not!
So the RAG revived its puny little head and I went into production
during the fall and spring of 1986. All total I think nine issues were
created although I seem to be missing an issue in which I interviewed
Gary Snider (it’s true!). I have most of the ragged copies, now
twenty-five years old and much mulled over. Back then I was the novice
par excellence, crazed with the printed word, wild and obviously not
the best typist in the world. I’m pretty sure the first two issues
were typed on my old Remington typewriter set up on the kitchen table
between meals. The kitchen table then became my lay-out space three
days before print time. In fact, it was during this time that I was
introduced to the computer and that actually complicated things,
because I wasn’t very good at that either.
In rereading some of those old copies I realized that some of the
artists interviewed had passed on and that some of them were still
around, now famous, and still making art. I found myself laughing at
stupid stories raw and half baked, rediscovered poets I have long
admired, and found myself remembering the streets and people of
Missoula, lively nights at Lukes, the Top Hat and Charlie B’s and my
days as a waitress at the infamous Tropicana Cafe. So I began the
process of reviving a very creative, bold endeavor in which I learned
immense amounts about publishing, human relations, who I was, who I
wasn’t and decided to put it out there again, all cleaned up and
shiny.
I can only thank the three Aries, one Leo and the Libra for their
willingness to go along with my hair brain idea and I can see from
this view point twenty-five years later that creativity is a living
thing, which grows, wanes, lives on and moves on. Enjoy!
Sincerely, Scarlett Remington Aka Susan Faye Roberts
On the Herbal Trail
By Bob Bauer
At its best, the pursuit of herbs takes me to river bottoms, woods,
mountains, and meadows. I haven’t had serious problems with grizzlies,
rattlers or mistaken identities of poisonous plants. It’s in the
man-made environs that my herbal treks often take a dangerous turn.
This time was at the natural food/herb store and the mission was to
find the right stuff for Mexican chorizo, a spicy breakfast sausage.
As I walked in the door, Carrot Blossom half smiled and waved at me
from the cash register. Above the overture by Ravel, I heard her soft
voice speak into the intercom. “Our herbalist friend is back again,
Erica. Con out and give him a hand pouring out the oil or whatever he
needs for his experiments. Remember the last time…”
“Not to worry, my lassie,” I interrupted, “this time I’m only here
for a mere handful of spices. No messes this time, I promise you.”
Erica came out from the back room, none-the-less, and followed me to
the shelves of herbs and spice jars.
“I think I see everything that I need. Nice crushed red peppers, just
like the pizza joints use. Cumin seed…garlic…hum, no paprika.”
“A shipment of herbs just came in today, I’ll go back and try to find
you some,” she thoughtfully volunteered.
That left me to scoop the other spices into bags. “To heck with this
little scoop,” I said, “I’m out to make he-man portions for the
Tropicana Café.” I cupped my hands and held a big scoop of crushed red
peppers under my nose. I breathed in deeply and convulsively coughed
it all back out. Seeds were picked up by the wind and bounced off the
shelves of spice jars like thousands of searing hot machine gun
bullets. My eyes turned red and filled with tears as I ran into the
bathroom coughing. I filled the skin full of cold water and dunked my
head into it, overflowing half of it onto the floor. I got a grip on
myself as my face cooled down a bit. I took a leak and headed back out
to clean up my mess, temporarily leaving the water puddles on the
bathroom floor. I was in luck, Erica wasn’t back yet with the paprika,
giving me time to clean up the mess I’d made. I’d promised them I
wouldn’t trash their store up this time but I was already off to a
grand start of it. Holding my breath, I got to work scraping up the
crushed red peppers. My eyes were burning again and I was in the
middle of a string of cuss words when the burning sensation began in
another place. Oh my God! My private parts were catching on fire. Just
touching them in the commode had transferred the heat. I could only
think about going home and jumping into a bathtub of cold water. Laid
back customers were blissfully pushing their half-size shopping carts
around and I was about to break into a blind panic in the middle of
all this tranquility. Jesus Christ, I thought, I wish she’d get back
with the paprika, I need to get out of here. Unable to stand it any
longer I headed back to the bathroom just as she was coming out
through the swinging doors.
“I found the paprika. But do you…”
“Anything you say, I’ll be right back.”
Working in a near frenzy, I managed to take off my pants and shoes to
straddle the sink of cold water, flooding half of it over the floor.
Relief came over as the water cooled and contracted my inflamed parts.
