Fire Country
by Celia Hayes
Having the winds kick up over this last weekend was wonderful, after what seems like an eternity of soggy, brutal and unrelenting heat. The winds also revived memories of what it was like, when I was growing up in the hill country – the hill country of Southern California. Then it would be hot and dry all summer long, the green grass of spring would turn gold, the chaparral – the native brush – would dry out . . . and then . . .
The winds would blow, the hot dry devil winds from off the high desert, which some called the Santa Ana. And then the hills would burn. A spark from a string of broken Christmas lights, the sun shining relentlessly through a piece of bottle grass, a bulldozer blade striking a buried flint rock . . . or even some fool throwing a lit cigarette out of a car window, or messing around with fireworks. Within seconds the sparks turn into flames, and the hills would burn, with the hot desert wind fanning it to a greedy blow-torch roar.
A well-lit brush fire does make that horrible, deep roaring noise as it burns, a noise to make everyone hearing it feel cold and afraid down to the toes of their boots. Once fire is well along, and a stiff wind pushing, there is very little to be done – only see that it is deflected from structures. At a distance, the clouds of smoke pile up in the sky like thunderheads. There's no mistaking the smell of a distant fire, the pale beige smoke of it hanging in the sky . . . or mistake the fall of fine ash, drifting in eddies along the ground for miles distant and days afterwards.
It is an unforgettable sight, seeing a runaway fire, especially at night. In the fall of 1975, from the hilltop above my parents' home, I watched such a fire, advancing over the mountaintop crests of the Angeles National Forest, a line of fire across the horizon as far as one could see. We escaped that particular conflagration, thanks to being across a well-built up valley from the closest point that fire came to us, but nearly three decades later, my parents were not so lucky. They had retired to Valley Center in northern San Diego County – and in the Paradise Mountain fire, theirs was one of the houses lost. They had twenty minutes to pack their vehicles and go, losing nothing but things – things which can be replaced, although some of them – pictures, books, certain items of china and relics – were sorely missed.
Yesterday afternoon, when my daughter went outside to water the plants, she came back, exclaiming excitedly that she smelled smoke. There was something burning, something to the north and east of us, borne on the wind. We know that smell, that hazy look in the sky. My daughter called the local non-emergency number, stressing over and over again, that there was something on fire close to us. Given the drought and the strong winds and our own experiences; enough to make both of us jumpy. Eventually, the operator told her that yes, there was a fire in a house over on Judson, which we agreed was probably what we had smelled. My daughter was so shaken that she went out and watered down all our yard within reach, aiming the spray up into the trees and over the fence into the green belt – now the brown belt. On Labor Day afternoon, we spotted the smoke of another fire away up north, towards Bulverde. She went and watered everything again, just to be sure.
Hearing the sound of sirens at this time of year, my mother used to tell us to run up to the top of the hill, and see what on fire, and on our report – a house down in town someplace: "Oh, only a house, then. Not the hills." But that's what you always think, in fire country.
There are certain dwelling places that are ever so much more than the houses that most of us are content to live in . . . these houses – or mansions, rather – are on guided tours, sometimes an attraction in their own right; they are spectacular for possessing any and/or combining all qualities; qualities of size, location, design, for workmanship and sheer extravagant comfort. In fact, such houses usually make the places that most of us live in, look like the ratty doghouse out in back of a crumbling double-wide in a run-down trailer park on the bad side of town. Most often the only comfort we can take in such comparatively humble abodes, is that it is ours, and it's paid for. Still, such ordinary homes are comfortable, and very often incorporate such items as were luxuries in previous decades . . . running water, electricity, air conditioning, cable TV and internet access – luxuries once, but almost necessities now. It's all a relative thing – but oh, the homes that we can fit out for ourselves when money is no object at all.
Then – what about spectacular location? There are only so many gorgeous mountain vistas, or villas with a spectacular seaside view or of Tuscan vineyards that the rarity tends to limit number. But such are wonderful places to live in – and given deep enough pockets or sheer determination to live out in scenic country or at the top of scenic downtown buildings – they can be found and possessed.
This was an amusement thought up by the Queen of the Red Hats group – which is not officially a Red Hats' group, but is really just a group of ladies of a certain age, who call themselves the Cherry Bonnets, and think of themselves as holding up the friendly, slightly exhibitionistic, somewhat anarchic social end of what the Red Hatters used to be. We put on red hats and purple shirts (in my daughter's case, since she is well under the cut-off age of 50, a pink hat and a lavender shirt) and meet once a month for dinner, a themed gift exchange and lively conversation at a chosen restaurant . . . this differentiates us from the Shiners and similarly long-term male organizations, in that we do it for the pure fun. And in my case, to get me out from behind a computer keyboard on the third Tuesday of every month.
