BEST OF: Popping-hot thoughts

Sometimes, my mind is like a popcorn kernel in a hot frying pan, jumping from place to place, but never really getting anywhere. That’s especially true when insomnia strikes. All I really want is an “off” button for my brain, so I can get some sleep.

In the middle of one recent night, I started mulling over some things I’ve learned in my life and how I’d define them.

For instance, I’ve learned that:

• If a jacket or dress in a shop window or ad makes the size 2 model wearing it look like a prime candidate for Weight Watchers, no amount of dreaming, wishing or squinting up my eyes will make the fashions look good on my generously proportioned body.

The phrase “high-style human Hummer” comes to mind.


• Running a vacuum cleaner over the same spot at least six times before I bend down to pick up whatever it is the vacuum isn’t catching is a waste of my time and electricity, and I feel profoundly foolish if somebody else sees me doing it.

Work order: “If you can’t suck it up, pick it up.”


• Cutting your nails over a shag rug will come back to haunt you.

Mantra: “Stepping on a rug of nails is no more comfortable than sleeping on a bed of them.”


• Buying a self-help book or listening to a do-it-yourself program doesn’t get the job done. If I want the results, I have to do the exercise, clean the refrigerator’s compressor, dig up the tulip bulbs or study Italian.

The title “’something for dummies’ means the dummy has to do the work herself.


• Once cupboards, closets and shelves are full, such pleasant occupations as window shopping, retail Web surfing, catalog-page flipping and going to garage sales can cause conflicts.

Having one mixing bowl is good. Two bowls can get me through a party. Having five identical bowls means I’ll never be able to get any of them into or out of the cupboard without a fight, and may not be able to close the cupboard door.

The dual phrases “Visa bill” and “But where are we going to put it, honey?” come to mind.


• Hunches are good things. Years ago, when county workers installed an all-way stop sign at Burton and Ardath drives, the concept made me nervous. It seemed to me then that having 99 percent of drivers stop at the busy intersection would make the remaining 1 percent is even more dangerous, because nobody would expect those drivers wouldn’t stop.

In a close call, I was nearly the statistic that proved my hunch.

I had stopped at the stop sign, ready to turn right on Ardath on my way home. As I began to turn the wheel and step on the gas, two commercial trucks came over the Ardath rise to the south.

A little voice in the back of my head said, “Those blankety-blanks aren’t going to stop.”

The big, heavy delivery truck, loaded with sheet rock and pulling a trailer loaded with an industrial forklift, sped through the intersection without a hint of stopping or even pausing. A second, smaller delivery truck followed behind.

If I’d made the turn, just because it was my turn and my right to do so, I’d be dead.

That first truck would have hit me right at the driver’s seat, and the second truck would have ploughed into the back of the first truck.

I recall a statement at the end of a public service message: “You may be in the right. Dead right.”


Now, if my mind would just quit popping so I could get some sleep, maybe I wouldn’t have such bizarre thoughts.

This column first ran in The Cambrian on April 3, 2003.

Follow the money

“You think there’s no good left in this world,” Mary Woeste of Cambria said. “You listen to the news and ask yourself, ‘Can it get any worse?’ And then something like this happens.”

Mary, a warmly caring woman eternally on the go, is a caregiver for seniors. She has more to do than time to do it.

I’ve known Mary for about a quarter century. Her brother and uncle, Keith Woeste and Pat Wade, were best pals with our sons Brian and Sean.

About a month ago, after a long shift, Mary was rushing to the post office to buy a money order, carrying cash in an envelope, five $100 bills saved up from Christmas and birthday gifts.

“I must have picked up the envelope upside down,” she surmised. As the money fluttered away, full-speed-ahead Mary was probably already a half-block away. She didn’t notice until, at the post office, she reached inside the now-empty envelope.

She went looking for the cash, but didn’t find it.

“I said to myself, ‘OK, it’s gone. I just hope the person who picked it up needed it worse than I do.’”

However, Henry Rodriguez, on his lunch break from Antiques on Main, had spotted two $100 bills. He thought, “It can’t be real. It must be play money. But then I saw someone else picking up paper in front of the drug store.”

