by Bobbi Phelps
Chapter Seventeen
Tent Caterpillars and Bathtub Living
At the edge of our lawn stood a sentry of aspen trees, marking the beginning of a potato field. Inside the house, our two-year-old son sat in his wooden highchair while I fed him raisin oatmeal. He wore a blue, one-piece romper. It was an early spring day, bright and clear, and unusually warm from the Chinook winds blowing down from Canada.
Beyond our dining room window, I saw numerous white caterpillar tents, thick gauze masses the size of dinner plates. They covered the lower limbs of the budding aspen trees, their leaves so thin that light shined right through them. These hungry insects were known to consume every leaf, damaging and sometimes killing the host tree.
After breakfast, I wiped Matt’s tray and lifted him from the chair. With his chubby little hand in mine, we walked over the gravel driveway to a metal shed near the back of our house. From the dark recesses of the three-vehicle building, I retrieved a large branch pruner and a red gasoline container.
“Let’s get those nasty caterpillars,” I said.
With imminent destruction in mind, I marched to the trees. Matt followed close behind, and I began lopping off tent-covered branches and throwing them into a pile. When I finished, the mound topped three feet. I sprayed gasoline over the tree limbs, interspersed with caterpillar tents. With concern for safety, I moved the red can thirty feet away and turned on our green garden hose, dragging it from the house to be close to the branches. I made a little spot at the base of the mound, preparing to light the tree limbs.
“Matt, stay behind me. Don’t get any closer,” I warned.
He moved as I had instructed and watched over my shoulder when I knelt to ignite the branches. I struck the wood match to the rough side of the box and a flame instantly blazed. With nothing but a quick brush under the branches, I placed the burning end to the base of the mound.
A roar ripped through the air and a huge fireball exploded. The match had ignited the gasoline and an enormous blaze blasted over my head. A gigantic flash flew upward and then curled down over my crouched body. I screamed and immediately dropped to the lawn and rolled, hoping to extinguish the supposed blaze on my nightie. Matt, still behind me, laughed out loud and clapped, jumping up and down with a huge smile on his face as I twisted on the grass.
“Do it again, Mommy!” he yelled.
Once I stood, I realized my nightgown had not even been touched. Matt, however, had received the brunt of the explosion. The inferno had spiraled over my bent body and torched his upper face, blackening his forehead. His long, brown bangs and eyebrows had almost disappeared in the flames.
“Oh, my gosh. What happened?”
I knelt and brushed my hand over Matt’s hair, tangled in scorched knots, and examined his head, body, and pajamas. Picking him up, I wrapped him in my arms. Standing a few feet away, I held him close to my chest while the blazing fire consumed the remaining pile of branches.
“Do you feel okay?” I asked. “Are you hurt?”
Matt was not at all concerned and stared at the flames while high in my arms, smiling as if we were at a birthday celebration.
“I’m calling your Dad,” I said to Matt. “I want him to come home.”
It took a few minutes for the fire to diminish. I showered the ashes with water, walked back to the house with Matt in my arms, and turned off the hose. Inside the kitchen, I put Matt down and reached for the handheld radio to call his father.
“Mike. Can you come home? Clear,” I said.
“I’ll be right there. Clear.” he said.
Just then the phone rang.
“Is Matt all right?” my mother-in-law asked. She had heard my message on the ranch radio. She didn’t worry about me, just about her grandson. She knew things happened around me and she wanted to be sure he was safe. She often mentioned that Matt would be lucky to survive his mother.
“Yes. He’s okay. Mike just pulled in. I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” I said.
“What happened?” Mike asked as he walked in the back door. His blue eyes flashed from beneath his baseball cap as he spoke.
I looked up to meet Mike’s steady gaze and told him about the early morning effort to remove the tent caterpillars and the ensuing fire. As he listened, he took off his cap and ran his hand through his blond hair, staring at me in disbelief. He bent over and checked Matt’s head and acknowledged he was fine. There was nothing to worry about.
“Don’t you know gasoline is flammable?” he asked in an angry voice, a look of disdain on his tanned face. A vein in his neck bulged as he forced his question to me.
