Writing love stories as I do, how could I not write about these books on a day like Valentine's Day. Now I must admit that personally I don't pay much attention to such days or haven't since I was in grade school, and we would get those collections of punch out Valentines, take home a list of classmates, and write our own name onto each card; so everybody got a bunch of Valentines to take home. Then came the years of boyfriends and would he give me one or how about if there was a Valentine's Day dance, would I be invited by the boy I most liked that month?
Overall Valentine's Day isn't a favorite to me (cut flowers don't last long, I don't wear jewelry hardly ever, candy is bad for me, and the words on cards should either be what we say daily or they are meaningless). Basically, despite the fact that I write romances (there's gotta be a better word for them), I'm not overly sentimental as a woman.
On a day supposedly devoted to love, I empathize too much with those who want but don't have a beloved at this time. This kind of day is just a kick in the heart for so many.
Except love, and a day devoted to reminding us about that, is about more than the sexy sort with which we tend to equate it. It's about love of animals, of land, of country, of home, of calling, of god, family, life, learning, etc. There are many types and expressions of love.
When I thought about which of my books would I most like to write about as a tribute to love, it would have to be chosen from my 11 contemporaries already published. Frankly the one I am actually 'hottest' on happens to be the historical where I just got its rough draft finished. It's always that way-- last love is at least best remembered love.
Among my contemporary eBooks, there is one that especially comes to my mind in terms of illustrating many types of love. From Here to There is not only a love story of a man and woman but of the land and the energy it brings to a life. It's a love story of ranching, family, hard work, nature, history, animals, and of those who write down their story for their families to someday benefit from finding. It's an ode to a region I love and a life I have both lived and cherished. The stories of the West have been part of my life from the time I was a child. It's wonderful to be almost 70 years old and find they are still stories that thrill me.
This isn't a story about boxes of candy and bouquets of roses. It's one of grit, sweat, blood and over it all-- love. To give a taste of this book, the following is a segment where the hero, a successful businessman from the East, is trying to understand what these Montana ranch people mean by the western way. As an outsider, he questions what their values really are. This kind of discussion is one I've heard many places in real life. In the book, it comes after a family dinner.
*************
"Well, now we know you like our pies.
What do you think of our West?"
Phillip managed to swallow his coffee before
he choked. "What could I think?" he asked, hoping he could avoid a
straight answer to her direct question.
"You could hate it, love it or not have
made up your mind yet," Nancy suggested, sitting beside Emile and
lightly massaging her husband's neck.
"I see you're not going to let me off the
hook," Phillip said with a faint smile.
"Is it such a complex question?" Nancy asked innocently.
"I don't think we should put Phillip on the spot this way,"
Helene said, interrupting protectively. "What he thinks or doesn't think
of the West is his business."
Phillip knew because of Helene's protective
intervention, he could avoid the issue, but he chose not to. "I have a
question for you all. What is this West
you talk about?"
Wes sat up straighter. "You don't know
what the West is?" he asked with at least pretend amazement.
"Sometimes you people talk as though this
is a foreign country or something, that people out here have a different set of
values than anyplace else. Is that how you see yourselves and this country?
"Maybe a little," Nancy admitted.
With a small smile, she suggested they sit in the living room where it was more
comfortable for the rest of this conversation.
Helene looked at Nancy speculatively, wondering what Nancy's purpose had been in bringing up
the issue. Her friend had always been provocative in her comments. It was one
of the things Helene liked about her, but she was never snide.
"Can I help you clean up?" Helene
asked, carrying dessert plates into the kitchen and hoping Nancy would agree so she could ask her
what had possessed her to put Phillip on the spot that way.
"Nope. I'll do that later. I want to
enjoy the conversation." Nancy smiled benignly at Helene, her face
ingenuous--except in the gleam of her blue eyes.
"I should apologize to you, Phil," Nancy said as soon as everyone was seated
again. "It must have sounded like an accusation the way I put my question.
I didn't mean it that way." She smiled a gamine grin that Phillip thought
would have made it nearly impossible for anyone to take offense at what she'd
said.
"We are defensive though," Emile
said, leaning forward, his voice intense. "Outsiders come here, buy up the
land, move into the valleys and hills and they don't understand our ways, share
our values. They don’t understand the problems we face with say wolf or grizzly
predations. They want us gone is the honest truth and leave this place for
vacation homes and the wolves and grizzlies.”
“I have read about the conflicts,”
Phillip agreed, “and see how it seems confrontive.”
“It causes a lot of trouble when
newcomers or worse outsiders expect to change everything to meet what their
goals or what they left behind. If they didn’t like how this was, why’d they
bother to come?"
“Everybody came sometime,” Phillip
argued.
“Outsiders cause us a lot of grief.”
"Outsiders. That's a good word
for the way you people treat anybody who wasn't born on your land."
"Oh my, I'm sorry I ever brought any of
this up," Nancy said.
Phillip made his own tone conciliatory.
