Tag Archive for: Barbara J. Eikmeier

The Classic Camel Coat

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I gave away my winter coat. It was a long wool coat with generous sleeves, easy to fit over a bulky sweater or blazer. It was a classic style: Notched collar, button front, buttoned bands at the sleeves. It was camel colored. The same color as my dog. Some would call this coat ageless – my mother had one in the 60s. Hers was mohair. Mine was wool.

Having left my job in the business world, I no longer wore my classic camel coat, opting instead for a pack-able down number that I can stuff into my purse when needed. I donated my old coat during the winter coat drive last fall.

I bought the camel coat in 1995 to match our new dog, Millie, a golden retriever mix who shed year-round. My favorite long wool red coat was a magnet for her fur. The camel coat collected her fur too, it just didn’t’ show.

The coat served me well, but I never really loved the color. Tan, in general, washes me out. I prefer a red coat, or purple, or navy, or black – anything other than tan.

Years passed, jobs changed, my husband retired from the military and we stopped moving. It was time for a closet purge. I stripped hangers of glittery formal wear saved for the next military ball. I unclipped my skirt and jacket suits, brushed the dust off the shoulders, catching a whiff of the cologne I used to wear to work at my office job – it seemed like a lifetime ago.

I worked my way to the coats. I pulled two leather jackets, bought for a song when we lived in South Korea, excess raincoats, bought when caught in the rain while traveling, and hip length ‘tween season jackets. The last coat to go into the donation bag was my classic camel coat. I held it up to my body and looked in the mirror. Even though my skin has grown fairer as I’ve aged and my formerly dark brown hair has lightened with streaks of grey, camel still isn’t my color. Into the bag it went.

There were no second thoughts as I pulled the yellow tie cinching the plastic bag closed just as my husband came in. Patting the bag I said, “These can go to the coat drive.”

End of story, right?

Purges are often hard for me. I spent 26 years as a military wife moving every 2-3 years. With each move I gave up neighbors, houses, gardens, and social groups. I lost my dentist, hairdresser, and church community replacing them with new people at the next location. But I had my stuff.

The items I collected were familiar to me in their new surroundings. They helped make my new house feel like home. I became a maximalist collecting anything I loved, saving cards, letters, and love notes, acquiring twenty-eight chairs (the guy from the moving company told me he counted them!) I saved curtains and area rugs – one never knew when they might work in the next house. And I saved coats – after all, we lived in a variety of climates.

Millie, the camel-colored dog, passed away many years ago. I no longer find her fur on my sofa or in my car. I hadn’t worn my classic camel coat in 15 years. It was time to pass it on.

No regrets, right?

Well, no immediate regrets anyway, until I attended a nephew’s wedding on a cold day in January. I watched two young women come into the church together. They were the spouses of two of my other nephews who were groomsmen.

I enjoy being around 20 somethings. It’s fun to notice the styles they wear and hear the language they use. That day both women where dressed in tea length floral dresses. Trendy, I thought. Over their pretty dresses they were both wearing coats. Classic camel coats.What? Wait a minute – is the classic camel coat popular with young women? Did I give away my coat 2 months too soon? I felt a twinge of regret.

The January wedding was the beginning of an informal study. I began seeing classic camel coats everywhere! I saw young women in airports, bookstores, at the grocery market, even at the gas station wearing classic camel coats. The styling didn’t differ much from coat to coat although the length varied from hip length to mid-calf (like mine). One thing was certain, the classic camel coat was trending.

A few weeks ago, when a frigid polar vortex hung over Kansas, I thought about my donated coat. I’m always hopeful that my donated coats are keeping someone warm, but this year was different. I hoped that my coat was snatched up by a young woman on a budget, delighted in finding such a stylish coat.

I’m over the regret. At least I think I am, until I counted five sightings in one hour at the Kansas City Airport this morning.

Do you own a classic camel coat? If so, did you know you’re trending?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Thoughts on an aging mother

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

My mother, at age 91, helped me up off the floor. It was one of those moments that will stay with me for a long time.

