Retiring to the Frontier: Part 1

Our friends back in Southern California have said they couldn't see themselves moving out of state to someplace completely new and at first I couldn't, either.  I'd spent all but my first five years in suburban Orange County, California, a childhood, adolescence and young adulthood filled with trips to the beach, to shopping centers (and later malls), a five to fifteen minute drive to whatever I wanted or needed. Orange groves dotted the landscape between postwar housing tracts, and that was all we needed.

Moving to rural inland SoCal in our mid twenties for T's first teaching job took some adjusting. Farther from the beach, from stores and from our friends, it was now a 37 mile drive to college, where I was finishing my degree and teaching credential. but getting to Orange County was a smooth 30 minutes on a good day, not that big a deal. We liked living in our little yellow house on the hill, looking out over the citrus groves, red tailed hawks circling overhead, the manic sounds of coyotes howling and yipping into the evening darkness. We were spoiled for country living.

By the time we were ready to retire, our country life had been spoiled. Horsethief Canyon Ranch and Sycamore Creek housing developments moved in where citrus groves had been. I missed the scent of orange and lemon blossoms on my drive to work, and my 12 minute drive to work became 30 minutes, then 40 minutes, until finally I planned for an hour just in case the freeway had a problem. It took forever just to go grocery shopping, fighting the traffic, finding a parking space, waiting in long lines. Errands took hours. Cars clogged the roads. We were living in the fastest growing area in the country.  Where it had always been hot in inland SoCal, now it was also humid since the new homes had grassy lawns with automatic sprinklers watering nonstop. And I don't do hot and humid very well.

 So we knew it was time to move,  looked around, and found we could afford to live in New Mexico, a place we had visited so often it felt like home. It helped a lot to have Southern California Edison purchase our little home for a project that has never been completed.

Our new 'hood is census designated as "frontier, " which means we're far from hospitals, food sources and jobs, with around three persons per square mile.

This is the first of three posts introducing our frontier and how we adjusted to a different culture, found new people and became much more self reliant.

Happy Day After Christmas!

We are here in Southern California and dropped by In-n-Out for my favorite burger served protein style. My dining partner had hers animal style.

Next to us was a couple visiting from Hawaii who had never eaten at In-n-Out. "It's so crowded," they said. "You should see the one in Barstow," I replied. "Now, that place is insane."

I think there were more people working at In-n-Out than there are living in the village of Guadalupita.

Crab Cooker-Newport Beach, California

Okay, so I don't have a new recipe for you today, but if you're thinking about Thanksgiving and pie, you might want to look at Pie Town's New Mexican Apple Pie recipe for an interesting apple pie guaranteed to keep eaters wondering, "What is that flavor I'm tasting?"

But today is cloudy and we are going outside in a few minutes to string barbed wire. (Bob-wahr is how it's pronounced in parts of eastern New Mexico).  The fence around the dome is done, but a little barbed wire along the top will keep The Angus Boys from extending their heads over the fence to find any delicacies growing there in the future.

The cold and cloudy weather makes me think of the beach, and in particular, the warming goodness of Crab Cooker's clam chowder.

This is not too far from the original site where a 1950's girl remembers the large steaming cauldrons used for cooking crabs and lobsters outside the restaurant. As a kid I never ate there: We were too poor but I didn't know it. Instead, Mom would bring a picnic lunch and we'd eat on the beach with my dad who worked at South Coast Company, a ship builder. That building is still just behind the Crab Cooker, family historians.

Tom and I discovered Crab Cooker's clam chowder during our early married beach days. Sometimes we ate in, but because we were poor college students and then because we had little kids at the beach, we did what surfers have done for decades: I ordered hot soup and bread at the fish market counter and took it back to that same sandy beach where we used to eat lunch with my dad.

Tom likes to fill his clam chowder with the cracker balls the counter man throws into the bag.

I like mine unadulterated, daintily dipping hunks of Crab Cooker's French bread boule into the Manhattan style chowder.

I like the other seafood Crab Cooker offers as well. So did President Richard M. Nixon (R), who wanted to make a reservation to eat there. Crab Cooker doesn't do reservations, and there was usually a long line of patrons snaking out the door waiting for a table. It is said that when The President's advance staff was told the President would have to wait in line like everyone else, an incredulous staffer asked, "What kind of place do you run here?"  "This is a democracy," the staffer was informed. Hell, baby sister, even John Wayne had to wait in line.

So that's your beach lore for today, folks. Have a great weekend and Eat Lots of Soup!

Experiencing Fall in All Its Glory

While we were teaching we never had the chance to experience fall in other places besides SoCal. In Southern California fall is hot. Kids wear new fall school clothes even though it's 90 degrees. By afternoon, faces red and sweaty, they desperately tug at new sweaters, wishing they hadn't been slaves to fashion. Walking home in those scratchy new clothes is an ordeal, finally ended at home where fall fashions are flung into a corner and replaced with tank top, shorts, and flip flops. Ahhhhh!!! That's more like it!


 Northern Michigan was cool and drizzly, the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula shrouded in fog. We crossed into the unknown. (Not really, since we had been there before in the summertime, but I like the way the previous sentence sounds.)

 Visiting Northern Michigan and its Upper Peninsula in the fall has been a treat. We couldn't get enough of the reds, oranges, yellows, browns, greens of the changing leaves. I haven't seen New England's leaves but I'll bet the U.P. is a contender in the leaf color contest.

This isn't peak leaf looking season. That's in a couple of weeks when I bet it's even more spectacular.

Even piles of leaves in our campground are awesome.

On to Wisconsin tomorrow. Special Lawbreaker Edition: Dillinger