Wyoming Trucks, True Love, and the Weather Channel: A Woman's Adventure

By Jeffe Kennedy

These essays explore the challenges Jeffe Kennedy has faced as a woman, a Westerner, a father-less daughter, a stepmother, a biologist, and a girl with hair of no specific color. From the book's opening in a cornfield, where Kennedy is searching for the twenty-five-year-old site of the plane crash that killed her father, she seems to be in constant motion. She is the feminist adolescent, ashamed to win a prize in home economics who learns to take joy in her pastry skills. She is the scientist struggling with mortality, the liberal learning to shoot a gun.

"With cheeky wisdom, Jeffe Kennedy explores the extraordinary moments that transform ordinary lives. No revelation--from the meaning of the death of a parent to being a blonde--is too big or small for this Colorado-born biologist to dissect. Her insights tell us a lot about the way lives enhanced by real convictions are formed."--Vicki Lindner, author of Outlaw Games

"[Kennedy] writes vividly and with great clarity. Her sensitivity and empathy for other people enhances an unusually authentic ability to establish three-dimensional characterization."--Lee Gutkind, editor, Creative Nonfiction

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Release date: Mar 16, 2004
• ISBN: 9780826333711

Jeffe Kennedy

Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning, best-selling author who writes fantasy with romantic elements and fantasy romance. She is an RWA member and serves on the Board of Directors for SFWA as a Director at Large. She is a hybrid author who also self-publishes a romantic fantasy series, Sorcerous Moons. Books in her popular, long-running series, The Twelve Kingdoms and The Uncharted Realms, have won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance and RWA’s prestigious RITA® Award, while more have been finalists for those awards. She's the author of the romantic fantasy trilogy The Forgotten Empires, which includes The Orchid Throne, The Fiery Crown, and The Promised Queen. Jeffe lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine. She can be found online at her website, every Sunday at the SFF Seven blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads and on Twitter.

Book preview

cover.jpg

Wyoming Trucks, True Love, and the Weather Channel

A Woman’s Adventure

Jeffe Kennedy

University of New Mexico Press

Albuquerque

ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8263-3371-1

© 2004 by the University of New Mexico Press

All rights reserved.

First Edition

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Kennedy, Jeffe, 1966–

Wyoming trucks, true love, and the Weather Channel : a woman’s adventure / Jeffe Kennedy.— 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-8263-3369-9 (alk. paper)

1. Kennedy, Jeffe, 1966– 2. Wyoming—Biography.

I. Title.

CT275.K45745A3 2004

978.7’033’092—dc22

2003018565

The author is grateful for permission to include the previously copyrighted material: Excerpts from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, translated by Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English, copyright © 1997 by Jane English. Copyright © 1972 by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Bullets first appeared in Wyoming Wildlife; Inheritances first appeared in North Carolina Literary Review, in Drive: Women’s True Stories of the Open Road, and on Blackhen.com; Of Swallows, Snakes and Science and The Remaking of Painted Creek first appeared in Dry Ground: Writing the Desert Southwest; Thanksgiving first appeared in a different form in Redbook as Ambushed by Love and as Abrasions in The Philosophical Mother; Wind Over the Face of Waters first appeared in Mountain Living, in a shorter form; and Wyoming Trucks, True Love and the Weather Channel first appeared in Wyoming Magazine.

Cover design: Lila Sanchez

To my two Greatest Teachers:

Professor David Hadas,

who sat on his desk and asked,

So … what do you think?

and thus planted the seeds.

Sifu Tim Sheehan,

who handed me the watering can and asked,

What are you going to grow?

and keeps pushing for more.

Acknowledgments

I once read an aspiring writer talk about how she worked on her acknowledgments page every day, instead of her book. It was a funny story about procrastination—and a writer’s dreams—but I find myself wishing I’d worked on this page a bit over the years. This collection represents seven years of my writing life and many people crowd my mind as I recall each essay and who helped me along the way.

The teachers: Ron Carlson, John D’Agata, James Galvin, Emmett Gowin, Lee Gutkind, Alyson Hagy, Judy Katsh, Vicki Lindner, Thomas McGuane, Veronica Patterson, Don Snow, Denise Sobiech, Samuel Western, and Terry Tempest Williams.