Dementia has left her passive. Arthritis has left her bent over at the waist and often in pain. She uses a walker, moves very slowly, and needs help with most aspects of her care.

Thanks to my dad’s careful financial planning and the round-the-clock caregivers we’ve hired, she still lives in the farmhouse in California where I was raised. I visit her from Kansas for a week or so every month or two. She has become quiet, rarely voicing descent in a conversation, often confused about who I am.

But I still know her.

So, I tell her about my travels, and my children. I show her my embroidery projects and tell her about the book I’m reading.

She thinks I’m her sister. Or one of my sisters.

She tells me “They don’t let me do anything.” Mostly I think she’s bored. After all, she had a busy life. She raised nine children, was active in her church, helped on the dairy farm, and took care of the 20 heifers we raised every year. She did all the bookkeeping and read the daily paper and listened to the evening news. She mended clothing, baked cookies, and served dinner for a crowd every night. Now she paints with water and watches cartoons.

She doesn’t know me, but she remembers how to spoon leftovers into Tupperware, so I set her up at her place at the kitchen table and  leave pot roast and potatoes, lettuce and broccoli next to an assortment of containers. She can perform this task perfectly, without help.

She thinks I’m her sister, but she can use a seam ripper to fix my sewing mistake. So, I gave her a seam ripper and showed her the stitching that needed to come out. She finished in no-time, after all, she was an expert seamstress earlier in her life.

I showed her the grapefruit I picked from her tree. She sniffed it and said, “It’s too old.” I cut it in half and showed her again. She poked at the dry, grainy segments and said, “Throw it away.”

When I’m with her I sometimes need to escort her to the bathroom. She washed her hands and said, “I think my shoe strap has come undone.” I squatted, my bottom nearly brushing the floor as I checked the Velcro on her navy Mary Janes. “It’s ok Mom, but now I have to get up!” I do squats at the gym, but I don’t go that low. My thighs were screaming, but the bathroom is so tiny, and I was trapped between my mother and her walker.  If I leaned forward, I risked toppling into her. That’s when my mother, permanently bent over at the waist, her arms dangling in front of her, reached out, just enough to put her hands around my torso, tuck her palms into my armpits and lift. I popped right up. She smiled and said with a nod, “We have to work together on these kinds of things.”

It’s been a long time since my mother has said my name, but that day, she put her arms around me and for a split second she was the nurturer again.

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

My Rare Pink Rocks

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By Barbara J. Eikmeier

For many years I collected sea glass. I filled a small jar with pieces from beaches in Hawaii and California. It took a long time to fill my jar. Imagine my surprise when my sister took me to Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, California. I felt like there was more glass than sand on that beach. It made my humble collection look, well, humble.

In my yard in Eastern Kansas sit two pink boulders and several lesser boulders. They were excavated when the house was built in 1992. They are probably rose quartz although I hear people call them pink granite (mine don’t look like granite.) They are unique to my area of Kansas, and I see them in neighbors’ yards too. I’m not a native Kansan but have been told these pink rocks were a gift from Minnesota, brought down during the ice age. When the ice receded, the big rocks were left behind.

Visitors from out of the area have been known to covet my pink rocks, in fact at least two visitors collected smaller samples from my property to take home with them.

When the utility company trenched across our yard to replace a gas line, they unearthed more pink rocks. The evening before the trench was to be filled in, I claimed those pink rocks. With my husband’s help we rolled the biggest and pinkest of them down the hill, laughing all the way, to the spot where the driveway leveled out. Then we got our piano mover, which is not really a piano mover, but it works like one, (I bought it at an estate sale for fifty cents!) We rolled those big rocks onto that platform and wheeled them to select locations in the gardens. The new rocks are a fraction the size of my big pink boulders, but they still weighed a ton!

I’ve been basking in the glory of owning such rare and special rocks for years.

I’m writing this post while on a road trip with my husband. We spent two days in South Dakota where pink rocks are everywhere.  Apparently, my pink rocks may have been a gift from South Dakota instead of Minnesota.

Near Sioux Falls, South Dakota there is a huge quarry with a giant heap of pink rocks.

