Even though I had to worry about chips and dings, I witnessed some pretty marvelous sights from the Kendall Ford loaner car

Last week, I brought up the fact that the "check engine" light had come on in our Escape and that I had taken it to the shop at Kendall Ford, got the problem diagnosed, made an appointment and had then dropped it off very early in the morning for what was supposed to be a two-and-a-half to three hour repair. Yet, come the end of that day, I learned that it had proven much more complicated than that and I could not pick up the car. They would have to keep it for another day.

I had planned to follow the story through, but I got sidetracked by matters such as Jobe's baby shower and my Mother's Day tribute.

So today I got up thinking that, concerning this story, I had blown it. The time had passed. It was too late to post it now and that I might just as well forget about it, pretend that it never happened and let the pictures that I took to illustrate it slip quietly away into that vast, unseen, archive that holds the big majority of images that I have ever shot.

Then I decided, what the hell - this is not a daily newspaper, this is my blog, I can do with it whatever I want. I don't always need to be perfectly timely. Ultimately, my goal is to continually wrap the past and the present together here, anyway, so what's wrong with wrapping in the recent past?

Anyway, no matter how current the images and the memories, by the time I post them here they are the past. So, here goes:

Come the next day, I waited and waited for the call that would tell me the car was done. My plan then was to ride my bike the five or six miles to Kendall and pickup the car. Or, if Caleb was awake, I might have him take me. Instead, near the end of the day, I got a call from Mark, my intermediary at Kendall, and he informed me that in the process of making the repair, the mechanics had accidently ruptured the fuel line and it was leaking gasoline.

They had ordered a part from Anchorage, but would have to hold the car for at least one more day, possibly two.

Mark said they could provide me with a loaner car and they could send someone to my house to pick me up and drive me over. "Okay," I said.

This is Ginger, the driver who came to get me. Ginger spoke with a strong southern accent.

Ginger has two jobs at Kendall - driving customers like me back and forth and doing custodial work. 

"It's either cleaning a urinal, or driving a customer... cleaning a urinal, or driving a customer... cleaning a urinal, or driving a costumer," she expounded. "Which one do you think I'd rather be doing?"

Yet, driving customers was not so pleasant that morning when two women were killed in a head-on collision just a few hundred yards up the Park's Highway from Kendall Ford. It was a busy morning, but she found herself repeatedly stuck in slow traffic as she crept by the accident scene.

Her theory was that the woman who had crossed over the suicide-left turn lane and into the oncoming traffic must have been struck by a medical problem. Otherwise, how could anyone possibly make such an error?

One of the customers she gave a ride to later that same day believed otherwise. He thought it was most likely driver distraction. His job, perhaps as an EMT, had put him as a first responder at many accident scenes and in such cases it almost always proved to be driver distraction, he told her - something like eating a hamburger, drinking coffee, putting on makeup or, most often these days, talking on the phone.

While she respected his expertise, she was not convinced. "If you start to cross four lanes of traffic because you get distracted from drinking a cup of coffee, you're going to figure it out and you can through that cup of coffee aside and save yourself. I still think it was probably a medical problem."

Before she could expound further, her cell phone rang. It was the office, calling to tell her she had a visitor waiting for her. She speculated as to who it could be - a higher up from the work place, perhaps, or, "it might be my boyfriend."

After we turned off the Park's and drove past the Kendall dealership toward the big shop at the back, she studied the cars in the parking lot. "Yep, it's my boyfriend," she said. "There's his car." Then she stopped to let me out. "You have a right good day, sir," she said with that southern accent.

"Where are you originally from?" I asked.

"Viriginia," she said.

Before I went into the office to do the paper work to pick up the loaner car, I saw Mark looking at our Escape. The way he held the blanket kind of reminded me a bit of someone about to drape a shroud over a dead body. I walked over to investigate.

Mark points toward the original problem, before the fuel line was ruptured, and explains how all that stuff that in front of his finger had to get removed before they could replace the bent camshaft in the solenoid. 

This is Sharon, who took care of the paperwork for the loaner car. It was regular rental-car paperwork, it's just that instead of me, Kendall and Ford would pick up the tab. If I heard it, I forgot the name of the lady in pink. She did say that she was glad that it was Sharon who was working with me and who would be in my blog, because she does not think she photographs well and so does not like to appear in pictures.