Steve Johnson of Bend, Ore., had found the other $300 and was walking toward Henry. Once they figured out that the money didn’t belong to either of them, Henry gave his two bills to Steve and went to lunch.

Steve was puzzled. How to find the owner? He did what any smart guy would do — he consulted his parents, Loren and Jeanette Johnson of Cambria, telling them, “It was raining $100 bills downtown! I’ve just found $500, and I don’t know how to find out who it belongs to.”

He decided to check at the drug store.

Bingo! This is a small town. Chances are good that if you’re looking for somebody, somebody else you know will know that somebody.

Cambria Village Pharmacy clerk Mandy Ervin, recalls, “A man came in and asked Kris Morris and me if someone had lost some money. We said ‘yes, five $100 bills.’ He pulled them out of his wallet.”

Then he left, but the man who’d had a fistful of dollars wouldn’t be a man with no name for long.

Sue Patchen and Kay Ash were unloading their van in front of the antique mall. Henry came back to work. “I found $200, but we don’t know who it belongs to,” he told coworkers, including Debborah Patchen.

She told her mom and Kay, and they said they’d seen a distraught Mary going from store to store in East Village, asking if anyone had seen her $500.

Debborah called Anne Winburn, owner of St. Mary Mead, a shop across the street. By the time they called Mary, she already knew her money had been found. You see, the drug store clerks also knew Mary, and the pharmacist knew how to reach her.

Mary remembers, “The girl at the pharmacy called me and said, ‘I’m in tears. You won’t believe what just happened.’”

An amazed, grateful Mary “went right down, got the money and went straight to the post office.” But she was dismayed to not know who her Good Samaritan was.

That didn’t last long. Soon, Mary tracked down Good Guy Henry, just a couple doors down the block.

Mary didn’t need CSI Cambria to figure out the rest, because —surprise, surprise — it turns out Henry had known Steve when the Bend resident owned a store in San Simeon.

Mary called Steve’s mom, Jeanette Johnson. Jeanette asked, “How did you find out so fast?”

This is Cambria, Jeanette.

Mary wanted to send a “thank-you” gift. Jeanette checked with her son, then told Mary he wouldn’t take anything, “but you can send him a card.”

Mary said that, on the card, she told Steve that the next time he comes to town, “at least I hope he’ll let me treat him and his family to dinner … What a guy. I’m forever in his debt … and so is my American Express card.”

BEST OF: Not-so-Iron-Chefs' ice-cream duel

When neighbors get together in Cambria, it’s often to share a meal.

We and two sets of our Marine Terrace neighbors added a twist to that equation, sharing a holiday weekend night as we made up quarts and quarts of homemade vanilla ice cream in a duel to determine who has the best ice-cream making machine.

The official competitors and their choice of weaponry were:

• Richard Greek, (then the county’s personnel director and former ag commissioner), with a wood-bucket, hand-crank, uses-salt-and-ice model ice-cream maker;

• Superior Court Judge Martin Tangeman, with an electrified version of the Greeks’ machine; and

• Richard Tanner, retired baker-caterer and former pit boss for Harrah’s Club, Reno, with a self-contained, no-salt/no-ice, commercial-style electric ice-cream freezer.

The Greeks paid close to retail for their model. We got our machine on super sale/closeout/slight scratches/discontinued model and they couldn’t even find the original box. And the Tangemans got their ice-cream maker at a rummage sale for $5.

Serious competition? Of course not. Hilarious? You bet. Competitive? Oh, definitely. We’re talking some major A-type personalities here, and each was devoutly convinced that his machine was the best on the block, literally.

We all live within a few houses of each other, even one of our official judges Joan Wedbush, who doesn’t have an ice-cream machine, but is a former caterer.

That Sunday proved to be ideal in every way but one: the weather, which was cold, foggy and London-like. Not exactly ideal ice-cream weather, but I guess ice cream is a hit in any environment.

While the idea was strictly for fun, we did have to do things correctly, we agreed. To make sure nobody hyped their own mix to make it special, we made up a giant batch of rich vanilla ice cream, and ladled it into the side-by-side containers right before the machines started their magic.

