In the summer of 2005, I was treated to the stories of an 89-year old Dr. Haney Cordua from San Diego, California. I noticed him when I walked up as he was having his picture taken under the Rodney Street Laundry sign which hangs in perpetuity on the side building wall. It’s not often that the laundry is a backdrop for a Kodak moment so I immediately became intrigued. I figured this had to be a certain occasion and I approached the threesome: elderly gentleman, younger female photographer and younger male completing the trio, as soon as I saw an opportunity. We were all headed into the building for the same purpose of lunch at the infamous Jailhouse Sandwich Shop and Soup Kitchen.
While we sat at our respective tables I asked if the older man was here for something special. Sure enough he was back to visit his birthplace. He was born in Helena in 1915 but moved away in 1918 and he’d only been back once since then. He readily agreed to talk to me once I explained that I was the resident writer, which he got a kick out of. I quickly saw that he had a keen mind as well as memory. I first asked him where he went after Helena and immediately realized my tactical error because it seems that the earliest memories are often more accessible and we were now starting at age 3 and had 86 more years to go. Fortunately he had a great sense of humor and could spin a good yarn. His family had moved to Florida when he was three in their 5-seat Franklin Chummy Roadster.
“This was 1918 and still close to the Civil War (which, I thought, is still pretty close to some Southern hold-outs). Kids in the neighborhood teased me about being a damn Yankee. My father told them that I had been born in the Montana Territory, he in the Republic of Texas and my mother in Canada and yes, we were damn Yankees and proud of it!”
By 1922 the family had settled in San Diego. He said that there are goofy things that happen in life that for some reason or another stick with you. For example in kindergarten a clown taught his class how to chew milk (he demonstrated and I witnessed his lips together but slightly puffed cheeks moving with the chewing motion inside his mouth). He said that he still thinks about the clown’s lesson whenever he has milk and faces the dilemma of drinking it down or chewing on it a while.
He changed topics to his mother and described how she was going to be a nurse in San Francisco but took one look at a bedpan and decided to enroll in medical school. Later she was taking exams when the great earthquake ruptured the city. After school she had a difficult time finding a job but she sent an application to a Butte mining company under the name O.B. Brazien and was hired. It wasn’t until she arrived that they found out she was a woman. Later in 1918 during the flu epidemic his mother was one of the few doctors that would make house calls.
Harney was named after his father who was named after a General Harney, a famous general in the Civil War (a name I have since run across in researching for a book on San Antonio). His grandfather was Captain May Cordua, served under the general in South Dakota, and had hopes if his child was named Harney that he would be made a major. The promotion didn’t come to fruition but the name stayed in the family.
At that point in our interview Harney’s daughter (the photographer) with a nudge from her husband (the younger man) redirected the conversation back to Helena and their sojourn that day through city and county records to find the addresses of his homes. Remarkably, after 83 years, he still remembered one of the addresses, on Lawrence. The records confirmed it. He laughed when he said that he was going to ring the doorbell of his childhood home and when the inhabitants answered he would say, “Remember me?” He also recalled his walks downtown by himself at three, almost four, where he sat in people’s cars trying to drive them. The owners would call his father to tell him to come and get him…again.
He lived his life in San Diego and, like his mother, had a long career as a physician. Still he was pulled back to his earliest roots. I could tell that he had many stories in him but his daughter and son-in-law sensed that he was tiring so they prepared to go back to theirhotel. I left feeling my life was far richer for having met him.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
It’s good to be back on my little computer screen after a month away though I didn’t mean to be gone so long. There was the week in New York City for Christmas with a couple of days in Callicoon, NY, followed by a whirlwind-week of fun in Chicago to bring in the new year, and ending with ten days of a nasty bug that clobbered me when I got back to Helena. I feel like a new season has arrived now but that may be because the temperature here has risen to the 30’s rather than the single and below-zero temperatures of the last two weeks. It’s a beautiful sunny day in Helena.
I intended to write an entry from NYC and Chicago but that fell away pretty quickly. However I did bring back some snapshots of a sampling of Laundromats along the way. One universal bond is the repetitive task of doing laundry. Yes, there are those sayings of music and love and laughter and such that we name as the common language of peoples around the globe and throughout history but washing clothes is definitely an experience that could be the foundation for peace accords –maybe a wash day truce. There are those that do not go for clean or even slightly-freshened clothes but the rest of us think, smell, and wish that they did. And there are those that have never done a load of laundry in their lives but hopefully they can at least imagine the process (much like knowing carrots come from the ground and not just from the produce section) even if with-or-without-bleach, cold or multi-temperature-wash detergents are foreign terms. So in honor of our global unity, I offer some laundry snaps.