We had to do a walk around to look for dings, dents, nicks, chips, scrapes, cracks and scratches before I could sign off and take the car. Sharon was very thorough in noting all the little mars, including ones that I would never spotted if she had not pointed them out to me.

On the one hand, this leaves one feeling grateful because now you know that these almost invisible mars are not going to get charged to you, should someone find them on your return. On the other, it makes one nervous, a bit afraid to drive the car much at all because there's no telling what she might discover when you do return it.

While it was a loaner car, the driver is still responsible for any damage it sustains while in his custody. My insurance would be there for big things, but there is always a deductible and I did not want to have to pay any deductible.

I signed for it, then took the car and drove away - feeling very nervous. Remember Larry, the Harley rider who came here from Florida and then gave up motorcyle riding, in part because the air above highways here tends to have an abundance of little rocks and gravel flying through it?

I am certain that you have noticed the cracks that lace our windshield along with the chips that pock it.

Yet, it was not long until I found myself in a parking lot as a train came rumbling past. This is that train, as seen through the windshield of the loaner Escape. I must admit, it is worth the risk, to be able to sit in a loaner Escape and witness such a wonderful, dramatic and exciting sight such as this.

That afternoon, I drove the loaner Escape up to the drive-through window at Metro Cafe. Branson, Carmen's four-year old son, rode this bicycle right up to the front of the loaner car, looked at me, smiled, and wiped his nose.

As I drove off with my coffee, I saw these two, through the window of the loaner Escape.

Then I saw this girl walking...

...and this guy riding his bike.

All these things I saw from the loaner Escape. 

When I took it back two nights later, it was given another thorough inspection. Not a single new ding was found in it.

Here I am, back in my own red Ford Escape. I have just driven away from the Ford Kendall shop and am waiting at the intersection so that I can turn onto the Park's Highway. It will be a long wait, as there will be no breaks in the traffic for many minutes.

Given the view, I do not really mind. In fact, if I could show you this picture at its original size, you would see that the words above "MOTEL" on the sign say, "Alaskan View."

Except for the motel, it was a grand Alaskan view indeed.

Oddly enough, every single view that we have around here is an Alaskan view.

Then, of course, someone had to turn in and cut off that view. Fortunately, he would not cut it off for too long.

Unfortunately, the next guy cut the view off even worse. Yet, look at the pleased smile upon his face - it looks like he is returning to Kendall from a test drive in a new car.

I wonder if he bought it?

Jobe: Five studies shot at the conclusion of today's business trip to town

Study #1: Jobe wakes up from his nap with a tear on his cheek

First, I apologize for not getting a post up until so late in the day. It used to be that I would make my posts late at night - usually after midnight - but awhile back I switched to blogging in the morning. This is because I have traditionally used those late hours to shape up whatever projects that I have had going on and doing my blog late at night was interfering a bit with that process.

So I switched to morning, so that I could still devote my nights to my projects.

But this morning, I had to drive to Anchorage to take care of some business and I did not manage to put up a post.

After I took care of that business, I stopped at Jacob and Lavina's for about half-an-hour to see Margie and Jobe. Jacob and Lavina were at work, of course, Kalib was at daycare and Jobe was asleep.

So Margie and I just sat and talked for about 15 minutes - and then we heard a little cry from the master bedroom. Margie got up, disappeared into that room and then returned with Jobe in her arms.

This tear was slowly slipping down his cheek.

Study #2: Jobe rests upon a small spring bed

Study #3: Jobe is admired by his grandmother

Study #4: Jobe at his grandmother's feet

Study #5: Jobe, touched by grandpa's hand, just before I drive back to Wasilla

32 hours pass and I look into but one human face - guess who's? Wrap of Jobe's baby shower

Just after 9:00 PM Sunday night,  as is now the norm, Margie left here with Jacob and Lavina so that she could spend the week babysitting Jobe. From that moment up until this morning, 32 hours later, I spent my entire time, save maybe three minutes, alone with the cats. I caught not even a glimpse of Caleb. I looked into but one human face, and that for only about three minutes.

It was Carmen. She showed me this little vase from which not flowers but little hand-prints grow. It was her Mother's Day present from her four year-old son, Branson. Thus I shot,

Through the Metro Window Study, #1212 - Carmen with Branson's Mothers Day present

She was very pleased, but still she found it in her to sigh. "Pretty soon, he's going to be chasing girls, Bill. He will Bill, he will."

I should hope so.

