Storytorch

Coming home to Winterset after a visit to a big city is always comforting to me. The solidity of our limestone Courthouse, the familiarity of our tree-lined streets, and the security of my own home provide a perfect balance for the amazing sights of New York, Chicago, or (just last summer) Paris.

In New York last week, my friend Kathy and I packed three shows (In the Heights, Gypsy, and Fuerza Bruta), visits to The Tenement Museum and The Met, a cruise around Manhattan, shopping, and various types of cuisine into just four days.

In gentle Winterset, one busy day is like another. For me, they include reading, writing, gardening, sewing, a little cooking, Scrabble with my husband Mark, and lunch or coffee with my friends.

I was as surprised as anyone day before yesterday when I heard about the Black Angus steer that wound up downtown. The maverick escaped from his trailer as he was being unloaded at Madison County Sale Barn on the west edge of town. I was told he fled straight for the square and ran down Court Avenue, but I don’t see how that is possible, considering the paving project currently going on there.

I know for a fact the animal knocked Ruby Callahan down in her yard while evading a couple of guys on horseback pursuing him clear over on the north side of town—Sally Olson forwarded me an email from Ruby’s neighbor Marilyn Newman who saw it all through her picture window as she was sipping her morning coffee and inhaling oxygen from her portable tank. I later read in the Madisonian that the poor creature was grazed by Woody Minor’s pickup truck before finally being tranquillized by darts shot into him by John Potter, DVM.

It was a tragedy in several acts for this animal, the final one being his return to the sale barn, via end-loader, and his eventual auction once he awoke.

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
You will hear a surprising, yet true, tale.

On the sly, my older brother taught me to read before I entered kindergarten. My mother had refused, fearing print might strain my young eyes. Once the jig was up, though, my mom (herself an English teacher and later a newspaper publisher) encouraged my reading.

Naturally, my daughters grew up loving books. They were read to as babies, toddlers, and pre-schoolers, and they all became early readers.

We moved to town from the country when they were 13, nine, and six, and many boxes of books came into Winterset with us. On shopping trips to Des Moines with me or with their grandmother, the Fons girls knew if they could get us to B. Dalton or Waldenbooks they would always succeed in acquiring a new book.

Hannah, Mary, Rebecca, and I ate dinner every night at the round oak table in the dining room. I promoted conversation, but there were also the normal amounts of squabbling, spills, and sulks. One evening, we all seemed to be staring at our spaghetti without much to say. None of my inquiries about the school day struck gold. "I know," I said. "Let's read." In a flash, everyone, including me, shot away from the table and returned with a current volume. We read and ate in silent contentment.

Visiting twenty-something Hannah in New York a few years ago, I related the Let's Read anecdote to her roommate Dave to illustrate the literary, culturally-attuned background from which she came. He soon shared the story with their social circle, to prove what he had suspected all along—chic, 5'10" Hannah grew up a nerd in a nerdy family.

My husband Mark, my daughters, and Mary's fiance Steve are all gathering for a vacation on Washington Island, Wisconsin, in a few days, where we'll spend a week surrounded by water, reading.

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
You will reveal yourself to friends gradually.

PS. Dave, who has an undergraduate degree in trombone and a master's in voice (and now his Equity card and two Broadway roles under his belt), also grew up a nerd.

One day last week in New York City, my friend Kathy and I spent an afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since I had already seen the Costume Institute's Superheroes exhibit, we split up in the Great Hall. I can't remember another time when I simply strolled through the Met by myself.

I looked at bronze Byzantine ornaments around to the right under the main staircase. I went back to the Robert Lehman Wing and looked at European art. From there, I went up or down every staircase I came across. Soon, I found myself in the newly-renovated Wrightsman Galleries of French decorative art.

A couple, kissing passionately, occupied the velvet-roped viewing inset of the first beautifully-appointed bedroom. She was tipped back in his arms, and they kissed until her sunglasses clattered to the floor. Separated, they viewed the velvety room, standing close. I slowed my pace and kept my ears open; soon, I recognized their French. Ah, I thought, that explains a lot.

In the halls of Greek and Roman Art, I sat a while on a long, flat bench. A family of tourists ambled through the room—mother, father, and teenage son all sporting klieg-light-white, Times Square I HEART New York T-shirts. They walked through the gallery, mesmerized by its grandeur. I understood exactly how they felt.

