18-July-99 Joan's party

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The ostensible reason for this whole trip was that my mother was throwing herself a party in honor of her 80th birthday. Her birthday was back in May, but she waited until the summer so people like Arlene and Luanna who teach school could come.

The first thing we did after breakfast was to head about ten miles up I-15 to the Clothes Horse at the Fort Hall Shoshone-Bannock reservation. The first time we came to Pocatello it was the Fort Hall Trading Post. I'll often show people some of the Shoshone beadwork that I have and tell them, “the next town from where my mother lives isn't a town, it's an Indian reservation.”

There's a high-stakes bingo hall near the store, and a little tribal museum across the street, but for us the trading post is the attraction. The place smells wonderful with woodsmoke tanned leather and has a huge display of beadwork on sale. This time there were handbills posted saying “We're currently buying only purses, handbags, and moccasins. Please no yellows, oranges, or reds.” It's really a trading post.

Besides the authentic local handicrafts and a stock of beads and beading supplies there's a shelf of books on native American subjects (there were lots and lots of copies of Deerskin to Buckskin, about traditional tanning methods), a full line of tacky Idaho souvenirs including frisbees made to look like buffalo chips and, true to the store's name, a good selection of western clothing. I bought a T-shirt for this year's powwow, even though it's not until August, and rummaged through a display of marked down beaded belt buckles and bought this one:

My mom's party was wonderful. There was good buffet food, lots of people (and my mom tried to introduce me to all of them), and LIVE MUSIC with folk dancing. My mom had brought in a three piece klezmer band (clarinet, accordion, and drums) and asked some friends to lead folk dancing. They taught zemer atik, mayim, tzadik k'tamar, and a bunch of others. If you've ever done folk dancing you know it's wonderful to have live musicians to work with instead of just recordings -- you can go over one section of the dance slowly as many times as you want, and so on, without fooling with a tape or scratching a record. The band was really good natured about it, too. When they played Tumbalalaika I started singing, and then got up on stage and asked if they wanted a vocalist. After I completely lost the key on the high part they transposed it down for me, and when I didn't know the words to the next verse they said “Just sing, they don't know the words anyway.” Of course they didn't! There were several people from the miniscule Pocatello Jewish community, but many more from the Unitarian-Universalists and just friends from the city and people who had been close to my mother when they were students at Idaho State U and she was working in the library.

One of the items on the buffet table was a Croatian roasted pimento spread called something like ajahr. If you're in a middle eastern food store and see a jar of something red with an aj at the front of its name and an r at the end, give serious consideration to getting it -- it was delicious.

Did I say I loved the dancing? I even missed dessert because of dancing so much. But I'd give up dessert any time for Israeli folk dancing.

After the party my mom, Arlene, and I went over to Sarah's garden. That's a little rose garden at one end of the Portneuf Greenway, a planned belt of park along the Portneuf River which my mom started several years ago as a memorial for my sister who died at the age of 45. There are roses and petunias, two trellises and a bench. At the beginning there were just a few roses among lots of weeds, but by now the city has put in and maintained a lawn around the garden, and a person living in an adjacent house has put in lots more flowers behind the area my mother tends, and it's a beautiful little park. A couple of years ago someone left a notebook there for comments, and people who used the park would write things like “I don't know who you were, Sarah, but thanks for letting me enjoy your garden”. My mom and her friends do most of the gardening, but the city mows the grass around it and put in a sprinkler system.

My mom and I stained the bench and trellises about three years ago

Looking the other way from the bench

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