Streetcars Home
The summer of my sixteenth birthday the Atlantic Ocean separated my parents and me. I was granted permission to go on a college study abroad to Vienna. I had finally achieved the independence and freedom all teenagers covet. I was excited for my new, perfect life. I did not realize, however, that with my newfound freedom came a great responsibility for myself. Learning that meant I made some big messes.
The first mess was my third night in Vienna. The sun had set but it was not yet dark. I started heading home. I got on the “D” streetcar where I had gotten off that morning. As the scenery flashing by grew unfamiliar, I had a revelation. I was on the right streetcar, but it was going the wrong way. I decided that it was safer to take the streetcar all around the circle rather to get off in an unknown spot. It was going to take longer than I wanted, but I could not afford to get lost.
I was bent on this plan. So when the streetcar crossed the Danube, I stayed in my seat. When the streetcar halted and all the other passengers got off, I stayed in my seat. When the streetcar stopped and the conductor got out, I stayed in my seat. Reasoning that like the tram that runs through the Hilton hotel in Hawaii, my only experience with public transportation, they were switching drivers and would resume the journey shortly. After several minutes the train hadn’t budged. I decided to get out and try to get home another way. I stood up and pushed the door open button. Nothing happened. I pushed it again. Still nothing. I was locked in the streetcar. My face contorted as I started to sob.
I started pacing up and down the streetcar, too literally like a caged animal. I saw the emergency exit bar. I had been told in orientation that when pulled, it was expensive to replace. I wanted to shop for European fashion, not splurge on streetcar emergency exit bars. I looked at the wooden seat I had just occupied. I could sleep there and be just fine. I reached for my phone to call the adult in responsible for me. Don’t worry about me. I am safe, spending the night in a streetcar. My phone was dead
I had my hand on the emergency exit handle, giving up my dreams of European fashion, when I saw a man in walking his bulldog passing my streetcar. I desperately pounded on the window, bruising my knuckles. Tears streamed down my face. After several pounds, he noticed me. He started laughing, and I laughed with him. We both recognized my pathetic state. He found the conductor who grumbled and turned the streetcar back on. The yellow-gold light lit up and when I pushed it, the door opened.
“Danke” I shouted, rather high pitched, to my knight in shining armor.
I saw two old men with potbellies sitting on a bench. I walked up to them and in a moment of inspiration I used German I didn’t realize I knew, saying, “Sprecken Sie English?” They laughed having just seen my rescue from the streetcar. Of course I was a foreigner. Only a foreigner would get locked in a streetcar. They said “Nein. Deutsch”.
I looked around, utterly lost. The two nearest street signs read “Praha” and “Budapest”. I looked at the various modes of public transportation around me, but near as I could tell, they were going places I didn’t want to go.
I was standing on the curb when I saw a taxi coming. I did what I’d seen done in movies and raised my right hand above my head. Miraculously, he stopped! I hailed my very first taxi. As he slowed I realized it was a blue Volkswagen. I wanted a black Mercedes. My need to get home surpassed my desire for class. I got inside. It smelled like old cigarettes. I habitually told the taxi driver my American address, then, embarrassed, my Viennese one.
He drove. I was relieved to be on my way home, until he turned onto a street where every sign had a curvy woman and the word sex on it. I grew anxious. I did not want to be sold into the sex trade on my third night in Vienna.
We soon turned another corner. The driver followed his GPS and found my house with no problem. I handed him 20 Euros, not waiting for change, and ran inside. I flopped down on my bed, breathed a sigh of relief, and was asleep within seconds.
The Sin of a Writer
The cafés of Europe have always been temples for writers. The Café Procope in Paris was where Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin discussed and wrote about ideas that changed the world. CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien had a writing group they named “The Inklings” that met every Tuesday in The Eagle and Child at Oxford. JK Rowling went The Elephant House in Edinburgh to write the absurdly successful Harry Potter series. Café writers such as these from a special breed who, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh put it “must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.” That is why I, a self-proclaimed café writer, write. I write to force order upon my thoughts and find the mental peace that only comes when my strands of consciousness have been placed in neat rows on the page.
I come to my favorite café in hopes of doing just that. Today the table at which I sit is covered in a crisp, white, ironed tablecloth. The table is small. It can fit two but is really meant for one. The waiter comes and asks if I want an espresso. I tell him yes. I shouldn’t. My parents have taught me to be very selective about what I put in my body: nothing remotely addictive including alcohol, cigarettes, tea and coffee. But I am wary of ordering hot chocolate. Only children ask for hot chocolate. The rest of the world orders a coffee with their personal combination of cream and sugar. The waiter brings me my espresso. It is on a silver tray with a large sugar shaker and a shot glass filled with water. The coffee itself is dark brown with a ring of tan foam around the edge. It sits in a round, porcelain mug that could not hold more than a fourth cup of espresso. I put it next to my journal. Its scent ascends. Coffee smells like heaven.
