Today we rode an underground train through the mine here at Iron Mountain. I had riled my kids up about how much fun we were going to have. Indeed, they did have fun. They got to dress up like miners, complete with hard hats, ride a train, and even see bats hibernating. Kimberly said it was the best day she had ever had. I am glad that they thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I am equally glad that they were too young and excited to learn very much.
Here’s what they took away from the experience:
* it’s cold and wet down underground
* riding trains is fun
* the whistle at the mine’s entrance is really loud
* bats are really tiny and cute, furry and cuddly looking, not at all the scary fang-bearing Halloween-like creatures they had envisioned
* it got really dark in the mine when the guide turned the lights off
Here’s what I learned:
It took the miners four years to drill the first quarter mile of tunnel into the mine. Men worked for ten cents an hour, in three eight hour shifts each day. They had no tools except a rod and big hammers. One guy had to hold the rod parallel to the ground while two other guys took turns pounding it with a hammer. With each blow, the guy holding the rod had to turn it one eighth of a revolution. It reminded me of my husband’s DeWalt hammer-drill.
There were no mechanical means to remove the rock from the mine, so they used mules to pull cart loads of it out. Iron rocks are very very heavy. A rock the tour-guide pointed out to us, not much bigger than your shoe, weighs over three hundred pounds. I would not want to have one of those drop on my toe. Little boys would go to work in the mine, at the tender age of eleven, guiding the mules in and out. They were paid 7 cents an hour.
After the first four years of grueling manual drilling, some guy invented a drill that could do in one hour what it took the three man team to do in ten hours. The way they would drill horizontally was that they had to drill that rod four feet deep into the rock, thirteen times, in a circle. Then they stuck dynamite into those holes, and lit it. The drilling with the new drill, plus the blast from the dynamite, caused a lot of smoke. In a mine, there is no air circulation, so it all got breathed in by the miners. They would get sick with this thing called “black lung”, and they would die. Those little boys who led the mules usually died before reaching age fifteen. For seven cents an hour, they gave their lives. By this point in the tour, I was getting physically ill just from hearing this.
The guy who invented this drill realized something had to be done about all the dust it put into the air, so he devised a way to connect a water hose to the drill. Now, instead of dust blowing everywhere, it was ice-cold water. The mine stays between 38 and 43 degrees year round. The cold water from this drill now caused the miners to die from pneumonia instead of black lung. By now, reality starts setting in. This is no joy-ride that I have brought my children on. This is more akin to the sight-seeing buses through the ninth ward after Katrina. I was beginning to feel horrified and ashamed that I had brought my kids to this place as if on some sort of field day.
From this point, we had to continue our tour on foot. I forgot to mention, on the train ride, we all sat sideways, and you couldn’t move, and you had to watch your head. The tunnel is very narrow. It is not for the claustrophobic. Once we reached the quarter mile mark, the tunnel turned 90 degrees and became even more narrow, forcing us to continue on foot. We walked very carefully. The ground is slippery, you have to duck your head in places, and if you are clumsy like me, you quickly become grateful you are wearing one of their tattered yellow raincoats to protect you from scraping against the walls. There is a milky white substance on the walls of the tunnel. I learned that this is calcium.
After a while, we reached the next “show and tell” part of the tour. It was another type of drill, called the “widow-maker.” It worked in much the same way as the first one, but this one was vertical rather than horizontal. The miner got paid a whopping 13 cents an hour to mine upwards, then blast the ceiling with dynamite. Sometimes a chunk would just land on a toe, and the miner would hobble out. Sometimes a chunk might land on his head, giving him a concussion, and he’d be dragged out by his friends on this metal basket. But quite often, the blast would cause big chunks to crush him to death, thus earning the drill’s nickname. Still, men lined up to sign up for this job. The extra three cents an hour was strong temptation.
I began to connect some dots at this point in the tour. You see, all around the town of Iron Mountain, there is a jogging trail, with historic landmarks and informative signposts. Earlier, we had visited the location of the mining company’s general store. Iron Mountain was not formed as a town, but as a mining camp. There was very little traffic in and out of town. Everything the miners’ families needed, they had to buy from the general store, which was owned by the mining company. This mining company set both the salaries and the food prices. Sound fair? Well, they were so benevolent that they would sell to the miners’ families on credit. Of course, their tab was paid directly from their salary before their checks were given to them. The result was that these families were imprisoned in this mining life. They could never get out. They could never save enough money to make a headways in life. They had to work in the mines to live, but the mines ultimately killed them anyway. This corrupt system of the mining company controlling both their income and their expenses is what forced mothers to send their little boys to their deaths working in the mines to earn a “living.”
Another visitor asked the tour guide how many men died in that mine. The answer was that it is unknown, because the house that kept the records was struck by lightning and burned down. Two weeks later, they built a gift shop in its place and started giving tours. All those lives, forgotten. What even their record house failed to record, though, is that the mine didn’t only take the lives of the miners who died in the accidents inside the mine. It also took the lives of the men and boys who died of black lung and pneumonia. It also took the lives of the wives and mothers who had nothing left but to grieve for their loved ones.
The tour guide blew the whistle. He said that the nearby towns in the surrounding area used to set their clocks by that whistle. It signaled shift change, three times a day. Additionally, if there was an accident, they would blow the whistle, and all the wives would come running from the nearby towns to see who had lost a loved one this time, and to help in any way they could.
