The Princess and the Valley

There's something about being from someplace distinctive but also a bit obscure that makes a person sit up and take notice when that place gets mentioned in the news, or shows up in a film, or provides background for a literary work.

This is exactly what happened to me when I first read Frank Norris's novel, McTeague, in a graduate course on literary naturalism. I eventually wrote my master's thesis on the topic, intrigued as I was by the really bad use of science in some of these novels. McTeague, in fact, was grounded in a notion of "degeneration," popular in the late nineteenth century as an explanation for the human propensity for beastliness toward one another. The idea had penetrated politics so thoroughly by the second world war that the Nazis used it to justify all manner of their own beastliness toward their fellow human beings.

All that aside, however, a passage in Norris's novel brought me up short when I read it some twenty five years ago, and I remember being puzzled by it:

Near a place called Queen's the train reentered California, and McTeague observed with relief that the line of track which had hitherto held westward curved sharply to the south again . . . . At length the mountains began again, rising up on either side of the track; vast, naked hills of white sand and red rock, spotted with blue shadows. Here and there a patch of green was spread like a gay table-cloth over the sand. All at once Mount Whitney leaped over the horizon. Independence was reached and passed; the freight, nearly emptied now, and much shortened, rolled along the shores of Owen Lake. At a place called Keeler it stopped definitely. It was the terminus of the road.

Now, anyone who's ever driven south from Laws or from Bishop in the Owens Valley knows that because Mt. Whitney is on a bee-line west of Lone Pine, the mountain itself doesn't become visible until just before you get into town--not before Independence, which is a good fifteen miles north (not to mention the fact that there's no real horizon). I wondered about this when I read the book, and even made a couple of marginal notes: "Independence comes before Whitney" and "Maybe it looks different from the train--on the eastern side of the valley." I kept meaning to check this out, and even asked my grandmother about it once, but by the time I was in a position to check it out, I'd forgotten about the passage.

Recently, however, my Uncle Art, the family patriarch, sent me some articles that my father and grandmother had written for the California quarterly, The Album (devoted to Inyo and Mono County history) back in the '90s. In one story, "Riding the Slim Princess" (October 1991), my grandmother describes her family's trip from Nevada to California in 1901 on the narrow gauge railway that crossed the mountains. It made me go back to the book for the passage, and realize that Norris wasn't very good at details like this anyway (he also mistakes "Queen's" for the depot at Queen). My grandmother's description was not only more precise, but also a great deal more pleasant to read. Her view of humanity was considerably more generous than Frank Norris's.

I've brought Norris up before in an earlier post on my great grandfather's stagecoach enterprise, but my grandmother's account provided some new information--such why they had decided to leave the isolated Big Smoky Valley for more "civilized" digs. Other family members had already settled in Big Pine, and my great grandmother wanted to make sure her children were properly educated. Despite having to leave her puppy behind, "Baby Clara" evidently thought that one good thing about the move would be that they wouldn't have to travel miles in a buggy just to see friends.

The family embarked at Sodaville (now mostly a ghost town) and followed a route which now roughly coincides with Nevada Highway 360 (feeding into US Highway 6 into California). They got off the train for good (except for a return to Nevada for a couple of years when my grandmother was still quite young) at Alvord station, the name of which was later changed to Zurich. Traces of these old depots (such as Kearsarge and Aberdeen) can still be seen along the route further south (the line ended in Keeler, on Owens Lake--not "Owen Lake" as Norris called it). Beloved Spouse and I spent an afternoon along the old railway bed the last time we were in the Valley, and got this picture of the terrain below the Reward mine:

I even came home with an old square nail that had been used to secure the track to the ties.

Little did my grandmother know when she made that exciting trip to her new home that she'd end up having children, grand children, and great grandchildren who developed a deep and abiding love for the place. Every time I think about getting out of town, as I did recently in another post, the first place I think of is the Valley. When I decided to write a utopian novel based on William Morris's, the only location I considered was the Valley. And now when far-flung family members get together for funerals and Labor Day celebrations, we convene at one of the old family homes in Big Pine. I miss being there this year, but long to make it out soon. I only wish I could take the train.