There were the three contestants, three judges and eight ice-cream groupies in the bunch, ranging in age from 3 to 76. The “duel” was a hoot. Good fun and dessert were the only real goals. We all laughed so hard, our sides and cheeks hurt.

Marty made a big play of stretching his arms behind his head and saying over and over, “See how hard I’m working, checking the ice cream,” while Richard, Christine and son Kris Greek took turns churning the crank on their low-tech device.

Marty made sure he or his wife, Carol Tangeman, stood guard at all times over their machine, to protect against insidious industrial espionage, I suppose.

The Greeks kept needling Marty, noting the noise factor from the Tangemans’ machine. “It’s so loud. You’re drowning out the ocean,” Richard Greek said. “And what if the power goes out?”

“You should have solar panels just for this,” Marty countered to my husband.

In turn, my Richard raised his hands above his head, looked up into the dense, drippy fog and said, “And just what good what that do you? Or us … remember, our machine is electric, too.”

When challenged over his demand for a handicap because he’d been “forced” to use the Greeks’ salt and ice, Judge Tangeman said he’d review the legal precedents … until one of us asked if there’d be any ice cream left by the time he’d get around to handing down his ruling.

This went on all night long.

We’d set up a wine-style blind tasting, complete with official judging forms and palate-cleansing glasses of water. And were those judges meticulous! “All contestants clear the area,” said Wedbush. “Let’s not have any undue pressure.”

The judges studiously nibbled and sipped, rolled the ice creams around on their tongues and slowly filled in their judging forms — much to the consternation of the youngsters waiting to dig into the leftovers.

Then we all sampled the three ice creams, eventually adding fresh strawberries or blueberries, caramel sauce or my Richard’s truffle topper, nuts, M&Ms or sprinkles. In some of the kids’ dishes, it was hard to find the ice cream among the add-ons. Memories of ice-cream-parlor “suicide sundaes” come to mind.

There were distinct differences between the three ice creams. One was soft and smooth, another slightly grainy and homemade style, another firm, icy-cold and silky.

Who won?

The Tanner’s commercial machine took the honors, I think partially because the self-refrigeration unit got the mixture so cold, so fast.

Finally, the sated contestants and judges staggered home, grateful to the end that neighbors could enjoy such a fierce competition, and each other, so much.

Summer’s coming. Anyone for a rematch?

This column ran first in The Cambrian on September 19, 2002.

Dye-hard egg hunt

Before I became a grandmother, I never knew it would be so much fun — or so complicated.

For instance, we hosted a houseful for Easter: granddaughters Caitlyn (12), Alyssa (9), Isabelle (8) and Georgia (5), plus our son Sean and his fiancée, Kim. What resulted was this family’s longest-ever Easter egg hunt.

The girls are each so different! And there were some special circumstances to consider: one girl is severely allergic to most nuts; another is fairly fussy about which candies she likes (such as peanut-butter cups); and a third was on crutches, with her leg in a cast after a sledding accident.

The fourth is 5.

So this hunt required some MBA-level pre-planning.

The holiday event began as soon as the girls awoke, with a nervous Easter Bunny (EB) fervently hoping the preparations would produce frolic and fun, but without any youthful hurt feelings, tears or temper tantrums.

At the dining table, each place was set with an egg-shaped place mat, a bunny mug, an Easter candy and a couple of little gifts to keep the girls occupied during breakfast. Meanwhile, EB snuck out, put four filled baskets on the front porch and hid 28 boiled hens’ eggs the girls had colored the day before.

Once the adults were up (if not yet Easter outfitted or even totally awake), the chant began. “Egg hunt! Egg hunt!”

When the girls opened the front door, the squeals began. Baskets! Candy! Trinkets! Chocolate bunnies (three of them filled with peanut cream and delightfully named “Reester Bunnies,” and one nut-free Cadbury)! The giggling gaggle of girls deposited their loot on the dining table, then dashed out the door in search of eggs.

“Halt! Wait!” EB said with nose twitching. “Rule time. There are seven eggs out there for each of you. Caitlyn and Isabelle — once you’ve found seven each, then go help Georgia and Alyssa,” who was limping around on crutches.