In  the sculpture hall next to the Petrie Court Cafe, I enjoyed the mix of marble and bronze. I noticed a man relaxing just on the other side of the glass wall that faces the Park.

Bare-chested, with his legs stretched out in front of him and unlaced combat boots to one side, he sat atop some ventilation vents, working his way through a stack of newspapers. His folded coat was his seat cushion. His folded shirt was his foot pad. His coat-hanger shoulders flexed each time he turned a page of the Washington Post's Sports Section.

As he read, the draft from the ventilation grates blew his grizzled hair and beard back dramatically. After refolding Sports, he turned to Business.

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
You will be humbled by the world around you.

I'm back in New York for a four-day weekend, this time with my longtime Winterset friend Kathy. We're going to a couple of interesting-looking shows and, Sunday, around Manhattan island on the yacht Manhattan. Today, our plan was to head uptown to the Met.

We were walking west on Ninth to Astor Place to catch an uptown 6 train and noticed the Max Brenner chocolate cafe on the corner of Ninth and Second Avenue. Having had only toast and coffee at my daughter's apartment an hour earlier or more, we agreed that some chocolate would fortify us well for the busy day ahead.

Inside, Wonka-esque floor vats mechanically stirred dark, white, and milk chocolate, pumping it to the bar area via chocolate duct-work along the ceiling. Our waiter, a cute young Polish emigre, showed us to a table and handed us thick menus with a smile. We skipped the single page of salads and sandwiches and studied the many pages of chocolate treats—chocolate pizza, chocolate soup, chocolate fondue.

My "choctail" was the fairly tame (compared to chocolate martinis, etc.) Eighties Milkshake, a thick milkshake made with vanilla and chocolate cream topped with a floating scoop of vanilla ice cream covered with crunchy chocolate. Kathy chose the Chocolate Granita, pure chocolate truffle blended with ice. So we'd have something solid to go with (and because after all we are in New York) we shared a huge, warm, chocolate-studded bagel topped with hazelnut-chocolate spread.

We slurped our drinks through icy-cold, stainless steel straws, reading chocolate-culture mottoes scrawled on chocolate brown walls, and looking with interest at the chocolate boutique at the back of the store. Lips smeared with chocolate and eyes glazing over, we both bogged down a quarter-bagel in.

Later in the day, around two p.m., we opted for late lunch at the Met. "After all," Kathy said, "all we've had today is chocolate."

On our final day in New York last week, my husband Mark and I made our first trip to  the New York Botanical Gardens. The 250-acre site in the Bronx is only 20 minutes from Grand Central via the Metro-North Railroad. The train stops within easy walking distance to Mosholu Gate, a secondary entrance.

The weather was hot and sticky, but, as ISU Master Gardener interns, we were happy to sweat among one million plants. On Perennial Garden Way, we discovered "grow-through" wire grids atop the (now leaf-only) peonies. We'll be installing one of those on our own peony to keep its huge, heavy blossoms from bending to the ground.

The huge Victorian glass houses of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory contain 11 distinct habitats, none of them air-conditioned, of course. We strolled through two types of rain forest, American and African deserts, and the display of aquatic and carnivorous species, noting that few plants on earth would thrive in the air-conditioned habitat many humans so enjoy in July.

Outside again, we observed a mini meeting under a shade tree on the north side of the Conservatory. A slim, clipboard-holding, impeccably-dressed, 60ish woman spoke to the semicircle of garden personnel riveted around her. We only caught a few words, but learned some type of vermin had successfully damaged a sponsored garden. "Perhaps the Ladies Border is not the best use of our time and money," she observed.

After lunch and Scrabble in the Visitor Center cafe, we hopped on one of the trams that runs through important areas of the Gardens—Tulip Tree Alley, the Magnolia Collection, Howell Family Garden, and the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, home of some 3,000 antique roses, modern hybrid teas, floribundas, and shrub roses.

Back in our own Winterset garden now, with a staff of only two, we carefully deadhead and prune our own 21 roses, including our Aromatherapy hybrid tea and our Ramblin' Red climber.

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
You will make plans for spring.