Nothing but Ink

This post will be very little about not much. On the last day of a grand momentus month, I'm urged by that inner nudger, that I should do what I said I'd do when I started this. You know... be a good example for the youngsters, (and my peers, the retirees) and get two entries in a month completed. So, it's "Nothing but Ink" (even if it is fake ink)  before the clock runs out for August.

I talked about my Montana grandmother in one of my first posts, http://twheatscarousel.blogspot.com/2010/10/whoa.html.
I'd like to do that once again, through these oldy type pencil drawings that match the moment.

I used to watch my grandmother, before the sun came up, go to the barn and milk the few cows she owned, at age seventy plus. She was a tiny little thing. She wore a dress, and her barn boots, and six sweaters and no jewelry and tied her elegant white hair into a loose beautiful bun, and secured it with crinkly little two tabbed pins. She sat on a three - legged stool. The flies were terrible, as was the stench, but after a while the smell seemed to disappear, in the sound of the animal contentedly munching away on oats or hay and the stream of warm white milk swooshing into the silver pail. I always watched her talk to the cow gently as she tied its tail to its leg, so as not to be hit in the face with it, when it flicked the flys off its haunches. I was always amazed she was never kicked by the cow. it was a gentle scene to see. 

As grandmother sat at the other end of the big brown cows, I was directed to go on the opposite side of the stanchions, where the hay was fresh and baled, and sit and behave. I could not resist those huge brown eyes, and the lonely look of being locked into the worn wood wedge. So I'd talk softly to them so they would not kick grandmother or be afraid, and I'd scratch their tufted white forhead, and try to feel where they'd removed the horns, and give them a little more hay if they asked nicely. I couldn't believe they would put their huge tongue in their nose as they ate!  The barn fell down, and that life is long gone, but I just had to attempt to show myself what that five year old might look like "back in the day."

Today I discovered some Vimeo videos by Virgil L. Harper. Because Iowa is now my home, his short film relegates as a current favorite. Watch ".....feet in the dirt!".  http://www.vimeo.com/26984617. The musician is Greg Brown.  The nice thing about this video -  you can Show it to your Kids!

Mr. Harper, a film producer and photographer, known for his work on films as "Field of Dreams", made this presentation piece for a documentary on Farm Toy Collecting and Restoring. Using still photography with voice interviews, he created a stunning view of the Iowa landscape and a fun side life of farmers when they aren't plowing, seeding, harvesting, fixing fence, milking, weeding, fixing water pumps and irrigation line, tractor parts and barn walls, farmhouse roof repairing, caulking windows and waterlines, hauling water...etc.  Harper instead shows us their hobbies of toy collecting, restoring and building dioramas of farmsteads. In contrast to most of the folks he features who say they don't care about the moneythey might earn, related to their hobby - Mr. Harper does, (probably because his is not a hobby, but his life depends on it.. you know food, water, film, lenses, marketing). Mr. Virgil Harper would be interested in your contacting him if you want to invest in his documentary effort.

I would, Mr. Virgil, if I had any spare pin money, but mine goes for sketchbooks, paper, pencils, software, cable connections, and airplane tickets to California. (I'm a grandma now!) I must say, you did a really great thing with "...feet in the dirt!". Your photography is beautiful, and connects me to Iowa, my new state. The interviewees could be my next best friends, and thanks for the coffee break. I needed that!  I might buy a tractor instead of a horse.

Toni Wheat, 8/31/2011, Sioux City Iowa

The Truth about Horseback Riding

The only real horse I've ridden is the one I took riding lessons with shortly after my divorce. We got along O.K. for 5 sessions, then I ran out of lesson money, and the horse didn't seem to care, so we parted ways with barely a whinny, and just a tiny lying promise that I might see him again sometime.

Earlier, along a simple childhood road, I learned to love to look at horses. At parades and rodeos in Western Montana I delighted in those summertime visions; so many colors, the structured faces, readable ears, flared nostrils, big muscled bodies perched atop those graceful marching/running legs.  Horse manes on Main Street - either long and flowing in the wind or braided, combed, and ribboned for a parade - an intriguing sight; those big animals, in every way, are more than just beautiful. They are simply awesome.

I, being small, as a child, always had the vantage point from below the chiseled jawline of those gorgeous living beasts. Besides being petite and short, I was kind of a "fraidy cat".  A carousel horse, painted like a dreamy fantasy, was much, more approachable, than the real ones. With a painted horse, I radiated confidence and true character!

The first carousel horse I met, was a hand carved wooden one, mounted in a double row, with pretty benches and some swans, in a sidewalk circle of worn wood, at the Columbia Gardens in Butte USA (Montana). The timezone was summer mid- 1950's.  The color of my chosen horse has blurred into other lost places where childhood goes. I know my horse was not a plain brown one (do they call that sorrel?); mine was either the buckskin or palomino, with the golden mane, or the beautiful black one with silver and gold jewelled embellishments, or possibly the galloping Pinto (the Indian horse) with an archery quiver and bow and arrows attached to its side.

Two things were great about the Columbia Garden's Carousel. The first was the price - five cents; the second was knowing you could get on a horse on either side, ride with one hand, and never get bucked off, like from a rodeo horse. The music was pretty nice too: loud enough that you couldn't hear your mother as she stood on the other side of the fence giving you orders to hang on with two hands, but soft enough to allow for a little dreaming about being in a parade, uptown, with your beautiful steed, or you were the princess of some castle just over the mountain.

The ride never lasted long, nor did the nickels, for the next rides. So, you went home, after the picnic in the park with the cousins or the neighbors, and you made up stories for the other kids that go to the Gardens that weekend.

As an adult, while my own children were in preschool and kindergarten, I waited for them in the Libraries, in another state, and read every book available, about carousel carvers who created those wonderful merry-go-rounds. Often, I tossed around ideas, not about riding carved creations, but about actually carving a couple of horses, myself.

Over the years, I'd collected some tools and some books of my own, drawn some large drawings, bought some paints and brushes, but the carving never began. Life makes dents in your plans sometimes, and then you take a different fork in the road and you end up far away from your plans. So, you change your drawings a bit, make new plans and take up with new tools. You put on the old music and you get going again.

Follow along with me, at twheat'scarousel.blogspot.com. Tap that RSS Feed button on this page (then each new article or picture/video will automatically go to your inbox, or your designated Reader application, when this blog is updated.)

New creations ahead!  The carouselcowgirl continues.  Any ideas for me to add here? I'm learning new software tools like Aperture2 from Apple and Premier Pro from Adobe. I comment in shorter sentences at Twitter.com/Cowgirlcards; I draw at Flickr.com/photos/drawia (DRAWUSNOW mostly city stuff), and Flickr.com/photos/toni-d-wheat (PRAIRIERANCH is mostly old fashioned things I'm interested in).  I am trying the service, GOOGLE+.  If you want me to invite you to Google plus, let me know. I do appreciate your stopping here today. Thanks for the interest!

I took this photo from outside the display area, where the citizens of Butte MT, are faithfully recreating a carousel, to memorialize their original Columbia Gardens carousel. The blackened horse is one of the originals, that burned in the fire of 1973, destroying the carousel.

Toni Wheat

Sioux City, Iowa, Aug 29, 2011