A Dickens of a Tale...

A favorite question in trivia games this time of year is to challenge a contestant to name all the spirits who visit Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve, a fairly easy question if one is familiar with the most seasonal of Christmas stories in the English Language, A Christmas Carol (the answer is "4"; can you name them?). A more challenging question, however, might be: "What Dickens' novel hints at or includes a story that is without a doubt the prototype for the most beloved Christmas story in the English Language?" This question is on a much higher plane of difficulty and unless you have read the entire collection of Dickens' novels, the answer is certain to elude you.

Though The Ripple is not one to boast, I'll share the fact I have read all eighteen Dickens' novels, plus A Christmas Carol and the shorter stories "The Cricket on the Hearth" and "The Chimes." Though I've always enjoyed Dickens' stories, I was a casual fan until years ago a colleague suffered a career-ending brain aneurysm. Out of respect for a friend and talented educator, I promised myself I'd pick up the torch and fulfill his goal to read the entire body of Dickens' works. So, concerning the question of which of Dickens' eighteen novels contains the fabric for A Christmas Carol, I've done all the legwork for you, and now for the answer which will have trivia players believing you're a scholar of Victorian lit.

The tale that morphed into the Christmas story as familiar and beloved as that favorite ornament you hang on the tree each year appears in Dickens' very first novel, the book that launched his literary career and secured his finances to the point he could devote the rest of his life to writing. If one were looking for the question and answer that are the subjects of this post and set out to read Dickens' entire body of literature, he need only to have read The Pickwick Papers halfway through to discover a narrative told by one Mr. Warble, "The Goblins that Stole a Sexton."

It is Christmas Eve and Gabriel Grub, confirmed misanthrope (Ebenezer Scrooge) and sexton for the village church, grumbles his way through festive streets, each house alight with Christmas cheer from which issue aromas of Christmas feasts in the making. Caroling children throng the doorsteps, their excited voices resounding the Christmas spirit. Gabriel, described as "a sullen, morose," fellow, has little time for such gaiety ("Christmas! Bah, Humbug!") and is en route to the churchyard to dig a grave to lift his spirits. As Grub trudges along, he sings a different carol:

                                Brave lodgings for one, brave lodgings for one,
                               A few feet of cold earth, when life is done;
                               A stone at the head, a stone at the feet,
                               A rich, juicy meal for the worms to eat.
                               Rank grass above,and damp clay around,
                               Brave lodgings for one, these, in holy ground.

His night's work finished, Gabriel seats himself on his favorite tombstone and takes a long pull on the bottle he has brought along. Just then the old curmudgeon hears a "Ho! Ho! Ho! and turns to see a goblin sitting on an adjacent grave marker. The goblin inquires after Gabriel's business in the churchyard and when he learns the sexton has been digging a grave, he wants to know what manner of man it is who visits graveyards and digs graves on the merriest night of the year. Before Grub can answer, a host of goblins choruses his name: "Gabriel Grub, Gabriel Grub!" The King of the Goblins chides Grub for being so mean-spirited: "You miserable man!" King Goblin and his unearthly host snatch Gabriel away to their underground lair where at the very end of a cavern the goblins conjure up a cloud upon which their captive is shown a number of visions.The first projects a poor family before a warm fire in their small, but clean, apartment. The children welcome their father home from work. Though he's tired, he attends to his children who flock to his knee. The scene is one of love, happiness, and comfort.