One way the women helped was by making their men lunches that could easily be carried into the mine. They baked meat pies in ovens. These meat pies are called pasties, pronounced pass tees. They can have beef or pork in them, and usually rutabaga and potato. The miners would heat them up on the same coals that they used to keep their dynamite dry. We went to the most notable pasty shop in the area, called “The Pasty Oven.” We bought one of each flavor pasty. We were eager to experience local cuisine, especially something with so much history. Each one we tasted was incredibly nasty. Each one was nastier than the last. You just cannot fathom the sacrifices made by these poor miners. Not only did they give their lives trying to earn a “living”, but the little life they were able to live was ruined by this horrible cuisine! The locals still eat them. I’m not sure why. I can only imagine they eat them as a sacrifice out of reverence for their ancestors. And when I say “ancestors”, we are not speaking of something that far removed. This mine was functional until 1945. Then the price of iron ore dropped by about half, so they shut it down.
Even with the mine shut down, I believe it’s legacy lives on. Let’s face it, something this horrific cannot go away without leaving its mark. I see clearly the mark it left on the residents of Iron Mountain. In preparation of visiting the mine, we made a quick trip to the local Goodwill store, which proved to be by far the busiest place in town. Each week they have a sale. They tell you the color of the week, and you have to search through the racks to find clothes with that color tag. Then you pay only 99 cents for each item, if it’s the right color tag. I was amazed that I could buy sweaters for the whole family for six bucks. But the lady in line behind me said “Well, we usually shop at such and such place, down the street, because they are cheaper than here.” Cheaper than Goodwill? A little internet investigation explains the need. According to city data.com, ten percent live in poverty, the median family income is about 35K, with the median per capita being 21K.
http://www.city-data.com/city/Iron-Mountain-Michigan.html#top
Iron Mountain is even poorer than most of the rest of Michigan. I found a house for sale in town for just 12,000 dollars. There are a lot for sale in the 20’s, and the nicest ones sell in the 50’s. And we’re talking incredible picturesque views, nearly anywhere in town! Why is the town poor? How many of those mining families are still here? A picture begins to form.
The other day, we were visiting a neighborhood park, and an old lady commented on my accent. I confessed I was from out of town, and she inquired as to my business here. I answered that my husband was working with the company remodeling their local Wal-Mart. Her face soured, and she retorted something about how construction jobs are not rocket science, and she doesn’t see why they have to ship in outsiders to do a job like that when so many locals are unemployed.
Take the history of this poor mining town, and add to it the present recession, and I am beginning to understand why the housekeepers turned on me. I’m beginning to understand that it might indeed have something to do with my husband’s extravagant purchase after all. Their family slaved away for generations in a mine that invariably killed them off and left them penniless, and here come outsiders to make money on a job they feel should have been given to locals, and the outsiders go spending money like it’s water, and it is understandable how it might seem like a slap in the face. Maybe I’m just digging for an excuse for their behavior towards me. Or maybe there really is something to it. I prefer to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I cannot find it within me to feel any harshness towards the people of this town, regardless of their treatment of me, after I have learned all that their families have been through. After all, history is not just something written in a book. It is the true stories of men and women that have lived here, and have left family behind. This is why we should study history. It puts our own experiences in an entirely different perspective.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
Iron Mountain Part One---From Heaven to Hell
When we arrived in Iron Mountain, we were taken back by it’s natural beauty and historic charm. Just to get here, we had to drive past crystal clear mountain streams, ice cold natural springs, picturesque waterfalls, and that’s just the roadside parks! Every neighborhood has it’s own little playground park and baseball field, each one as clean and well-kept as the next. Quaint little “pasty shops” adorn nearly every street corner. The vibrant colors of the changing leaves of fall were icing on the cake. We had left Louisiana right at the peak of a drought-related heat wave, with temperatures soaring to well in the hundreds. But here in Heaven, um err, Iron Mountain, the breeze flowed at a perfect 65 degrees.
When we checked into our hotel, our visit seemed to just keep getting better and better. The room was enormous, clean, and pretty. The blankets were soft, the beds were two queens instead of the usual doubles. The rooms were all equipped with little 21” TVs with built-in VCRs, and in the lobby was a free video rental place with plenty of variety. We thought “oh, how quaint! It’s like we’ve traveled back in time to a simpler better era!” Housekeeping insisted on cleaning our room every day, claiming that the extremely hard water made it necessary, but the ladies were great company. They apologized for the intrusion, and when we assured them that their visit was the highlight of our day, they apologized even more! I was deeply impressed by the hospitality of these “non-Southerners.” And of course, I was even more delighted with their incomprehensible accent. They adored my “tree girls” and said to my son “geeze, what a cute matchbox car you’ve got!”, causing him to roll with laughter and start saying “geeze” a few hundred times a day ad nauseam.
We had been hit pretty hard financially on the way up here, in part because of my husband’s “great luck” in winning an auction on e-Bay for a cargo van which we had to pick up in Missouri on our way here, and in part because our regular van broke down in Arkansas, and we had to shell out several hundred dollars on that unexpected expense. If driving with a family of six from Louisiana to Michigan is expensive, try driving that same distance in two separate vehicles. Needless to say, we were cash-poor during that first week while awaiting that first paycheck.
Luckily, there was a Little Caesar’s Pizza right next door to our hotel, and they sell large one-topping pizzas for five bucks at their drive-thru window. The housekeepers commented on our growing mountain of pizza boxes, and I explained that it seemed the cheapest way to feed a family of six on a tight budget. They inquired whether our company didn’t reimburse our travel expenses to get up here, and we just smiled and explained that the first paycheck pays for our trip up here, the last one pays for our trip home, and since this is just a five week job, the three checks in the middle are all we get to take home. These housekeepers were so friendly, so talkative with us. I thought I had made new friends.
