Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Fif (Friend I follow) and I have been on the road for more than a week and I’m just beginning to feel a little settled and more secure. The first few days were very rough. I missed being on our farm, being with my buddy Emma and Ef (Emma's friend). I missed the horses, which sometimes I’m allowed to “herd,” and even those pesky cats, which I am NOT allowed to herd.

Hardest of all though have been all these strange smells to sort out. And different ones every day. Who knew there could be so many dog smells (thus dogs) in this world? Every time we stop for the night or get out during the day I have to catalog all these different smells.

I guess if I had to find a bright spot in this it is that I get to spend 24 hours a day with Fif. That has never happened before and it’s mostly good. A couple of days ago I actually started feeling more like myself and Fif and I had a short, fun game of toss and tug with the new Lambie she bought for this trip. I had totally ignored Lambie till now, but after our game she became my go-to in stressful times (like when Fif makes all those trips out to the car and leaves me in a motel room alone). 

We have also been invited into a number of museums, like this one I got to tour in Dana, Indiana. It's about this guy named Ernie Pyle, who was a writer and traveled all over the U.S. like Fif and I are doing, meeting people. He also "went to war," as a writer during WWII and people at home in the U.S. got to read about what it was like to live in the trenches. Ernie died during a battle he was covering at the end of the war. I noticed after we went through this museum Fif's eyes were very moist.

This was actually kind of fun. We got to walk to a lake every morning and evening when we visited Shell Lake, Wisconsin and watch ducks and geese. I made friends with a little girl whose father was teaching her how to fish. She asked if I was a WOLF! Have I mentioned that I LOVE people?

Finally, here I am in one of those embarrassing touristy photos Fif insisted on taking in, of course, Wisconsin. It was worth it as the cheese IS spectacular!

July 26, 2015

Although Lyla and I stayed two nights in this small North Dakota town of Valley City it seems I’m only now getting a blog off and almost dozing at the keyboard. So to catch up I’ll try to post some photos instead of a lot of words. Here is a brief overview of them:

The house my grandmother Ada Houyde Upton grew up in in Shell Lake, Wisconsin in the late 1800s, is still occupied. The kindly couple who has lived there 57 years invited me to step just inside the door.

We visited the Buskala Jewelry shop in Cloquet, Minnesota, where it is likely my grandfather DeForest Upton, bought a wedding ring in 1904 from the grandfather of John Buskala, who is the fourth generation to run the shop.

Mosquitoes drove us to leave our camp at Mille Lac Lake at 5 a.m. so as we arrived at the lake we were able to see this beautiful sunrise being enjoyed by a couple who either got up very early or were going to bed very late.

David Brekke and his wife opened The Vault, a coffee shop with much more in Valley City in 2013. The shop is in a renovated bank that had sat empty for many years. The only employees are the cooks in the kitchen. Customers help themselves to sandwiches, drinks, baked goods and more and push money through a slot or scan a credit card, all on the honor system. David, on the right, Lyla (who gets into every act if people are involved), and the building owner, Paul Stenshoel, were replacing a door when we met them.

Tomorrow we are off to the parks and Bad Lands. Lyla has been itching to give a report, so she will be up next.

Your observer,

Joy

Dana, Indiana

July 21, 2015

I’ve only been on the road three days and already a routine is settling in – we humans (and dogs) crave routine. The first day was a lot of driving with about the only interesting thing to observe being a burly truck driver walking his gray-faced chocolate lab at a truck stop where Lyla and I were having lunch in the van. He walked her off-lead so must have thought she would obey when he called her back, but she didn’t. Daisy, the rough-looking driver, who surely was named Butch, called her.

I was eager to get to Dana the second day to visit not only the Ernie Pyle museum and his birth home, but also to walk the lonely land where Ernie grew from a child to a young man who wanted to leave his Indiana farm and travel. But trying to get through Clinton proved difficult, as several blocks of the downtown Main Street were blocked off. Looked like a fireman’s festival there were so many emergency vehicles and fire trucks to dodge as I backtracked looking for a way out.

As I finally found the way to exit town I saw a novel (to me) sight. Dozens of people were pushing very small cars (go-carts it turned out) on little wheeled carts. Intrigued, I stopped and Lyla and I approached a group of three men working on one of the go-carts. The wheels, which were about as big as three donuts, were being pulled off at a rapid rate and replaced. The men glanced at the thickening clouds and declared they would need to put on the rain tires. A fellow who looked like a good-sized sedan would be an appropriate fit for him seemed to be in charge, but it turned out that a much smaller man was the actual driver. Lyla and I stayed for one incredibly noisy race, which took place around several blocks downtown, so as to have a circular track. Someone said the tiny vehicles, which were only inches high, could go as fast as 80 miles-an-hour or more. 

