Vegetables, flat tires and Gov. Sarah Palin

Let this be a stream of conscious thoughts this morning. While waiting for my computer to boot up, I looked at the book next to me and remembered my niece Laura's query the other night, "Have you finished reading Animal, Vegetable Miracle?"

I had to tell her no, that I was reading two books at the time and had not had time to pick up either for several weeks. My vegetables and animals have kept me too busy. I wish I could talk about miracles----but then, maybe I can.

Maybe I can talk about the miracles of dirt, helped along by dirty hands, shovels and garden hoses. Those would be vegetables coming on strong, and a meal last night where I could tell Bill, "The tomatoes came from the garden. So did the cucumbers, and the onion, and the carrots and the beans."

The ham slice, smothered in spicy honey barbecue sauce, came from Costco and the fresh-baked cornbread from Marie Callender mix (just add water and bake for one half hour at 375 degrees) via Costco.

To which, Bill offered, "The honey came from the garden."

And, he's right. Chad Moore's honey bees spend an awfully lot of time over here doing what bees do. Every year, the Taylors bring us a big jug of that honey, and we enjoyed it on our cornbread last night.

There is a miracle involved, I believe, every time we pick something from the garden and enjoy its beauty or its flavor. The great satisfaction is knowing we helped in that miracle.

Now, the stream moves on to flat tires. I couldn't get too excited about the speeches on last night's convention coverage so I turned off the TV and climbed on my bike. Halfway out the driveway I realized the back tire was a bit low. So, I took it back to the air compressor and pumped in some air.

These days my daughter's preparation for a goal and her climb up Mount Rainier continue to inspire me. I'm 61, and there's no reason I can't stay in shape like she does. So, that bike ride felt good, and the evening was perfect.

While passing Gary Finney's field just north of our farm, I noticed that our cat Festus has broadened his horizons. Good ol' Festus was sitting out there, waiting and watching for an unsuspecting mouse to appear.

It was a quiet ride on this first night after the first day of school in Bonner County. I figured everyone must have crashed inside their homes after the big day, cuz only one rig passed me all the way down South Center Valley Road.

Passing Eva Whitehead's farm, I chuckled to myself about the moment this time last year when I almost wiped out my former geometry teacher and colleague with my pink bike while she was out for a walk and I was quickly pedaling home after dark.

Eva still laughs about her near-death experience.

I turned right on Center Valley Road and decided to ride to its end. That's when I thought about Marilyn (her father was Sandpoint's mayor, Floyd Gray) and Adrian Lane who used to live down there. For years they've lived in Alaska, and in at least one newspaper article over the past few days, I've seen Adrian's name listed as one of Chuck Heath's best friends.

I'll explain more about that later because I'm still on my bike headed east, and I'm thinking to myself that this trip may turn out uneventful except for the deer I see looking back at me from Cathy Russell's big hay field. Almost to Claire Hansen's place, I see three more deer on the right, heading for the road.

If I pedal fast enough, maybe I can meet them and say hello, I think to myself. The deer watch me speed up their way, do an about-face and bound back into the nearby woods. Just then, I hear it: the sound that's not so secret, especially in the great outdoors on a bicycle---air escaping my back bike tire.

It went flat fast.

The uneventful trip instantly turned into a story---almost a two-mile walk home, lugging a pink bike beside me. I determined that if anyone came by to offer me and my bike a ride, I'd say no. This was an opportunity to see both Center Valley and South Center Valley Roads with added perspective, even if I might arrive home in the dark.

Along the way, I saw more deer looking back at me far across fields in the dusk. I noticed that the nice man who brought me two sacks of zucchini right around this time last year is apparently moving. Two trailers sat in his yard, and a garage door was open, showing a huge pile of boxes. Could be their Arkansas roots have drawn them away from another wonderful North Idaho winter.

Later, Lucy barked at me. Lucy, an adorable black Labrador, belongs to Janice and Mark Johnson. I didn't worry about Lucy coming out to eat me because she has an invisible boundary around her yard, and she does not pass over. Janice heard me talking to Lucy. We never saw each other, just talked. When I told her it was just Marianne with a flat bike tire, she said, "Well, at least it's not pitch dark."

I arrived home seconds before pitch dark, and told Bill of my adventure. While checking my email, I discovered another phenomenon: a trend toward people around the country who have ties to Sandpoint wondering about Chuck Heath and his daughter Gov. Sarah Palin.

In one case, a former teacher here named Bob Pegg (now of Tacoma) read a column I wrote about Mona Heath on http://www.riverjournal.com/ and wanted to know if Adrian Lane's good friend Chuck Heath and Mona Heath were related.

He had taught Mona in the '70s when she was a Sandpoint Junior High student and thought of her as very pleasant. I taught her later along with her brother Kirk, and last spring Mona, now a teacher herself, asked me to come to her classroom in Trout Creek, Montana.

That day I asked her if she was related to Chuck Heath. She said no. Mona was of the Heaths south of the bridge, while Chuck Heath grew up in Hope.

Later, David Jones (the cream pie-eating champion of the 1973 Ponderette Pie Debacle, which was chronicled in my book Lessons with Love) sent me a note from Roseburg, Ore. He couldn't find any pictures of Chuck Heath in his yearbooks, and, of course, he was curious for some kind of connection.

I informed David that Chuck graduated in 1956, so he probably wasn't going to find him in the Monticolas (pinus monticolas, i.e., "white pine) of the '70s.

So, the Sarah sensation and her Sandpoint connection and curiosity live on.

At the "old geezer" SHS faculty party the other night, some of the older geezers, Don Albertson and Bill Adams, who went to high school with and taught with Chuck Heath, respectively, told this younger old geezer that Chuck had just one sister and that she was not the Janice Heath (daughter of Walt) who once lived in our old place on Great Northern Road and married Don Burnett (son of Myrtle and Art). Still, a different family.

I wonder if Chuck ever gave a thought that he would be cast into the public limelight after escaping little ol' podunk Sandpoint for the wilderness of Alaska.

Well, my stream of crazy thoughts and miracles is narrowing, and Bob, the electrician, is here, so I'd better step back into today's reality and say good morning to Bob.

Happy Wednesday, and bon appetite from the Garden of Love. And, yes, Laura, I read two more pages this morning. Oops, one more thing: Laura, do you know how to get kids to eat veggies? One of my other blogger friends wants to know.