Our hotel stay mysteriously took a turn exactly one week after checking in. And what a 180 turn it was! I will relate the events of that fateful day, and let the reader decide whether any of the events are related. I insist that they can’t be! My husband fears it is a case of cause and effect.
On the night of payday, Wal-Mart marked down all of their big screen TV’s that had been on display to about half price, some even less. They even had one TV that had never been opened marked down to half price, because someone had bought it and returned it the next day, box unopened, with the complaint that it was “too big.” Naturally, all the boys on my husband’s work crew stood around gawking at these TV’s during their break. They all started comparing them, and then one guy said “this one is mine” and the next guy said “not if I buy it first” and it quickly became a game. The boys all figured out who among them was going to buy each TV, and my husband played along with the rest of them. Then the boss brings out the paychecks, and the peer pressure thickens. The first guy goes and grabs his TV, and (I’m sure you can see this coming!) the rest of the guys follow suit! Even my husband! Yes, my husband Julio! Julio, who is always so frugal! This is the guy who orders only two plates when he takes his family of six to a restaurant, orders water for everyone, and asks for extra plates so we can divvy up the food. This is the guy who buys a twenty piece chicken nuggets at McDonald’s and makes all the kids share one drink, because after all, refills are free! This is the guy who encourages me to make homemade laundry detergent so we can save money. He buys the cheapest paper plates, then wants us to reuse them as much as possible. I swear, if he thought he could talk us into reusing toilet paper, he’d give it a shot! He wears the title “Tight Wad” with honor. He has literally made me return things to the store when he thought he could possibly find a better deal elsewhere! This is the guy who has to stop by the Post Office on his way to Lowe’s because there is a ten percent off coupon in the change of address packet. And this is the guy who caves to peer pressure and buys a 55 inch Samsung LED Smart TV. Did I mention that we don’t have satellite at home, not only due to his penny-pinching antics, but also due to our (ok, mostly my) convictions? I mean, seriously, what is he going to watch on this TV? You can only watch Inception and Andrea Bocelli in concert so many times, even on blu-ray, before even they get old.
So here my husband shows up from work on payday with a really big TV, and guess what?--hardly anything left over! Ach! Another week of one-topping cheap pizzas!
Enter the housekeepers. “oh, you guys got one of those too? It looks like everyone with your company got one. Your company must pay really well.” Last words I ever heard from my “new friends.”
That night, while my husband is away at work, the hotel manager pays me a visit and says that we are being “too loud” and that I need to put my children to sleep because we are bothering other guests. I was bewildered. My children were busy working away at home schooling! They had not made a peep all night! The little ones were crawling around on the floor pushing their baby dolls inside of my shoes like they were cars. I thought, hmm, it must be the light bumping of the babies’ knees on the floor that is disturbing someone. Maybe the occasional trip to the bathroom was the culprit, what with footsteps and flushing and all. Nevertheless, I closed their math books, turned off the lights, and obliged the manager by putting us all to bed, regardless of the fact that this would mean we’d all be wide awake the next day while my husband tried to sleep.
The housekeepers come again the next day, but this time they ask us to leave the room for them to clean. I assumed they must have gotten in trouble for taking so long cleaning our room, since they usually chatted up a storm with me and the kids. I obligingly took the kids out to the parking lot and we sat in the van. Nobody even flagged us to let us know they were done. We just sat and sat and sat out there in the cold.
The next night, the manager appeared at our door to complain yet again! Noisy? My children? Where have I been while my kids are making all this racquet? I certainly haven’t heard any of it! This time she spoke rather harshly to me, prefixing it all with “I don’t mean to sound crappy, but…” and then I completely lost the rest of what she said. Suddenly, her Upper Peninsula accent was less charming and more nasal. Kimberly asked me “When she says she doesn’t mean to sound crappy, is she telling the truth?” I didn’t know what to say, except that maybe she always sounds crappy and just can’t help it.
The next day, we were ordered to change rooms. At the drop of a hat, we had to pack all of our things, and lug them downstairs to a smelly room in disrepair at the end of the hall. Luckily, that big TV weighs no more than a feather. Still, it was a tough task to maneuver it around the corners. I couldn’t understand why we were being forced to change rooms, but I only smiled and obliged.
Every day now, we are forced out of our room into the cold parking lot for half an hour or more, so the housekeepers can clean our room. Except that, they don’t make the beds, they don’t take out the trash, and they rarely leave us any fresh towels. I’m not sure what it is that they are doing in there, but it sure isn’t cleaning. Worst of all, it is never at the same time two days in a row. They might wake us up in the middle of the day, or they might run us off in the middle of the night. We never know. Nothing has gone missing, so we can’t really complain. Still, I feel hurt and confused by the strange behavior of the formerly friendly housekeepers. I have actually cried over it. It doesn’t make any sense!
My husband says it’s simple. They saw the TV, became enraged with jealousy, and hate us for having it. I told him nobody could be that shallow. After all, I see other people with nice things all the time, and I don’t hate them for it. I’m not jealous. I don’t even think about it. Sure, I realize that I am not the norm. Chloe, my two year old, has a very hard time understanding why she has to get into our old van, when there is a beautiful Jaguar parked right next to us, and she can reach its handles. She tells me every single trip that we take anywhere “I want to ride in THAT car!” At least my baby has good taste. Except that she also wants to ride every motorcycle she sees. “Mommy, I want that motorcycle! I want to RIDE it!!!” Every motorcycle. Every time. I seriously hope this isn’t some foreshadowing of things to come. But back to the housekeepers, I insist that they are not two years old, and thus cannot be acting out of some jealousy.
