If gas stations were scarce, toilet facilities were almost nonexistent. When we did find a place to gas up, I’d always ask about a restroom. One time, the attendant didn’t speak, only pointed to an add-on at the side. Not knowing what to expect, I cautiously opened the door. There was a toilet. That was a relief. I thought there might be only a hole in the floor, as I had often found to be the case during my travels in Asia. But as I stepped forward, the floorboards moved down. Between the gap my weight had created, I could see the ground below. Without turning, I stepped slowly back. Bob was still at the pumps. Talking.
“I’m afraid I’m going to fall right through the floor in there,” I said. “You’re heavier than I am. Will you test it out?”
He raised his eyebrows, hesitated a moment, and then did as I asked.
Bob quizzed everyone we met, trying to satisfy his innate curiosity and to advance his goal of seeing a grizzly. We chose our routes on the basis of where the chances for that would be best.
One day, as the sunlight faded and I became ever more concerned about finding lodging for the night, we drove into Glennallen. The town, according to the last census, was situated in an “unorganized borough,” population 483.
We stopped at the only place that wasn’t closed for the season. A handwritten sign was taped on the door: “Attention, all guests: Please be advised that there has been a bear behind the hotel. Do not walk behind the hotel. Beware of your surroundings. Thank you!”
When we entered our dilapidated room, the only one available, we looked out the window and saw a young couple setting up a pup tent on the other side of the hotel’s wire fence.
“Look at that great bear bait,” Bob said, referring to the young man and woman. “I’m sure to spot at least one bear tonight.”
“Bob, go out and warn them. They didn’t check into the motel. They couldn’t have seen the sign. They don’t know about the bears!”
“But they’ll have a great vantage point to see one,” he said, as he slowly—for my benefit—picked up his jacket and headed to the door.
It was dark when we returned from dinner, so I wasn’t able to check on the young couple, but in the morning I was relieved that there was no sign of them or their belongings. Bob was disappointed that he hadn’t scored a sighting.
It seems strange now, but gift shops became an entry point for me to learn about the native culture. I was astonished at how many ways contemporary artists have refined and integrated ancient designs and symbols into their work. My questions about the items and my appreciation of their beauty elicited detailed explanations from the clerks and artisans.
Bob, who good-naturedly grumped whenever I asked him to stop, declaring that we were wasting precious driving time, also took advantage of the breaks by standing outside the shops and talking to anyone who passed by.
I’d been successful in tamping down Bob’s jokes as we rode along thousands of miles and shared numerous meals. Until one day in British Columbia. I wanted to buy a small object, an old one, for Helen, but, though I’d been on the lookout, I hadn’t seen any establishment advertising antiques. A waitress told us to watch for a SECONDHAND sign and gave us directions.
As I entered the barnlike structure, I smelled a combination of furniture polish and tea. Everything was organized by category and era. I was pleased when I found two old, red-handled kitchen utensils to add to Helen’s collection. The owner offered to box them up. As she did so, we chatted. When I told her I lived in Manhattan, she offered sympathy, referencing 9/11. Then she began to tell the sad story of her son’s death. He’d gone in for a routine checkup. At the end of the visit, with no one there to support him, the young man had learned he had only three months to live. The woman said her greatest regret was not having been there with her son; he was forced to hear the news alone. I did my best to offer my condolences.
In the meantime, Bob had settled into an easy chair next to the owner’s husband. I couldn’t understand his words, but I could tell from the rhythm of Bob’s voice that he was telling one of his stories.
I picked up my box and headed for the door. Without breaking the rhythm of his story, Bob waved me on.
“Were you telling one of your dirty jokes?” I snapped when he climbed into the van.
“Yep.”
“Do you know that the woman and her husband just lost their son?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said, taking a moment to look over at me, “but when I left she was laughing more loudly than her husband. And I think, given what you just told me, that was a good thing for both of them.”
I had to admit he was right.
Farther along in British Columbia, we detoured in order to drive through a réserve, a clearly delineated territory deeded to the indigenous people.
A large sign warned us that if we continued we’d be subject to the laws of the First Nations, and, would be prosecuted under tribal laws. On another day at ’Ksan, a reconstructed village, we were frustrated that we couldn’t stay longer so we could learn more about the indigenous culture and the injustices those people had suffered.
Bob and I both recognized the irony of this. As adults traveling thousands of miles away from home, we were eager to learn, but while growing up we’d had no knowledge of the lives of the Dakota Sioux who resided on a reservation only sixty miles from our farm.
A day later, we discovered crucial bear information when I was the one to initiate a conversation. For hours we’d driven in heavy rain and fog through mountains on a narrow dirt road. We decided to stop for coffee to calm our nerves. We were at a junction, about to head toward Prince Rupert, leaving bear country. While Bob was at the gas pump, I went into the small store, ordered two cups of coffee, and sat down. The woman in the next booth was an Alaskan resident. I told her of Bob’s disappointment in not having found a bear. If we wanted to see bears, she said, we’d have to change directions and go to Hyder. The salmon were running.