Further west I noticed them used for landscaping at rest stops along Interstate 90. Heck, in some sections, Interstate 90 itself glows pink because it’s made of crushed pink stone mixed with the asphalt. When we stopped, I checked. I could see the bits of pink rock.

The driveway in the campground we stayed at was made of crushed pink rock. I picked up two heart shaped stones for my granddaughter. I stopped at two, but I could have found 100, all pink, all heart shaped!

And the greatest shock of all, to me anyway, was pink rocks on the edges of the train tracks.

It feels like Glass Beach all over again!

Have you ever discovered that your rare collection isn’t so rare after all?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Designated Parking

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

It’s back-to-school-time which means it’s time to paint the high school parking lot AGAIN. An annual tradition at our local high school, it’s a senior privilege.

My children didn’t attend this school, so I’m strictly an observer of the annual changing of the guard in the school parking lot – a local citizen enjoying the show.

I notice the transition while exercising on the school track. It starts on a weekend. Dad’s and daughters, small groups of teen boys, and threesomes of giggling girls in short shorts and tank tops descend upon the asphalt. They arrive with rolls of blue masking tape, cans of paint, and rollers with long handles. They mask frames and roll the first color of paint. As the days go by the art emerges as the rising seniors personalize their private parking spots.

Designated parking spots are everywhere. CEOs and company presidents have them. On military posts the Solider of the Month has one. I once saw one near the door in a JC Penney’s parking lot for “Mother to be”. But aside from a formal sign, they aren’t decorated.

I’m not sure how the seniors get the privilege but in my mind it’s a fundraiser – auctioned to the highest bidder, the money deposited to the Grad Night fund.

What I haven’t sorted out is why the seniors choose their particular spots. Oh sure, those coveted places near the entrance to the school make sense. A senior can push the snooze button every morning then whip into his prime parking spot and still be in his seat before the tardy bell rings. It’s a rational that I would use myself, given the chance. But what puzzles me are the random spots in the middle of the parking lot. Or those on the outer edges furthest from the door. Why there?

Google Earth image

 

A day or two before school resumes the parking lot painting wraps up. The masking tape is peeled away leaving a sharp outline well within the official white lines.

The colors are vibrant: Hot pink, sunny yellow, Black and Red, Go Lions!  The themes are as varied as the students themselves. Football player’s numbers in bold block letters, favorite car brands, pop culture icons such as Pokemon and, new this year, Hi Barbie, and of course “Class of 2024” everywhere. The trending themes, popular colors, and school pride splashes across the parking lot in a sort of “controlled graffiti”.

I never actually see the students – they’re in class when I do my laps on their track, but I sure enjoy the way they share their passions with the world in the form of a decorated parking spot.

As the months pass the vibrant colors will soften until the week after graduation when the parking spots will be painted over with black paint, the dark rectangles creating a clean canvas for the next batch of rising seniors.

Does your community have a quirky annual tradition that amuses you?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Hooked on Podcasts

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

I’ve become a Podcast junkie. It happened rather innocently when, last September, I had eye surgery. For the first 48 hours post-op I had to alternate ice packs 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off while awake.  Then I switched to warm compresses for 20 minutes four times a day for another 3 weeks.

In the beginning I felt agitated thinking about all the work I had waiting for me. I would recline on the sofa and force myself to breathe in and out. With both eyes covered in ice packs I couldn’t even watch the clock, so I set a timer on Alexa. Then I proceeded to pester her by asking how much time was left on the timer.

I tried listening to music. At least the music calmed me. My eyes hurt, especially when I looked up to read a computer screen. Looking down, however didn’t hurt. That meant I could work at my sewing machine, which started a new routine, 20 minutes of sewing, alternating with 20 minutes of ice packs. I set the timer. It was a slow way to make a quilt with forced breaks for ice packs every 20 minutes.