Then the scene shifts to a small bedroom in which the family stands vigil over a dying child.The child dies before Gabriel's eyes and the family grieves (sounds familiar, doesn't it?). The cloud shifts to another scene which portrays the world of nature, its beauty and the wonderful creatures that live in it. Between scenes the goblin king calls Grub a "miserable man" and he and his followers kick Gabriel unmercifully. Another scene: poor folk going about their daily lives, cheerful and optimistic in spite of the hardships life throws their way. Vision after vision until the sexton has a change of heart and remarks at his revelation: "...that men like himself, who snarled at the mirth and cheerfulness of others, were the foulest weeds on the fair surface of the earth; and setting all the good of the world against the evil, he came to the conclusion it was a very decent and respectable sort of world after all." No sooner had Gabriel reached his conclusion than the goblins disappeared one by one and he slipped into a deep sleep. He awoke in the churchyard on the same slab of stone, an empty bottle at his feet, "but he was an altered man." ["I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The spirits of all Three shall live within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach." Ebenezer Scrooge]

The Pickwick Papers was written and serialized 1836-7, but A Christmas Carol did not appear until 1843, six years later. During those six years the tale of Gabriel Grub and the goblins gestated in the creative mind of Charles Dickens, shifted like the visions shown the sexton in Goblin Cave and six years later emerged as the wonderful Christmas story known the world over. And there's your trivia question ripe for the asking.

The Ripple wishes one and all the very merriest of Christmases.




                                                         

Black is the New Green: From the Editor's Desk...

"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" 

Ebenezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens

This is the time of the year I hire an extra security guard to stand watch over my wallet; it has come under siege from all quarters. The mailbox bulges with catalogs. Pages of glossy photographs push merchandise confirming white elephants are alive and well, no longer on the endangered species list. Sandwiched in between them are packets from one charity after another reminding me this is the season for giving--as if the needy were invisible the other ten months of the year--as if I could use all those address labels in two lifetimes....

At their posts, standing sentinel over the red tripods and kettles, Salvation Army surrogates halfheartedly shake loose a jingle or two out of their little bells, leveraging guilt to squeeze a few coins out of shoppers. Surrogates? Yes, General Booth's army has outsourced its bell ringers, gone secular in keeping with the spirit of getting and spending. No more that little dumpling of a Salvationist, ruddy cheeked, braving the cold, her uniform replete with bonnet, red shield and epaulletes. No longer does she swing her bell with cheerful resolve for hours on end, standing the while on those black regulation high heels fat as my wrist. Her replacement? Some fellow wearing an L.L. Bean jacket lounging in a folding chair, sipping a holiday cup of Starbucks which, by the way, he's holding in his bell ringing hand...a disingenuous "Merry Christmas" to you, too, sir. Enjoy your seasonal paycheck."

                       "The world is too much with us.
                        Getting and spending we lay waste our powers..."
                                              William Wordsworth

But there's nothing more insidious this time of year than the concept of "Black Friday," corporate retail's strong-arm campaign against the American consumer. Not only has Black Friday cast a pall over Thanksgiving, but it's nearly relegated the day of thanks (not unlike the marshmallow-topped yams) to the holiday back burner. Black Friday is an all out assault on our wallets, our bank accounts...our nest eggs. Now it's in your face Black Friday every calendar day post-Thanksgiving until after the Friday before Christmas. Car dealerships dangle "Black Friday" month in front of shoppers. Furniture stores, the big retailers, everyone with something to sell has hopped on the "Black Friday" bandwagon. Black Friday, I'm told, now begins on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It's "noir" Friday in your face (I have several containers of Black Friday honey if you're interested; it's Black Friday every day until the supply runs out).

The days of those two  magical wish books, Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck's winter catalogs are gone forever, swallowed up by the black hole known as Black Friday. We Americans have so much to be thankful for, and it's my hope we honor Thanksgiving in the spirit for which it was intended. So, readers, regardless of  this plague of blackness, The Ripple wishes you all a "Happy Thanksgiving." And if you do happen to fall into the Black Friday abyss and have any money left over for Cyber Monday, give thanks for that, too.

Down on the Frohning Farm...

I had occasion this past week to check out the effects of the Skykomish River's unwelcome visit at the Frohning Family Farm. Prompted by a call out from social media, I was on a meals on wheels type of errand: to deliver some baked chicken and potato salad to the cleanup crew and other volunteers who had pitchforked and shoveled themselves up an appetite at the farm. Because the southbound route to Frohning Road was accessible only by watercraft, I had to circle the Loop to the low road and even then had to creep north through two pools of residual floodwater. First, I'll relate how things went down and then share Matt Frohning's story of how the floodwaters came up.