Again, like the home-brewing and cheese-making thing, this was my daughter's idea. She insisted that I needed a real-time, meat-space social life, so a couple of years ago, we happened to be out for dinner at a Cajun restaurant in the Forum at Olympia Parkway (alas, long gone – I think Panera Bread moved into the space, although the food is just as good, either way) and the Cherry Bonnets happened to be having one of their do's . . . or affairs, as they call them in the old-fashioned and purely social sense. So, we've been toddling out to a monthly dinner ever since, and having a moderately good time, and getting home in time to watch mid-to-late evening television. Party-animals until the wee hours, the ladies are not. But we still manage to have a good time.
A couple of dinners ago, the Queen of our group suggested that for our most recent event, we should bring a movie-based gift basket for the obligatory exchange; popcorn and movie candy – and at least four clues to a specific movie. The fun of that would be in guessing exactly which movie was meant: anything would be within play, although something over forty years old and/or thunderingly obscure would not be any fun at all. We had about three months to think about this, and for my daughter and I to collect the various clue items from our various sources, mostly yard sales, the retail severely-marked-down-shelves and/or the Dollar Store . . .
Like many of these things that I am reluctant to do at first, but get talked into and eventually start having fun – getting into the home-brewing and cheese-making was my daughter's idea. Many months ago, I had noticed that storefront location in a local strip mall was now taken up by an enterprise called Home Brew Party. I was unwary enough to mention this to my daughter. At the next opportunity, she dragged me inside . . . and was promptly carried away by the possibilities of making home-brewed beer and wine.
We did wind up buying some other things – cleaning brushes on long handles, nylon bags for steeping fruit, and a little device to squirt cleansing solution up into bottles. We started with some ingredient kits, until we got the hang of it. They were expensive . . . and it was much more fun to see what we could do with in-season fruit, or what my daughter could bring home from her occasional job at Edible Arrangements. One of the fruits they use is pineapple, cutting ornamental shapes out of the center of the whole ripe fruit – and the scraps are waste, and so the workers may take away as much as they like of it. My daughter and I came home with what amounted to about twenty pounds, once the usable portions were cut from the rind.
Sixteen pounds of pears dissolved away to about a quart of fiber and skins. I put the nascent pear wine into the carboy today – it's cloudy and pale yellow, and smells divinely of pear-essence with a touch of yeast. There was a thin layer of sticky sediment at the bottom of the fermenting bucket. As the pear wine ages in the carboy, more sediment will fall out over the next few months, as it clears. Then, we will bottle it – possibly having to sweeten it again. And there you go – pear wine.
So, my daughter and I have been experimenting with a lot of do-it-yourself food, lately; Breads and cheese, beer and wine, mostly. It's part of our family culture, or it might be in our DNA, an ancestral proclivity to have a go at something, since it really can't be all that hard. Well, some things are a bit tricky, and require a lot of instruction and experience: fine cabinet-making, for instance. And installing HVAC systems. And automobile maintenance – just not interested in that. But we have found that we have had pretty good results with many of our own D-I-Y projects, especially the food-based ones. What's so complicated about following a recipe, and making a food-product for the household just as our ancestors did?
One of the other big reasons for doing this is that we actually do appreciate the good stuff, when it comes to food and drink; champagne tastes on a beer budget. The solution is to either drink mineral water on six nights and champagne the seventh, learn to like beer, or learn to make champagne. Or cheese, or multi-grain breads; many of the necessary ingredients for making something at home are now widely available either in the grocery store, a specialty store, or on line: wheat gluten, rye flour, liquid rennet. I really can't say if we come out ahead, comparing the cost of ingredients for our home-made stuff, against the retail price of the cheapest available commercially mass-produced foodstuffs at HEB or Walmart, but we certainly come out ahead in comparison to the cost of the top-line gourmet products from Central Market or Whole Foods.
On the road again, last week for a book festival at Sun City, Texas* . . . which is out on the sun-baked flats of grassland lightly sprinkled with woods, away on the edge of Georgetown, about half an hour's drive north of Austin. We have heard dire things of Austin's rush hour, so in order to get there in time, Blondie and I arose at the crack of dawn . . . actually 4:00 AM, plotting to have at least a couple of cups of caffeinated beverage in us and be ready to roll at 5:00 and thus be well-through whatever hellish traffic jams that Austin offered in the morning rush hour. With our luck, we could have given it another hour, for we arrived just before 7:30, to set-up my table in ten minutes flat, and the fair didn't officially open until 9. Yeah, we could definitely have slept for another hour – except that everyone that we met, setting up in the Sun City community center ballroom assured us that, oh, you just never knew with Austin traffic. If we had delayed leaving until about 6 AM, guaranteed there would have been a terrific pile-up and we would have been delayed well-past time.
I can't say enough nice things about the organizers, or about the residents who came drifting through, many of whom were eager to talk about books – really, I think my throat was raw from talking so much. I sold enough copies of my various books to make back expenses and then some, there was a considerable uptick in the Kindle and Nook editions afterwards and I met a couple of people who were interested in the Trilogy and involved in the Williamson County historical society who would like to have me come back for other events. Well worth the trip – but I don't think I got over the exhaustion until today.