Bloom as if your life depended on it

 

 

My Christmas miracle.

Some dear friends came to visit just before Christmas. They brought an amaryllis that was part of a kit: a bare bulb, a red planter can, and a disk of dehydrated soil, all sealed up in a box and ready to put together. What none of us realized until we opened the box was that it had been kept in a place that was too warm. The plant had begun growing in the dark enclosure and the flower stem, when it met the lid of the box, turned downward seeking space. What we found were white nubs of leaves and

a ghostly pale bud bending down. It was clear that this plant would never amount to much; it had been crippled by the box and was doomed from the moment it began its premature growth. Obviously the thing to do was to throw the bulb away. 
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But I didn't. I planted it anyway and set it in a sunny window. And on Christmas Day, defying everyone's predictions, it bloomed.

If I were the writer of feel-good stories for children, I would say that my little amaryllis saw the sun, and the flower bulb changed directions and stood up, proudly becoming the most beautiful of Christmas flowers. But this isn't the story of the Ugly Duckling. This story is more honest and more true. The stunting that occurred in the box dealt irrevocable damage.This poor bulb didn't become much to look at. On New Year's Day the petals are already browning on the edges and the leaves, although a little greener, still haven't grown much. 

This is the message this amaryllis brings us: We can be irrecoverably damaged by this world, but in spite of all that is done to us we must bloom. We will not all become the most beautiful of blooms, but we can be the bravest.

A Clear Creek Christmas

 

 

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12459168

​The wind outside our little tent howled pitifully, sounding God-forsaken and destitute.  I wasn’t fooled.  Along with dry, sharp snow, that gale was throwing around plenty of gold dust. That’s why I’d laid down a claim among these desolate peaks. Rocky Mountains winds don’t howl so much as shout for joy. No land has been more God-blessed rich since God laid down manna in the wilderness. All a man has to do to prosper in this wilderness is listen with an attentive ear and open his eyes.

George Nelson, who held up the other side of our foursome, groaned. George is a big, meaty galoot, with broad hands that can rip apart rock and a back that can carry a hundred-weight without complaint. But he’s not big on brains. Without me, he’d have frozen, or starved, or been cheated out of his claim long ago.
Luther and Key slept between George and me , the four of us nesting like spoons in a drawer. It can be hard to sleep when one of us twitches in the throes of a nightmare or has the trots from some rancid bacon or undercooked potato, but sleeping like this keeps us from freezing. Out here, comfort is secondary to survival.

“Samuel? You awake?” George’s voice was somewhere between a whisper and a groan. I might not have heard it over the wind if I weren’t already listening for it.
“I am,” I answered. “Still an hour or such ‘til dawn. Need to roll over?” That’s what we did, turning as one when one side of us or the other got too cold. Right now I was facing out, my back warm against Key and the blankets tucked under my knees. George, with his back out, would be the first to feel the chill.

“I’m fine,” George said with a sigh that matched the wind and told me that he really wasn’t. “Just ruminating. This here’s Christmas Eve, ain’t it?”

“That it is,” I agreed. I let the conversation lie, waiting for George to tell me why that would matter in a place such as this, where the closest church is miles away, in Golden City.

“Samuel, what did your mother serve on Christmas when you were a child?”

Ah. So this wasn’t about going to church. The big baby was missing his mother and the comforts of holiday traditions. I salivated, thinking of the sumptuous meals of my childhood. “T’warn’t my mother made Christmas dinner. We’d all bundle up and take the sled to grandmother’s. Oh, Lordy, what a feast she prepared! She’d roast a turkey of uncommon size, and there’d mashed potatoes and turnips, and boiled onions, and dressed celery. And always mincemeat pie for dessert. How about you?”

“Roast pig, and applesauce, mashed sweet potatoes and pickles. And large pitchers of sweet cider,” George said. “My granny was there, too, but she was addled in the head by the time I come along. Couldn’t be trusted for anything beyond shelling peas.”

“Boiled goose with oyster sauce,” Luther pitched in. “And plum pudding when my Father hadn’t drunk away all the money.” I didn’t know Luther was awake until he spoke. Luther is thin as a rail, which is why he sleeps in the middle most nights. He’s all elbows and knees, and his words can be as sharp as his elbows. He didn’t often share much from his childhood, but what I’d heard was ugly and had turned him mean. But I understood Luther. If not for me, he would have been killed in a squabble over something of no account. My men need my leadership.