I left the food with Sandy and Terri who directed me to the dairy barn where Matt was hard at work cleaning up the mess left behind by the bullying Sky. I'm no stranger to the Valley's dairy barns and knew enough to wear my barn boots for the on-site visit. So glad I did: the road to the barn was a quagmire, as you might suppose...and of not just mud, either. After all, the farm's a dairy, right? I headed to the barn, threading my way through the Frohnings' flock of free range chickens. A couple of roosters eyed The Ripple's credentials and cleared me to pass.

In the barn I found Cameron hard at work switching out the flood-soaked bedding one stall at a time."The cows were standing in two feet of water here in the barn," he told me. All waterlogged bedding had to be shoveled from each stall and replaced by fresh, dry wood shavings. Cameron was working on the second bay when I arrived. We had a brief conversation before Matt tractored in a hopper full of fresh shavings which he funneled into each one stall at a time. He emptied the hopper, throttled back the tractor, stopped to  tattle-tale on the Sky, and relate the rest of the story. The gist of our exchange follows:

"I went to bed at 8:30, hoping to get a good night's sleep, awoke at 11:30 and found the Sky knocking on our barn door. I called Jim Werkhoven to warn him the river was on the rampage, but no answer [Jim and Delores were at an industry meeting, high and dry in Minneapolis]. By 12:30 the water was up to the floorboards on the tractors and I moved them to higher ground. Fortunately the river crested, so I didn't have to move the herd to higher ground. I don't think I've ever seen the river come so fast," Farmer Frohning told me, "and from that direction." Not surprising because after each flood event, the river's hydraulics change. One has only to peer over the railings of the Lewis Street Bridge to see the mounding gravel bars that displace water and push floods to new levels in the Valley with each subsequent inundation.

At this point our conversation takes a strange twist, turns to last summer's drought, irrigation, water rights and such. Matt tells me the farm has water rights he never knew existed. This past week, however, it appears the Skykomish River owned the water rights and at Mother Nature's mandate, darn well exercised them. But I know and respect Matt Frohning and have this message for the Sky, other rivers and their floodwaters. Ebb and flow as you will. In Matt Frohning you've met your match. Rogue river, you'll learn not to trifle with the likes of dairyman Frohning. He's beaten you time and again. In the end he'll prevail.

Post Diluvium...

When I crossed the Lewis Street Bridge today, it was hard to imagine that just three short months ago bathers were wading the Sky from bank to bank. Looking down at the roiling, brown water of a river that day before yesterday scoffed at containment and even at this posting is yet lapping hungrily at its banks, made me wonder if I was the same person who shared his fear about the well running dry.

The sun came out today, a welcome change from overflowing gutters and ponding on the property where ponds have never been before. A good day to be afoot in the Valley and so out I went to see what had washed away or, as I discovered, was still awash. Floodwaters shimmered in the November sun. I noted the silt-laden vegetation marking high water marks...the familiar signs of Valley hydraulics in flood season.

The grass shouldering the road west of Swiss Hall was flattened, roots showing white in some places, victims of the flood currents rushing over the asphalt. What I first thought was roofing material from Swiss Hall turned out to be debris washed up on the roadway by the rampaging river. Further down the road receding flood waters had piled and dropped more detritus.

Sargeant Road is my routine turnaround spot, but I noticed the flashing lights of a Werkhoven bucket loader tiptoeing its way through a lake of floodwater pooled in the road in front of the silage bunkers. Parked up to its hubs was a tractor, hose trailing from a pump powered by the PTO. I thought I'd continue my exercise and inspect up close and personal the Sky's impact on the Valley's milk supply. I first noted the dairy's sand auger grounded and out of commission. Then the familiar figure of Andy Werkhoven skirted the dairy's new--and unwelcome--water feature. Most of my encounters with Andy find him up to the top of his barn boots in some sort of liquid...effluence from the dairy barns, for instance. Today it was the Sky's floodwater. Andy saw me working my camera, recording the waterlogged scene and yelled: "You can title that picture 'A Pain in the Ass.'"

