Prairie Lite…

 By Carla Kelly

I’m a telemarketer’s nightmare. No one can hang up faster than I can when the phone rings and there’s a tell-tale space before someone asks for Carla Kelly in a harried voice.
I hung up on Sam once, when he faked a Chinese accent. Wounded, he called right back in his normal voice, but he got the message: Don’t mess with Mom on the telephone. She knows she didn’t order egg rolls from The Mandarin Palace.
On the other hand, I’m a sucker for bath products with the word “ocean” or “sea breeze” in them.
I feed my fantasy when I’m standing by a Suave products display: inexpensive goodies for those of us of modest income.
Several months ago, missing the ocean, I bought Suave shampoo and conditioner called Ocean Breeze, even though I didn’t really need it.
There I was this morning, washing my hair with Ocean Breeze and trying to remember John Masefield’s poem, “Sea Fever:”
“I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.”
Masefield was England’s poet laureate years ago, but he was no Keats or Shelley. Still, Masefield was right about the ocean being a “must,” on occasion.
What a disappointment. The shampoo didn’t smell anything like seaweed or salt water. At least I had a poetic moment in the shower, which beats most mornings, when I’m thinking about stuff to write at the newspaper.
I miss the ocean. By now, I’ve lived more years in the center of the nation than on its fringes, but the ocean is always there in my mind, somehow.
I found one cure better than shampoo. Almost two years ago, I took the train to St. Paul, Minn. Bob Turner, my brother-in-law, picked me up in a 1993 Camry I had located on-line in his city, and he arranged for the purchase.
Bob wanted to go to Duluth, where his parents live, for the purpose of a test drive. His folks needed some computer assistance, so Bob thought he’d combine a shakedown cruise and the geek help.
This suited me fine, because I like Bob. I don’t think Bob and I had ever spent that many hours with just each other for company, and it turned out to be grand.
As we neared Duluth – my first visit – Bob started to prep me for the view of Lake Superior. I was ready to be mildly impressed. I’m well-seasoned enough to know that too much anticipation often means disappointment.
Not this time; Lake Superior is well-named. We topped that rise, and my goodness, there was the ocean. I had no idea something so ocean-like existed so far inland. There was water as far as I could see, even if it was frozen.
I need to go back in June, when Superior is open water. For now, I’ll grumble and settle for my $1.78 bottle of Ocean Breeze.
Marcel Proust got it right; smells do jog the memory. Years ago, I visited Santa Fe, that marvelous New Mexican town formally founded in 1610. For more than 400 years, actually, people have been burnings aromatic, greasy, pinon pine in the low-ceilinged houses. The whole town smells of pinon pine.
Before I left Santa Fe, I bought some pressed pinon pine incense. My children were young then. During the summer, I’d light the incense and we’d sit in the backyard, enjoying the pungent fragrance. Unlike the fake Ocean Breeze, that incense smelled exactly like Santa Fe.
Sam, a district sales manager for Sysco Corporation in West Texas, decided to change Sysco houses. He had a job interview in Taos, N.M., before Christmas.
He called to talk about the job and told me, “Mom, the whole area smells just like than incense you used to burn. I drove around with a smile on my face.”
And I had a smile on mine, pleased to know Sam remembered. I’m sure we’ll visit him in New Mexico. Until then, I might have to ask him to find me some of that pinon pine incense.
I’ve been missing Liz, who lives in Midland, Texas, now. I have a recipe I call West Texas Yahoo! Pecan Bark. Maybe I’ll make some. It doesn’t smell like oil wells, dust storms or javelinas, thank goodness, but the Yahoo! is there.
Travel in a whiff.