Caity and Izzy were done in a flash, of course, but they amiably played “you’re getting warmer … colder” with the other two girls as a couple of adults trailed along to make sure Georgia didn’t wind up stranded in a tree and Lyssie didn’t fall over trying to dig an egg out of a flower pot.

Meanwhile, EB and her two cohorts were inside the house, hiding candy-filled plastic eggs and other goodies.

Once the girls had found all the real eggs outside, the hunt was on in the living room, dining room and halls. It was like having four caffeine-amped monkeys playing “I spy” throughout the house, peering into vases, under couch cushions and behind pillows.

(I so hope they got it all. I remember my grandmother finding an overlooked chocolate egg in August one year — behind the radiator on a white rug that wasn’t white any more.)

Once our girls had ferreted out the goodies, the “Easter Banker” took over.

With a reserve of each kind of candy in another basket, the Easter Banker could exchange candies for another kind. That way, the fussy eater and the nut-allergic could redeem treats they’d found but couldn’t or wouldn’t eat. The other girls could exchange, too, if they wanted to.

Were we done yet? Not a chance.

After Easter Banker negotiations finished, the girls whooped and headed outside again.

Soon they were back, announcing that the adult Easter Egg Hunt was about to begin. They’d re-hidden the colored eggs, and now the parents and grandparents were to find them.

Devious? I ask you, how was I to know they’d hidden an egg under an upside-down abalone shell?

With a little coaching and a lot of hilarity, hooting and hollering from the youthful gallery, we oldsters finally found all the eggs (which by then were destined for the garbage rather than a deviled-egg tray or egg-salad sandwiches).

Whew! The hunt was over. We’d pulled it off. We’d made memories — and a huge, so-funny mess. A month later, in the most unlikely places, we’re still finding biliously pink and purple strands of Easter grass.

Could the Easter Bunny finally relax? Of course not. She’s already planning the 2009 hunt, playing “Can you top this?”

BEST OF: Tour de chance

Imagine joining a group of strangers traipsing around on a shared vacation, seeing sights, having adventures, being taught new things.

Imagine us running rapidly in the other direction.

It’s called a tour, and for decades, we’ve avoided them like the plague. I'd protest that we’re too self-reliant, too stubbornly autonomous. We like to go our own way, make our own decisions, do our own thing at our own time.

On a tour, most of those choices are premade for you, about your room, your schedule, your activities, your menu and even the people with whom you sit and dine.

“Go, go,” our friends had told us. “Trust us. You’ll have a wonderful time.”

Finally, feisty as I am, I had to admit there was a lure in having somebody else making the decisions once in a while. I was willing to give up my tour-director hat, just for a little while. So, recently, we gave in and dipped our travel toes into the world of shared vacations.

Now as newbies, we weren't brave enough to sign up for a two-week group jaunt to Zimbabwe. We started small, with a close-to-home tour that began on a Sunday night and ended on a Tuesday morning.

Know what? We really did enjoy it. But we did our homework before we went, and that helped a lot.

Here are some things we did pre-tour, and one I shouldn’t have:

· We made sure that we were staying in a hotel we’d have chosen on our own. After you arrive is not the time to discover your hotel is a flea-trap in a red-light district. Fortunately, ours wasn’t.

· Ask dumb-sounding questions, such as “Do you have good water pressure there?” Why ask that, especially at a small hotel? Because on tour, everybody’s on the same schedule, which means most of them will hit the showers at the same time. It’s a bummer to bathe at 6 a.m. with cold water coming out of the showerhead drop by drop.

· Make sure the schedule matches yours. If you sleep till 10 every morning, and the group breakfast is served at 7, you’re going to be miserable.

· The itinerary also should allow you some down time. We had three walking tours in a row, one at 9 a.m., one at 10:30 a.m. and another after lunch. But we had a long sit-down meal, and time to rest before the beach barbecue that night. Even so, our tootsies would have appreciated a longer break.

· Conversely, if you have the chance, switch between types of activities. If you’re sitting on your duff being lectured in the morning, then go for a kayak tour or ping-pong competition in the afternoon. Otherwise, your scheduled evening stroll on the boardwalk may turn into a hobble.