Yet only a couple days ago, the hateful manager informed me “We haven’t even been able to rent your last room out, because it was so filthy! It was covered in crumbs and sticky stuff. They are still trying to clean it!” Lies! Lies, I tell you! This is not the first hotel we have stayed at. I am a very well-seasoned traveling mommy. My children are never allowed anything sticky at all in a hotel room. They have no candy, even my oldest drink out of sippy cups to avoid any messes! For that matter, even my husband and I have “sippy cups”, or thermos bottles, that we drink out of, to ensure we NEVER leave a mess! We bring our own linens, so that if any food does get spilled, we are able to wash it, and it not dirty up the hotel’s linens. The children do not EVER have snacks or anything that might make crumbs in the room! In all the years we have been traveling with this job, and all the dozens of hotels we have stayed at, we have NEVER had a complaint of noise or mess! Not only is this the first, but it is a lie! I cannot fathom it at all.
When we checked into our hotel, our visit seemed to just keep getting better and better. The room was enormous, clean, and pretty. The blankets were soft, the beds were two queens instead of the usual doubles. The rooms were all equipped with little 21” TVs with built-in VCRs, and in the lobby was a free video rental place with plenty of variety. We thought “oh, how quaint! It’s like we’ve traveled back in time to a simpler better era!” Housekeeping insisted on cleaning our room every day, claiming that the extremely hard water made it necessary, but the ladies were great company. They apologized for the intrusion, and when we assured them that their visit was the highlight of our day, they apologized even more! I was deeply impressed by the hospitality of these “non-Southerners.” And of course, I was even more delighted with their incomprehensible accent. They adored my “tree girls” and said to my son “geeze, what a cute matchbox car you’ve got!”, causing him to roll with laughter and start saying “geeze” a few hundred times a day ad nauseam.
We had been hit pretty hard financially on the way up here, in part because of my husband’s “great luck” in winning an auction on e-Bay for a cargo van which we had to pick up in Missouri on our way here, and in part because our regular van broke down in Arkansas, and we had to shell out several hundred dollars on that unexpected expense. If driving with a family of six from Louisiana to Michigan is expensive, try driving that same distance in two separate vehicles. Needless to say, we were cash-poor during that first week while awaiting that first paycheck.
Luckily, there was a Little Caesar’s Pizza right next door to our hotel, and they sell large one-topping pizzas for five bucks at their drive-thru window. The housekeepers commented on our growing mountain of pizza boxes, and I explained that it seemed the cheapest way to feed a family of six on a tight budget. They inquired whether our company didn’t reimburse our travel expenses to get up here, and we just smiled and explained that the first paycheck pays for our trip up here, the last one pays for our trip home, and since this is just a five week job, the three checks in the middle are all we get to take home. These housekeepers were so friendly, so talkative with us. I thought I had made new friends.
Our hotel stay mysteriously took a turn exactly one week after checking in. And what a 180 turn it was! I will relate the events of that fateful day, and let the reader decide whether any of the events are related. I insist that they can’t be! My husband fears it is a case of cause and effect.
On the night of payday, Wal-Mart marked down all of their big screen TV’s that had been on display to about half price, some even less. They even had one TV that had never been opened marked down to half price, because someone had bought it and returned it the next day, box unopened, with the complaint that it was “too big.” Naturally, all the boys on my husband’s work crew stood around gawking at these TV’s during their break. They all started comparing them, and then one guy said “this one is mine” and the next guy said “not if I buy it first” and it quickly became a game. The boys all figured out who among them was going to buy each TV, and my husband played along with the rest of them. Then the boss brings out the paychecks, and the peer pressure thickens. The first guy goes and grabs his TV, and (I’m sure you can see this coming!) the rest of the guys follow suit! Even my husband! Yes, my husband Julio! Julio, who is always so frugal! This is the guy who orders only two plates when he takes his family of six to a restaurant, orders water for everyone, and asks for extra plates so we can divvy up the food. This is the guy who buys a twenty piece chicken nuggets at McDonald’s and makes all the kids share one drink, because after all, refills are free! This is the guy who encourages me to make homemade laundry detergent so we can save money. He buys the cheapest paper plates, then wants us to reuse them as much as possible. I swear, if he thought he could talk us into reusing toilet paper, he’d give it a shot! He wears the title “Tight Wad” with honor. He has literally made me return things to the store when he thought he could possibly find a better deal elsewhere! This is the guy who has to stop by the Post Office on his way to Lowe’s because there is a ten percent off coupon in the change of address packet. And this is the guy who caves to peer pressure and buys a 55 inch Samsung LED Smart TV. Did I mention that we don’t have satellite at home, not only due to his penny-pinching antics, but also due to our (ok, mostly my) convictions? I mean, seriously, what is he going to watch on this TV? You can only watch Inception and Andrea Bocelli in concert so many times, even on blu-ray, before even they get old.
So here my husband shows up from work on payday with a really big TV, and guess what?--hardly anything left over! Ach! Another week of one-topping cheap pizzas!
Enter the housekeepers. “oh, you guys got one of those too? It looks like everyone with your company got one. Your company must pay really well.” Last words I ever heard from my “new friends.”
