Category: Uncategorized

Sometimes my kids surprise me in ways that make my heart smile. My son Mateo is spending the week in Mexico City. He has joined a long time friend there to just play. A couple of weeks ago he shared with me about this upcoming journey. This opened up conversation about the six weeks I spent in Mexico, during the winter of 1970, on an Interterm anthropology course taught by one of the finest teachers I ever had—Bob Rhodes. It was the third week of the class when Professor Rhodes called all 30 of us together and said, “Ok, you…

My soul has finally caught up with my body. There is nothing like a 3000 mile, 13 day road trip,to test a 75 year old body. I got to see a number of sites that I had only heard about. The Salton Sea in California should not be there… but it is—all 30 miles of it. Google it up and discover a strange man-made anomaly that was created 100+ years ago by accident. This week I read an article that a 560 billion dollar lithium deposit has been discovered there under the lake—the debates begin. It’s well worth a side…

In 1964 I became an indentured servant at the family business—Cleaver Carpet. I became the “assistant” to both the cleaning crew and the installers. Being the owner’s kid gave me very little perks, other than that I got to learn a whole lot about how people live—for $1.15 and hour. When we were working at a home, the men who actually earned their living would often bring their portable radio. There were two AM music stations in Pueblo—KDZA, which was the classic Top Fifty pop station, and KPUB which was REAL country. Guess which one the guys made me listen…

In 1958 my parents loaded up their 1957 Buick station wagon and pulled a 14–ft. Aljo travel trailer on the first of many road trip adventures with our family. The destination was the great Northwest. My dad, who was born in Bellingham, Washington, was like a salmon who had to migrate to the place of his birth. I was nine years old and I had never seen the ocean. I will never forget our first experience at some state park in Oregon, where I was introduced to tidal pools. They teamed with starfish, crabs, little fish and about anything else…

I have been thinking about the words nice and kind for the last 45 years. It all started when a man who was a member at Central Christian Church in Pueblo, sported a bumper sticker that said—“Niceness is kind of Nice”. It’s a decent thought on first blush, but the problem I had with this display, was that guy was one of the meanest men I’ve ever met in church. Since that time in the early 80’s I push back from the word nice. “Oh she is so nice, they are nice, that was nice, etc.”. I decided after this…

The pandemic of 2020 has been part of our history for five years. Travel was an integral part of my life until then. My dad Bill died 25 years ago today. To say I was privileged is an understatement. He made sure that we saw the world. By the time I was 18, I had been to 24 states and 14 countries. I had planned, by the time I hit 75, to have visited all 50 states and all the continents. Then came Covid. Worse, the next year Covid caught me and nearly took me out. For the last three…

The inpouring of memories that keep coming this time of year—keep it up! I was listening to some friends talking about the various things their families shared, that only seemed to come at Christmas. My mom was half Swedish. Her father was raised on a farm near Essex, Iowa, by immigrant parents who came to the US to farm. She would often tell stories of a wooden Christmas tree that would be decorated with candles that were lit on Christmas Eve. My kid mind wondered how they never burned the house down. Occasionally, she would share a song in Swedish…

Last night, a friend asked me “Did your mom put baking soda in her peanut brittle as she was stirring it”? My answer was “No, Birdie made our peanut brittle”. It will be 66 years ago tomorrow—December 22nd, that Birdie came into our familie’s life. It was a Monday morning and my dad had written on the kitchen chalk board “Congratulations—You have a brand new baby brother—Donald Paul Pumphrey”. I was met in the kitchen by a woman I had been introduced to a couple of weeks before. Her name was Georgianna Bird, she went by Birdie. She became our…

One of the many joys of growing up in Belmont, was that a 10 year old Mark could walk four blocks to the corner of Yorktown and Horseshoe, and ride a bus all the way downtown, for a dime. I suspect I did this dozens of times, as the YMCA was on the corner of 8th and Main, just over the 8th Street bridge. Tonight I am remembering one particular outing that was prompted by the song “Silver Bells”. It was probably the first Saturday of Christmas break and I decided to go ‘downtown’ by myself. It was an overcast…

This is the year that we sold our fake tree, tons of lights, assorted snow men and whatever we could pass off as no longer being used. It’s “Christmas light” at the Pumphreys. Our house is now adorned with a small nativity, an18 inch fake tree, an ornament hanger that has seven of our most beautiful orbs and the tree featured in the photo. I grew up in a home that was iconic in it Christmas warmth. Of course, living in a large Cape Cod style home where knotty pine and a fireplace framed every scene, helped. My parents had…