Getting back to Helena and the Rodney Street Laundry and Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen (the soup kitchen part just means that they serve soup with their sandwiches unless you want potato salad…and though original, “& Potato Salad Kitchen” is not as catchy), there was a great event in the neighborhood last Saturday, the Snow Sculpture Contest. It took place in the parking lot between the Laundry and B&B Market in a festive winter carnival atmosphere, two fires going to warm up by, and plenty of slick ice to slide around on. And it was COLD, really cold, subzero cold. Emma was actually shivering which she never does unless she wants to really act like it is a humongous problem that she is being left at home. I think the ice was chilling her little paws and on up her doggie legs though that did not keep her from eating snow. But the really cold ones to feel sorry for were the sculptors, especially as they had to take gloves off to do the finer touches like spray on the color. I talked to two that had worked side by side all day and were trying to uncurl their frozen fingers by the fire, one on a mountain lion, the other on a queen (Helena is known as the Queen City). As frozen as they were, they seemed invigorated with their accomplishments and should have been, they won the top two prizes respectively. I was pulled in as the third judge after the first two had come to different un-bridgeable conclusions. Third place went to a slide sculpture that a group of children created. Other works were very good: a penguin with baby (see the movie March of the Penguins), a buffalo head, and a van in a likeness to an icon long-parked in the neighborhood. There had been a sculpting workshop held the weekend before led by Charlie Carson. The result was a colorful Sponge Bob that stood in front of the B&B all week to entice entrants and spur curiosity. Besides the sculptors, about 150 people dropped by the carnival throughout the day.
At least one pick-up truck was parked nearby with signs in its bed of the snow that had to be hauled in from MacDonald Pass and Cox Lake as there hasn’t been a good snowfall since November (maybe October, it all kind of runs together). I admired the straight-forward, can-do attitude of the organizers: Snow Sculpture Contest, bring your own snow. Not, “we want to have a contest but we might not because there might not be any snow.” Nope, this was going forward no matter what.
Both the Christmas Caroling Party and the Sculpture Contest were the result of a neighborhood organizational meeting back in September. Set up as a part “get to know your neighbors” and part town hall, the event pulled in about 150 people and filled the Myrna Loy Center (MLC) auditorium.
The MLC is another extraordinary, dynamic fixture in the neighborhood, around the corner from the B&B. Housed in the old county jail (the reason for the Jailhouse in Jailhouse Sandwich Shop…), it is a performing and media arts center that screens films nightly; offers music, dance, and theater performances throughout the year of local, regional, national and international artists, a number who come for artist residencies and work with area schools. In one year one could rock out to a local high school age band complete with teen groupies, groove to the sounds of “Ladies and Gentlemen, the legendary Chico Hamilton” (as one of his group announced often…we all could use someone like), vibrate to the drumming and dancing of an African dance group, and be awestruck by Alvin Ailey’s younger dance troupe, Ailey II. To me this is an amazing place in a city of 35,000 and a state population of about a million people and is a fabulous part of the one-of-a-kind Rodney Street neighborhood. The center is named after the (Ladies and Gentlemen, the legendary) glamorous actress Myrna Loy who lived in Helena for a time and started her acting legacy in local productions. (Gary Cooper also grew up here, possibly in the RS neighborhood but maybe I’m making that up.)
The old jail-turned-MLC is across the street from the county courthouse, the present jail on the other side of the courthouse. The MLC is also a community center of sorts as many organizations rent the auditorium or gallery space for their performances, meetings, or receptions. So the MLC was a natural setting for the neighborhood gathering and perfect for a meeting to discuss the past, present, and future community –a living history.
The snow might have to be trucked in and is different each winter but the sculpting of a neighborhood is always in process. On Rodney Street the neighbors are reviving a rare awareness of the past that forms the present and envisions the future in fine detail, with colored water frozen on a snow queen. Even though she will eventually melt into the ground, she was here on a cold winter day, and her formation was cheered by a carnival of people
I intended to write an entry from NYC and Chicago but that fell away pretty quickly. However I did bring back some snapshots of a sampling of Laundromats along the way. One universal bond is the repetitive task of doing laundry. Yes, there are those sayings of music and love and laughter and such that we name as the common language of peoples around the globe and throughout history but washing clothes is definitely an experience that could be the foundation for peace accords –maybe a wash day truce. There are those that do not go for clean or even slightly-freshened clothes but the rest of us think, smell, and wish that they did. And there are those that have never done a load of laundry in their lives but hopefully they can at least imagine the process (much like knowing carrots come from the ground and not just from the produce section) even if with-or-without-bleach, cold or multi-temperature-wash detergents are foreign terms. So in honor of our global unity, I offer some laundry snaps.