That night, while my husband is away at work, the hotel manager pays me a visit and says that we are being “too loud” and that I need to put my children to sleep because we are bothering other guests. I was bewildered. My children were busy working away at home schooling! They had not made a peep all night! The little ones were crawling around on the floor pushing their baby dolls inside of my shoes like they were cars. I thought, hmm, it must be the light bumping of the babies’ knees on the floor that is disturbing someone. Maybe the occasional trip to the bathroom was the culprit, what with footsteps and flushing and all. Nevertheless, I closed their math books, turned off the lights, and obliged the manager by putting us all to bed, regardless of the fact that this would mean we’d all be wide awake the next day while my husband tried to sleep.
The housekeepers come again the next day, but this time they ask us to leave the room for them to clean. I assumed they must have gotten in trouble for taking so long cleaning our room, since they usually chatted up a storm with me and the kids. I obligingly took the kids out to the parking lot and we sat in the van. Nobody even flagged us to let us know they were done. We just sat and sat and sat out there in the cold.
The next night, the manager appeared at our door to complain yet again! Noisy? My children? Where have I been while my kids are making all this racquet? I certainly haven’t heard any of it! This time she spoke rather harshly to me, prefixing it all with “I don’t mean to sound crappy, but…” and then I completely lost the rest of what she said. Suddenly, her Upper Peninsula accent was less charming and more nasal. Kimberly asked me “When she says she doesn’t mean to sound crappy, is she telling the truth?” I didn’t know what to say, except that maybe she always sounds crappy and just can’t help it.
The next day, we were ordered to change rooms. At the drop of a hat, we had to pack all of our things, and lug them downstairs to a smelly room in disrepair at the end of the hall. Luckily, that big TV weighs no more than a feather. Still, it was a tough task to maneuver it around the corners. I couldn’t understand why we were being forced to change rooms, but I only smiled and obliged.
Every day now, we are forced out of our room into the cold parking lot for half an hour or more, so the housekeepers can clean our room. Except that, they don’t make the beds, they don’t take out the trash, and they rarely leave us any fresh towels. I’m not sure what it is that they are doing in there, but it sure isn’t cleaning. Worst of all, it is never at the same time two days in a row. They might wake us up in the middle of the day, or they might run us off in the middle of the night. We never know. Nothing has gone missing, so we can’t really complain. Still, I feel hurt and confused by the strange behavior of the formerly friendly housekeepers. I have actually cried over it. It doesn’t make any sense!
My husband says it’s simple. They saw the TV, became enraged with jealousy, and hate us for having it. I told him nobody could be that shallow. After all, I see other people with nice things all the time, and I don’t hate them for it. I’m not jealous. I don’t even think about it. Sure, I realize that I am not the norm. Chloe, my two year old, has a very hard time understanding why she has to get into our old van, when there is a beautiful Jaguar parked right next to us, and she can reach its handles. She tells me every single trip that we take anywhere “I want to ride in THAT car!” At least my baby has good taste. Except that she also wants to ride every motorcycle she sees. “Mommy, I want that motorcycle! I want to RIDE it!!!” Every motorcycle. Every time. I seriously hope this isn’t some foreshadowing of things to come. But back to the housekeepers, I insist that they are not two years old, and thus cannot be acting out of some jealousy.
Yet only a couple days ago, the hateful manager informed me “We haven’t even been able to rent your last room out, because it was so filthy! It was covered in crumbs and sticky stuff. They are still trying to clean it!” Lies! Lies, I tell you! This is not the first hotel we have stayed at. I am a very well-seasoned traveling mommy. My children are never allowed anything sticky at all in a hotel room. They have no candy, even my oldest drink out of sippy cups to avoid any messes! For that matter, even my husband and I have “sippy cups”, or thermos bottles, that we drink out of, to ensure we NEVER leave a mess! We bring our own linens, so that if any food does get spilled, we are able to wash it, and it not dirty up the hotel’s linens. The children do not EVER have snacks or anything that might make crumbs in the room! In all the years we have been traveling with this job, and all the dozens of hotels we have stayed at, we have NEVER had a complaint of noise or mess! Not only is this the first, but it is a lie! I cannot fathom it at all.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Gaylord, Michigan
Well, it took us 48 hours to get from our home in Louisiana to our hotel home in Gaylord, Michigan. That's including two nights in hotels on the way. Natalie (4) started announcing every time she saw a billboard for a hotel, and she said she needed to sleep in a "real bed," so we stopped long before I was tired of driving. First we stayed in an Econolodge in northern Arkansas. My husband loved their firm beds, but my arms kept going numb, so I got no sleep. Plus I'd had way too much caffeine, and that causes me to have nightmares. I slept better the next morning in the truck while my husband Julio drove for a couple hours. Other than that, I drove the whole way. The second night we stayed in a Super 8, just barely into Michigan. It was in the process of being remodeled. Our room had already been remodeled, and it was amazing! We paid 49 dollars at both of the hotels, but the difference was like night and day. The Super 8 had a modern feel to it. We even took pictures. Once I figure out how to do it, I'll post the pics on this blog. What I love about hotels in Michigan is that they are all 100% smoking-free. And most have indoor heated pools, but I would have never imagined I needed to bring swimsuits with us on a trip to a town covered in 6 inches of snow.
Driving through Chicago was insane! I drove through on a Friday night, and everyone on the road was driving over 80 mph, and traffic was bumper to bumper. Even though I NEVER speed, I had to drive just as fast, or I would have been a danger. I was relieved to be the biggest truck on the road.
