ESTELLE (Grandma Sugar)

The Girl

It is laundry time…we have to give up the big red wagon for a few hours while she launders the linens from the cabins.  Sheets and pillowcases flow into the wringer washing machine and out to the lines, soaking up fresh mountain air and sunshine.  Once the laundry is done, she relinquishes the wagon…it is ours once again.  We pull it up the drive, jump in and ride it like a coaster all the way to the front door of the general store!

Now it is fun time.  We have already chopped kindling, filled the coal shuttles, and emptied the chamber pots from all the inhabited or recently vacated units at the Rainbow Cabins.  We are free to run though the muddy meadow; and fish in the spring that feeds into the Frying Pan River that runs along the back of the property.  But Estelle (my Grandma Sugar) keeps working.

How did she manage us all?  We ran quite wild, me and my sisters and cousins.  She always knew what we were up to…knew when we broke the rules like “no going to the river without an adult” because the current was strong, and it was mostly white-water rapids near the cabins. We could go to the spring and fish, “no wading or splashing around the pump house” because that would muddy the water coming out of the tap in the big house.  We could slosh around in the meadow unless there was a lot of rain…the mud could almost be like quick sand…I lost more than one pair of shoes that got SUCKED right off my feet as I ran through the sludge.

But she knew…always had a second sense …or maybe we were not so clever and she just had to put the clues together….like the time my cousin Butch and I got naked and went for a swim in the river.  We found a little cutaway at the base of some big rapids.  We took our clothes off and did the old “I will show you mine if you show me yours routine” and waded in.  It was cold and even though it looked shallow and still, there was a mighty current—we both lost footing and went in over our heads.  Fortunately, a fisherman saw us and helped us out.  We got dressed and went back to the house.  Our clothes were dry, but our hair was wet—so she knew we got naked…and the only section of the spring that was deep enough to drench us was at the spring house…no dirt in the pump…well, she figured it out. And of course, the fisherman managed to tell someone who told someone at the post office who told Estelle! BUSTED!

The Rainbow Cabins was a motor hotel of sorts.  It consisted of 10 real log cabins, logs with mortar and lots of chinks that let in the daylight and the cold. They sat on the banks of one of the best fly-fishing streams in Colorado, the Frying Pan.   These cabins ranged in size from the single bed tiny one to the largest of the 10 with enough beds to sleep a family of 8…. or more if there are a few “really little ones”.  All consisted of one room which included a coal burning stove, beds, table and chairs for eating and rocking chairs for resting.  There was electricity for lighting but no plumbing.  My grandparents’ cabin was a more finished and traditional 2 story house. On the back side of the house had showers and toilets for the cabin guests; the front side was a general store on the closed in porch that led into the home which was a big room, now known as an “open concept” kitchen and living area and there was a bathroom/laundry room attached.  Upstairs were two bedrooms, each with large dormer windows.

It was summer when we visited there and we picked berries, hiked and of course we fished. The Rainbow Trout were plentiful, fun to catch and delicious when coated with corn meal and fried in a cast iron skillet. Grandma Sugar was a patient teacher with the fishing and the cooking. We caught our own earthworms for bait, and we learned to attach that bait to our fishhooks. We learned to clean and gut the fish and helped bread them and cook them … we ate with relish!

ESTELLE

They are back!  Every summer we get them and every summer I know it may be the last time we get her!  She is the oldest of my youngest son and soon she will not be coming up with the others.  She will have a job and maybe a boyfriend and will not want to give up a month of her summer to spend time with us. 

She looks so much like him, her father. I ache when I look at her.  It is so sad that my Jimmy abandoned her, and her sisters, and her mom when they were such a young family.  He missed out with this one…the girl who was old enough to remember another time when they were whole.  She knows the loss in a way that is different from the others.  She is also lucky enough to have a new dad who chose her and her family.  A man who cares for them and has a heart big enough to make certain that I am included in the family made new when he married the girl’s mom.  What a blessing to me!

She is always ready to help with the chores.  She and her cousin, Butch will chop kindling and fill the coal shuttles for the cabins.  They will even empty the chamber pots while I clean the rooms and change the linens.  But when the work is done, oh my, they are terrors.  They hunt night crawlers after dark for my worm bucket…I sell bait to the guests when they go fishing.  This is mainly for the kids and not the parents who are “fly fishermen”.  They catch frogs, snakes, toads and terrorize the younger children with them.  Oh, and yes, they get naked and swim in the river!  They jump from the roof of the tackle and storage sheds while playing elaborate “hide and seek” games with their siblings and the children of the returning families that summer here.

The cousins all love to stay in one of the cabins and play monopoly until the wee hours of the morning. They have comic books stored in the spare bedroom in the house. The girl loves that room…especially when it rains. The dormer window overlooks the pasture and the spring house. The view is green and bright and wet. It smells of fresh mountain air and water when it rains.

We will have the girls for a month and then Tony and Vi will drive up and take them home. When everyone is here, we will have a big fish fry (trout that the kids have caught during their stay here) in the yard out by the double swinging chair. I keep an old coal burning stove out there and will cook the trout on it for the family and the cabin guests (several families return every summer)! We churn ice cream and serve it on top of the berry pies. The kids all help pick the berries, making the feast extra special.

 The girl…she is rough and tumble, but I think she will smooth out a bit as she matures. However, she is quite obviously, tough. She comes from good stock.  I think back to her linage…. her Godmother & aunt (my daughter) Montie Gertrude, me Estelle, Maddie Clementine my mother and Sara her mother. Texans all and dirt farmers and mountain goats. Yes, she fits just fine.