“You’re making my stomach pinch,” Key’s melodious voice chimed in irritably. “Go back to sleep, the lot of you.”

I chuckled. Key’s like a feisty little lap dog among a pack of mastiffs. He’s just a little slip of a lad, too young, even, to shave. When he sings, he sounds like a girl. Or, perhaps, an angel. But the thin arm he throws around me when we sleep is as strong as bailing wire. His manner can be just as steely. Key’s young, but he’s been through a lot that’s hardened him.

Key’s orphaned and alone in this world. He was working at a livery stable in Denver in exchange for one meal a day and the right to sleep in the hay. I happened past the stable and saw the stable owner, a man well known for his irascible nature, beating him him for being a lazy Irishman. Key’s name, I should tell you, is not really K-E-Y.  It’s C-I-A-N, and it’s pronounced “key in.” It’s Irish, but I don’t hold that against him. I am of a liberal mind when it comes to foreigners. Especially those who work hard and take hardship without complaint.
The beating clearly hurt, but Key was determined not to give the man the satisfaction of tears. I decided then and there that Key was the sort of fellow I could use in my company. I offered him a position in my growing company, signing him on as cook and general errand boy.  

“Since everyone’s awake, let’s roll over. Key, tell us about the Irish. What do they eat on Christmas?”

Key tensed, and I sympathized with him. His lineage sets him apart and marks him as a target for derision. But his accent itself marks him. “I canna speak for all the Irish. I left Ireland when I was but a wee lad. But mi Ma, she was a canny cook, and thrifty. She took whatever the other housewives passed by and made it a feast.”

“No special foods? On Christmas?” Luther’s voice cut sharply, derisively.
“We had special foods. Every Christmas Eve, we had oyster stew.”
“Oyster stew? I love oysters,“ George said. I smiled, glad that we’d just rolled over so that George wouldn’t drool on Luther.

“So do I,” Luther said earnestly.

“You’ve never had them as rich as mi Ma made.” Key’s voice quavered on the edge of tears.

Inspiration dawned on me as clear and bright as a prairie sunrise. “If I got a tin of oysters, could you make stew like your Ma used to make?” I asked.

Key belly-crawled halfway out of the blankets and rummaged through his rucksack until he pulled out a metal handle with a bull’s head and a wicked, curved knife at the end. The fact that I could see it made me realize that my dawning ideas weren’t the only dawn that had occurred. “Here’s me tin can opener!”
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“And a fine one it is, too,” Luther said, grabbing it away and examining it closely.

“Stole it off an English tar in Boston Harbor,” Key said proudly.

“Oysters . . .” George gurgled dreamily.

“Oysters it is, then.” I threw back the blankets and pulled my feet into my shoes, pleased that I’d thought of how to make this holiday a good one for me and my men.

“And cream and butter. And a little bit of black pepper to crack over it!” Key shouted at my retreating back.
​
The tent was still deep in the shadow of a nearby ridge, but the peaks above and the valley below both gleamed golden in sunshine. I breathed in the cold, pine-tinged air and began the long trudge down to Golden City. As I passed into the sunshine the sparkle in the snow changed from silver to golden, but I knew that I’d already found my true goldmine: men who would follow me to the ends of the earth and back because I’d won their loyalty. With oysters.

A short Inquiry into Canning, Oysters, and Christmas

 

 

In my research on the second book of my series on the Civil War in New Mexico I've been reading a lot of journals and diaries left behind by men in the Colorado Volunteers. Many of them mention acquiring tins of oysters. It's made me wonder why men so far from the ocean seemed inordinately fond of a food that seems unlikely. Recently a dear friend of mine published a little booklet on oyster stew, which he called a New Mexico Christmas Eve tradition. That got me thinking about oysters, about Christmas, and about how they might have become connected.

​Canning and oysters both boomed at the same time in American history. The one helped the other become accessible, cheap, and popular.

​Canning was invented at the behest of Napoleon Bonaparte, who famously said that an army travels on its stomach. The first metal cans were made of tin-lined cast iron and were almost impregnable. Most people used a chisel and hammer to open them.

By the 1840s tin smiths were fashioning cans out of thinner, more easily breached tin. The invention of the can opener by Ezra Warner followed in 1858. Warner's can openers were standard issue to cooks during the Civil War. 