Photos: A photo attributed to Fred Hurst on the Owens Valley History pages; a map of part of the Carson and Colorado railroad route out of Nevada; my grandmother, "Baby Clara," about two years before she made the trip to California; barrel cactus on the Manzanar-Reward road, alongside the C&C rail bed.

Taking Care of the Roots

I just read Pico Iyer's short essay in Orion, "The Inner Climate," about global warming, and the necessity to gauge our internal temperature as well as that of the local climate. This was an especially timely happenstance, because the weather's started warming up again and my snarkiness level is going up with the temperature.

Iyer's thesis revolves around the notion that in order for us to effect change in the physical environment, we have to make some changes in the philosophical climate:

Action without reflection is what got us into this mess in the first place, and the only answer is not action, but, first, clearer reflection.

As I look around, at the superficial evidence of change (I can, for example, see my blue recycling trash bin from where I type), there seems to be a great deal of it going on. I could--and may still do--post on what my town is touting in the way of "green living," what with its McKinney Green Building, its model elementary schools, its "green" Walmart, and its snappy new logo ("McKinney--Unique By Nature").

But it's clearly external. I can't imagine for a minute that most of the neighbors who use their blue bins are doing it out of any deep philosophical understanding of what human beings have wrought. Many are using them because their kids are urging them to, or because it's kind of trendy (like buying organic produce--at least until the price makes a dent in the fashion budget). A couple of houses have been ticketed for using their blue bins as extra trash bins (the bigger green ones). Some houses--smaller than ours, with only two or three people living in them--have two green bins they fill up weekly (we used to put ours out twice a month; now it's down to maybe once because we can now recycle most of our waste). The only way they'll really begin to stop buying over-packaged merchandise and throwing all that stuff away is if it starts hurting them in the pocketbook. Capitalism has done this to us: consume more and more to help the economy. But put the packaging in the recycle bin whenever possible.

If the oil companies weren't rolling in their profits, and bitching about new drilling sites (when they're not drilling the places they've already got access to), I'd be happy that gas prices are hovering around $4 per gallon. It's got me to increase my mileage by about 4 mpg (simply by slowing down to 60 and using cruise control whenever possible) and combine necessary shopping with trips to and from work. High gas prices may actually encourage the city of Allen to rethink its participation in the local rapid transit consortium, which would mean that we'd hop on that bandwagon, too (Allen is the next town south, and without its participation, McKinney can't get train service this far north).

But that's just it. As a nation we are reluctant to do anything simply because it's the right thing to do; we've clogged our ears with iPod buds, turned on the TV, the computer, the video game, and tuned out reflection. Thinking makes us uncomfortable, so we don't do it. Until this aspect of our collective experience changes, efforts to do anything substantial to save the planet or to prevent political catastrophe will continue to be cosmetic and, in the end, they won't work.

We need what Tom Kuhn would call a paradigm shift. And maybe, if things get bad enough, the evidence in favor of a philosophical shift--from rampant consumerism to responsible stewardship; from rabid partisanship to true community--might tip us over the edge. We might reconsider our position as Lords of the Earth and begin to see ourselves as just one species, one political entity, among many, but with power that requires vigilant reflection to wield properly.

Take care of the roots, says Iyer, and the flowers will take care of themselves.

Photo credit: "Bluebonnets and Fence" by Observer12 on Wikimedia Commons. I loved the juxtaposition of the state flower with the barbed wire--it says a great deal about Texas.

Mrs. Rudkin's Cookbook

One of the problems with having multiple blogs, even when they're focused on different topics, is that sometimes I'm not sure where to post something. This conundrum arose yesterday when I came across a wonderful book about which I wanted to make note--but couldn't choose the proper venue. This morning I decided to post it on both. This sounds a bit lazy, but since it's the product of a serendipitous occurrence and about the idea of home and place, maybe the idea isn't as silly as it seems even as I write.