Those are Andy's words, not mine. I'm just reporting the news....

Maxing out the Garden...

For years I've thought about growing one of those huge pumpkins, had visions of it ballooning up in the pumpkin patch like a harvest moon. So why haven't I? One reason: I don't own a tractor with a bucket loader, would have no way to harvest the thing. After all, record breaking pumpkins can easily top half a ton. (This year's record: 2,145.5 pounds grown by a gardener in Wisconsin.) Every year the season's winner tops the previous by two or three hundred pounds, it seems. This year to impress the grandson, I  thought I'd give it a try. I could always remove the behemoth from the garden in chunks if I had to, take an ax to it, slice it up like I was flensing slabs of blubber off a whale.

I planted two varieties: Atlantic Dill and Big Max. As a backup, just in case the big gourds failed to produce, I planted my old standby variety: Connecticut Field which year after year always yields a crop for Halloween.There is a science to raising record breaking "tonnage" pumpkins, techniques like spritzing the vines with milk, erecting shades over the fruit to protect it from the weather, and before the gourd is too big to handle, placing it on a solid base so it won't sink into the soil. All competitors, however, seem to agree on one point: all fruit should be removed from the vine except for one, that special gourd into which you channel all your gardening karma, your hopes, your dreams of pumpkin glory, that one truly fat boy that will not only tip the scales but hopefully break them. As I'm just your ordinary gardener, no scientist or horticultural genius--and no owner of a front end loader--I set my sights on a less lofty goal: a pumpkin the grandson would exclaim, "Oh! Wow!"when he saw it.

Not long into the growing season a Big Max showed promise, and I set about lopping off all subsequent fruit from the vine. It wasn't long until the pumpkin showed above the leaves, squatting in the patch like an orange boulder left behind by a receding glacier. At season's end I had the largest pumpkin I had ever grown on the place. I had no means to weigh it, could hardly budge the thing, but I compared mine to those on sale at Fred Meyer's, plump teasers scattered around and about the mountain of pumpkins guarding the east entrance. My Max must surely tip the scales in the 140-150 pound range which explains why I had a devil of a time rolling it into the wheelbarrow and transporting it to the deck where its fate has yet to be determined.

This time of year pumpkin flavors everything. And pumpkin pie season is fast approaching. I wonder how many potential pumpkin pies my grandson Atticus is sitting on?

Pumpkin lattes? Pumpkin bread? Pumpkin cookies? Pumpkin soup? Baked pumpkin seeds seasoned with garlic salt? Yes, its one big pumpkin, but considering the world's largest pumpkin pie weighed 3,699 pounds, was twenty feet in diameter (9/25/2010 at the New Bremen Pumpkinfest, New Bremen, Ohio), I doubt my Big Max would supply one thin slice, hardly a mouthful.

“Mush”melon…

Grandpa Mike’s term for “muskmelon,” (“cantaloupe” to melon lovers). English was not Grandpa’s mother tongue so I’m not sure if his native Hungarian made “musk” into “mush,” but I do know the fruit he brought home from “the A &P” always had a mushy texture. Grandpa Mike not only was a fancier of melons, but a bargain hunter as well, and the casaba, honeydew, or cantaloupe he purchased were always just a half dozen hours away from the compost heap. If the stem end of the melon lacked a mold blossom, the fruit was not likely to end up in Grandpa’s shopping cart. Come to think of it, perhaps Grandpa Mike actually meant “mush”melon: that was pretty much the melon’s condition when he lifted it from the shopping bag.