We passed lots of snow on the side of the road, and we've seen icebergs in ponds! I bought lots of snacks at a gas station, and the guy said,... "wait I forgot to charge you for the pops" and I looked down at my kids to see if maybe they had suckers in their hands, but they didn't, so I said "we didn't get any pops" then he pointed at the cokes and I realized that was Yankee-speech for cokes! It's like they speak a whole different language! But so far I haven't run into any rude Yankees. On the contrary, they've all been nice and even helpful. So much for the South having the monopoly on hospitality! They do drive very aggressively. I had to learn to speed just to keep up. I can honestly say I've never driven over 85 miles an hour in heavy traffic before this!
Chloe had her second birthday during the trip up here. On her birthday, she visited Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan! How many babies get to visit five states on their second birthday? So far, in her short life, she has also been to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Washington D.C. 19 states plus the nation's capital, all by her second birthday! 31 to go!
Here in Gaylord, we're staying in a Baymont Inn. It's clean, but it didn't have a fridge or a microwave in the room when we got here. Thankfully, my husband's company complained and the hotel responded by buying little fridges for every room that the company is occupying. Still no microwave. Still, we have avoided eating out. Wal-Mart has surprisingly good salads, subs, and sandwiches in the front near the produce. We buy those, and we keep cereal and Lunchables. We're still hoping the hotel will supply us with a microwave. If not, we'll end up buying one. That will open up a much larger menu for us.
I have been known to boil eggs in hotel coffeepots, but the one here is very small, and I'd have to boil them one at a time! I also know how to make grilled cheese sandwiches on a clothes iron, but I would never do that to a hotel's iron!
My husband works nights remodeling Wal-Marts, so I keep the kids up all night. That way they sleep late in the morning. Then we also take an evening nap just before Daddy goes to work.
I'll add more to this same post later, since we'll be staying here 8 weeks. I write mostly for my own entertainment, but I do apologize to anyone out there reading this who is disappointed by my lack of entertaining skills!
Driving through Chicago was insane! I drove through on a Friday night, and everyone on the road was driving over 80 mph, and traffic was bumper to bumper. Even though I NEVER speed, I had to drive just as fast, or I would have been a danger. I was relieved to be the biggest truck on the road.
We passed lots of snow on the side of the road, and we've seen icebergs in ponds! I bought lots of snacks at a gas station, and the guy said,... "wait I forgot to charge you for the pops" and I looked down at my kids to see if maybe they had suckers in their hands, but they didn't, so I said "we didn't get any pops" then he pointed at the cokes and I realized that was Yankee-speech for cokes! It's like they speak a whole different language! But so far I haven't run into any rude Yankees. On the contrary, they've all been nice and even helpful. So much for the South having the monopoly on hospitality! They do drive very aggressively. I had to learn to speed just to keep up. I can honestly say I've never driven over 85 miles an hour in heavy traffic before this!
Chloe had her second birthday during the trip up here. On her birthday, she visited Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan! How many babies get to visit five states on their second birthday? So far, in her short life, she has also been to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Washington D.C. 19 states plus the nation's capital, all by her second birthday! 31 to go!
Here in Gaylord, we're staying in a Baymont Inn. It's clean, but it didn't have a fridge or a microwave in the room when we got here. Thankfully, my husband's company complained and the hotel responded by buying little fridges for every room that the company is occupying. Still no microwave. Still, we have avoided eating out. Wal-Mart has surprisingly good salads, subs, and sandwiches in the front near the produce. We buy those, and we keep cereal and Lunchables. We're still hoping the hotel will supply us with a microwave. If not, we'll end up buying one. That will open up a much larger menu for us.
I have been known to boil eggs in hotel coffeepots, but the one here is very small, and I'd have to boil them one at a time! I also know how to make grilled cheese sandwiches on a clothes iron, but I would never do that to a hotel's iron!
My husband works nights remodeling Wal-Marts, so I keep the kids up all night. That way they sleep late in the morning. Then we also take an evening nap just before Daddy goes to work.
I'll add more to this same post later, since we'll be staying here 8 weeks. I write mostly for my own entertainment, but I do apologize to anyone out there reading this who is disappointed by my lack of entertaining skills!
Monday, February 7, 2011
Diogenes Academy
In Louisiana, there are two options to legally homeschool -- the home study option, and the home-based private school option. Under the home study option, you have to turn in a portfolio for each of your children to the state each year, showing the progress achieved. You have to submit standardized test scores each year. It's not a lot to ask. Still, it involves Uncle Sam a little more than I care to, given that there is the other option. Under the home-based private school option, you inform the state that you are starting your own school, and that your children are enrolled in it. There is no outside involvement required. I chose this option because the freedom it offers fits our chosen lifestyle a little better.
I read somewhere online that I should send my letter of intent to the Louisiana Board of Education on my school letterhead. First I needed to make a "school letterhead." To do that, I needed to choose a name for my "home-based private school."
As funny as it may seem to those who have never homeschooled, many homeschoolers name their home schools for various reasons. It gives the children a sense of belonging. It lends a feeling of legitimacy, which in turn encourages the parent/teacher to keep better records, and the student to perform at the best of their ability. Having a name allows the parent/teacher to make business cards to show at bookstores so they get the educator discount. It even gives the students (and parents) an easy out when someone asks where the child attends school. Let's face it, explaining our choice to homeschool to complete strangers gets old after a while.
We are second generation homeschoolers. I was homeschooled by my grandmother in the cozy town of Ruston, La, home of LA Tech and a School for the Blind. My well-meaning grandmother had no experience teaching, and in fact had to study hard to learn the materials the night before she taught them to me. Often she would even push the books at me and say "Figure it out, then teach me, so that I know that you understand it." One thing she didn't need books to teach me, she taught me through example--humility. She named our home school "School for the Blind Leading the Blind."