By day three I had resigned myself to the fact that being home for three weeks recuperating was going to be a total bust in productivity. Then I saw an email from The Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, (I read it on my phone with my eyes cast down during one of my 20 minutes off cycles.) I’ve had three residencies at Dairy Hollow and enjoy following them on social media and email. The message contained a link to their latest podcast, Write Now. By now I was onto the warm compresses, which, by the way, were much more comforting than ice on my eyes! With a podcast to concentrate on, the time seemed to fly. Before I knew it Alexa was chiming that my timer had ended.

My eyes are fine, my travel has resumed, my to-do list, as usual, has too much on it, but now, I have this new love of podcasts. I got a set of wireless ear buds and listen to podcasts on the stationary bike at home, or while walking the track at the nearby high school. I listen to podcasts while lifting weights at the gym, while sewing, and while waiting in airports. And I’m learning so much!

My favorite remains Write Now where I’ve “met” so many interesting authors. I especially enjoy the early episodes that aired during the “stay home” part of the pandemic. I recently listened to Stiletto Gang’s very own Bethany Maines in the Plotter vs Pantsers show down.

I’m learning French online through Duolingo.  Now I listen to stories in French on the Duolingo podcast! I wish I could tell you it’s improving my French, however I listened to a great story about the most famous boulangeries in Paris! If I ever go I’ll take my French speaking 7-year-old granddaughter with me to do the talking!

I listen to podcasts about quilting, health and wellness and writing, of course, all during time that my brain would otherwise be idle. Do you listen to podcasts? Do you have a podcast? I’d love to hear about your favorites!

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

The Tenth Child

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

I have eight siblings. The nine of us were together recently for my dad’s funeral. It was a bittersweet day.  My dad was 92 years old and yet, despite the wind, rain, and mud, over 350 people attended his service.

The church ladies served lunch at the church hall. They came out in full force to support my mother who, for 25 years oversaw the funeral meal program. And they brought food: Potato salad dotted with black olives, deviled eggs, sprinkled with paprika, and delicious fried chicken. There were cookies, pies, and cakes. I grabbed the last piece of cheesecake and handed it to my older sister – I think it’s the only thing she ate that day.  She was busy greeting people. Without planning, we nine children spread out in the hall talking to as many visitors as possible.

I chatted with Janet in front of the photo display – she lived with my parents her senior year. She said, “I visited your dad a few months ago.  I asked if I could go upstairs and see my room.” She was like a tenth child. In fact, she’s always claimed that status. But then there’s Ed. Younger than all of us, my dad took a liking to Ed and encouraged him when he started a goat dairy. Some of us even call him our little brother. I knew about these two claims for the tenth child position but was surprised when Sara, a family friend and my dad’s god daughter, asked to take a picture of my mom with the nine of us. She then jumped between two brothers and said, “Now let’s get another with me in it, after all, I’ve always felt like I was the tenth child!”

Later that evening, back at The Dairy, as we call my parent’s place, we siblings exchanged stories about the day. That’s when I learned there are others who claim to be the tenth child.   The common thread was, “He treated me as if I was a member of the family.”  My own best friend since the 6th grade recalled, “I would just come in and sit down at that big ole farm table and eat dinner as if I lived there.” Neighbors who spent summers on the farm said, “He treated me like I was the tenth child.”

I don’t share DNA with any of the tenth children, but I’ll share my family with them. After all, as my mom would say, “When you are already cooking for eleven people, what’s one more?”

Someday I may be able to write about some of the more poignant moments of my dad’s final days and his funeral, but for now I’m finding comfort in the fact that so many people thought so much of him that they wanted to be his tenth child.

Do you have self-adopted family members?

Bob and Doris Martin and their 9 children

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

After the Hurricane

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

The Wood Stork lifts off from the edge of the pond. His long slightly curved beak points the way like a menacing weapon, and his shaggy head droops, in sharp contrast to his elegant body. My hostess calls him The Professor.

Wood Stork – image from stock photos

From the lanai I also see the Great Blue Heron, and the Tricolor Heron, his white belly flashing us as he takes flight. I’m impressed with the perfectly still, dark feathered Cormorant standing on the rock, with his wings fanned out. My hostess shrugs and says, “Oh he is quite common.”