I could have stayed there for hours but I headed back to where I had
left Erica. She was trying to hold her breath and clean up the
peppers.
“Uh, sorry Erica. Let me take care of that.”
“Thanks, anyway, but I’ll clean it up.”
I was red from heat and embarrassment.
“Well, in that case, do you have a mop hanging around anywhere? You
see, while I was in the bathroom…”
“That’s okay, I’ll take care of that, too. I scooped you a bag of
chilies and your paprika is there beside it,” she said.
“Well thanks.”
“Before you leave, Doc, got any cures for a headache?”
“What you need is for me to take a long vacation. I’m going to pay
for this stuff and leave immediately.”
Winter Foraging
I could hardly sleep from the chill in the house and the wind
pounding against the windowpanes. Wishing that I had one of those
Santa Claus style pajama hats, I got up shivering to stoke up the fire
and brush my teeth. No luck. The pipes are frozen.
I huddle by the crackling wood stove thinking about my hunting chums.
Right now they were probably slipping into their woolen paints and
suspenders and were happy as larks. This was the kind of weather they
love. It was too miserably cold even for the snow to fall but it meant
that the deer and elk would be moving during the day so they could
comfortably “road hunt” in their four wheel drive pickups and blazers.
Herb hunting is my preference and not in sub-zero weather. But what
was I to do? I’d go crazy if I didn’t get out foraging during the
unfathomable Montana winters. So what if the plants are wilted and
dead and their roots bound in the frozen ground. I was determined to
bring home the herbal bacon, and like my friends, do it “road
hunting.” My old Plymouth is a junker but the heater works and as long
as I didn’t take any chances going way out I’d be safe from the cold.
After fixing some breakfast, I put on my coat and boots. Stepping
outside I grimaced and went to try and fire up my rig. Priming the
carburator several times, I managed to turn the engine over and get it
running. While it warmed up I hurriedly taped some plastic over the
broken rear window and ran back inside to call up Susan.
“Hey baby, how about dinner tonight a-la-Kim Williams. I’m going to
stalk the wilds of Missoula.”
“It’s cold enough to freeze a Polar bears ass Bauer. You must be nuts!”
“Nuts are what I’m after. Before it snows a foot and covers them all.”
“Sounds terrific, but we’ll probably have to fix some noodles or
something for the kids. You know how they are about wild things.”
Wild things phooey. Kid’s now days never want to eat anything that’s
creative, spicy or different. Still I would try. “Okay,” I said. “See
you at six. I gotta get going my car’s running and I’m low on gas.”
The old heater was working like a champ as I pull out of the
driveway. I turned off Russell onto Third and follow it to the elegant
Clark Fork Station. Choke cherries thrive there along the river bank
and herbs like burdock, yellow dock, mint and nightshade are plentiful
in the summer time. Now I was after juniper. They grow all over town
but these particular ones were laden with ripe blue berries. They were
planted by the entrance and looked to be a shrubby horticultural
version of Juniperus Communis.
I fondle the boughs and the ripe berries fall into my sack below
leaving the immature ones behind. Engrossed in my task I am startled
by a middle age couple in ski clothing.
“What are you doing?” the woman inquires.
“Picking juniper berries for gin,” I lie.
“Oh,” she said confused. “Well I hope you don’t mind my snooping.”
“That’s fine ms. And I can’t tell a lie. I’m going to use these
berries to season a marinade sauce and turn sauerkraut into
daintiness.”
“Oh,” she said again. “Well thank-you. Do you know if the bar is open?”
“Not until five. No one’s around and that’s why I am. Before noon try
the Oxford or Charlie B’s.”
They walked away still not seeming to understanding anything except
that the bar was closed. I hope the reader is making sense of this.
You, see juniper berries make an excellent seasoning through they’re
never seen in a spice in. Use them sparingly however because their
potent taste. They are delicious added to a marinade for meats,
particularly venison and duck. I’ve been told it is exquisite on pork.
The flavor finds its perfect combination with sauerkraut. Try baking
short ribs with kraut and add about a half dozen juniper berries for
something beyond the imagination of the palate.
The Indians sometimes made a straight mush of them but the taste
would be too bracing for most modern people.
My teeth are chattering so I add a few twigs to my bag and get back
into the car. The needles don’t make a bad tea if they are well dried
to evaporate the volatile oils. Compared to the current commercial
teas with their teddy bear labels and sophisticated soda pop taste
juniper displays an honest woodsy flavor.