“Of course I know it’s flammable. That’s why I used it.” I countered. “I didn’t know it was explosive!”
After my comment, Mike shook his head in disgust and walked down the hall toward his office. I felt chastised and wondered why he was so critical of me. Was I too sensitive? Or was he too harsh?
I changed Matt’s clothes and replaced my nightie with jeans and a shirt. The challenges of living on the ranch sometimes seemed overwhelming. But life on the ranch was exactly what I wanted. The peace and beauty were perfect for me. My transition from city gal to country wife was far from complete but still stimulating and exciting.
* * *
When we designed our home, we didn’t know I could become pregnant. Consequently, the master bedroom was at the far end of the house on the first floor. Once Matt outgrew his crib, I didn’t feel comfortable having him so far away, in a bedroom on the second floor. As our downstairs guest bathroom was close to the master suite, I chose that space for our son. I placed a small foam mattress in the tub and covered it with sheets and blankets. The bathtub became his bed. I removed the shower curtain and hung his clothes on the rod above the tub. The counter top held a thick changing pad, and the drawers contained all his baby supplies. Little Matt now had a complete bedroom, right next to ours.
For the next two years, he slept in the tub. That situation came to an end once I hired a city plumber to fix a leak in the tub’s faucet. He kept looking at me and then back to the bed in the tub. I thought he’d report me to child welfare. That very night I removed Matt’s items and shifted them to a bedroom on the second floor.
Chapter Eighteen
Airplane Travel
When I arrived in Idaho in 1980, the state’s population was under a million inhabitants and would not break through that statistical barrier for another ten years. Idaho is a big state with few people. Consequently, I loved the fresh air and clean water; and with such a small population in Magic Valley, I rarely had to wait in line at grocery stores or movie theatres.
The negative aspect of living in a sparsely populated area was having to drive long distances or travel by air on a small, thirteen-seater prop plane. Because my family lived back east, we flew from Joslin Field, now called Magic Valley Regional Airport, to visit them in Florida. The rectangular building, located five miles south of Twin Falls, supported only a few flights a day, all of them going first to Salt Lake City. Passengers then transferred to larger planes to continue their journey across country.
On one of our trips to the East Coast, Mike, three-year-old Matt, and I flew from Joslin Field in a fierce blizzard. Strong winds battered cars and buildings as we drove along the Foothills Road toward the airport. In one extreme gust, we later heard the historic Hollifield barn, built in the 1910s in Hansen, had blown off its foundation.
The blistering snowstorm delayed the arrival of our airplane. While waiting we checked out a huge wood-carved mural that covered one wall and ceiling of the airport hallway. Kimberly artist Gary Stone depicted numerous scenes of Magic Valley, most of which we recognized. Because he continued almost daily with his art, adding more and more businesses, we decided we’d have him carve and paint a fly rod and creel to represent us. He and his wife, Bev, had been my friends for years, and I had edited their Christmas book, The Secret of Santa Claus. From the hallway, we walked to the adjoining restaurant and sat at a small
table, eating donuts and drinking coffee and hot chocolate, waiting for the plane to land.
“The flight to Salt Lake City will begin to board in fifteen minutes,” an employee announced over the loudspeaker.
“Let’s use the bathroom,” I suggested. “It’s going to be a rough flight.”
Once the plane landed, we bundled in thick jackets, covered our heads with caps and hoods, and raced from the terminal to the portable stairs while icy snow pelted our bodies. The silver aircraft had a center aisle with a seat on each side, extending five rows back from the cockpit. Three seats across the rear completed the cabin layout. Once inside, we placed our jackets in the overhead compartments and parked ourselves in the middle of the aircraft. Matt and Mike settled in hard plastic seats across from each other and I sat in front of Matt on the left-hand side. We tightly buckled ourselves and listened to the safety instructions from a female attendant as we traveled down the taxiway. We didn’t know it then but a frightening ordeal had just begun.