I thanked her. As we set out, Bob turned toward Stewart. It was dark and raining when we arrived. Stewart is in British Columbia, Hyder is in the United States, yet the two towns are only a few miles away from each other. Our motel was in Stewart. The bears were in Alaska. We crossed the border several times during our short stay between the two countries, the boundary marked only by a wooden bridge and a border guard.
The afternoon of our first full day there, we stopped at a shop near that bridge. It featured beautiful handcrafted jewelry side by side with gleaming, efficient-looking hunting knives. The owner, who looked as though he could take care of himself in any situation, explained the different salmon runs and with that information gave us the key to what times of the day and where to look for bears.
As we were about to leave, he offered another bit of advice: “Keep in mind that grizzlies may look clumsy, but they’re fast-moving critters!”
At twilight, we followed the shopkeeper’s directions, and—at last—we spotted a young black bear and two older blacks wandering down the middle of the road.
“Well, Bob, you’ve seen your bear! And more than one!” I said.
“Yes, but not a grizzly.” Disappointment was heavy in his voice.
We continued on, even though the road was becoming narrower and rockier. In some places, it disintegrated into a slough of muddy water.
And then, on Bob’s side of the van, across the narrow stream, there was a grizzly! As though posing for us, he held and was chomping upon a large salmon.
The bear was on the other side of the stream. The narrow road, which had no shoulder, dropped right down into the rushing water. The distance wasn’t great, but, I reasoned, the bear was preoccupied. And the scene would make a perfect photo. I opened the door, hurried to the front of the van, and began to focus my camera. Then, through the viewfinder, I saw that the bear had stopped munching and was looking directly at me!
Common sense returned in a flash. I turned around and ran back to the van. Bob had already leaned over to push my door wide open.
THINKING ABOUT BEANS
My mother made her baked beans three times a year: at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, and for the annual Farmers’ Day picnic in July. I remember helping her when I was a child. She’d spread the beans out on a baking tin, and together we would carefully check to make sure that there were no bean-size, bean-colored stones among them. After soaking and boiling the beans, she’d scoop one out with a long-handled spoon. Then she’d blow on the bean to cool it and, holding it between her forefinger and thumb, slip the outer skin off.
“This is how you test the beans,” she said.
Years later, at Christmas, when I returned to visit my parents in their farmhouse in South Dakota, my husband experienced my mother’s baked beans for the first time—mahogany in color, each bean separate but melded together by a smoky, sweet, what-is-that? flavor. He ate the first serving and asked for seconds, then thirds. And I asked my mother for the recipe.
A few years later, Joe and I traveled to Europe. High on our list of must-see places was Carcassonne, the medieval walled city in southern France. The best cassoulet in the world, a main dish whose primary ingredient is beans, is purportedly made in Carcassonne. Joe diligently researched restaurants and then made reservations at the one known to serve the premier cassoulet in Carcassonne. Now, we’re talking about the Mouton Rothschild of cassoulets and, perhaps, of beandom itself.
For me, tasting beans prepared the French way in France was slightly short of momentous. As the family story goes, our bean recipe was of French origin, having migrated in the mid–eighteenth century with my maternal ancestors—maybe, I like to think, tucked in the corner of an old wooden trunk, but more likely in the corner of a woman’s mind. Those ancestors left a small town in France for Québec, Canada, where at least one of them, a young man, fought under Marquis de Montcalm. From there, many years later, a variation of the bean recipe traveled with my great-grandmother to Pierre, South Dakota.
That evening in the best-cassoulet-in-Carcassonne restaurant, Joe and I scanned the menu and, of course, ordered what we’d come for. We waited. A large, covered crock was brought to our table and the lid removed with great ceremony. Eagerly, we spooned portions onto our plates. We took one taste. No smiles. No “aha” moment.
“Your mother’s beans are better,” Joe said.
My mother always slow-cooked her beans in the oven (for many years in a wood-fired stove, then, later, in a gas stove) while she prepared them for the three ceremonial feasts. Because the small oven in my Manhattan apartment could hold only beans or a bird, I didn’t attempt to make them for decades after my mother had died, long after we’d tasted the last of her famous beans. I decided to surprise Joe and our sons by adding baked beans to our traditional Christmas dinner.
As I read the recipe for Myrtle’s Baked Beans, I realized that, of course, she’d just given me guidelines: my mother had cooked not by recipes, but rather by taste and touch. And I stretched the nonrecipe concept even further. I couldn’t find a hambone in our supermarket (I substituted a smoked pork butt) or great northern beans (I substituted navy). The recipe called for soaking the beans overnight. I hadn’t found time to do that, but directions on the bean bag indicated I could achieve the same result by simmering them for twenty minutes, then soaking them for an hour.
To coordinate turkey and beans, I decided to cook the beans a day early. While I prepared Christmas Eve dinner, I cooked and tasted the beans. As the afternoon proceeded, I kept adjusting the flavor as my mother always did, adding more brown sugar and molasses. But the beans remained hard and tasteless. I refrigerated them overnight and then the next day gave them as much oven time as I could while I prepared the turkey and stuffing. When I took the bird out to rest, I popped the beans back in. The beans remained crunchy. Nonetheless, I served them. Joe’s eyes widened when I brought them to the table.