I leave the station and drive over the Orange Street Bridge glimpsing
floating ice. “Man it’s cold,” I thought, “but the hunt must go on.” A
minute later I park by the Poverello Center. A group of cold looking
people are already lined up waiting for the free lunch doors to open.
I wave and open the gate to the front yard. My jaw drops open. The
lawn has been raked. I am on my hands and knees crawling around
searching under the shrubs when the supervisor comes out. “What the
heck do you think you’re doing fella? We don’t allow no one that’s
drunk to eat here.”
“I’m not drunk. I’m looking for walnuts and who the hells idea was it
to rake the lawn anyway?”
“It was my idea, the city wants us to clean up our image.”
“Well a person could starve around here.”
“Lunch begins in five minutes, chum, and there’s plenty for everyone.”
I crawl around a little longer and find about a dozen that the cruel
rake missed. “Better than nothing,” I think walking back to the car
and admiring the two beautiful walnut trees. Black walnut trees re
rare in the west. They are native to the Eastern and Midwestern states
and are treasured for their beautiful hardwood. The nuts have a
distinctive flavor unmatched by any others. Each time I pick them I’m
reminded of the smell of them stored in my grandmother’s cellar.
Next stop was the Orange Street Olie’s for gas, coffee and a world
famous hot dog.
“Hey guy,” said the perky cashier with a Pattly LaBelle hairdo. “How
come you’re not buying the usual six pack? Getting old?”
“Getting classy is more like it. I’m heading out Mullen Road to pick
the cuisine of the elite. I’ll bet you never tasted a watercress
sandwich here on the North Side.”
I pass the Holiday Inn and the rendering plant and it begins to feel
like I’m in the country. Snowberries grow alongside the road. This
year they are plumb and plentiful, a sign of a hard winter according
to the old timers. Nature provides extra food for the animals they say
and the weather is proving them correct. I drive several more miles
and park on a gravel road by the spring. What an oasis on this frigid
day! The green living watercress covers the bottom for twenty yards
and there and there are no cattle around to taint it. I pinch a stalk
and pop it into my mouth. The taste is peppery and good. There will be
no scurvy for this kid. I pick a mess of it and hurry back to the car.
Further down the lane I spot several wild rose bushes with their rose
hips enduring on prickly branches. Technically speaking, the hips are
the seed pods or fruits. They have a core of small seeds and cling to
the plant all winter long making them beneficial to foragers and wild
life alike. The picking is a little painful as the briars scratch and
the cold wind stings my hands but it is a reasonable price for this
excellent fruit. They are both tasty and high in vitamin c as well as
other vitamins. People use them in jams, jellies, soups and pies. I
enjoy them in a winter time tea along with tonic herbs such as yarrow,
mullein and mint.
I head jubilantly back to town with only a stop at the grocery store
left. Wheeling down the aisles I pick up steaks, bread, ice cream,
cream cheese, Worcestershire sauce, garlic and a jug of Carlo Rossi
Pisano. Please excuse my domesticity but I like a few extras when I
fix a wild meal.
And wild it was going to be. Susan jumped for the Pisano as I emptied
the bag. “Hold it,” I order. “That’s for the marinade sauce.”
“Can we get sauced too?”
“Okay, just let me take some for the steaks.”
I poured about a fourth of it into a pan and added garlic, onion
slices, and a dozen juniper berries. I steep the concoction then cool
it outside before immersing the steaks in it. I begin work on the
sandwich spread while Susan works on the jug of wine. I put about a
cup of watercress in the blender along with a package of cream cheese,
a quarter cup of butter, some mayonnaise, a half teaspoon of
Worcestershire sauce and salt. After blending it all together, I put
it outside to cool and go looking for the hammer. In a few minutes I
have the walnuts open and the meats separated.
The steaks are nearly ready so I begin on the rose hips. I put them
in the blender and add just enough water to cover them. I strain the
seeds from the beautiful red pulp and return it to the blender adding
ice cream, milk and sugar. Presto, rose hip milkshakes.
While the steaks are frying I make up the sandwiches using white
bread for the kids since that is what they like and I am determined to
make them like this meal. I make sandwiches for the adults with rye
bread. I chop the walnuts and add them to the watercress filling and
spread it over the bread. I remove the steaks from the stove and set
the table with two rose hip milkshakes, four watercress sandwiches,
two steaks and two glasses of Pisano.
“Dinner,” I call to the kids.
“What’s for dinner? Ama asks making a face.