OK. Now I back up again to last Friday. What are all these people so raptly looking at? Even that guy on the TV is looking.

Why, it's little Jobe, still tied into a cradle nap.

Jobe is admired by his aunties, Melanie and Lisa.

After he wakes, he gets passed around. Sandy takes him.

Jobe received many wonderful and exotic gifts, from cute little outfits to diapers and toys.

That's little Anna, sitting peacefully upon the floor. That's Cooper in the background. Yesterday, I mentioned that Cooper is mischievous.

Here is proof.

Cooper, Anna and Ian were all watching TV when Ian leaned too far back in his chair. 

This is Ngone and her daughter, Kathleen. Ngone comes from Senegal and has been in the US for 6.5 years, Alaska for a year-and-a-half. She does not much care for life in Alaska. "The winters are crazy," she explained. Before she and husband Dave, who wears the baseball cap in the group picture, moved here, they lived in Los Angeles. She liked it much better there. She loved getting out on the freeways to drive anywhere she wanted to go. Here, she is surrounded by big, huge country and there is no easy way to get into most of it.

She also remembers Africa with much warmth and fondness - all the little neighborhood shops and street vendors, the brightly-colored, beautiful clothing that the women sew and wear.

By comparison, everyday American clothing looks kind of drab. When she shows her mother pictures of her and others running around the US dressed in blue jeans and casual clothes, Mom is a little horrified to think that women would actually dress that way.

One thing about Jacob and Lavina's home - it has no shortage of stuffed Muzzys. Kathleen finds one and loves it.

Yesterday, did I not say that Kathleen is not only beautiful but cute, too?

And very bright, too.

She is a girl with roots in North America and Africa. I wonder where life will take her?

I know it seems unlikely, but I hope that in 20 years I am still around, still taking pictures, still writing stories and that I might come upon her somewhere. I would take her picture again, talk to her, find out how things are going, where she has been and where she hopes to go.

Kathleen - 20 years from now, if I still walk the earth, remember to give me a call. We must get together.

You met Kathleen's brother David yesterday. Well, here he is again.

What will he be doing in 20 years?

And this little beauty, Ashlyn, here in the arms of her mother, Tamara, what will she be up to?

Ashlyn also found a stuffed Muzzy to love.

Yesterday, I also posted a group shot from the shower, but there were a few individuals present, such as Caleb and Kalib, who were not in it, but they came running to get into this one.

I am not certain how it happened, but there was a beautiful young friend of Lavina's by the name of Toni in the lower left hand of the shot that ran yesterday, right there alongside Natalee and Jazmin, but she is out of the picture in this one. I tried to make certain everyone was in, but to take this picture, I stretch my arms upward and hold the camera as high above my head as I could reach and so I had a very poor view of the LCD screen.

You will note that of my immediate family, Rex is missing. He had gone to Seward to take some sailing lessons in a 45-foot boat with a pretty tall mast. One day, I hope to get pictures of him sailing such a boat.

Little Anna, Ian, Anna and Sharon are not in this picture, either. I thought this was because they had left.

They must have just gone down to the playroom to play, though, because soon they came back.

Rusty, husband of Natalee, father of Cooper. I mentioned that Cooper is mischievous. So is Rusty.

Sandy, with Andrew. The two plan to marry in September, in Hawaii. Even though I am not a wedding photographer, Sandy looked at the album that I made for Jacob and Lavina. She wants one like that. She wants me to come to Hawaii and photograph their wedding.

Again, let me reiterate... I am not a wedding photographer!

But Hawaii...?

A photographer must be flexible, right?

This post has gotten entirely too long, but, crimeny, you didn't expect me to leave Kalib out, did you?

An artist finds his place on a newly painted wall; my baby shower post turns into a preview

I simply cannot keep up with myself. I hate to break a baby shower into two pieces, but I started editing the images for this post about an hour-and-a-half ago, I'm not even close to having made my final selection, I have much to do today and I have no more time to spend on it. 

So I decided just to post this one image of Kalib's art, hanging on the wall in the dining room of his family home. Readers will remember this wall as being white. Last week, Jacob and Lavina painted most of the upper-floor walls. After painting this wall blue, they devoted this portion of it to Kalib and his art.

I will come back tomorrow to show the shower in greater detail.

Well, I suppose that if I am going to say anything at all about a baby shower, I should at least present one image of the baby for whom the shower was thrown. This is he, Jobe, with his Auntie Melanie.