“You made baked beans!”
They were the first dish he tasted.
After a bite and a short pause, he looked at me and said, “I think you should have baked them a little longer.”
I might not have tried to make the beans again, but the following year we bought a Crock-Pot, and I remembered that my sister-in-law Ruth made baked beans in a Crock-Pot, thus leaving her oven free for a large turkey. I called and asked how she cooked her baked beans.
Soak overnight. Simmer for twenty minutes on top of the stove; add the other ingredients; cook in the Crock-Pot on high for an hour, then on low for three more. Ruth asked me what I put in my beans and said she also added ketchup and chopped onions, ingredients not in my mother’s recipe. I told her I hadn’t been able to find great northerns and had substituted navy beans. That, she said, was the reason my attempt had failed.
A few days later, I received a package from Ruth. In it were packages of great northern beans. Three one-pound bags!
On my second attempt, I sorted the beans (one bag only), soaked them overnight, and simmered them for twenty minutes. I even tested them, sliding the skin off a bean or two to check that they were ready for the next step, as my mother had done. I rinsed them, added new water, and put them back on the stove. Then I added molasses, brown sugar, mustard, and a thick piece of ham, cut into chunks (in lieu of a hambone). I also chopped an onion and added it and the ketchup.
I mixed the ingredients and placed them in the Crock-Pot. All through the afternoon, I interrupted my other tasks to stir and test the beans.
At one point, my son Peter wandered into the kitchen, looked at me stirring the beans yet again, and remarked, “Those beans sure take a lot of cooking.”
Later, Stephen walked by just as I was blending a little more molasses into the beans.
“Something smells really good,” he said.
“We’ll see,” I replied.
The beans remained white and crunchy.
In desperation, I turned the Crock-Pot up to high for half an hour, then turned it back to low after adding more molasses, mustard, and brown sugar. Before we left for Midnight Mass, I placed the beans in the refrigerator.
Th next morning, the beans went back into the pot. I stirred and tested and seasoned as I prepared Christmas dinner.
At the table, I carefully watched Joe’s expression as he took his first bite. A pause. A smile.
“Ahhh,” he said, “there’s nothing like baked beans.”
The following day, after the excitement of the holiday had been muted—everyone reading gift books or trying out electronic toys—I dished up a portion for myself, poured the remaining Christmas wine into a glass, sat down at the table, and ate the beans, taking time to savor them.
And, yes, those beans were good.
AN EARLY RESOLVE
On each of those trips back to South Dakota and Minnesota, I planned so that I could be at Helen’s on a Thursday, the best day for garage sales, and stay through Saturday, the day of the local flea market.
Before I arrived, Helen would pick up the local paper and, by reading descriptions of what was offered, plan an efficient route to the best garage sales. Of course, we both realized that the planning was irrelevant. We’d be lured by signs with arrows pointing this way or that to bargains and, just maybe, undiscovered treasures.
On Thursday and Friday mornings, Helen gave me enough time to drink two cups of coffee while I watched the sunrise paint ever-changing colors on the surface of her lake. But on Saturday morning, she shifted into her standard, “If you want the best, you have to get there first” tempo.
“Barbara! Ready yet? Let’s be on our way.”
I hastily poured my coffee into a to-go cup and grabbed a straw hat from the coat rack.
“Just pull the door closed behind you,” she called, already out in the yard.
I heard a car door slam shut and the motor start up.
It was a short drive, less than five miles, over a gravel road. Down went the windows, up came the country. With lyrics of love and heartbreak as background, we delighted in spotting a whitetail deer and her fawn, and mom and pop ospreys d
iving for field mice to feed their squalling nestlings. A little farther along, Helen brought her car to an unexpected stop. We watched as a mother skunk, followed by five little ones in a neat line, tails raised high, parade style, crossed the road a few feet in front of us.
The land where the flea market—“swappers’ meet,” in local parlance—was situated had been a farmer’s field. Where once had been wide expanses of soybeans and corn now stood rows and rows of stands and tables. On them were spread out old things of every kind: dishes, tools, machinery parts, furniture. There were new things as well: socks, bedding, towels. Some dealers had placed their things directly on the grass. On and on the displays went.
Helen charged off, but I lagged behind so I could admire a few stands with produce picked just that morning: cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet corn, berries of all sorts, even ground cherries that I’d not seen since my childhood, and a riotous display of flowers.
Helen stopped often to speak to people she knew—almost everyone, it seemed. While I examined items that appealed to me, I kept her in my peripheral vision—not an easy task. Conveniently, both of us were interested in the bowls and plates from the 1950s on one table. My eyes were drawn to a large, oval stoneware platter. It was the color and had the smooth texture of river stones.
When she saw my interest, the middle-aged woman standing behind the table spoke up.
“I’ll give you a good price on that. It’s heavy, and I’m really tired of unpacking it and then having to pack it up all over again at the end of the day.”
I ran my hand across its cool surface.
“Oh, it is heavy,” I said, as I picked it up. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s beautiful.”
I didn’t have to look at Helen to know she was frowning. I was violating a cardinal rule: never show your interest. Doing so signals to the seller that it’s time to state a higher-than-usual price.
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