“Wonder Bread sandwiches and milkshakes.”
“Oh, boy!” she exclaimed.
The dinner was a success. The children like the milkshakes better
than Mac D’s and the sandwiches were fit for the most pretentious of
bridge parties. The steaks had taken on the delicious flavor of the
juniper berries.
“It was wonderful Bob. That was the most unusual streak I’ve ever
had. The kids loved it too, but I don’t know how healthy they will
stay on white bread and milkshakes all the time.”
“What are you talking about? With all those greens, walnuts, and rose
hips there were more vitamins and minerals than they’ll ever get until
they drop out and become organic hippies …or physically superb
yuppies…or whatever’s going to be next.”
Susan yelled into the other room asking the kid’s to turn down the
phonograph. It was their favorite record, The Snot Puppies. Well,
maybe they won’t become hippies or yuppies but watercress is a good
start to where ever.
On the Herbal Trail
Jody went into a full howl and moments later a whitetail broke out of
the cottonwoods and headed toward the river. Bouncing along like a
pogo stick, the little beagle bounded through the snow in pursuit. I
tried to catch her but it was of no use. My beer and sloth body was
heaving as I arrived at the channel just in time to see the deer and
dog crossing the ice. They disappeared into the next county.
“Come back here you little swine.” The stubborn dog paid no attention
and her yelps soon faded into the distance. I would have been content
to let the mutt chase the deer to china but unfortunately it belonged
to my girl friend’s seven year old daughter. So, disregarding all
common sense, I decided to try and cross the fragile ice and follow
her tracks. My first tentative step broke the surface and I crashed
into the river. I gasped for air and cursing scrambled up the bank
soaked to my chest.
“To heck with the cur!” I screamed and left Jody to fend for her
self. I needed to get home and warm up before I caught pneumonia.
Nearly frozen, I tramp back to the car and guess who is wagging her
tail to greet me? (Author’s quotation is censored).
Back at home I begin filling the bathtub and climb out of my wet
clothes. I lay in the hot water for fifteen minutes and then climb
out getting into some warm long johns. Feeling weak I decided to
concoct a hot cup of herbal tea.
At times like this my primal kinship with healing plants is recalled.
I smell and sense the power of dried flowers and leaves.
Ritualistically, I crush them in my fingers and sprinkle them into a
simmering teapot. Nature, my severe teacher, becomes my benign
rescuer.
There’s good evidence that some type of rite was used clear back to
the time of Neanderthal man, at a burial site in a cave, his bones
were found heavily scattered with flower pollen grains. The corpse had
apparently been heaped with flowers. Perhaps they were used merely as
funeral ornamentation but identification of the grains led
anthropologists to believe that these were pharmacopia. All of these
grains are from plants that still flourish in Irag and seven of the
eight are still used by the local people in dozens of different ways.
Marshmallow is used as a mucilaginous remedy for the stomach or
throat. Ephedia, also found amidst the bones, is now used by modern
medicine as a cardiac stimulant. And yarrow, used by this herbal
correspondent sixty thousand years later, makes a potent tonic for
colds, fever and frigid dunkings in the Clark Fork River.
Fortunately, I had collected and dried their aromatic white flowers
and leaves in July. They were stored in a jar where they generally
remain until the iceman cometh. Then they become the antidote for most
of my winter aliments.
The first time I usually drink yarrow teas is in the fall when the
first cold spell catches me off guard and later when the northerly
elements try to knock me down.
In my kitchen I add some wild mint and let the tea steep. The mint
mellows and compliments the strong bitterness of the other. When it
becomes a dark brew I take my first sip. I feel something rush clear
to my fingertips something like the exhilaration from a shot of
whiskey. Thus in an enigmatic and vibrational way, the herb embraces
the weakened organism immediately, and the healing constituents enter
the blood stream soon after.
I drank the team throughout the day and ten add several more herbs
the next morning. Rose hips for their vitamin C content, stinging
nettles for their tonic and lung astringency properties and mullein
for its soothing effect to the entire respiratory system. All of
these, I had gather, dried and stored earlier in jars. Of course,
it’s a little late to find them now. The next best bet is to buy them
at Butterfly Herbs on Higgins Avenue. Somehow herbs from the store are
never quite as potent as the one’s you collect yourself but Scott at
Butterfly does a good job of finding quality plants.
