Guess Who?

By Nahide Craig

Over the last 12 years reading and hearing about his policies I knew in my heart he was no good for the country.  He was a master mind of manipulating the poor and the uneducated into religious promises and gifts just to get their votes while he and his family benefitting millions of dollars from bribery and nepotism. Last summer I saw myself the changes he brought to the country and I was appalled. Was all the new construction, roads, bridges, tunnels and roads considered progress? Was bringing extreme conservatism through pushing religiousness and extreme measures to a country with constitution requires secularism considered a progress? Was there a secret motive behind all of these for his own political future?

Hearing his speeches I can see that he can be convincing, sympathetic and even emotionally close to people. This was his only gift. Even his lies sounded true and sincere as if they are coming from his heart and for the benefit of the country. Of course the biggest beneficiary was himself and his closest family so far.

Then he became more autocratic and wanting to change the constitution to his liking and jailing the journalist, closing TV stations and newspapers. When he became paranoid and started to fire the judges, and sending high ranking military commanders to jail. And finally some financial scandals related to his cabinet members and then to his son became public. Thanks to the foreign press to make these issues open in public through the news and the media, because news in local media came to paralyzing halt with most prominent authors being in the jail.

When reading this one can guess at least half a dozen government heads. I guess I will not reveal it for amusement and for guessing game.

On the Road to Vermont

By Nahide Craig

Mid August 1964: After a very long and bumpy flight from Istanbul here I am in the USA. I landed in New York and yet with another flight I am in Hartford Conn. My friend met me at the airport and we started to drive to Vermont to his parent’s summer home. The 4 lane highway had a heavy traffic even in this late night and incoming lights on the curvy highway looked like a four strand diamond necklace. Traffic was orderly and the roads were impressive. After an hour or so we were in the narrower country roads, so dark and also beautiful.

Even the darkness of the midnight one can discern on this two lane road the land forms, orderly fences signs for entering and exiting different counties and states. After three hours of drive, we were almost in middle of the nowhere, he suddenly stopped at the road side by an unknown structure to me. I asked him why are we stopping and what this thing is. He said “a Coca Cola machine! Aren’t we thirsty”? I started feeling like I was really in America.

Now, after almost a half a century later, I am driving with my husband from Hartford to Vermont to visit my friend who picked me up in Hartford. What I see now in this four lane highway is a traffic jam; what happened to the four strand diamond necklace? The road to Vermont is still bucolic, beautiful, and long. The coke machines on the road now have many more beverages also beef jerky and even ice – cream bars. I am sure I am in America!!

If Only

By Edna Coulson Hall

Even now, as a far removed elder of my rural Ohio home-based family, I enjoy a reputation that tinges on myth. I was the one who left, the one who sallied forth in the midst of a fierce blizzard to see what it was that lay south of the Ohio River and west of Cincinnati.

My journey began in January 1964: South to New Orleans where the original plan for a three-day stopover stretched to three weeks. Finally heavy rains and a flattened wallet convinced me to turn westward.

Texas was a half week crossing. Next came New Mexico. I hardly blinked. In Arizona I saw my first road runner, my first desert palm. I stopped at a roadside trading post just east of the California border.

Inside I was drawn to a table piled high with rugs I thought of as Navajo despite being told I was in Yuma Indian Territory, I checked my not-so-ready cash. I could sleep in a motel with abundant delayed maintenance and call a sleeve of soda crackers and jar of off brand peanut butter dinner or I could buy a rug. The store owner hovered.

“Pretty one you got there. All made local. No two alike. You won’t be sorry. Good price. Let me lay it out for you.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t have the money. Really. I’m pretty much broke.”

“Hell, Little Sister, you need a job? I can help you with that.”

Little Sister? Was that Arizonian for Miss? And a job? What was the man talking about? I looked around. I was the only customer in sight. Clearly the man, Big Brother(?) didn’t need help. I stepped backward toward the door. “Just a sec,” he said and disappeared behind a burlap hung doorway.

In my attempt to escape I knocked against a row of little papoose style dolls and was trying to set them straight again when the man reappeared waving a torn scrap of yellow tablet paper. “Lookee here,” he crowed. “I gotcha a job interview with Colonel Oakley himself at the First National downtown.”

I held a papoose in each hand and stared at him. Appointment? Oakley himself? Where? “Ah, where?” I said.

“Straight on down the road to Main. You can’t miss it.”

He took the dolls from me and set them on the counter and clapped his hands together. “Best get a quick move on,” he said. “I told Col. Bob you’d be there in ten minutes.”

I hardly remember the rest, but the following Monday I was officially made Secretary to Col. Robert Oakley, grandson to the famous Annie-Sure-Shot Oakley, Trust Officer of the First National Bank of Arizona, Yuma Branch. I worked there until September when I had saved enough to resume my travels. I eventually settled in San Francisco.

People still ask how I had the nerve to make that long, long trip all alone. My question went to my mother. “How could you let me go that awful blizzardy day? Didn’t you think about hiring a couple of people to kidnap me and haul me off to some obscure location where wayward teens were reprogrammed via Tough Love.”

Mom said, “Because I thought if I asked you to stay, you would say no to me and leave anyway, and that would break my heart.”

If Only

By Janet Clark

If only I hadn’t been standing in line, buying those two books I was certain you’d enjoy. Laughing with work friends — bragging about your most recent adventure. I don’t understand how I could have been feeling such joy when I should have been with you to cheer you on as you made the journey. I should have been at your side to whisper words of encouragement. I should have been there to help you cross over — from this life into the next. Such regret. If only I had been with you — to hold your hand when you died.