As a former flight attendant, I was used to difficult flights in all types of weather. I had worked for an international airline and thought nothing could make me queasy. That was until I took this flight. Passage over the Albion Mountains in the middle of a blizzard is not something any airplane should attempt to do. The passengers should have cancelled their flights. I ought to have known better.
When the small plane flew upward to cross the mountain range, it twisted and turned with every blast of wind. Although it was nine in the morning, we saw nothing from our windows. The sky was black with dark, snow-laden clouds. The plane continued to spiral, shifting and diving. We were thrown against our seat belts like rag dolls. Soon an unsettling feeling in my stomach overtook me. But I was determined to make it to the airport. I was not going to get sick. Then we heard an announcement over the intercom.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. Salt Lake Airport has temporarily closed. We have enough fuel to circle for forty minutes. If it doesn’t open by then, we’ll return to Twin Falls.”
That was it. There was no way I could hold my upset stomach any longer. I reached for a plastic bag in the front pocket. Bending over, I retched into the container.
“Mommy. I want to sit with you,” Matt cried as he unbuckled his belt and started to climb out of his seat.
“No, Matt,” Mike said as he stopped our toddler. “Mommy’s busy right now. Come to me.” Mike lifted Matt and placed him on his lap, holding him tight while the plane jolted up and down. Matt faced Mike and started to cry.
“Oh, no,” I heard Mike say while my head was bent over the burp bag. I turned around to see Matt vomiting hot chocolate over the front of Mike’s sport jacket. I couldn’t help it. I broke into laugher. My weird sense of humor certainly did not endear me to my husband. The man across the aisle also started to snicker. Maybe it was the stress of the flight that caused us to laugh, like stifling a giggle when listening to a funeral sermon.
As we started to descend into Salt Lake City, it was as if we were inside a toy slinky, rotating and twisting as we fell from the clouds. The man in the aisle across from me held his arm rests with white fingers and closed his eyes as we bounced across the sky. Finally, another message was announced.
“Ladies and Gentlemen. The Salt Lake airport has just opened.”
No one clapped with gratitude. We were holding our personal barf bags, and vomit smells permeated the aircraft. When we landed and all the passengers had departed, I stood and gathered Matt’s small backpack from under my seat. I changed his clothes and wrapped the soiled ones in a plastic bag and deposited them into his little pack. Mike had to stay in his smelly shirt and sport jacket for the continuing flight to Florida. In the Salt Lake airport, I took his blazer into the ladies’ room and cleaned it as best as I could. Mike wiped off the worst of his shirt in the men’s room, but it was no use. Once we boarded the plane heading to Miami, no one wanted to sit near us. The atrocious smell meant we had two rows of airplane seats to ourselves . . . the only blessing after our horrendous flight from Twin Falls.
After ten days visiting my parents as well as fishing and photographing the coastal region, we returned to Sky Ranch. Spring soon enveloped South Central Idaho; and Mike and Don, once again, began their farming chores.
Chapter Nineteen
Losing Our Toddler
“Matt! Where are you?” I called, my voice slicing through the air.
I had started to set the table for lunch and stepped outside to pick some pansies, barely peeking their heads above the bits of remaining snow near our house. Matt usually followed me everywhere; now he was nowhere to be seen.
Huge piles of dirty snow lingered beside our dirt road. As the sun warmed, the leftover winter snow melted. The resulting water created a small pond about two feet deep a hundred yards or so from our lawn. Nine months of the year, this area was dry but after a quick snow melt and a wet spring, it could be particularly hazardous for a little toddler. I began to fear the worst for Matt. After checking inside and outside our house and in our barn and shed, I ran into the house and tracked Mike in his office, relaxing in his leather recliner.
“I can’t find Matt. I’ve looked everywhere.”
Mike thought the same thing I did. We were both worried about the nearby pond. He jumped from his chair and ran outside, losing a slipper in the remaining snow as he raced toward the pond. I was right behind him and waded into mud, then into deeper sections, my feet wrapped in freezing cold water. I imagined all sorts of horrible things and tried to remember the many stages of artificial resuscitation from my earlier days as a flight attendant.