My writing group, the Silver Sage Writers Alliance: Gary Alkire, Esther Avendano de Chen, Mary Beth Baptiste, Julene Bair, Anna Bourgeois, Rita Burleson, Sarah Dabney, Maija Devine, Lela Eicher, Karol Griffin, Monica Hansen, Janell Hanson, Chavawn Kelley, RoseMarie London, Sara Martin, Mark Miller, Jonas Slonaker, Christy Stillwell, Lynne Swearingen, Tina Thronson, and Carolyne Wright.

The other writing groups: Writer’s Ink, Cheyenne Area Writers Group, and the Slow Sand Writers Society, especially Kathy Hayes, Teresa Funke, and Tracy Ekstrand.

Special thanks to:

The Ucross Foundation for their support and a glorious two weeks.

The students of the CCMA and the WCMA—you all know exactly why.

Beth, most supportive of editors—looks like you’re in time to publish my first book!

Chavawn, supporter, critic and the staunchest of friends.

Vicki, for the excellent instruction, critique, and advice, and for organizing the visiting writers program at the University of Wyoming.

Alyson, for all the good advice and whole-hearted enthusiasm.

Lee Gutkind, for the recommendation letter I have hanging on my desk to read whenever I start to doubt.

The Writers Summit crowd, for the comradery and for listening to me talk about me and my work.

Mike Shay, at the Wyoming Arts Council, for doing what he can.

My colleagues at The Cadmus Group, Inc., especially Ben, Laurie, Val, Kim, and Joe, for their enthusiasm and patience in allowing me the flexibility to take time to write.

Kev, my unconditional reader, for all the support even after all these years and for saying he’d object to the suburban stereotype if the shoe didn’t fit so well and he didn’t enjoy wearing it so much. Thanks to Linda, for understanding, and Rebecca and Stephen for sitting through the reading with such grace.

Mike and Lauren, for all the times they went in and out of the back door during writers group, for being in the stories without complaint, and for tiptoeing around on writing days.

My family, for letting me shine the light on all our lives. Thank you for your forbearance and all the love and support—Karen especially for her pride in my work and allowing me to go unedited, and Carole for the gift of telling me the story from her perspective. Thanks, too, to Jane, for helping.

Leo, who didn’t get to see this book, but gave his blessing on Bullets and everything else I wanted to do. We miss you, Leo.

Mom, for saying I didn’t have to change her name and for pointing out I’d have written some of the essays differently if she weren’t still around to read them.

RoseMarie for gifts beyond price. I can never bake you enough pastries or buy you enough drinks—but let’s give it a shot!

And always, David. I couldn’t have done it without you, My Dear.

Inheritances

Some stories become parables, repeated in a family to avert bad luck, to hold disaster at bay. The first day of October 1969, it rained in North Carolina—far from unusual weather for autumn in the South. My mom wondered if the rain and gloom would delay the afternoon’s flight exercise. She had no special premonition; her days had simply fallen into a pattern of speculation about when the fighters would fly and when they would return.

My mother, barely a woman at nineteen, married an Air Force Academy Cadet and left her birthplace in the Rocky Mountains to live near the Okefenokee swamp in the foreign South. In the wedding pictures, crossed sabers reflect the searing sky and scatter light on the Peter Pan bride in ice-blue, holding the arm of her Officer Knight as they descend the white chapel stairs. Though the photographs are curiously blurred, as a little girl I could always see the brilliance of the day; no thunderclouds loom in the background.

Hatted and gloved, she attended the Officers’ Wives Clubs in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and finally, North Carolina. She sipped too-sweet sherry and discussed flight schedules over luncheon, sifting international news with the other ladies for information the husbands couldn’t give. The men were always gone, mysteriously stationed overseas for weeks and months, leaving the base manned by homemakers and babies. Gossiping over back fences while their children played, the ladies talked earnestly of the weather. Meteorology says the deployment may be delayed by the off-shore front. I heard the TAC squadrons are grounded until the pressure front shifts.… Can they fly in this?

On this particular rainy day Ted (I never knew him as a father, so I called him by name as my mother did), already in his flight suit, ate the lunch my mother prepared. Perhaps he kissed her. He never spoke much, she says. The rare times he was stationed at home were like a honeymoon. After eight years of marriage and less than a full year together, they still courted, spending Sundays in bed with the newspaper and each other. I build the images in my head from photographs. In one Christmas picture he drapes his arm along the mantle, one hand dangling down. From this I know my hands are his. I imagine these hands touching her yellow hair, waving slowly.