The book in question is The Margaret Rudkin Pepperidge Farm Cookbook, illustrated by Erik Blegvad, and published by Atheneum in 1963. I found it in the "nostalgia" section of Half Price Books yesterday, where I'd gone to drown my sorrows after hearing about the resignation of a friend and colleague--the second in as many months--which left me feeling more than a little bereft. Beloved Spouse and I were on our way out when I noticed the rather Edward Gorey-ish spine of a book which, on first glance seemed to be another corporate promotional endeavor (some of which, like the Spice Islands Cookbook, also published in 1963, can be quite good)--but with amusing and well-crafted pictures scattered throughout. The dust jacket was missing, so what attracted me were the un-augmented images on the front (above) and back (below) covers.

Now, I'm as big a sucker for good illustration as I am for good cookbooks, so I said to myself, "What the hell; it's only ten bucks" and added it to my small pile of goodies.

When I got home, I started leafing through the book and discovered a treasure: a compendium of healthful recipes developed by the woman who had founded Pepperidge Farm (named for her own family's farm in Connecticut) and ended up serving on the board of Campbell Soup after she sold her company to them in 1961. In 2007, Fortune Magazine named her one of the century's fifty most powerful women. (Copies of the cookbook can be had from online used-book outlets like alibris for less than what I paid, but some may be the 1992 edition).

Margaret Fogarty Rudkin was born the same year as my Grandma Clarice, 1897, in New York. In 1937, when her son developed allergies that his doctor said could be addressed by feeding him bread made from whole grains, she began a journey that eventually led to the cookbook. 1963, when Rudkin published it, was the year after I returned from Taiwan and during which I lived with my grandmother, so the coincidence adds to my delight in finding the book when I did.

The illustrator, Erik Blegvad, is actually no stranger to my family. One of my children's favorite books growing up was Judith Viorst's The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (which I highly recommend to families for helping them deal with the death of a pet)--illustrated by none other than Mr. Blegvad.

During my recently aborted attempt to improve my typographic skills (I had to drop the class because midterm madness caught up with me), I had run across another book by Blegvad that's probably worth looking for: Types Best Remembered/Types Best Forgotten, published by Parsimony Press in 1994. But the cheapest edition I could find through alibris is $69. Guess I'll wait on that one.

At any rate, owning Rudkin's cookbook is really like having several books in one, because each chapter focuses on an entirely different topic: Childhood, Country Life, Pepperidge Farm, Cooking from Antique Cookbooks, and Ireland. Each features a chatty and informative introduction, and the "antique cookbooks" chapter offers modern versions of such goodies as a fifteenth-century pumpkin pie, although the original carries this warning: "Cassius, who was bothered by colic and stones, did not eat this. It is difficult to digest and nourishes badly." Rudkin's version is much more palatable (perhaps because she doesn't put in a half pound of sow's belly), and simple to make:

Preheat oven to 450.

Ingredients: (Plain pastry for a 9 inch single-crust pie.) 1.5 cups canned pumpkin, 2/3 cup brown sugar, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. ginger, 1/2 tsp. salt, 2 eggs, 1 c. milk, 1 c. cream.

Method: Line a 9-inch pie pan with pastry, making a high edge. Brush the pastry all over with egg white. Place in the refrigerator while preparing the filling. Mix together the pumpkin and the spices. Sift the brown sugar into the pumpkin and mix well. Beat the eggs and add them. The add the milk and cream and mix well. Pull out the shelf of the oven, set the prepared pie pan on the shelf and carefully pour the filling into the crust. Don't pour all onto one spot., but take a cupful at a time and spread the filling around to avoid breaking the crust. Filling the crust this way avoids spilling.

Bake at 450 F for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake 45 minutes more until the custard is set.

The idea of simple food, lovingly prepared is always welcome, but I think we can especially appreciate it in times when folks no longer eat together all that often, and when grandmothers and their grandchildren can be separated by continents. My memories of times in my grandmother's kitchen come flooding back when I find a book like this, grounded in a similar view of the world and a similar notion of nurturing. My fondest wish is that more people come back to the practice of spending time cooking together as gas gets more expensive and makes folks less likely to run out to the Olive Garden for a family meal. There is absolutely nothing like a home-made pumpkin pie to make us feel secure and comfy--and nothing like a well-illustrated, well-written cookbook to help us recall the relationship between food and home.