The experienced Pacific Northwest gardener knows melon cultivation is a fruitless (excuse the pun) enterprise; our short growing seasons aren’t melon friendly.To set fruit, melon vines require warm nights, considerable sunshine and soil heat. A  greenhouse environment might uncork a few melons but no such luck in the northwest garden proper. A season or two ago in a sunlight friendly section of the garden I set out a half dozen cantaloupe plants in green plastic mulch. The result? Plenty of healthy vines and a sizeable bouquet of pale yellow, star-like blossoms, but even with an abundance of honeybee pollinators, not a single flower set fruit. Imagine my surprise then this summer to find a softball-sized cantaloupe squatting beneath our garden wagon, a twofold surprise: first, that one grew to maturity here; second, that I harvested a melon at all… because I never planted a single seed.

The south side of our house is an excellent place for heat-loving vegetables and to take advantage of the southern exposure, I’ve placed four whisky barrel halves for planters. I’ve grown corn, okra, tomatoes and eggplant successfully (the okra? I might be stretching things a bit, but I did harvest enough pods to make one meal of Shreveport gumbo). Eggplant grows very well in my sunshiny south location, and each summer I’ve reserved a pair of eggplants for each of the first two barrels; however, if I didn’t amend the soil from my compost heap each spring, this post would never have been written. Soon after I transplanted my eggplant pair in the first barrel, I noticed some alien plant making itself at home between the eggplants. Its signature pair of oval-shaped primary leaves signaled some variety of squash: zucchini maybe, or pumpkin. My curiosity piqued, I decided not to yank the “weed,” but give it a chance to reveal its identity. Besides, the eggplant didn’t seem to mind the company. 

A month went by before I saw the first telltale blossom, pale yellow, star-like. Too pale for a cucumber blossom; too small for squash or pumpkin…some sort of melon certainly, but I wasn’t sure if the vine was watermelon or a “mushie.” The vine made itself at home, twining around the eggplants, threading  itself among the collards (none of which I planted either), trailing down the barrel staves and creeping onto the driveway--at which point I frequently had to redirect its forward progress.

As the summer moved forward—the vine was flowering heavily now—I checked the blossoms. Both male and female bloomed along the vine, but as in my former attempts, nothing set; the flowers withered, dropped off. The eggplant set and we had our first eggplant casserole of the season but not so much as a nubbin of a melon anywhere. Sometime late in August I stopped checking. A couple weeks later I yanked out the vine and to my surprise, bumping along at the end of it was the softball-sized melon. Though it was not even large enough to be a “personal melon”—as the produce folks in the grocery stores call them--I stripped it from the vine, and set it aside by its eggplant buddies. A week or so later, more out of curiosity than anticipation, I took the thing to the kitchen and sliced it in half.

Excepting its doll house size, the inside of this little cutie was melon perfect: the seed mass full of mature seeds, the flesh soft, salmon colored, and sweetly flavored. Half the melon satisfied my fruit requirement for each breakfast. I savored one half per meal, one spoonful at a time. Six mouthfuls each—I counted them.

A Meeting at Bridge 155

Suppose you wake up one morning or come home from work, say, and find your lawn staked out almost to your front doorstep? Those orange stakes signal your life is about to change. That’s the predicament in which Kevin Olson and Vicky Olson found themselves this past week. I posted about the Olsons’ situation after a chance meeting with Kevin in the produce section of Fred Meyers (“Upgrades Planned for Tualco Valley Speedway,” 7/18) when he told me about the County’s intent to replace Bridge 155 over Riley Slough. Until last week the County’s project was just a concept on twenty-seven pages of paper with cost projections, timelines, numbers and measurements, facts themselves worthy of concern for the Olsons. But seeing those garish orange stakes, the physical manifestation of encroachment on life and property, really bring home the stark facts of the matter. I know: we’ve had stakes near and on our property, and they’re wooden slivers that fester your peace of mind.

I’m standing by the Olsons’ home on the north side of Bridge 155  on the upper Loop Road. County district five councilman and Council Chair Dave Somers has set aside time to meet with Kevin to discuss the County’s proposed bridge replacement project. Kevin has invited The Ripple to attend the meeting.