Thanks to herbs, I made it through the river incident in pretty good
shape. Now that the weather in Missoula is warming up I’m confident
that I’ll stay well if I don’t fall in the river again. What I’m
looking for now is an herb to strengthen my eyesight. This fog is
getting hard to see through….
They Chew Horseradish Don’t They?
I was in the hills at last. Four long days on the Greyhound bus were
nearly over and, man what a trip. First there was the long stop in
Belgrade to eject the drunk. “On to Valley Forge,” he roared as we
departed the little town. Then there was the night in the Billings
depot waiting for the roads to clear, the rubber eggs in Fargo and
Burger Kin in the Wisconsin Dells. Exhausted in Chicago I was
beginning to hallucinate, William “The Refrigerator” Perry was
tracking me into the restroom. In Indian, a passenger was blaring,
“SHAKE YOUR GROOVE THING,” on his tape deck.
Thankfully, the bus was nearly empty as I cruise the final stretch
through the highlands of Southern Ohio. There were green patches of
mountain laurel and Christmas fern animating the dormant landscape
along with ramshackle homes, dog houses and chicken coops clinging to
the hillsides as laundry, coon hounds and fighting cocks walking about
yards. A sign proclaims we should keep the Sabbath a Holy Day and
painted on a rock: Elect Sheriff Howell For Law and Order. I was
almost home for Christmas.
Settled on the Ohio River, Ironton is another little town that
industry deserted and time nearly forgot. There’s a restaurant called,
“Mom’s”, a dozen beer and wine carry outs, a few markets, a
Woolworth’s and the in the hills all around the most remarkable herbs
flourish such as ginseng, yellar root (golden seal) and spicebush.
In the winter, however, this Herbin’ Cowboy had to change his
diversions to other things like visiting his family, drinking Iron
City Beer, and listening to bluegrass and revivals on the radio.
Finishing off my first case of Iron City Beer I drove over to
Goodrich’s Market for more sauce. It was misty and cool. Next stop was
the Twilight Zone. The faded market stood where the pavement ended and
the cobblestone began. Inside was an eclectic hillbilly story crammed
with old wooden shelves and merchandise hanging off the ceiling. There
were jars of picked beans that the old lady canned herself. I found
dust covered bottles of Wildroot Cream Oil, Dr. Caldwell’s Senna
Laxative, and long strips of sassafras bark tied into bundles. Finally
in the beer cooler I found something I hadn’t had in years, Meniger’s
Horseradish. I ambled to the counter with beer, sassafras, hair tonic,
laxative, prickled green beans and horseradish.
“Where do you get the sassafras bark? I asked the elderly lady.
“There’s an old fellar that lives out in the country. He brings it in
once a year.”
“How’s Joe Meniger, the horseradish man doing?”
“He’s still a-working away, usually up on the levy a diggin’ roots
when the ground ain’t froze.”
“Well, thanks a lot. Can’t wait to try your beans.”
“Hope you like ‘em, honey.”
I decide to look for Mr. Meninger and find him right where she said
he’d be -- up on the levy, slowly digging roots and putting them into
a bushel basket.
“Hello Mr. Meninger, remember me?”
“Yer the feller that’s a-livin’ out west, ain’t ya?”
“Yep,” I said with my most affected cowboy drawl. “I’m back to visit
my family and collect herbal lore.”
“Take this shovel then, and I’ll learn ya some.”
The plot measured about fifteen by sixty yards. At one time it was
planted in rows but by now the horseradish had scattered everywhere.
The roots spread faster than Mormons it seems. In nearly every shovel
full I came up with slender white rootstalks.
“See how you keep a-breakin’ the root off at the end,” he said.
“Those will com up again.”
I dug out one that had half a dozen side roots. Joe took it and broke them off.
“I tie these smaller roots into bundles and store them underground
for the winter. Come spring, I’m gonna dig me a new garden, uncover
these, and plant em in rows. They’ll be a couple of inches across come
autumn. Not all crowded and skinny like these roots.”
I continue digging as Joe talks. “Now if I was away all summer, I
could still come back and tell what kind of year it was just by
looking at the roots. If they grow deeps its been a dry year and if
they’re shallow roots with lots of these side roots, its been pretty
wet. I’m retired now,” he continued. “But I’ve been raisin’
horseradish for seventy years. I wouldn’t be doing it now if I didn’t
like it. It don’t hardly pay.”