Just then we both saw Matt. He bounded down the dirt road bordering the pond, his small fist buried around Jack’s red collar. What a sight. He was muddied from his knees to his feet, and yet he had the biggest smile covering his face. Mike scooped him up and gave him a swat on his butt while hugging him close to his chest.
“Don’t ever leave again without telling your Mom or me where you’re going,” he lectured.
Tears escaped Matt’s eyes and covered his splotchy face. Farming is dangerous. Because workers are in close contact with gigantic machinery, fast-moving equipment, and large animals, there are many accidents and numerous fatalities each year. Being a wife and mother, I was always concerned about my family’s welfare. Having a small child walking around ranch roads only added to my stress. Thank goodness, we only lost Matt two times during his early growing years. Yet with each occasion, Mike and I experienced major panic, always expecting the worse.
* * *
“Are you making something for P.E.O.?” Georgina asked over the phone as she prepared for the educational meeting.
“Yes. I’m cooking brownies,” I answered. “But would you mind picking them up? I can’t make today’s meeting.” I could prepare brownies blindfolded as the ingredients were in a box, and all I had to do was add eggs, oil, and water. Easy. Georgina arrived an hour later and walked into an acrid-smelling kitchen. She saw me hunkered over my batch of brownies, cutting off the burnt bottoms.
“Oh, no. You don’t want me to bring those, do you?” She asked. “They’ll think they’re mine!”
“I’ll put them on a nice plate and cover them with aluminum foil,” I countered. “They’ll never know. You can leave the plate as a donation.”
She left the house with a disgruntled look on her face. I had burnt so many items during those first years that the smoke alarm became my timer. From an early age, Matt took a towel whenever the smoke alarm went off and whipped it around the air, helping me clear out the smoke.
* * *
After the brownie incident, I remembered the time a fire could have been disastrous. Mike was in his office, tying fishing flies, and Matt, at this time only a few months old, was in the living room inside a playpen. I was about to fry potatoes in oil and had set the burner on high. Just then Mike called me.
“Come see this fly I’m tying,” Mike shouted. I forgot all about the
pan of grease and walked into his office. Leaning over a Renzetti vice at the edge of his desk, I inspected the new fishing fly through a magnifying glass. It was an involved salmon fly with many feathers in several bright colors. He swiveled back in his oak chair, proud of his accomplishment, and we started to chat.
Soon Matt began to cry. I left Mike and walked back to the living room. From the hallway, I saw flames two feet high, coming from the pan of grease in the kitchen. Yelling to Mike, I raced to the stove and grabbed the handle of the pan with a pot holder. Knowing not to put it in water, I placed the blazing pan on our Corian counter top and threw flour on the flames, dousing the fire. When I raised the pan, our counter had a black circle beneath it. Dinner was put on hold while I checked on Matt. The next day I sanded off the scorched counter which created a slight indentation next to the kitchen sink. It became another reminder of my culinary calamities.
Although cooking was not my forte, I relished almost all aspects of business. With innovative concepts, my business expanded and won several awards, the most impressive being “Exporter of the Year for the State of Idaho” in the small-business category. Having a professional office in the house meant I could welcome Matt home from school, prepare meals easily for Mike, and handle international orders coming in at all times of the day.
Chapter Twenty
My Horse Smoky
“Want to sell your horse?” I asked my neighbor, Larry Adams, over the phone.
“You mean Smoky? I’ve never thought of it. You know he’s twenty-two, don’t you?” he stated. “If you still want him, let me know.”
“I had no idea he was that old. I’ll have our vet check him out,” I replied.
In years past, I discovered Mike had participated in a rodeo event called “team roping.” Larry Adams was the other half of the team. As Mike explained the event to me, Larry would ride his horse, Smoky, and lasso a steer’s head, preferably around the horns. He and his horse were known as “headers.” Mike then had the tougher job of roping one or both of the hind feet. He and Shamrock were known as “heelers.” Once the ropes were secured around the head and hind hoofs, their horses backed up, tightening the rope and stretching the steer. Timing started the moment the steer and horses broke from their chutes. It ended with the animal stretched and immobile.