"I'll concede the evils of the big cities with high taxes, crime,
pollution, and overcrowding, but how about if we keep this discussion to the
thing I really don't understand. What is the philosophy that you folks see as
being Western, that separates a Westerner from what you would call an
outsider?" He had no desire to get into an argument with Emile. On the
other hand, fighting with Wes might have a certain appeal. His eyes narrowed as
he looked toward Wes, who had settled next to Helene on the gingham covered
sofa. What were that guy's intentions?
Emile subsided back, as Nancy, who had moved
to sit on the arm of his chair, began soothingly kneading his shoulder muscle.
There was a silence "A lot of the ways
around here have changed, even since I was a kid," Amos said finally.
"There was a time when a man was judged by what he did not just what he
owned. There wasn't so much concern with how much money you had, but more how
you did your work, what your word was worth. You know, even now with some of
the old timers, a handshake is as good or better than a paper contract would be
somewhere else. In fact, with a lot of men, you never get a signed contract. A
man's word, that's everything. Know what I mean?"
"Maybe. I deal with people a lot on the
look in their eye," Phillip said thoughtfully. "It doesn't always
work out though when you don't have the expectations written down. People
remember their promises differently."
Amos grinned. "Well, that's true out here
too, but if a man's worked the winter at your side, you've watched his kids
grow up, seen how he keeps his stock, how he maintains his fences, you get a
feeling for him and the kind of fella he is. A man who can do does. A man who
can't brags.”
Phillip smiled. “That’s pretty much
true anywhere.”
"Well we do come out here from other
places, heck, if we count our families, all of us came from someplace else, but
there's different kind of men, not so much matters about where they come from,
but more what they're like inside. There's those that come, buy up land, fill
it with cattle, overgraze their places 'til there isn't a blade of grass left,
then go belly up. They're sucking it dry and pretty soon somebody else's got
what's left. The city folks look at it and don’t know it was another city folk
who done it.
“Some see these ranches as just
investments. They don’t work it at all and take land out of production. They
don’t care about the schools, the socials, none of it. Another kind of fella,
he sees the land and the people here as a responsibility, a way to feed his
family and other folks. He takes care of it, like it's in trust or something.
Looks after his neighbors. He's the kind of man we say it'll do to ride the
river with."
Amos chuckled. "It ain't the hat so much.
It's what's under that hat. We got a saying out here--the bigger the hat, the
littler the outfit. I think though you're not so much asking what makes the
West what it is, but more what is we're tryin' so hard to hold onto that we
feel threatened by newcomers?" He waited for an answer.
Phillip nodded. "It is something of what
I see."
Emile answered. "Some of it's a feeling of
self-sufficiency in the community, a caring for each other. A man takes care of
himself but also helps out those around him. There’s knowing you can leave your
door unlocked and if your neighbor comes by the only thing he'll be going into
your house for is to leave you a pie or loaf of bread his wife baked."
"It sounds Edenic," Phillip said,
remembering the neighborhood he'd grown up in. If you left your door unlocked
there, you'd find the place destroyed and emptied out when you got home; and if
you were lucky, the burglar was gone and was not waiting to beat you to a pulp.
"I suppose it is and a lot of it's
already gone,” Emile agreed. “When I was a kid, everybody used to get together
at the county grange on Saturday nights for pot lucks and at each other's barns
for dances. Us kids would watch them as they’d dance all night and the worst
thing that would happen might be a couple of hotheads fighting over some pretty
little thing down behind the barn.”
Amos chuckled. “Yep, when the boys'd
get through trying to knock each other's heads in, they'd shake hands. If a
man's barn or house burned, the whole valley'd show up to put up a new one. You
saw a fellow driving his rig down the road, and you not only knew who he was
but who his people were. Nowadays, I don't hardly know half the people three
miles from me, let alone all the way into town."
"You can't blame that totally on city
people who moved in though," Phillip said. "Change happens. Nobody
can hold onto anything forever." He ought to know the truth of that. He'd
never lived in any home longer than a year, and father figures had changed with
the seasons—sometimes twice in a season.
"We can damn well try," Emile
retorted argumentatively.
Amos shook his head. "No, he's right. We
can't hold onto what was, and we probably do glamorize the old West too much,
make more out of it than it was, like it really was John Wayne running things
back then."
He stopped for a moment and then, as
though thinking aloud, mused, "It's a funny thing about the Western way of
thinking. On the one hand, it's a man helping another man by choice, but on the
other hand, it's a man being independent, doing for himself. I think that's
what we don't want to lose the most... independence."
"You don't think people from the city can
be independent?" Phillip asked, knowing what the answer would be.
"City folks want somebody else to do
everything for them," Wes said. "Get the government into every part
of life. Raise taxes, ask for services. They want to butt into everybody else's
business and tell them how to run it. You get a man from the city out here and
the first thing you know he wants sidewalks, street lights and expects you to
help pay for them."
Waiting until the laughter died down, Amos
quipped, "Well now, I don't want you to think this business of Western
independence goes too far with us. You go taking away our electricity, and
we'll be squealing like stuck pigs."