I’m teaching for a week in Southwest Florida. In Ft Myers to be exact. The same Ft Myers where Hurricane Ian made landfall on September 28, 2022. I’m staying with my friend Bridget and peppering her with questions about the hurricane and its aftermath. The writer in me can’t help it.

If creating a setting or writing a dramatic scene featuring catastrophic weather, I’m not sure I could write a convincing hurricane. I can do flood waters from the creek rising after torrential rains. I can do a monsoon. I can do a tornado warning and get my characters to shelter before the funnel cloud touches down. I can even do a tidal wave warning. But my knowledge of hurricanes comes strictly from the weather channel.

Going to and from class today my driver toured me around Ft Myer, pointing out the canals that bring the water inland creating waterfront properties. Many homes and businesses are still draped in bright blue tarps. The palms lining both sides of McGregor Blvd are missing palm fronds, but otherwise are standing tall, new growth sprouting high above the ground. Three months of cleanup have already taken place. But then there is the marina and the topsy-turvy pile of yachts and smaller boats, twisted among huge chunks of broken up dock, bringing home the truth of what happened here. I saw a sailboat trapped at the base of a bridge; its silver mast tangled with the black post of a streetlight as if braided together. Another sailboat rested on its side, the mast pointing inland, the sails shredded to ribbons, fluttering in the breeze.

Restaurants are closed. Beaches are closed. A little island, seen from the bridge, has been stripped of vegetation.

Today the calm of my friend’s pond, is a different view from the story she tells of that day when she watched the water rise, saw it churn one direction, then change directions as the eye of the storm passed overhead. She exclaimed, “The wind, oh that awful wind that continued for hours, or rather for days.” And she describes the surprise of seeing whitecaps on her little pond.

I’m keenly aware of the devastation that happened here, but I’ve also seen the spirit of Southwest Florida in the people I’ve met. Seasonal residents have returned. Year-round friends greet them and immediately ask how their places fared in the hurricane. They are rebuilding and supporting each other.

Originally, I thought I’d make this trip part work, part vacation – after all, its Florida in January! Hurricane Ian changed things, but I still came. It turns out that I didn’t need that trip to the beach, and I didn’t need an excursion to Sanibel Island, but I did need to see the amazing strength of Southwest Florida in the people I met. After all it’s the human spirit that defines a place.

Image from Ft Myers tourism

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

The Best Thanksgiving Movie Ever?

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By Barbara J. Eikmeier

The Last Waltz was showing at the Sunrise Theater at 730 pm on Thanksgiving night. Our hostess attends every year. I was intrigued. What movie can possibly be so great that a person would go to see it every year?

As it turns out, The Last Waltz isn’t an ordinary movie, and the Sunrise Theater experience is far from ordinary.

I was in Southern Pines, NC on Thanksgiving for the second time ever. Our friend toured us through the historic downtown, with the railroad running right down the middle of Broad Street! When we turned the corner near the Sunrise Theater, I noticed, “The Last Waltz, Thurs 730” on the marquee. I remembered seeing the movie in my previous visit, so naturally I asked, “Are we going to the movie tomorrow night?”

Southern Pines, NC 2022

The Last Waltz released in 1978. If you aren’t familiar with the story, it’s about the farewell concert performed in 1976 by The Band. After 16 years of touring, The Band had decided to retire from live performances. For their last concert they wanted something special – a celebration. They chose the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco as the venue, because that’s where they got their first big break. Then they invited other Rock and Roll legends to perform with them.

The Last Waltz, The Band – Image from wikimedia

As we filed into the Sunrise Theater with others in the 60-70 yr old set, I was amused to also see thirty-somethings and elementary school kids in the crowd. The old, refurbished theater, closed after the economic downturn of the 70s and 80s, had been saved by the community and now operates as a non-profit bringing live theater and film events to Southern Pines. Next door is an outdoor stage with a large grassy area for summer programs.

We found our seats as the lights dimmed. When The Band took the stage (in the movie) and shouted, “Happy Thanksgiving!” The crowd (in the movie and in the present-day movie theater) cheered wildly! That was my first clue that this was not going to be an ordinary movie going experience.