Oh, what the heck - one more image, but only because there were a number of little people there, including young David, whose mother hails from Senegal. I can't decide which picture of David I should use in my post tomorrow, so I will put this one up today and that will make the decision easier tomorrow as there will be one less photo to chose from.

David has a very beautiful sister, but I already know which picture I am going to use of her. You can see it tomorrow. She is gorgeous and very cute.

So is little Ashlyn, who you will also meet, and little Anna.

Cooper is mischievous, as you will see.

As for young Ian...

This is he. As I have mentioned the fact that Jacob and Lavina painted their walls, I think that means I had better include this picture today, just to explain the paint job a little better. You might be wondering why there is such a strong cast of green light falling upon Ian, the wall and the rug.

It is because he is standing by the open door to the newly painted bathroom.

This is the bathroom, painted in its new shade of green. When you step into it and the sun is shining, as it was on the day of the shower, it is actually much brighter than it appears here. If I did not tone down the brightness a bit, it would sear your eyes.

Plus, no computer screen that I am aware of is capable of emitting a level of green brightness to match that of this bathroom.

Caleb holds a Navajo/Apache taco - the main entree of the event - which he will soon eat.

It is probably better to think about eating bean-laden tacos when you are in a room other than the bathroom.

Okay - one more - another of baby Jobe, admiring his grandfather as he is fed by his mother's good friend, Natalee. This kid receives love from many sources.

So today I failed to put up the post on the baby shower.

Tomorrow, I hope I will post it and then we can all move on with life.

My God-Loving Mom breaks the law and finds joy in it; other mothers important to me, presented in the order in which they entered my life

This is Mom, Thora Ann Roderick Hess, the descendant of Mormon pioneers who pulled handcarts across the plains to settle in the Rocky Mountains after being persecuted and driven out of the eastern United States for their beliefs  - which, yes, included polygamy. Mom was born into a hard and sparse life, yet she found beauty all around her - in the songs of birds and the brightly colored petals of flowers and the fluttering wings of butterfies - in all the creations of the God to Whom she was determined above all else to bring her family back to.

When I was small, we would sometimes walk together. Butterflies would flutter around us and honey bees would buzz by to land upon the flowers and suck their nectar. Mom would sometimes pick a flower - dandelions, mostly, because we were in a town and could not pick the flowers that grew in gardens, but I also remember roses, daffodils and tulips in her hands.

And to a child, there was no flower more beautiful than the dandelion.

When Jacob graduated from Wasilla High, she came to visit us. Afterwards, on a beautiful, exquisite day when the temperature rose into the mid-70's for the first time that year, we took her on a drive up the valley to the Matanuska Glacier.

She marveled all the way. "I never thought I would live to see anything so beautiful as this," she exclaimed.

There is a visitors area alongside the road in the park that overlooks the glacier. A nature trail runs from the parking lot through the woods and over a steep drop off. At the entrance to that trail a sign warns visitors not to pick flowers. It is illegal.

We became separated as we walked, she taking her time as the rest of us scurried ahead.

This was not because old age had slowed her. Indeed, when we would visit her in the Salt Lake City Suburb of Sandy where she and Dad spent the final decades of their lives, I would accompany her on her daily walks and I would have to break out of my natural pace just to keep up with her. Even in her mid-seventies, she was a swift walker.

Mom took her time this day just to observe the beauty - and to illegally pluck some of it to take back to Wasilla with her. 

She was so thrilled that I could not tell her she had just broken the law.

Park rangers - here is the evidence of Mom's crime spree - but you cannot arrest her, boys, because she lies in the ground now, alongside my dad and my brother, her son, who, despite her faith, could not be healed by all Priesthood blessings administered in good faith to him.

I wish that I could tell you that Mom's life came to a peaceful and happy end, but it didn't. Her final decade was a long, drawn-out episode of misery upon misery, brought on, I believe, not by lack of faith and hope but because of faith and hope, and the failure of life to live up to the promises of faith devoutly adhered to. 

Yet, when the memories of the misery feel as though they are going to overwhelm me, I do have this photo to look back upon, to remember a day when my mother broke the law; when she was overcome with joy in the sheer beauty of the world that rose and fell all around her.

It is one of the absurd ironies of my life, but I have very, very, few pictures from our early days together of the beautiful woman who became my wife and the mother of my children.