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Another early can opener, called the Bully Beef Opener, was common in England. This opener was decorated with a bull's head. It has been said that what Americans call Corned Beef,  British call Bully Beef because the cans it was stored in were opened with a Bully Beef Opener. This may be apocryphal, though; other sources suggest that the British word for this product is an anglicized version of the French boeuf bouilli, or boiled beef.   

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The Chesapeake Bay teemed with oyster beds. Canning proved a good way to save the prolific harvest. Early on, oysters were stored in twin tin containers such as these, which were then placed in a taller wooden barrel. The remaining space was packed with ice before they were shipped by

​​rail and steamboat across the entire country and into the territories. Companies such as Platt & Co, founded in 1848, sent ice-packed tins of oysters to men who'd gone west to California and Colorado in search of gold. These men, faced with hardships and shortages of essentials, so nostalgically yearned for the east coast foods of their childhoods that they were willing to pay outrageous amounts for a little taste of home.

I grew up eating oyster stew on Christmas Eve. My maiden name is Swedberg, a Swedish name, but I'd thought my own family's tradition of oyster stew on Christmas eve came from my Norwegian grandfather. My research, however, didn't credit  Scandinavians,  but 

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Irish immigrants with making oyster stew a traditional Christmas Eve dish. Thousands of Irish entered the United States in search of better lives during the years of the Potato Famine, 1845-1852. Most of the Irish immigrants  were Catholic and fasted from eating red meat on Christmas Eve. Instead, they ate a simple stew made from ling, a type of fish not available in America.

The Ling, which had been dried and heavily salted to preserve it, was cooked in a rich broth of milk, butter, and pepper, yet remained chewy from being dried. Once they were in America, Irish cooks substituted oysters for ling because the cheap and easily obtainable oysters tasted briny and had a similar, chewy texture.

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I've got some Irish in me. Are they the ancestors who began my family tradition? I don't know any other New Mexicans who eat oyster stew on Christmas eve, and  wonder if my friend Kirk's family eats it because his parents and my parents were friends and the Austins learned to eat it from the Swedbergs. The origins of traditions can be hard to pin down.

​If this is the year you are inspired to go back in history and try this traditional dish you might want to try the recipe my friend Kirk Austin has published on Amazon. 

Is oyster stew among your family's Christmas traditions? I'd love to know if it is, and where you think your family picked up its traditions.

​Coming soon: a short story featuring characters from my work in progress, inspired by oyster stew.

Kit Carson, New Mexico Celebrity

 

 

The author in the courtyard of Kit Carson's house, Taos.

Last month I took a weekend trip up to Taos, New Mexico to enjoy a little R&R and to snoop around a bit.  Taos is as historic as a town can get. The area has been inhabited since around 1,000 AD. When the first European in the area, Hernando de Alvarado, saw the adobe walls of Taos Pueblo shining in the evening

sun, he believed that he'd discovered the fabled El Dorado, or city of gold.

Beginning in the early 1700s, Taos was the site of annual summer trade fairs,  where Comanches, Kiowas and other Plains Indians came to trade captives for horses, grains, and trade goods brought up from Mexico. It was also the center for the fur trade, attracting the wild mountain men who hunted beaver throughout the Rocky Mountains. One of the most famous of the mountain men, Kit Carson, married a local girl and made Taos his home. ​

Located just off the town plaza, the Carson home was probably built around 1825. It is a one-story adobe with three rooms: a living/sleeping room, a kitchen, and a parlor/office. The ceilings and doorways were low. Although

The fireplace in the kitchen of the Carson house was set in a corner, with access from two sides.

now large and filled with glass, the original windows would have been very small, made out of thin sheets of mica, and barred with iron rods to protect against Indian raids.

​Much of the day to day living in the Carson house occurred in the central courthouse of the house. It was here that Josepha would have done the laundry, cooked most of the meals, and processed wool. The well and outhouse would have been in the courtyard as well. During the time that Carson was the Indian agent for the area, Indians often camped in the court yard while waiting for him to make decisions.

Kit and Josepha moved the family to Colorado in 1867, when he became the commander of Fort Garland, but they loved Taos enough that they were both buried there, in the cemetery that is just a short walk away and is now part of Kit Carson Park. 

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Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of several novels, including on in which Kit Carson has a small roll. You can read more about Rebels Along the Rio Grande, a trilogy of historical novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War, by clicking here.