I wanted to chose a name that would be uniquely ours.
We have a heavily biblical course of study. Besides using the ABeka curriculum for all the traditional subjects (ABeka is a curriculum produced by Pensacola Christian College, a Baptist college in Florida), I also use Rod & Staff (a Mennonite curriculum)Spanish reading books (reading and phonics in Spanish language, as my children are bilingual) and Christian Liberty Press books for Bible study. We also use AWANA (a Baptist church-based program) books for Bible verse memorization, as well as the ABeka ABC Bible memory cards (a verse for each letter of the alphabet). With this in mind, we considered choosing a biblical reference for a name. However, we realized that without someone knowing us, a biblical name may seem pretentious. I thought of the passages that command us to pray in private rather than in the public square for others to see. The humility my grandmother taught me won out, and I decided that it is more important to teach my children to LIVE as Christians should rather than simply proclaiming ourselves to be Christians. Such labels have become cliche. But if we live as we should, we don't need to label ourselves. Others can do the labeling.
I asked myself what was so unique about us. I thought of a few things. My husband is from Mexico City, while I'm from Louisiana. Our first two children were born in Texas, the youngest two in Louisiana. We speak Spanish at home, and English with everyone else. When my children began to ask whether they were Mexican or American, I never said half and half -- I said both. They are 100 percent American. They live here, they speak English, they were born here, they know the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem. They learn American history and folktales. There is no question about it. They are 100 percent American. But they are also 100 percent Mexican. They qualify for dual-nationality, and we plan on getting them both US passports and Mexican passports. They speak Spanish, though not as well as English, which is understandable since they lack the same levels of exposure. We plan on spending some time in Mexico sometime soon to reinforce their language skills. They learn Mexican history, they know the saludo a la bandera and the himno nacional. They eat Mexican food almost every day at home. Our oldest even lived in Mexico for the first year of her life. But beyond this dual-national identity, we try to instill something deeper. We don't want our children to have the same ethnocentric world view that is so common today. We believe that ethnocentricity is rapidly becoming outdated. We want our children to be prepared for a world where they may need to travel for a job, or work with people from different cultures. For this reason, we love the old quote from Diogenes: "I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
A second unique quality of our family is our love for travel. We travel mostly out of necessity. My husband works for a company that remodels Wal-Marts across the country. He has remodeled stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Iowa, and Delaware. Before this job, he had worked building homes and hospitals in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, California, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana. When I was still teaching public school, I taught in Texas, California, and Louisiana. It has been our unfortunate experience that when we move, we often are forced to leave behind most of our worldly possessions. We left a king size bed, a wrap-around leather sofa with built in recliners and sofa-bed, top of the line washer and dryer, all only months old, and several handmade (by my husband) wooden furniture pieces when we moved away from California. We didn't have time to sell our things, so we basically just gave everything away. When we moved away from Mexico City, we left brand new appliances and a carpentry shop full of expensive tools. We have even remodeled homes we have bought (twice) only to sell them at tremendous losses when we move. Through all of this, we have learned the very difficult lesson that these material possessions do not truly hold the value that our society generally places on them. Now, we travel with extremely little. We do have our two-story home in Louisiana that we built with our own hands (no hired work whatsoever) where we do have nice things. But we understand that no matter how nice the stuff is, it's still just stuff. It doesn't hurt to leave it behind. What matters is our family. What matters is that our family remain united. Because of this family priority, we travel together and homeschool our children. We travel with so few possessions, that we can easily relate to the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, who slept naked in a barrel. Diogenes kept no worldly possessions (not even clothes!). He once saw a poor boy drinking water from his cupped hands, so he threw away his own wooden bowl. While we don't exactly share Diogenes' conviction for living in poverty, we can often relate!
We believe that our lifestyle of traveling and homeschooling is just as legitimate as the regular family lifestyle of staying home, both parents working, sending their children to public school, and growing local roots. Going against the grain is not necessarily wrong. I dyed my hair with purple streaks last October, and not for Halloween! I like purple. It's not wrong. I meet with a lot of disapproval on account of our traveling and homeschooling lifestyle. But I'm stubborn and just a tad rebellious. Again, another parallel to the life of Diogenes. He often did things that were against the societal norm, while not morally wrong. He liked to eat in the marketplace, which was taboo in his society. He explained that it just so happened that he got hungry there, so he decided to eat. He liked to carry his lantern lit during the daytime. Everyone knows that story. (He claimed he was looking for an honest man.) You can google him, there's a lot of information online.
So I decided to go with the tongue-in-cheek name of "Diogenes Academy." I may be the only one amused, but who cares? It's as good a name as any. Our mascot is a dog carrying a lantern. Another Diogenes reference, of course. I even found a nice Diogenes quote to use across the bottom of our school letterhead: "The foundation of every state is the education of its youth." I'm immensely amused at myself, and I feel clever. So it's a great place to start this adventure of our life.
I read somewhere online that I should send my letter of intent to the Louisiana Board of Education on my school letterhead. First I needed to make a "school letterhead." To do that, I needed to choose a name for my "home-based private school."
As funny as it may seem to those who have never homeschooled, many homeschoolers name their home schools for various reasons. It gives the children a sense of belonging. It lends a feeling of legitimacy, which in turn encourages the parent/teacher to keep better records, and the student to perform at the best of their ability. Having a name allows the parent/teacher to make business cards to show at bookstores so they get the educator discount. It even gives the students (and parents) an easy out when someone asks where the child attends school. Let's face it, explaining our choice to homeschool to complete strangers gets old after a while.