In those days, she almost always refused to let me photograph her. It was extremely frustrating, to have such beauty before me all the time and not be able to photograph it, but that was the situation.

Yet, upon this day, after a rain that fell upon the cottage in Provo, Utah, where we began our life together and made our first baby, the light was so soft and beautiful and she looked so lovely standing in it, under her umbrella, that I begged her to let me photograph her.

Reluctantly, she consented.

I did not do my subject justice, but even so, I treasure this photo. Sometimes, I pull it up on my computer screen and just stare at it for long periods of time. To this day, I have yet to look upon greater beauty than that possessed by this gentle, sweet, woman - loving mother and now grandmother. 

Were it not for this woman, there would never have been a Margie to become the mother of my children. This is Rose Pinal Roosevelt, Margie's mom, with our sons at her camp that borders her corn fields in Carrizo Canyon, on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, home to the White Mountain Apache Nation.

Near here, she gave birth to my wife under the open Apache sky.

And the corn that is grown here is not yellow, but red, orange and black. The seeds have been with the family since time immemorial.

Margie was very worried the first time she brought me home to meet her mom and her dad - just as I had been when I brought her home to meet mine. Concerning the subject of who I should marry, my mom had been adamant on three issues: she must be chaste - a virgin, she must be Mormon and she must be white.

Yet, when my parents met my brown-skinned soul mate, they saw her inner beauty and quickly accepted her. Margie, too, had been raised to believe she must marry an American Indian, if not an Apache, and so feared the reaction of her mom and dad to meeting me.

They, too, accepted me immediately.

It got a little more awkward in some ways after we got married, because in Apache tradition, a man is never supposed to be with or talk to his mother-in-law. When Margie was growing up, she would see her mother's mother make a quick departure whenever her dad would approach.

So, when I would come around, Rose would have this feeling that she could get up and leave, yet it did not seem right to do so, so - most of the time - she would stay. Over the years, she grew more comfortable with the idea.

As for me, I enjoy being around her, especially when she cooks over the open fire. I would hate to think of it being any other way. Yet I still feel a little funny, sometimes, when I think about how I caused her to break out, just a bit, from the tradition that had formed her.

I share not one drop of blood, either by lineage or marriage with either of these two women, Mary Ellen Ahmaogak on the left and her mother, Kanaaq, Florence Ahmaogak, on the right.

Yet, I include her here because in the year 1995, Kanaaq's husband, Bennie, took me into his whaling crew but in doing so, it was more than that. He took me into his family as well. Kanaaq originally wondered about the wisdom of this, but Bennie was the captain and so she accepted it.

As the season drew on, she began to call me, "my baby boy," and would laugh affectionately when I would come up from the ice and enter the house. She kept a bed ready for me, and the coffee pot hot.

There are no papers to prove it, no ceremony was performed, but Bennie and Kanaaq did adopt me in an Iñupiaq way. Their sons and daughters call me brother, their children, uncle - but they say "Ataata Bill."

After that season, whenever I would show up in Wainwright, Kanaaq would say, "Welcome home, son. Your room is waiting for you."

She would feed me generously, and it was always the food of the Arctic land and sea, such as the bowhead maktak that she and Mary cut here.

There is a much bigger story to tell here and I plan to, down the road a bit.

And if some of you, knowing that when I am in Barrow I most often stay with Savik and Myrna Ahmaogak and that they also treat me as family - as do so many others on the Slope and elsewhere in Alaska - wonder why I have not included a picture of Myrna here, it is because when I am out with Myrna and Savik, I am introduced as "my brother," not my son.

It feels just as good.

I also feel a very strong bond to every whaling crew that ever took me in - George and Maggie Ahmaogak, Kunuk and Mabel Aiken of Barrow, Elijah and Dorcas Rock of Point Hope, the Aishannas of Kaktovik and Nukapigak and Rexford of Point Lay.

A few years after Jacob was born, Mary Fatt, the woman at right gave birth to Lavina and raised her in the Navajo way. So far, I have spent very little time with Mary, but, just knowing Lavina, I know she is a great mother.

Regular readers know Lavina, mother of my grandsons, Kalib and Jobe. Here she is, Friday night, holding Jobe in the Apache cradleboard that his Aunt LeeAnn made for him. The event is a baby shower. I had planned to post images from the shower as part of this post, but I have run out of time.

I will make Jobe's baby shower the subject of my next post.

To all mothers everywhere: Happy Mother's Day!