Bearlodge Writers

Gardening

    Vineyards and fruit trees need regular watering during the growing season—reason why we have given up on taking summer vacations, except for the occasional weekend mini-break. I have calculated the number of trees and vines, divided the number by five and must pull a hose around for about an hour in the mornings. Fortunately I can carry a book with me and use the time I am “tending my sheep” to dual purpose, but sometimes I just sit with the trees, bushes, and vines as they drink up. The west is in another year of drought and I am conscious of our holy well’s fragile existence and capacity, though the water comes from 360 feet deep in the ground, where hopefully it meets with a great aquifer.

    My husband tends a garlic crop. I help him plant after the full moon in October—their being bulbs—and harvest in July some 1,300 heads, both hard and soft neck varieties. They are hung in the garage rafters to cure for a couple of days, then brushed of dirt, sorted and most braided into ristras. The largest bulbs are held out to be divided, and each clove replanted in the fall. We only learned to make this sacrifice recently, but the practice yields better garlic. An analogy here staggers my imagination: Our “best and brightest” are shipped off to fight a war, some to be killed and planted in the ground …Will killings fields ever be allowed to lie fallow, just as we must let rest this year’s garlic bed?

Fallow Time

    Indoor tasks are best done during the heat of the day: correspondence, book-keeping, housekeeping, and my efforts at writing, but I squeeze in a short reading period and rest after lunch. During the winter months I exchange the gardening chores with writing. Meditation with music practice, weeding the garden with sitting still for a period of time both ease me into the late afternoon before suppertime. My mother once suggested I ride as meditation, and while it serves relaxation I find I must pay attention when I ride and stay vigilant; perhaps it is more a form of martial arts when I occasionally get surprised and upended.

    Not being a cook, I have had to learn the hard way around the kitchen. We eat game much of the time and our vegetables are often garden green beans; I didn’t inherit my mother’s ease and facility with cuisine. It was her domain. She once gave me a thick Austin, Texas Junior League Cookbook and inscribed the words, All you need to know on the first page; she was serious.

    My pastor gave a homily wherein he defined Gnosticism as the “undue thirst for ‘secret’ knowledge,” and that Gnostics believed that this kind of knowledge could insure one a place in Heaven. My own notions regarding knowing, knowledge and faith cover a broader expanse …I like to think it is the one the poet Rumi once imagined, “Somewhere beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there lies a field; I’ll meet you there.”

    My horariums, summer and winter, conspire to coax structure into my life, but sometime they become tyrants, and this is when I throw them off altogether and do nothing, absolutely nothing, or I oversleep, or I hyper-focus on reading and neglect my friends and family, leading to a sad despair, considered a sin, but how does a feeling qualify as sin I ask. Acting on it, I hear. This continuum is appallingly polarized, I counter. Rumi’s field has become the much sought ground of equilibrium, and that of common sense, as I experiment with juggling essentials, i.e., combining art and music time, learning to “let it be,” “let it flow,” and to rest in however the Presence occurs to me, whether outdoors, in a recipe, a flash of light, a bird call, or in a friend’s conversation.

Introduction to forthcoming Straight and Level, by S. Paul Latiolais, Col. USAF (ret)

Edited and compiled by Renée Carrier

Paul Latiolais passed away in 2004, leaving behind an unfinished, unpublished manuscript—though complete in a larger sense, if his preface is any indication. Earning his “silver pair of wings” concluded a chapter in my father’s life, but also served as the highlight of his life-long passion for aviation and his thirty-year career in the Air Force. In the preface the retired colonel informs his readers of his intent, and he has, I believe, kept to the spirit of his mission. The narrative ends in 1941 following his appointment as Flying Cadet in the United States Army Air Corps, and includes a moving description of what it meant for a young man to be accepted into those “hallowed halls,” particularly during the marvelous years of early aviation prior to our country’s involvement in World War II.

Following his narrative I added accounts taken from several other sources, some written by him, others about him. In the Conclusion I related highlights of his later Air Force career, and included a few personal observations. The Appendix includes photographs (many of which my father took) of aircraft mentioned in his account, as well as a list of the 100-plus types of aircraft that he piloted, logging over 4,000 hours.

In introducing this narrative I would add a personal note as a daughter whose relationship with her father has retained that certain awe-inspiring element that only an aviator father—and personal hero—could. But my task has proven bittersweet. Children largely cannot appreciate, in terms of understanding, their parents’ unspoken thoughts, fears, or dreams, but much of what I read in editing his account gave me further meaningful insight into his character and humanity. It has greatly enriched my life, and I believe it may enrich the reader’s as well.

My father was a gifted writer—clear and economical with the written word. In this capacity he represented the Secretary of Defense on the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations in 1953. He also worked for Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., advising him and drafting speeches and rebuttals in the Political Committee of the U.N. on the question of disarmament during the Cold War. As well, he delivered scores of military briefings, no doubt honing his writing skills. Articulation, precision, and a prodigious memory are three qualities for which he is remembered, and as demonstrated by the stories that follow.