· Make sure the prices you’re paying are, indeed, less than you’d pay if you were setting up the same activities on your own.

· Probably, you’ll be barraged with food. If you’re lucky, as we were, it will be marvelous. But it’s still different than your normal fare. So go easy. Don’t take that third skewer of shrimp or second piece of pie, even if it is included in the cost. Your tummy will thank you.

· And, for heaven’s sake, don’t do as I did and change purses right before the trip. It was plumb mortifying to hold up the line as I rummaged around for my pass in the 17 pockets that purse had suddenly sprouted. I must have looked like an aging bimbo as I smiled (aka grimaced) and apologized over and over.

So, go, go. Enjoy some group travel. If you plan ahead, it can work out to be more fun than you’d have had alone or as a couple. Trust us.

This column ran Sept. 18, 2003 in The Cambrian. And while we've only taken one other shared tour since then, we remain impressed with the concept.

Finding lost memory, digital style

I admit it — I’m a loser.

Not in the sense of not being good at my job or my life. I think I’m a good person. I’m also proud of being a community reporter and think I do it well … although I’ll never be in the same financial league as Oprah, J.K. Rowling or Rachael Ray, fersure.

I’m a loser because I lose things.

My car-key misplacing abilities are legendary. I’ll misfile crucial sheets of notes. I’ve put the portable phone in the freezer and the clean pillowcases by the phone stand. Fortunately, I didn’t put the ice cream in the linen closet. No, I left it sitting on the counter.

Just imagine the trouble my digital camera could give me.

Not the camera, itself, at least not yet. But have you taken a good look at the “film” for digital photography?

If I can lose a 5,000-pound mini-van in the parking lot or a 200-pound husband in our very own home, just imagine how fast I can mislay a miniscule digital-media disk.

I take some vitamins that are bigger than that!

Of course I never lose the old, slow, worn-out cards, oh no. It’s always the brand new, expensive, faster-than-the-speed-of-light disks that disappear.

It’s worst when I lose a card that I’ve just filled with photos during a crucial, never-to-be-repeated event.

On deadline.

To say that my bosses wouldn’t be very happy when that happens would be an understatement, like declaring that Mt. Everest is a sizeable hill.

And then there was a recent parade at Cambria's annual Pinedorado festival.

I’d taken with me a little case that holds backup AA batteries and a couple of spare photo cards. Digital media and pockets don’t get along, so I always have the case with me because it snaps right around my camera strap.

During the parade, I dashed up and down the street, taking pictures of floats and bands, little kids and clowns, just like I always do.

I think I log more miles than the marchers.

There were frustrations, too.

My Stetson flew off, and almost got crushed by a Clydesdale.

I missed some great shots because so many parade-watchers weren’t staying put, but were instead walking around, right in front of my lens. And I’m not tall enough to shoot over their heads.

I kept myself together, though, even when someone reached over and slapped a sticker-badge on my fringed, Western jacket and I couldn’t peel it off the suede.

Then I lost it. First the little case and the digital cards inside ... and then my cool, in part because there were wonderful parade pictures on one of those disks, I just knew it.

Husband Richard and I looked everywhere, obvious or not. We searched our van, gutters, trash cans. We asked everybody within a mile. We left “please call” notes all over town.

Eventually, photos from the other disks were used. Husband Richard ordered some expensive new digital cards. And I sulked.

But recently, I got around to taking my Western jacket to the dry cleaners so they could remove the stick-um from that doggone badge.

Did you know it costs more to clean that suede jacket than it would to replace it? Absurd.

As I flung the jacket back on the car seat in disgust, something thunked my knee. I reached into the pocket, rummaged around and surprise! I found the little case with the digital cards in it!

Sometime during the parade, I must have taken the case off my camera strap and stuck it in the fabric pocket of my jacket … not knowing that the pocket had a well-camouflaged hole in it.

As I scurried about taking photos, the lightweight little case must have slid down between the suede and the lining, ending up near the jacket’s already-bulky bottom hem.

Of course, I had checked the pockets way back when. But not the hem!