The basket was nearly filled with the long pungent roots. After
washing they would be ready for grinding. The roots don’t take on
their characteristic taste or smell until then, but during grinding
it’s hard to be anywhere near. The vapors fill a room like a botanic
version of tear gas. Meninger uses a very large electric grinder
vented by a twenty inch window fan. Once in awhile, gusts of wind will
reverse the air flow and Joe has to beat it out of the room or his
face will have turned red like an angered tomato.
The final step is to add white vinegar and fill the jars. Besides
selling to the markets in Ironton, his son-in-law sells to his
co-workers in Dayton.
You can see that there is a lot of effort in making this condiment
and you’re probably hoping that I won’t start a wacked out narration
on making it yourself. They sell it in stores, right? That’s right but
if you are the type who liked to east sausage with it and enjoy
watering eyes and your nose running, then homemade horseradish is for
you. I’ve been hooked ever since making my first batch. I discovered
that there is a difference between the six month old cultivated roots
and the old mangy ones that grow wild. The younger ones don’t have
time to develop the same commanding bite.
Your first step is learning to recognize the wild plant. A member of
the mustard family, it is a tall coarse plant two to three feet high
with foot long basal leaves clustered around the stalk. The tiny white
flowers bloom May through July. The positive identifier, however, is
the fiery root. They sometimes get so big and gnarly that I can almost
believe the hillbilly who said, “A root will keep growing till the
judgement day.”
Horseradish is likely to be found growing almost anywhere that has
ever been settled. I’ve found it in pastures, around farm buildings,
and along railroad tracks. I even know of a patch in downtown
Missoula. It’s behind the deserted Smith Hotel between Railroad and
Alder. Perhaps it had been planted by a lobby chef. In any case, once
it is established it never goes away.
To make your own horseradish, start by scraping off the worst of the
drk outer skin. This only develops on the older roots. Now find an
extension cord and hook up a food processor OUTSIDE. If you don’t have
a processor for chopping, use a hand grater instead. Your eyes are
going to smart either way. Finally add enough vinegar to make a pasty
consistency. (Don’t use apple cider vinegar, health fanatics; it turns
it a sickly brown and tastes like mustard candy). Jar it with a tight
fitting lid and refrigerate, it will keep almost indefinitely.
Medicinally, horseradish has many uses. The most practical is merely
eating it for its extraordinary rich in Vitamin C. It has saved many a
scurvy-plagued individual living on non-fresh, salt-preserved rations.
Also, it’s a stimulant to the appetite and the digestive system, which
could use a little help with the typical accompaniments of hot dogs,
salami, etc. Not surprisingly, it replaces mustard plaster for aching
joints and limbs. It will also rid horses and children of worms, if
you can get them to eat it.
I would like to propose a new use-for teenage boys in cow towns that
are experimenting with snoose. This purely a macho rite as anyone is
bound to puke out his guts on all initial attempts. Just a pinch
between the cheek and gums says a moron Dallas Cowboys halfback will
prevent these impressionable youths from dying with transplanted PVC
throats. They should be instructed to substitute with the omnipotent
condiment. What better way to prove your manhood than by
simultaneously breathing, chewing and holding back the tears.
Back on the road again for the return trip to Montana Meninger’s
horseradish patch was just a fond memory. We were approaching the
Wisconsin Dells and I was prepared for the Burger King having seen one
of their commercials in Ironton. Say the password -I’m not Herb- to
get a double cheeseburger for only ninety-nine cents. Who said riding
a Greyhound can’t be fun.
Upon arrival I hurried out of the bus and got into the food line.
Within seconds it was my turn to order. I choked when the most
beautiful Nordic blonde I had ever seen asked, “May I take your order,
sir?”
“Uh----high on herb-----uh-----so what’s the beef-----I mean,”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have the special when the bus is in.”
“Well just give me a Whopper,” I said composing myself.
At my table, the hamburger looked worse than usual for fast food. No
sweat I had a jar of good old Joe Meninger’s horseradish in my
knapsack. I shoveled it on about half an inch thick. Meanwhile, I
spied my Swedish Goddess cleaning the salad bar. She was talking to
another worker and looking my way. Ah, she’s finally noticing my
rugged good looks. I strain my ears to hear her sweet voice.”
“These buses really get the weirdos, ya know. Look at that one over
there. He cries every time he takes a bite. I’m not taking the bus to
the Springsteen concert, I’ll fly to Chicago!”
Burdock Root
You have probably noticed the burdock plant because of its large
jungle like foliage and have perhaps mistaken it for rhubarb. It may
show up in any moist area including your yard if, like myself, you
leave some areas undisturbed from the tyranny of the lawnmower.