We are second generation homeschoolers. I was homeschooled by my grandmother in the cozy town of Ruston, La, home of LA Tech and a School for the Blind. My well-meaning grandmother had no experience teaching, and in fact had to study hard to learn the materials the night before she taught them to me. Often she would even push the books at me and say "Figure it out, then teach me, so that I know that you understand it." One thing she didn't need books to teach me, she taught me through example--humility. She named our home school "School for the Blind Leading the Blind."
I wanted to chose a name that would be uniquely ours.
We have a heavily biblical course of study. Besides using the ABeka curriculum for all the traditional subjects (ABeka is a curriculum produced by Pensacola Christian College, a Baptist college in Florida), I also use Rod & Staff (a Mennonite curriculum)Spanish reading books (reading and phonics in Spanish language, as my children are bilingual) and Christian Liberty Press books for Bible study. We also use AWANA (a Baptist church-based program) books for Bible verse memorization, as well as the ABeka ABC Bible memory cards (a verse for each letter of the alphabet). With this in mind, we considered choosing a biblical reference for a name. However, we realized that without someone knowing us, a biblical name may seem pretentious. I thought of the passages that command us to pray in private rather than in the public square for others to see. The humility my grandmother taught me won out, and I decided that it is more important to teach my children to LIVE as Christians should rather than simply proclaiming ourselves to be Christians. Such labels have become cliche. But if we live as we should, we don't need to label ourselves. Others can do the labeling.
I asked myself what was so unique about us. I thought of a few things. My husband is from Mexico City, while I'm from Louisiana. Our first two children were born in Texas, the youngest two in Louisiana. We speak Spanish at home, and English with everyone else. When my children began to ask whether they were Mexican or American, I never said half and half -- I said both. They are 100 percent American. They live here, they speak English, they were born here, they know the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem. They learn American history and folktales. There is no question about it. They are 100 percent American. But they are also 100 percent Mexican. They qualify for dual-nationality, and we plan on getting them both US passports and Mexican passports. They speak Spanish, though not as well as English, which is understandable since they lack the same levels of exposure. We plan on spending some time in Mexico sometime soon to reinforce their language skills. They learn Mexican history, they know the saludo a la bandera and the himno nacional. They eat Mexican food almost every day at home. Our oldest even lived in Mexico for the first year of her life. But beyond this dual-national identity, we try to instill something deeper. We don't want our children to have the same ethnocentric world view that is so common today. We believe that ethnocentricity is rapidly becoming outdated. We want our children to be prepared for a world where they may need to travel for a job, or work with people from different cultures. For this reason, we love the old quote from Diogenes: "I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
A second unique quality of our family is our love for travel. We travel mostly out of necessity. My husband works for a company that remodels Wal-Marts across the country. He has remodeled stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Iowa, and Delaware. Before this job, he had worked building homes and hospitals in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, California, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana. When I was still teaching public school, I taught in Texas, California, and Louisiana. It has been our unfortunate experience that when we move, we often are forced to leave behind most of our worldly possessions. We left a king size bed, a wrap-around leather sofa with built in recliners and sofa-bed, top of the line washer and dryer, all only months old, and several handmade (by my husband) wooden furniture pieces when we moved away from California. We didn't have time to sell our things, so we basically just gave everything away. When we moved away from Mexico City, we left brand new appliances and a carpentry shop full of expensive tools. We have even remodeled homes we have bought (twice) only to sell them at tremendous losses when we move. Through all of this, we have learned the very difficult lesson that these material possessions do not truly hold the value that our society generally places on them. Now, we travel with extremely little. We do have our two-story home in Louisiana that we built with our own hands (no hired work whatsoever) where we do have nice things. But we understand that no matter how nice the stuff is, it's still just stuff. It doesn't hurt to leave it behind. What matters is our family. What matters is that our family remain united. Because of this family priority, we travel together and homeschool our children. We travel with so few possessions, that we can easily relate to the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, who slept naked in a barrel. Diogenes kept no worldly possessions (not even clothes!). He once saw a poor boy drinking water from his cupped hands, so he threw away his own wooden bowl. While we don't exactly share Diogenes' conviction for living in poverty, we can often relate!
We believe that our lifestyle of traveling and homeschooling is just as legitimate as the regular family lifestyle of staying home, both parents working, sending their children to public school, and growing local roots. Going against the grain is not necessarily wrong. I dyed my hair with purple streaks last October, and not for Halloween! I like purple. It's not wrong. I meet with a lot of disapproval on account of our traveling and homeschooling lifestyle. But I'm stubborn and just a tad rebellious. Again, another parallel to the life of Diogenes. He often did things that were against the societal norm, while not morally wrong. He liked to eat in the marketplace, which was taboo in his society. He explained that it just so happened that he got hungry there, so he decided to eat. He liked to carry his lantern lit during the daytime. Everyone knows that story. (He claimed he was looking for an honest man.) You can google him, there's a lot of information online.
So I decided to go with the tongue-in-cheek name of "Diogenes Academy." I may be the only one amused, but who cares? It's as good a name as any. Our mascot is a dog carrying a lantern. Another Diogenes reference, of course. I even found a nice Diogenes quote to use across the bottom of our school letterhead: "The foundation of every state is the education of its youth." I'm immensely amused at myself, and I feel clever. So it's a great place to start this adventure of our life.
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