The audience held nothing back, hooting, hollering, cheering and whistling as their favorite singer appeared in the movie. When the camera panned in on drummer, Levon Helm, from the back of the theater a deep, masculine voice bellowed, “Yeah! Leeeeeevoooon!”

From the clusters of audience cheers we could tell where the Neil Young fans were sitting. And Joni Mitchell’s. When Van Morrison took the stage, the man two rows behind us yelled “Van the Man!” As Morrison spiked the air with his arm and kicked one more time, loud clapping and cheering filled the theater. Enthusiastic appreciation continued for Emmylou Harris, Muddy Waters and Dr. John. Fans sang along with Eric Clapton and Neil Diamond. When Bob Dylan sang “Forever Young” I sensed the end nearing.  I dabbed at my tears, caught up in the moment, cheering just because those around me were cheering. It was fantastic!

When asked how long it’s been a Southern Pine Thanksgiving tradition my hostess said, “Maybe five years.” But I knew that wasn’t right because when I saw it five years ago it was “at least ten years.”

A bearded man holding his sweetheart’s hand said, “Well, I’m 30 and I’ve been going since I was a kid.”

An attractive older woman, her grey hair pulled into a long braid, said, “Pretty much forever.”

Each year the showing is free to the public thanks to sponsorship by local business, Howell Masonry. During 2020, in spite of the Covid-19 pandemic, the show went on, playing on a screen at the outdoor stage.

There’s something heart-warming about being in a crowd of jubilant people. These are people who love Rock and Roll or holiday traditions or just being a part of a community. They were little kids, who had become adults and now attend with their parents and their own children.

Small town rituals are rich with material for writers. While I don’t have plans to write the Sunrise Theater into a novel, I can harvest the memory of this event for character traits (“Yeah! Leeeeevooon!”), dialog peppered with dialect, a hometown setting and a unique holiday tradition. After all, in Southern Pines they say The Last Waltz is the best Thanksgiving movie ever!

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

The Poet

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

One of my writing teachers is a poet. I saw him last week in the coffee shop. He wasn’t at his usual table, near the window where the light is best. This day, his table was next to the fireplace, where it’s warmer.  Sheets of paper spilled across the table with a book of quotes opened in front of him.

I look for him every time I’m in the coffee shop. Pre-pandemic he wrote there three times a week.

Years ago, I took writing classes from him. He taught me about expansion and contraction – taking one line of free writing and expanding it to fill a whole page, then taking the full page and editing it down to one paragraph. He said, “Sometimes we don’t know what we are writing about until we uncover the core truth in our words.”

When I bought a little book of poems from him, I learned he was also an artist – his sketches graced the bottom of each page. A graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute, he taught art and poetry to inmates in the 1970s. He thought if people read more poetry there would be less crime.

There, in that little coffee shop, I began taking drawing lessons from him. Under his tutelage, I learned to draw without looking at my paper. He said, “When you don’t look you draw what is true.” They looked like scribbles to me, but he praised my pencil lines as being honest. In the beginning I paid him. Then one day he asked if I would read his poetry in exchange for drawing lessons. I admitted I didn’t know much about poetry, but I knew when I liked it. That was all he wanted, for me to read his poems and tell him what I liked. He wrote a poem every day and typed as many as he could fit on one page, arranged in columns. At each art lesson he gave me another manila envelope filled with poems. My instructions were to circle 2 favorites and 2 least favorites on each page. In exchange I learned to draw trees and leaves, human hands, and coffee shop scenes of people deep in thought.

Between my travel and his vacations, we stopped meeting. Our visits were reduced to the times I saw him in the coffee shop. Then came the pandemic and he disappeared.