Folks lined the sidewalks just mere feet from the speeding vehicles, which seemed bent on taking the corners at the fastest possible speeds. Portable barriers about two feet high were flanked by orange snow fencing to keep any wreckage at least a foot from spectators. Within five minutes of warm-ups we got to witness why so many emergency personnel attended – a black cart spun out at a corner and banged into the barriers, which miraculously held it from the crowd. The driver was helped off the track and two men lifted his cart off and as they say, the race went on. So did we.

We made a small detour because we saw a sign that said “Ernie Pyle School.” I expected an old one-room affair with a memorial sign out front, but it is actually the real school used by today’s young Indianan farm kids. It’s nice that they named it after Ernie. I hope those who want to go to college get to, but I also hope some stay on the farm, because without them we would get very hungry.

Finally, down the lonesome road so accurately described to me, I found what the locals call “the mound.” It’s a slight rise in the otherwise pancake-flat land with the ruler-straight roads, and on it is a lovely group of very old and some younger trees. Two ancient outbuildings whose window-less windows frame the pretty trees, lean in on themselves. It was very easy to imagine the blacksnakes and the hornet’s nest waiting inside the buildings to startle intruders (which I was not).

Mosquitoes buzzed my ears and I anointed myself with repellent, but they still followed, creating a small haze around my head. Then as I approached the bare area where I knew the house had to have been (they say it burned down), the insects mysteriously disappeared. It was about that time that I began to feel watched over in a good way, as if Ernie appreciated my appreciation. I hope I am correct that his mother is the one who planted all the flowers that lined the edges of the house site – of course they are still there, reappearing year after year. Day lilies, a rose of some sort (pin rose?), lacy blue and white flowers.

A huge tree near the end of the drive was forked part way up and I could imagine a young boy climbing that same tree a hundred years ago. The boy would have looked down on the ancestors of the Queen Ann’s Lace that festoons the ground at the base of the tree and out at the acres and acres of corn, soybeans and other crops that grew in all directions then and today. And he would have appreciated them and he would have growing in his mind the thought that the world is big and that in it were stories to tell.

Your observer,

Joy MillerUpton

Journalist Lyla

I am a very smart dog, as dogs go. Most of us are pretty smart – much smarter than even the most generous humans give us credit for – but I would have to somewhat humbly say I am brilliant. I am after all a proud descendent of the line of German Shepherds. Need I say more?

It wouldn’t take a very smart dog, however, to have figured out long ago that “something is up,” as a human might say. It seems to me it started last winter when I heard long discussions between Fif (that is pronounced as if it rhymed with “life” and is short for what I call “Friend I Follow”) and her partner, Ef  (Emma’s Friend). Emma is the other mutt in the house, and I say that in a loving way. Ef is easier for you to pronounce than the actual way Emma and I say his name.

Emma and I live on a really neat farm in Ohio where we get to go to barns to help feed horses and harass cats every day. When Fif and Ef have time we also go for long walks on our hilly farm, where Emma and I run at least four times as far as our friends and that is mostly uphill. We check back on them every few minutes though, just to make sure they are going to be able to climb that hill.

So in this manner of predictability our lives have gone on for the past three years, when we first became part of this family. I came first at the age of three, just as the last of many dogs who formerly lived here was on her last legs. Poor Liberty, she was blind and deaf and a bit tottery at age 16. But she was able to fill me in on quite a legacy of previous dog inhabitants. But more about that later.

Emma arrived about six months later and she was just a bratty 8-week-old something or other from a local dog shelter. Really, it was quite impossible to define her breeding, although I heard Fif and Ef refer to her as a Lab. Ha, well, maybe, but sometimes I did hear the dreaded word “pitbull.”

As I was saying, our lives were pretty routine – until this past winter you would have just thought of us as farm dogs. Then we began overhearing talk of a “trip” Fif was planning. We knew what trips were – Fif and Ef went off to work almost every day. And sometimes we went in the car to the vet or for a walk in a park. But this sounded different. I heard Ef say Fif should take me with her and Fif say, ‘whoa, that sounds like a lot of work, plus you know Lyla (that’s me) doesn’t really like to be near other dogs.”

In fact, that is what made me really perk up my ears (although they are already perked, a German Shepherd’s ears can be hyper-perked). There ARE other dogs I don’t care for. Liberty was fine and I got used to Emma constantly chewing on my tail and neck, but strange dogs – just don’t want to go there. I have a very dim recollection that in the family I first lived with something very bad happened with a strange dog and I just don’t care to deal with them.

Then I heard Fif talking about taking me to an “animal behaviorist” to see if we could figure out how I could be more friendly around other dogs. Ef thought that was a great idea. I thought it sounded just horrible! For one thing, I probably know more about dog behavior than any so-called human animal behaviorist.

