Papa and Granny Pish came here with the first party on the Mormon Trail with Brigham Young in 1847. They settled this convent land.
CURRIED TUNA SANDWICHES
1 6½-ounce can water-packed tuna, drained ½ cup salad dressing½ cup finely chopped jujube (apple can be substituted) 1/3 cup raisins ¼ cup finely chopped celery 1 small green onion, finely chopped 2 teaspoons curry powder 16 slices cocktail pumpernickel bread 16 slices cocktail rye bread
She heats the raisins in 1/3 cup of water in a saucepan, adding the curry powder and boiling over medium heat for one minute. She lets the raisins cool for about thirty minutes, and then drains off the excess liquid before adding the salad dressing, tuna, jujube, celery, and onion to the raisins.
Charged with a sense of inner harmony, Mercedes spreads the curried tuna mixture on half of the pumpernickel and half on the rye slices and tops each with a bread slice of the same type. With care — because she does care — she wraps each one in a square of wax paper, molding and tucking the corners in, smoothing out the wrinkles for her friend, Sister Pish, and then refrigerates them until time,
time being a word of special importance to the senior citizen: Don’t underestimate the time you may still have left.
By the time the sandwiches cool, the jar of sun tea will be ready. She fills the jar with water and ties together three large decaffeinated tea bags inside, and then takes the time to walk it out to the grove of jujube trees, finding the most perfect sunny spot where she knows it can get four hours of God’s strong sunshine in this spot before the sun moves and the shade sets in.
Being keenly aware of her creativity, it is here that God’s little green acres show her how to make a picnic basket out of a small box by weaving some colorful paper twist from the hobby store, the many slumbering talents that are waiting within her to be unleashed. No television and no telephone free up just so much time,
absolutely necessary to find one’s set-point.
As she braids the handle with the paper twist, it must be said that at the same time, she is braiding
memories. You will be surprised at how much warmth the basket will return in the future. To the person looking to deepen a friendship, they might just as well be on the lookout for a similar ripple effect of kindness that can spread (like the curry tuna mixture) beyond the original intention.
One of the best ways to deepen a friendship is to eat together. Many important deals happened when Jesus and his friends sat down at the table. There is something sacred in breaking bread with a friend.
Gluing the braided handle onto the basket bonded the Big
S and the little s; the ages of the women are not important.
This is a heartfelt picnic, so there better well be a fancy bow for celebration. Mercedes loops a wide strip of paper twist, fashioning a nice bow. The Mormon women make a lot of these two-color-checkerboard baskets. They fill the baskets with foodstuffs and give them to the new ones who arrive in their community. All of this comes from having an educated heart.
“I would like to take you on a picnic this afternoon in the jujube grove,” Mercedes says. “Are you feeling up to it?”
“Can I carry this beautiful basket?” Sister Pish asks, her mind calm and operating normally.
“Yes, carry it to your heart, for that is where it came from — from my heart,” Mercedes answers. Mercedes spreads out a red-and-black checkered blanket and they sit down in the shade under the jujubes.
“As clear and as refreshing as the Provo at Sundance running over the rocks,” Sister Pish comments when Mercedes pours the sun tea over the ice cubes. The Provo River is one of the most beautiful rivers in the Western United States, good for year round fishing, well-stocked with brown trout. “I always like to stop and fish the Provo on my way to Temple Square in Salt Lake,” Sister Pish says.
“Who taught you how to fish, Sister Pish?” Mercedes asks.
“My beloved Daddy Pish. His grandparents, Papa and Granny Pish came here with the first party on the Mormon Trail with Brigham Young in 1847. Papa and Granny were just tiny babies coming with their folks in wagons,” Sister Pish tells.
“Did they settle this convent land?” Mercedes asks.
“Yes, Sister Cade, they made babies of their own on these acres. Remember this: Bloom where you are planted. When the Lord called all of my family home, I planted this jujube orchard because I knew God would provide the time to let the trees make fruit for others to enjoy someday, and here we are,” Sister Pish remembers, but that is the strange thing about Alzheimer’s coming and going. The chances of developing Alzheimer’s increases with age, and its frequency doubles every five years after age sixty-five.