Last week, he was seated with his wife whom I’d never met. I went to him, squatted down and said, “Ah there you are! What are you writing today?” He looked up, his blue eyes watery and vacant. I asked, “Do you remember me?” He said, “I think so.” I looked across the table to his wife. She smiled a tight, sad smile and said, “He’s not so well.” Turning back to him I said, “You taught me to draw in exchange for reviewing your poetry. I’m Barb.” His wife’s smile broadened as she told him, “It’s Barb. The quilter.” I chatted briefly with her – long enough to learn that she knew everything about me from those days when he gave me lessons. I went back to my table and ate my pumpkin bread, aware with each bite that he was the one who introduced me to that amazing pumpkin bread. As I prepared to leave the coffee shop I returned to his table. This time he looked up at me with recognition in his eyes. “You’re the quilter! You read my poems.”

Eight years have passed since he gave me permission to use one of his poems in my novel. I have a new motivation to finish the revisions and get it published: I wrote a scene in it where my teacher, the poet, is reading his poem on a radio show. It’s a beautiful scene. I’d like him to see it in print.  Time won’t wait. That’s the truth.

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Road Research

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By Barbara J. Eikmeier

My favorite place to find details for a story is on a road trip.

My regular job is presenting programs about quilts to small and regional quilt guilds. Bookings take me off the main highways to “Blue Roads”, through tiny communities and sometimes even down dirt roads. Ninety percent of the time I travel alone.

Once my GPS is set for my destination and snacks and water bottle are within easy reach, there is one last item to put in place before hitting the road – my notebook.

Over the years I have filled great piles of these notebooks with lecture notes, story starters, to-do lists, quilt patterns, rough drafts and travel notes. I don’t journal daily, although I admire those of you who do. I just make notes. My notebooks are sloppy. I seldom keep the script on the line but if I’m striving to hit the line, I prefer wide-rule over college rule so I have plenty of space for the letters that loop below the line. I really love letters that loop below the line. I have a memory from kindergarten of writing my name in the proper upper right hand corner of the paper. I started with a B and ended with an A but in between I used all sorts of letters – especially g and j because they looped below the line. My teacher didn’t think I knew how to write my name. I did. It’s just that it was so long and only used three letters repeated over and over, yet there were so many fantastic letters to choose from on the ABC chart that wrapped around the classroom. As an adult I opted for Barbara J. Eikmeier as my legal name because with all those letters in my long name, only my middle initial loops below the line!

When heading out on a trip, my notebook, wide rule or college rule, it doesn’t matter because I won’t be using the lines, is positioned on the passenger seat. As I drive I notice landmarks, brown sign historical markers, the names of rivers and creeks: Bee Creek, Wolf Creek, The Mississippi River!

Keeping my eyes on the road, I write without looking: Kalona Creamery, MO mile marker 48 – look up round barn.

My notes include clever place names that I can use in my stories: The name a of a beauty shop in western Kansas became the name of the diner in my current novel.

When I stop to rest or get fuel I take my notebook inside with me. I’ve sat in McDonald’s, Subway restaurants and  truck stops making notes about the man with snow white hair cut as if a bowl had been place on his head, the young kid behind the counter who was overly friendly – acting as if I liked him enough I might take him with me, and the trucker with the huge tattoos up and down his muscular arms that spelled out PUGSLEY in great Gothic lettering. What does Pugsley mean? It doesn’t matter – I can make something up as long as I have a note to jog my memory.

I record snippets of conversations, especially local dialects and topics like the old guys discussing the price of beans over coffee and a breakfast burrito at their local gas station where three cafe tables line the wall along the windows – the only breakfast eatery for miles. And I’m a huge fan of local bulletin boards with notifications of missing pets or persons, items for sale, local fundraisers, estate sales and funeral announcements. A writer can extract a lot of interesting details from a bulletin board in a gas station!

Periodically I will skim through a notebook or two and re-write or type an entry. I usually remember what I’ve written about, (and where it was and when) when re-reading my scribbling that either runs sideways in bold print, or neat script with lovely loopy letters. A psychologist in a writing class once said it was a hand/brain correlation that helps us remember things we’ve written.

The back to school supplies are dwindling. Soon the notebooks, folders and 12 packs of #2 pencils will be relegated to the office supply aisle until next year. It’s my reminder to stock up on another stack of spiral bound notebooks.

How do you keep track of tidbits you notice on a road trip? Do you also love spiral bound notebooks?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.