A Eurasian native, it has spread nearly everywhere in America thanks
to its large burr-like seeds which stick to anything but a plastic
raincoat. People, game, and livestock have carried it to pastures,
woodlands, alleys and vacant lots missing only the chemically
protected suburbs of Shaker Heights and Malibu. This successful
extension of the invader plant is proof of Doc Bauer’s Theory of
Survival of the Most Obnoxious.
However, as you’re pulling those hooked burrs from your hair and
clothing stop and consider the wonderful medicinal properties that the
seeds possess. They’re an excellent diuretic particularly for water
retention and kidney related toxemia. For those maladies remove the
seeds from the sticky chaff with a rolling pin or blender and winnow
in your hands. A half teaspoon boiled in water two or three times a
day is the right dosage.
The roots are more commonly used medically and now, since the foliage
has wilted and died, it is the best time for digging them. It is
widely used as a blood purifier meaning that it will hasten the
excretion of waste products in the blood stream particularly when
there are resultant skin eruptions. A teaspoon of the dried root
boiled and then simmered for twenty minutes is taken twice daily. Due
to its diuretic effects, the second cup is best taken well before
bedtime. It is also an excellent drink in conjunction with fasting as
it helps to maintain peristalsis and prevent blood acidity.
I first sampled the edibility of burdock at a “hippie” party in the
early seventies in an old parked trolley car on the south side of
Missoula. After a plate of millet and groats I was the first to go for
a nice sugary slice of rhubarb pie. I took a bite, made an ugly face
and ran through the sliding doors to spit it out. I hadn’t bee rhubarb
at all. The gal who made it had mistaken burdock for rhubarb despite
the fact that the stalks lacked the characteristic and showy redness.
Of course we missed some details in those days in our endeavor to get
the whole picture.
Now there’s an outside chance that the pie might have been palatable
had she peeled the rank skin off the stalks. They are edible when
peeled and cooked like asparagus.
Burdock is a biennial. The roots from the first year plants are very
good if dug in June or early July. Boil the root in two waters with a
pinch of soda added to the first. Many people including myself feel
the most delectable dish comes from the bloom stalk of the second year
plant. These must be gathered when the flower heads are starting to
form and like the leafstalks are peeled of their bitter green rind.
Prepare the same as the directions given for the roots.
The Japanese make a dish from burdock root and carp that I’d rather
die than eat. It is called Koi-Koku and is used by athletes and
dancers. It is purported to surpass any of the “energizers” that are
going around the professional locker rooms these days. Its strength is
due to the combination of the most yin (acidic) among fish and the
most yang (alkaline) of vegetables. Make sure the gall bladder is
removed from the carp then cut it into one-half inch slices – head,
scales, fins, guts, everything. One third the amount of burdock root
are shredded and sauted in oil. The carp slices are then added on top
and the heap is covered with water. This is simmered until the carp
disintegrates. Add miso and water then simmer a couple more hours
until done. Eat hearty gladiators!
If any of these medical or culinary recipes arouse your interest,
remember that burdock is readily available to the forager in Montana.
And I’ll add that the carp are getting very prevalent in Canyon Ferry
Reservoir, which is further proof of Doc Bauer’s Theory.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
And more....synchronicity.
After the previous posting I found "Rainbow Connection" on youtube, and the song featured Kermit the Frog playing a 4 string banjo, one like the banjo Bob willed me.
Emily thinks the song makes perfect sense, but I'm still pursuing the connection.
So I look at another youtube, the Carpenters version. It opens up with Richard Carpenter playing the song on a Schoenhut toy piano just like one Bob owned and gave to us when he visited us in Nashville. The Carpenters' version of the song wasn't released until after Karen's death, and the video on youtube has some macabre images of Karen, almost like she's singing from beyond the grave.
If you think I'm getting carried away with these synchronistic details, I should explain that there was a series of these beginning with his visit to Nashville the month before he passed.
Emily thinks the song makes perfect sense, but I'm still pursuing the connection.
So I look at another youtube, the Carpenters version. It opens up with Richard Carpenter playing the song on a Schoenhut toy piano just like one Bob owned and gave to us when he visited us in Nashville. The Carpenters' version of the song wasn't released until after Karen's death, and the video on youtube has some macabre images of Karen, almost like she's singing from beyond the grave.
