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Grand Canyon – Light and Laughter

Photo by Daughter

Dad and I went to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We went because he did not remember having been there and always wanted to go.  While we were waiting to check in to our cabin we decided to hike the Bright Angel Point Trail. The trail starts near the lodge and winds along sheer drop offs with dramatic views of the canyon. While we were hiking, Dad began to tell me how much he “hated this trail” sharing he hated it the entire time he helped build it. I was surprised but just listened. He explained that it was cold and snowing and he and all the workers feared they would slip and fall. I encouraged him to walk away from the edge and we continued along the trail. I asked him where he lived when he was working on the trail and he told me he drove to work from his home every day. He lives more than eight hours one-way from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He also told me a good friend of his, one he worked with for years at his primary profession, quit after just one day. He was adamant about his experience, so I just hiked along with him in his moment. Along the way we stopped for a few sips of water under a shady rocky overhang.  At this same stop was a couple visiting from India. Dad told them in great detail how he built the trail sharing how the stones were placed along the edge and about the dangerous work. The couple listened to his story with interest and became excited to meet him. I just stood there quietly watching and listening. After all, my mission was to give Dad a happy visit to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We had a wonderful evening watching the light sweep across the canyon at sunset and a glass of wine with dinner. Our cabin was just 20 yards from the edge of the canyon. We slept peacefully under the pines with a fire in the stone hearth. We woke early to watch the sunrise and enjoy the changing hues as much as possible. Just one day – a few hours together as father and daughter to be remembered…or not. A few days after we returned home, Dad called me and said he needed to apologize. I said, “Dad, you never do anything you need to apologize for.” He said, “I never built a trail in the Grand Canyon.” I said, “well, there is a couple in India telling their friends they met a guy that did.” We laughed and laughed. Dad still remembers our trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Sometimes we look at the photographs together, talk about how beautiful it was, and laugh about our adventure.

Photo: National Park Service

“A short trail leads visitors from Grand Canyon Lodge to a viewing area at Bright Angel Point. Looking east, hikers can see Roaring Springs Canyon, a major tributary to Bright Angel Creek and the source of Roaring Springs. Deva, Brahma, and Zoroaster Temples are visible to the southeast. To the west is The Transept, a large tributary canyon of the Grand Canyon. The Colorado River, however, is hidden among the multicolored buttes and rock outcroppings that fill the Canyon’s depths. Along the trail are displays of marine fossils and crinoid fossils that illustrate the evolution of the landscape and life through the millennia as revealed in the exposed layers of the Canyon.”  Bright Angel Point

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The Funnies – Together

Smokey Stover – One of Dad’s favorite comic strip characters.

Dad makes almost daily references to comic strips like Smokey Stover which he enjoyed growing up.  The other day Dad said “Cash U. Nutt” and then asked, “Do you remember Nancy?” I didn’t so I asked him to tell me about it. We looked it up on the internet and he was so excited to see the comic strip Nancy. We read a few and chuckled. Then he asked me if I remembered Henry. I didn’t. Dad said, “You youngsters can’t remember anything!”. Here are strips of Smokey, Nancy and Henry we found on the internet with Wikipedia excerpts describing each. I think we will make reading the “funnies” a daily activity. Enjoy!

“The puns and “silly pictures on the wall with various items hanging clear out of the frames” was the feature that provoked the most reader mail, according to articles and interviews with Holman. The cartoonist often visited the syndicate office to pick up the puns which readers suggested for the walls. He called these items “wallnuts”. For example, a picture of a fish opening a door is labeled “calling cod”.[2] The panels of Smokey Stover regularly include sight gags, mishaps, absurd vehicles, and bizarre household items, including oddly shaped furniture, clocks, vases, headwear, cigarette holders, and telephones. Framed pictures on the walls change completely from panel to panel or feature the subjects literally jumping out of the frames. The strip also abounds in nonsensical dialogue, non-sequiturs, and puns.”

“Comics theorist Scott McCloud described the essence of Nancy: Ernie Bushmiller’s comic strip Nancy is a landmark achievement: A comic so simply drawn it can be reduced to the size of a postage stamp and still be legible; an approach so formulaic as to become the very definition of the “gag-strip”; a sense of humor so obscure, so mute, so without malice as to allow faithful readers to march through whole decades of art and story without ever once cracking a smile. Nancy is Plato’s playground. Ernie Bushmiller didn’t draw A tree, A house, A car. Oh, no. Ernie Bushmiller drew the tree, the house, the car. Much has been made of the “three rocks.” Art Spiegelman explains how a drawing of three rocks in a background scene was Ernie’s way of showing us there were some rocks in the background. It was always three. Why? Because two rocks wouldn’t be “some rocks.” Two rocks would be a pair of rocks. And four rocks was unacceptable because four rocks would indicate “some rocks” but it would be one rock more than was necessary to convey the idea of “some rocks.” A Nancy panel is an irreduceable concept, an atom, and the comic strip is a molecule.[18]

Cartoonist Wally Wood described Nancy‘s design more succinctly: “By the time you decided not to read it, you already had.”[19]“

“Art Baxter analyzed the appeal of the character and the strip: Henry was a strip that was supposed to be contemporary, but it never looked that way. There were almost no modern trappings. There may be cars or telephones, but that’s about it. It always seemed like Henry could always find the coal wagon, horse-drawn ice delivery or a five-cent ice cream cone. There were always shadings of nostalgia in the strip, even when it began in the Depression. Part of that has to do with the fact that Henry’s creator, Carl Anderson, was already an old man in his late sixties when he created the character by accident. Henry is autonomous in The Saturday Evening Post strips. Henry would not pick up a regular cast of characters, all with no proper names, only titles: the mother, the dog, the bully, the little girl, until it became a William Randolph Hearst comic strip. The Saturday Evening Post Henry is similar in many ways to the Little Rascals/Our Gang comedies of the same era. That is children free from the tyranny of an adult presence (mostly): children navigating the world as best they can with the knowledge and experience they currently possess; sometimes getting things right, often getting things wrong, and frequently coming up with solutions to problems unique to their limited experience. Necessity is the mother of invention with funny, surprising results.[4] Later strips of Henry would be somewhat a reversal of earlier themes, such as adults having the last word when Henry and his friends misbehave, or Henry walking around town to see free samples of common household items, then seeing another sign advertising ice cream for expensive prices, to his unspoken consternation.”

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It’s just a bucket of golf balls

A bucket of golf balls at the driving range

Dad has lived in the same home with the same neighbors for more than 40 years. When one of his neighbors decided to downsize, Dad snagged a few old golf clubs from the front lawn “free” pile. He called to tell me he was taking up golf and was practicing in the backyard. “I found a couple golf balls around the house!” he exclaimed. Concerned about the small size of his backyard and the six foot block fence, I asked Dad if he thought is was a safe thing to do. He said, “I opened the door of the garden shed for a target. The balls really make some noise when they actually go in.” Pleased that Dad was taking an interest in something new, during my next visit, I took him to the nearby driving range. Since golf was new to Dad, I took him to the pro shop, showed him the practice putting green and we watched a couple of starts from the first tee. He purchased a bucket of balls. We figured out the ball machine together. We had a great time just hitting golf balls. A few days later, Dad called to share he was just returning home from the driving range. He said, “I enjoyed it a lot. But I did get a bit tired and only hit about half the balls in the bucket.” I told Dad it was okay as long as he enjoyed himself. Then Dad shared, “Well, I just poured the rest of the golf balls into a box in the back of my truck. I’ll use them up the next time I go.”