But early in February, off we went. Our friend, Dr. Daubenmire, who gives me shots and trims my nails and such went with us. She is my veterinarian, but she is also a very good friend and I don’t ever mind anything she does when I see her. In fact, I love all humans a lot! From teeny ones to big ones, to funny-looking ones to very old humans (especially them), I REALLY love humans. I love them so much I could be the prototype for the first dog who joined up with a human to be friends.

We drove to a big city called Columbus and went to a place called Ohio State University. A nice woman named Shana came to the car to walk in with us (I heard them say that was in case I saw another dog, which I did, a big Lab, and I did feel compelled to bark loudly so she would know I knew she was there.) We went into a little room that smelled of other dogs and TREATS and even horses and cows, since they were not far away in another part of the building. For more than three hours the humans talked and Shana asked me to do very simple things like sit and lay down and gave me treats every time I did what she asked. I loved this, so maybe being “evaluated” wasn’t so bad. Shana said I had a “fear aggression of other dogs.” Well, duh.

Then we left and Fif and Dr. Daubenmire talked all the way home about “strategies” and how I could learn to pay attention to Fif and eventually learn to ignore other dogs. And that is just what we did. I liked some of it – for one thing I love playing, “look at me” and can almost always do it. But, then as I said, with my breeding, most things come easily to me.

Some of our training was really hard though. We went for lots of walks where there were other dogs, who always looked at me. I didn’t particularly like this, but Fif was always very close and I got treats every time I looked at her instead of the other dogs. After awhile it didn’t seem like such a big deal to see another dog go down the street across from me. But I have to say I’m not really ready to run up to one and sniff butts.

Back to the “trip.” As my training progressed Fif bought lots of cool things for me, like a bed and harness for in the car and I got to go with her to meet people (did I mention I LOVE people?) and go for walks in interesting places where there were smells unlike any I have ever smelt. In the past few weeks Fif’s eyes have looked a little glazed as she works constantly to outfit our van with all the comforts she says we will need for six weeks of travel. I’ve heard her talk about “Wyoming” and “Idaho” and something called the “Pacific Ocean.”

Like I said, I am exceptionally brilliant and I sense a change is coming.

Journalist Lyla

The Beginning

July 4, 2015

Finally, after long minutes of menus, the credit card customer service rep began asking questions about the dates and locations of the trip I was planning. When she asked which states I’d visit I pulled out my (yes, actual paper) map and started listing them. After eight or nine states the woman said, “wait, I don’t have room in my computer fields for more…”

And it was at that point I really looked at the map (after months of studying and planning) and felt just a tad overwhelmed. By the time I got to the second credit card company rep I had honed my reply to “everything west of Ohio and north of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee.” (I really don’t have Michigan in my plan, but didn’t want to complicate the issue.) And, in truth, I will choose between Kansas and  Nebraska on my return circle home in six weeks, but why make all those decisions now?

So the plan is to begin with a 300-mile jaunt from Logan, Ohio to Dana, Indiana, which Don and I visited last September. Dana epitomizes one intent of my journey – to discover “realtown” America and listen to the stories of “realpeople” of the U.S.A. Ernie Pyle, journalist extraordinaire, was born in Dana in 1900 and made his mark as a journalist by telling the stories of real people, both as he traveled extensively across the U.S. and as a war correspondent. I will once again visit the small museum and home that is a re-creation of the one in which Ernie was born. And I will once again come from the dim interiors wiping tears from my cheeks, for Ernie was a person about which a story can be told, as well as a person who could tell a story.

I also am fascinated with John Steinbeck, whose three-month tour of the U.S. in 1960 to regain a perspective on real people resulted in “Travels with Charley.” Eerily, 55 years later, one of the issues Steinbeck was concerned with has re-bubbled to the surface in our nation – race relations was undergoing in 1960 what should have been pretty much settled 100 years prior. Now, in the year of 2015, it would seem our steps forward have melted as surely as our globe is warming.

My own humble career as a journalist began with freelancing stories for magazines and newspapers – writing while wearing gloves and hat at a Royal typewriter in the barely-above-freezing tower room of our “castle.” That was in 1972, the year before I graduated from Ohio University’s journalism program. I went on to work at two newspapers during the next 10 years as both a writer and photographer, then went back to college for a masters degree (which is still pending) and have continued writing and photographing till present. Throughout my career, telling stories of people has been my passion.

And so I set off two weeks from today with my canine friend, Lyla, to meet and listen to our fellow Americans. Lyla gets to have a voice in these journalist posts, so you will next get to hear from her.

Your observer,

Joy S. MillerUpton