If you think I'm getting carried away with these synchronistic details, I should explain that there was a series of these beginning with his visit to Nashville the month before he passed.
8/20/11, the rainbow connection again! - from Al Cantrell
I find myself singing "Rainbow Connection" this afternoon, and I remember that was the first song I heard a year ago today, that morning after Bob died.
Yesterday afternoon, the anniversary of Bob's passing, we saw perhaps the most intense double rainbow I have ever witnessed, after a rainstorm in Boulder, Colorado. The neighbors across the street were yelling things like "and the purple really is purple!", and jumping up and down.
I really don't know why there is a "rainbow connection" with Bob. Does anybody else?
Yesterday afternoon, the anniversary of Bob's passing, we saw perhaps the most intense double rainbow I have ever witnessed, after a rainstorm in Boulder, Colorado. The neighbors across the street were yelling things like "and the purple really is purple!", and jumping up and down.
I really don't know why there is a "rainbow connection" with Bob. Does anybody else?
Thoughts, a Year Later
From:
"Jeff Jenson" Jeffrey.Jenson@du.edu
To:
"The Cantrells" <thecantrells@yahoo.com>
Hey Al and Emily, downtown Boulder having a beer and thinking about Bob. I bet you are too. Hope you are well. Jeff and Mary
From Al:
Yes, there were many thoughts and memories of Bob yesterday.
I told our Boulder, Colorado friends Dave and Dawn about Bob's passing: how he managed to climb into his big chair in the Missoula trailer and get his legs up by kicking back into that rclliner. Shortly after that effort life left him, but his body remained in that angle of repose while those left behind performed a ceremony, signed documents, answered the questions of the sheriff/coroner and began the momentous and mundane tasks of tidying up Bob's life.
Because by then it was late the decision was made to remove Bob's body in the morning. I slept in the Airstream "guest" trailer, which had no toilet, so when I woke in the middle of the night I went out in the yard. My conscious mind hadn't accepted Bob's death, and so certainly my semi-conscious mind wasn't prepared for what I saw. There was one light left on in Bob's trailer, and it back lit Bob, lighting his silhouette in that big easy chair, his legs kicked up, the image centered in the trailer's livingroom window. For me that was Bob's finale.
In my mind Bob Bauer's final resting place remains that Lay Z Boy recliner in an old trailer shaded by trees by a stream.
"Going Green with Bob", from Ron Peel, Aug 19, 2011
August 19, 2011
Going Green with Bob:
A year ago now since Bob passed on. That news hit me like a freight train and even though I knew it was coming, I stood firm and let the train do its work.
Time has started to cover the hurt like scars over deep cuts and I smile now when the Bob angel or devil on my shoulders shouts in my ear.
Like the time in Ocean City when rain drove us from the job into a bar, where, in smoky late morning light, we narrowly escaped the wrath of several louts from Philly that did not care for Bob’s dissertation on ex mayor, Frank Rizzo.
Bob had a girlfriend, a naval lieutenant, no less, that left him for Dr. John – the Dr. John, who sent his limo down from New York to pack her away to his lair. There was some crying in his beer after that one. Then it was on to Salsa dancing lessons in DC and notions of Latin love that surely would have meant bigger trouble had he succeeded in seducing those girls. There was wild dance party at Burney’s place, where the police were called twice by Fox newscaster, Chris Wallace. Bob screaming “Chris Wallace – COME ON DOWN”! The same night, retired marine, Wiley Pierson impressed us in with his own ‘dance in his pants’ – henceforth known as ‘pulling a wiley’.
Getting paid in the alley from Mr. Bo. Red, Bob and I ambushed him and his cronies in the smoking lounge of the Tidewater Inn. He was quite annoyed by our need for compensation. But he and his friends taught us the secret to success - like the ‘Plastics’ talk from the Graduate, instead it was “buy ocean front property, but make sure it is in a DEAD ZONE so the Fed’s will loan you the clean up money and cover your bond”. We nodded our heads, thinking, man this world is in big trouble…
Bob handing off a quick loan to Jerome, Peanut and Joe (rarely repaid) or sometimes the use of his car. Once, both the loan and the car never came back.
Working the rigs in North Dakota, hanging with the oilfield trash, everybody is ‘hon or darlin’. Kermit the Frog and the Bismarck Letterman jacket found in a single haul from the Salvation Army Store in Dickinson. Apply the homemade herb salve to cover the bruises from a tumble off the rig. The imprint of green Bob, fresh on his flop house bed sheets left behind.
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