<<Prev Next>>
The Tellin' Takes Me Home
Remembering the Canyon Country...#3
By Jim Stiles
By Jim Stiles
The One & Only TOOTS McDOUGALD
TOOTS at "Turnbow Cabin"
It's
called "Wolfe Ranch" these days, named after the original settler of
this barren piece of ground in Arches National Park. But for Toots, it
was always "Turnbow Cabin," named for her step-dad, Marv Turnbow. Toots
spent summers here when she was a littl girl.
She was my neighbor in Moab for many years and it is hard to believe she's been gone for a decade.
I miss that gravelly voice.
She
was born Marilee McDougald, but her Uncle Ab always called her his
"little Tootsie" and the name stuck. Seven decades later she was still
listed as "Toots" in the Moab phone directory. Whether Time sweetened
Toots' memories or she just loved Life that much, only she can say for
sure. But at 80, she could find little fault with her childhood.
"It
was wonderful. We went on hikes and picnics and chicken fries. We had
great watermelon busts; in fact, a man named Ollie Reardon planted a
field of watermelons, just for us kids to steal. He said we could steal
from that patch all we wanted, if we left his other patch
alone...Everything was so free and easy. No pressures. No traffic. We
didn't know anything about drugs. We thought we were pretty wild if we
got a sip of homemade beer. My father's friend was a bootlegger...I'd
tell you who it is, but they've still got family here."
Hardly
anyone in Moab owned a new car in 1940. The Depression made sure of
that. Old cars and trucks limped along, held together with baling wire
(Duct tape had not been invented) and horses still provided conveyance
for many. Toots depended on her feet to get her just about anywhere her
heart desired. Hummers and SUVs and ATVs and ORVs and even Jeep 4WDS
were beyond the realm of Toots' imagination.
Toots
McDougald's summer nights were unfettered by credit card debt and
staggering mortgage payments or time-share condo schemes. Or late night
indigestion from a Big Mac, or a Whopper, or a Soft Taco Supreme, or a
Lean Cusine frozen dinner. Her evenings were spent with Dick, watching
the twilight fall over their little town, listening to the croaking and
humming of frogs in Mill Creek or the rustle of a summer breeze through
the towering branches of a cottonwood tree and believing that it would
be this way forever. Her life was a quiet adventure in the best sense
of the word and the experience didn't cost her a penny extra. She was
blissfully ignorant of a future she would live to see and it would all
happen within the span of her remarkable life.
From Brave New West
<<Prev Next>>