Ted grasps his bike by the handlebars and rides back to the squadron house. My mom bundles me up, going to run errands. When she spots a purple bike on sale—complete with training wheels and handlebar streamers—she knows it would be perfect for me. But because I had left my tricycle in the neighbors’ driveway where they backed over it, my dad thought my carelessness should not be rewarded with a new bike. My mom felt a three-year-old shouldn’t be punished too long. Torn, my mom calls the flight shack from the store to persuade my dad.

Sorry, Kathy, the duty officer answers, he just left on that mission. Want me to have him call you when he gets back?

Now when I travel, my mom never telephones on the day I plan to leave, in case the call meets with empty air.

* * *

Twenty-five years later, we planned the excellent adventure, as my mom dubbed it. An antique with my name on it awaited me at Grandmother Mize’s in North Carolina. Grandmother refused to ship it and worried that she would pass on before I claimed my inheritance: a cherrywood teacart I first saw when I turned twelve and my mom finally sent me to visit my Southern family—she had waited for me to grow up enough to look past their racial hatreds.

Jeffe, this is yours, said my grandmother. I got it from Aunt Stella Mize Turner, who brought it from Emporia, Virginia, in her Hudson when I married Pop, and I was to give it to my oldest granddaughter at her wedding. She got it from your great-granddaddy John Vardey when she married. She voted for FDR, you know, she drawled on. I’ll keep it for you until you marry.

The inheritance thrilled me. The dark wood inspired visions of generations of gracious women passing the treasured piece to their daughters, dressed in princess gowns for Cinderella weddings. Every summer visit, I would examine the teacart and imagine my own home and daughters.

At twenty-eight, a year older than my mother when she was widowed, I remained unmarried. But with Granddad gone, Grandmother’s health worsened relentlessly. She had already lost one leg to diabetes, probably not unrelated to her diet of bacon grease, buttered grits, tomato and mayo sandwiches on Wonder Bread, and Crisco frosting on the wedding cakes she made; she could go to her Maker any day. And I did have a house of my own. I had to drive from Wyoming to get the teacart. Soon.

My mom had visited her husband’s family only once, a year after the funeral. Even once was unbearable. She described the shrine Grandmother had kept, with flowers, Ted’s picture, and candles burning. Oh, it was just awful. Mom Mize cried all day, kissing the pictures. I was drowned in everything I had managed to put behind me. I never could go back after that.

Now Mom was ready to see the old house again, where I was conceived on a Thanksgiving leave. We would visit Grandmother, Uncle Rocky, Aunt Beth and the boys. And with the teacart safely ensconced in the back seat, we would go see the base she lived on for three years, but couldn’t remember—Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro. And from there to the site of the plane crash, on the South Carolina border.

* * *

I spent the night in Denver and Leo, my stepfather, loaded the freshly washed car with every emergency supply we might need. We left as first light opened over the flat eastern edge of the city. We plunged on through Kansas, through St. Louis, gradually leaving the sky behind. On the topographic maps, you can see the descent—from my sere sagebrush plain in Wyoming down to the High Plains, down to the Great Plains, drop to the Mississippi Valley, go deeper and greener over the hump of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and roll down the gentle slope of North Carolina to the sea. As the trees, heat, and thick air closed in over us, my mother became quieter, more withdrawn. We slept, tired, cranky, and behind schedule, in Asheville. But in the morning light, Mom could see the Smokies, rounded old and misty, just as she remembered. When I was twelve I laughed at Grandmother and Grand-dad for calling them mountains.

We called my Uncle Rocky on the cell phone so he could meet us at Grandmother’s in Statesville and let us in. With several crack houses in the old neighborhood, he didn’t want us waiting outside. My mother shook and cried hard to see Grandmother Mize again. I knew the stories from my mother: how Grandmother would sneak me out of bed to play after my parents went out, how she slipped me candy, how Ted would take my mom to Hardee’s on the sly because she couldn’t bear the canned creamed corn and fried liver mush at every meal. These two women, unconnected but for me and a man long gone, sat together, weeping and laughing over old visions. You’re still so beautiful, Grandmother Mize told her. I can’t believe the house looks exactly the same, my mother answered.

We stayed the day with Grandmother and the night with my uncle’s family. And then we pressed on to find the spot where my father actually died. No one ever told my mom where the two planes went down; or if they did, she has no memory of it. The history of that day is chronicled in the stark and lucid bits she does remember.

* *