It’s an Indian summer day: blue sky, shafts of morning sunlight filter through the maple trees across the road. Except for an occasional vehicle passing by, the quiet of Riley Slough soothes. Kevin’s rustic cottage complements the pastoral setting, plank siding, unpainted, the place nearly picture puzzle perfect. Whenever Gladys and I roll by, the coziness of this little cottage nestled on the bank of Riley Slough impresses us. Primroses in the window boxes announce spring; colorful hanging baskets accent the summer; the lawns always kempt and well-tended. And so out of place now are those threatening day-glo orange stakes and surveyor’s figures splashed on the cement drive in front of the barn.

Councilman Somers, escorted by property owner Ginger Mullendore, strolls up the road to meet us...a half hour late…bad accident on Highway 2. Dave is soft-spoken, a good listener. The fact he’s not wearing a tie and arrives on foot instead of rolling up in an “XMT” County vehicle puts us at ease. Dave is here to address a constituent’s concern, to assess the issue up close and personal. The meeting, necessarily, is one-sided: Somers is here to listen, gather information, and see what he can—if anything-- do to help. Kevin has done his research, asks pertinent questions he’d like answered, issues he’d like explained. Of paramount concern is the County’s right-of-way. Kevin believes it’s twenty feet from centerline; County claims thirty feet. Dave says rights-of-way vary, from twenty to thirty feet depending on the locale. He’ll check it out and asks if the County has contacted Ginger about buying the property the project would claim (they haven’t). Next question: average daily traffic (ADT). Kevin claims the ADT figures are too high, would like to know where the counters were placed and the dates. If the bridge replacement was safety driven, The Ripple wanted to know if structure integrity was the County’s concern or was it the issue of a blind corner at the north bridge approach? (Seems a misuse of funds If the latter is the case: only one accident has occurred in the vicinity, back in 2007…and that incident south of the bridge.) Somers shared that the County is moving forward to replace its wooden bridges (#155 was built in the 1930’s). Kevin asks a funding question: to qualify for Federal funding (the current administration has allocated funds for states to repair/replace failing highway infrastructure) are there certain parameters to which states must adhere before federal funding is forthcoming? In cases involving federal funds, Somers believed states and counties had to share project costs and match funding. The price of the project? 4.4 million dollars. I tell Dave if St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City could be renovated for 3 million, it seems that Bridge 155 could be totally refurbished for far less than the 4 million price tag of a replacement—and the Olsons could keep their cottage and not have their lives turned upside down.

We pointed to the “Salmon Crossing” sign at the south end of the bridge, another point Kevin discussed with the County engineers. Their response: “Oh, we mitigate those issues all the time.” If County engineers are so adept at mitigation, we wondered, why couldn’t they “mitigate” the new bridge corridor to the east instead of the west? That way no homes or structures would be impacted by the project. Or repair the undercarriage of #155, which, by the way, engineers have determined currently can support forty tons safely. (Furthermore, The Ripple asks, if the County is so concerned about safety along the Tualco Road corridor, why don’t they “mitigate” the sharp curves at and east of Swiss Hall; both corners are debris fields because of frequent accidents on those two corners…and how about mitigating the excessive speed along the aptly named Tualco Valley Speedway?)

So for now we wait for feedback from Councilman Somers. But those stakes in Kevin’s front yard mean the bridge project is on the move; those stakes at this juncture mean the Olson family will be forced to relocate in the near future; those stakes mean adding an additional quarter mile of straightaway which will most certainly do nothing to “mitigate” speeding along that stretch of Tualco. I think about the elderly lady in Ballard who refused to sell her little house to developers…but she was dealing with the private sector, not a government agency with eminent domain their trump card. Understandably so, Kevin is mounting a petition drive to protest the project. Gladys and I most certainly will sign…but meanwhile we wait….