What a picnic! A hot-air balloonist parks her wicker basket. She bends her knees slightly to avoid breaking them when she sets the balloon down. “I’m asking to tether my balloon. Unfavorable winds at five hundred feet forced me down,” the woman explains.
“At ease in Zion,” Sister Pish says. “Will it tear up the Lord’s divots of grass?”
“Mercy, no! God has dropped out of the sky to assist me in his pasture,” the woman replies, not knowing she has landed on convent property. “The Fisher pen was taken to the moon. It met NASA’s and God’s requirement, a gravity-free flowing instrument for writing in outer space,” the woman says, seemingly like she is offering this omnipotent ball-point pen for deposit that can write upside down in the sky, overgrease, and underwater, or
it is so almighty that she is going to use it as a stake to tether the balloon. Having learned over time to travel with this cavalier attitude, she is carefree and gay, the blithe spirit of a balloon pilot.
It isn’t long before the chase crew arrives, communicating with her by radio. Balloons fly best very early in the morning when there is no wind and the temperature is cool. Wind means everything to a balloonist. Updrafts, downdrafts, and wind direction determines where the balloon will go. For that reason, the ground crew takes it down. Pushing the air out of the balloon and rolling the fabric into a bag is no easy feat.
The balloon basket and the picnic basket are emptied and packed up. At ease in Zion — until Sister Pish walks over to the chase truck loaded with the balloon basket and asks if she can carry the beautiful wicker basket. The jujubes weep…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The chores are done, for up to five days and the windmill is greased. They put the sign on the door,
GONE DREAMTIME.
The quarry is calling Vi, the archetypal place where she knows she can raise her spiritual IQ by flint-knapping spearheads and meditating on the Clovis culture.
Vi, with a leg fit comfortably on each side of her palomino filly, and Sadie astride her paint, each saddled their pony outfitted with martingales, big moon going down, and olives in their saddlebags. They set out this time in search of a higher spiritual IQ, known to be below the surface where the spirit marshal told them they could find their “missing hides,” when they had converted from the Mormon religion to Australian Dreamtime.
What brings people to change religions is a variety of things: a spiritual crisis that can’t be relieved by the person’s original faith, or a major life change like a marriage, partnership, divorce, retirement, or relocating. Most converts are lured to their new faith by someone they have a close personal relationship with, which is the case with Vi and Sadie: They were one another’s lure.
The Mormon faith is just too structured of an environment for Vi and Sadie to live with all throughout life. Vi wants to let the rebel wind comb her hair, fanning it out by playing a hand or two of poker in that same maverick air, and Sadie likes to masturbate and choose orgasm for herself without being told she “must not.” She has thighs that can crack walnuts, strong and powerful and she is damn proud of what is lying between them. She is a damn good-looking woman and she has a woman who is just as damn good-looking as she is.
Sitting atop the ridgeline — where the charred remains of their bush telly is still visible from their last visit — Vi and Sadie look down into the quarry tailored by the habits of the Clovis people.
“Mark this one down with a notch of prehistoric IQ,” Vi says, as she makes the conical fracture, flaking lengthwise channels in the chert they had found at Muleshoe. The chiseled stone sends her on a journey through the labyrinth prairie that lured the Clovis people across a thousand strange paths — mixed-grass, tallgrass, and shortgrass — tracking quarries of stone to make their prized spearheads needed to bring down the mammoth until they became extinct from overhunting and climatic changes that reduced the grasslands to desert scrub. On the Great Plains, water became scarcer and grass grew shorter and tougher where the advantage went to the lighter-footed grazers with thinner bellies and smaller thirsts.
Excerpted FROM THE CONVENT TO THE RAWHIDE: THE SAGA OF SADIE CADE AND VI MONTANA by Sage Sweetwater, Copyright 2006
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