Time passes. My thoughts no longer bump around my head like children in a bouncy house. They are now lined up in a constant, isolated stream of words. I have several sheets of paper filled with dark blue words written in my messy, boyish handwriting. Only time will tell if they are worth anything to anyone besides me. To me they are worth something. They are a small part of my soul.
I am ready to leave. I have done all I will do today. My mind is overheating, grown tired under the effort. My eyes scan the café searching for my waiter. Then I look at my untouched espresso. I am suddenly self-conscious about how stupid it will be if I pay for a full espresso. I would appear uncultured and young. Both of which I am, but I neither of which I am not ready to admit to. I know I can’t drink it. I stare at my muse, wondering how I can destroy it.
I pick up small glass and fill my mouth. The espresso is cold after sitting. It is also strong. It makes coffee ice cream seem like pure sugar. I nearly spit it out. I stand up, my mouth full of espresso, and I go as quickly as I can to the bathroom. I turn the door handle. I push the door; it doesn’t budge. Some damned person is using the bathroom, probably for a more conventional purpose. I stand in the hall my cheeks full of coffee like a squirrel before winter. I fight back my gag reflex. My stomach contracts. I start counting. I get to twenty-eight before the door is opened by a tall woman. I push my way past her not caring if I offend her but careful not to spurt espresso onto her ivory sweater. I hang my head over the toilet and spit out the coffee in a stream of brown that reminds me of polluted waterfall.
I go back to my table, relieved to be rid of my burden. I lift up my index finger as a sign to the waiter that I would like my check. The waiter won’t bring it until I summon for it. It is part of the respect for the café writer tradition. I pay two Euros for my espresso, really paying for my seat. I am paying to be a café writer.
Don’t Let Your Luck Spill Out
The mountains belong to my father. Not all of them, of course. Just a piece. Twelve acres to be exact. He owns twelve acres of the Uintah Mountains. My father has made his twelve acres a classroom where he can instruct me on everything he finds pertinent. He taught me to hike, fish, do the dishes by hand, play in the mud, ride an ATV, crash an ATV, drive a car, hitch up a trailer, mend a fence, divert a stream, start a campfire, identify Indian Paintbrush and Sticky Geraniums, look at the stars, spot a deer, but best of all, he taught me to ride a horse.
My father loves horses. When I was just a toddler he would put me in front of him on the saddle and we would go for short rides down the drive way and back. I grew up a little bit and developed enough balance to sit on the horse all by myself. We would go for longer rides, sometimes hours. He would ride in front, holding on to my horse’s lead rope. His grasp on the lead rope loosened over time and I started to ride the horse on my own following behind him. My bravery grew and I rode in front. My younger horse would outpace his. I rode on my own for the first time when I was twelve. I promised not to gallop and went on a ride down the dirt road and back, maybe ten minutes. My father watched me out the kitchen window, and chided me as I galloped up the driveway. I was stubborn and refused to listen. I regretted my stubbornness a week later when I fell off galloping up the driveway. But my father was there, as always, to help me up and give me a boost back on. He gave me confidence and I started saddling up by myself and going on longer rides in the mountains up to rockslides, springs, meadows, and overlooks while my father stayed home nursing a bad knee.
My father taught me how to feed a horse by hand. He taught me to spread my hand flat, palm up. He taught me that I had to fight back the instinct to curl my fingers. He taught me to hold my hand out to the horse, offering the treat but not forcing it upon him. He taught me that the horse had to be allowed to choose. That the horse would reach out his neck if it were right. He taught me that the horse would gently but quickly eat off my palm with his lips not his teeth. He taught me how soft a horse’s nuzzle is. He taught me how their whiskers tickle. He taught me and I, in turn, taught others.
If you walk into my father’s closet you will see a large boutique’s worth of slacks and monogrammed dress shirts. You will see 12 white shirts and a wall full of leather dress shoes. But if you look past that, you can also spot three cowboy hats lined up in a row. Brim in the air so the “luck doesn’t fall out”. A closer look will reveal the overuse of the first one. Gray and worn, not quite holding it’s shape, “shapeless and bulged because it had served for a while all the various purposes of a cap” (The Grapes of Wrath). This hat belonged to my father’s father, who rode on a silver saddle. The next one is straw. It smells like sweat. That is my father’s, worn in reining competitions. On the last hat you will notice brown rhinestones. That one is mine: a surprise for my fourteenth birthday. If you are perceptive enough, you’ll notice that it has less luck then the rest. A young teenage girl put it down brim first, spilling her luck out. Her father quickly turned it the correct way. He taught her to save her luck, because there would inevitably come a time when she would need it.
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