I suppose if I were more prone to wearing a fringed suede jacket around the house, I might have found the case and those three expensive photo cards much sooner.

But even months later, let me tell you, it’s a whole lot nicer to be a finder than a loser. I admit it.

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribune news.com.

BEST OF: We don't fight. Really.

When Husband Richard and I owned the bakery, lo all those years ago, another husband-and-wife team who worked with us asked a question. The two, who had spent years in the bakery industry, clearly were embarrassed to ask.

"You don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but we're curious," they said. "When do you fight? We've never worked with a husband-and-wife team who didn't rip into each other every so often. We never see you fight or argue."

Husband Richard, replied, "We don't. We don't have time to fight."

And that's true in more ways than the obvious.

He and I were in our middle-age years when we married, old enough to sense that the clock was ticking, even then. The gut-level knowledge that time's passing quickly puts a different light on a relationship, the realization that we don't have forever to spend together, so we'd much rather enjoy what we've got.

We do, and we have, for more than three decades now. It sounds like a lot of years, but it's not long enough when you're married to the right spouse.

That statistic puts us in the minority, for sure, which is sad.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics, a new marriage has a 43 percent chance of ending in divorce. I've been there, too, and it's a miserable place to be.

But for the last 30 years or so, Husband Richard and I have been sharing love and laughter, children and grandchildren, smiles and tears, good days and bad breaks, hospital stays and vacations.

We've worked side-by-side in a half-dozen business ventures, shared fire and flood, survived various serious surgeries, dealt with births and deaths, built a house under duress, and vacationed in a motorhome with my mother, two teenage boys and six tiny poodles.

Is our marriage always easy, passionate and exciting? Yes and no.

First, define for me "exciting."

If exciting is jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, keeping a python in the bathroom, running for political office or safari-ing in dusty, bug-laden air so thick you could polish it like a piece of lapis, the answer is no. Emphatically.

If exciting can include dashing off to take photos of a breaking story or a special event, being among the first to learn the latest on something that interests us, standing together arm-in-arm to watch the ocean at sunset, seeing caribou plod across the tundra, giggling as we try to find a cab in the rain on Market Street, playing with grandchildren ... then definitely, yes.

Husband Richard and I are both adaptable to a point (but if I'm honest, I'll admit he's more flexible than I am).

And we don't like to argue, so we don't do it.

Really, we don't. We may discuss our differences, but it's never with anger or by disparaging each other. Disagree, sure. But never battle over why I bought those socks or why he forgets to put them in the hamper. We don't arm-wrestle for custody of the TV remote, and we never argue over where to put the sofa or where we're going for the day.

When we've hurt each other's feelings, it's been entirely accidental. We both know that, and it's an important point to remember.

A long relationship brings with it the knowledge of the time already invested. Whenever we disagree, each of us remembers to ask ourselves, "Is this an important enough argument to risk ruining this relationship?"

The answer always has been "no."

As an e-mail I got a while back pointed out, no matter how long you live, you've only got a certain amount of time to spend together, whether on exciting and romantic vacations or chopping veggies for a salad, reading the paper over the cereal bowl at the breakfast table, or waiting at the doctor's office.

Each moment is a treasure, if you let it be.

Count 'em up. Calculate your probable lifespan. Figure out the number of weekends you've got to spend together. Not many, is it?

No matter how young you are now.

If you could know now how little time there really is, wouldn't you spend as much of it as possible doing the things you really want to do together, even if it's just cuddling on the couch instead of mucking out the junk drawer or watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"?

Do you really want to spend all that weekend time cleaning the garage, doing chores, shopping for things when you could be making memories together?

Or even worse, given the finite amount of time you've got, do you really want to spend any of it kvetching about something so minor you won't even remember it in a week or a month?

When you think about it, the same thing holds true for many relationships — with other family members, with friends, with co-workers and associates. It should even be true for people embroiled in Cambria's legendary political differences of opinion.

Think about it. Do you want to argue, or do you want to solve the problem?

At least at the Tanner household, life's too short to sweat the small stuff. Trust me: Having fun sure beats fighting over who has custody of the damnable remote.

This column ran first in The Cambrian on May 15, 2003.