Getting back to Helena and the Rodney Street Laundry and Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen (the soup kitchen part just means that they serve soup with their sandwiches unless you want potato salad…and though original, “& Potato Salad Kitchen” is not as catchy), there was a great event in the neighborhood last Saturday, the Snow Sculpture Contest. It took place in the parking lot between the Laundry and B&B Market in a festive winter carnival atmosphere, two fires going to warm up by, and plenty of slick ice to slide around on. And it was COLD, really cold, subzero cold. Emma was actually shivering which she never does unless she wants to really act like it is a humongous problem that she is being left at home. I think the ice was chilling her little paws and on up her doggie legs though that did not keep her from eating snow. But the really cold ones to feel sorry for were the sculptors, especially as they had to take gloves off to do the finer touches like spray on the color. I talked to two that had worked side by side all day and were trying to uncurl their frozen fingers by the fire, one on a mountain lion, the other on a queen (Helena is known as the Queen City). As frozen as they were, they seemed invigorated with their accomplishments and should have been, they won the top two prizes respectively. I was pulled in as the third judge after the first two had come to different un-bridgeable conclusions. Third place went to a slide sculpture that a group of children created. Other works were very good: a penguin with baby (see the movie March of the Penguins), a buffalo head, and a van in a likeness to an icon long-parked in the neighborhood. There had been a sculpting workshop held the weekend before led by Charlie Carson. The result was a colorful Sponge Bob that stood in front of the B&B all week to entice entrants and spur curiosity. Besides the sculptors, about 150 people dropped by the carnival throughout the day.
At least one pick-up truck was parked nearby with signs in its bed of the snow that had to be hauled in from MacDonald Pass and Cox Lake as there hasn’t been a good snowfall since November (maybe October, it all kind of runs together). I admired the straight-forward, can-do attitude of the organizers: Snow Sculpture Contest, bring your own snow. Not, “we want to have a contest but we might not because there might not be any snow.” Nope, this was going forward no matter what.
Both the Christmas Caroling Party and the Sculpture Contest were the result of a neighborhood organizational meeting back in September. Set up as a part “get to know your neighbors” and part town hall, the event pulled in about 150 people and filled the Myrna Loy Center (MLC) auditorium.
The MLC is another extraordinary, dynamic fixture in the neighborhood, around the corner from the B&B. Housed in the old county jail (the reason for the Jailhouse in Jailhouse Sandwich Shop…), it is a performing and media arts center that screens films nightly; offers music, dance, and theater performances throughout the year of local, regional, national and international artists, a number who come for artist residencies and work with area schools. In one year one could rock out to a local high school age band complete with teen groupies, groove to the sounds of “Ladies and Gentlemen, the legendary Chico Hamilton” (as one of his group announced often…we all could use someone like), vibrate to the drumming and dancing of an African dance group, and be awestruck by Alvin Ailey’s younger dance troupe, Ailey II. To me this is an amazing place in a city of 35,000 and a state population of about a million people and is a fabulous part of the one-of-a-kind Rodney Street neighborhood. The center is named after the (Ladies and Gentlemen, the legendary) glamorous actress Myrna Loy who lived in Helena for a time and started her acting legacy in local productions. (Gary Cooper also grew up here, possibly in the RS neighborhood but maybe I’m making that up.)
The old jail-turned-MLC is across the street from the county courthouse, the present jail on the other side of the courthouse. The MLC is also a community center of sorts as many organizations rent the auditorium or gallery space for their performances, meetings, or receptions. So the MLC was a natural setting for the neighborhood gathering and perfect for a meeting to discuss the past, present, and future community –a living history.
The snow might have to be trucked in and is different each winter but the sculpting of a neighborhood is always in process. On Rodney Street the neighbors are reviving a rare awareness of the past that forms the present and envisions the future in fine detail, with colored water frozen on a snow queen. Even though she will eventually melt into the ground, she was here on a cold winter day, and her formation was cheered by a carnival of people
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