Dreams, Moments, Travels
That’s Jerry Roberts on the left, Rob Lazzarotto in middle, and of course my mother-in-law Jutta Engelhardt on the right. The team is preparing onions for the weekend market.
While Rob and Jerry are off tending to other tasks, Jutta is cleaning up the oranges.
Before leaving the Tonopah area, we stop in on Jimmy and Celia at Chile Acres where Jutta lends a hand to bottle-feed a kid. I don’t this German lady ever imagined going to America and spending so much time on farms.
Good, cheap migrant labor isn’t always easy to come by, but when you have a German mother-in-law spending time with you, it’s easy to sell her on working for nothing if you package it as part of the American experience.
Out at Fiber Factory in Mesa, Arizona this evening Jutta and Caroline began the first night of lessons with Shari Monsam to learn how to make a Navajo rug. The first step is learning how to set up a loom, no easy task. This is Jutta’s first-class ever taken with her daughter but won’t be the last as there are another couple of workshops I set up for the mother-in-law to do while on this visit to the United States. The hardest part for Jutta was listening to the instructions in English and learning specific technical weaving terms she wasn’t familiar with.
Yesterday we were at Chile Acres and while the blog entry focused on my mother-in-law, my little cowgirl was out here too and this cute photo of her just had to find its way to my site.
The mother-in-law is in training and today’s exercise involves hiking up North Mountain near where we live. It’s not a long hike but it is a test to see how she feels after scaling this puny mountain. She makes it as high as the trail will let her go and is treated to a wonderfully clear view of the downtown Phoenix skyline. Jutta is in training for an attempt next month to hike into and more importantly, hike out of, the Grand Canyon.
Off the trail and on to another trail of sorts, the horse trail. It was time for another horseback riding lesson. First though we had to get my mother-in-law her first pair of blue jeans – $9 at Walmart. Caroline lent her a pair of boots, Celia supplied the hat and I offered an extra lift to get Jutta back into the saddle.
Left home early this morning to head into downtown Phoenix to the open-air market. The first stop was to stop in and say hi to Jimmy and Celia of Chile Acres, they are down here every Saturday selling eggs. As we walked around we crossed paths with the mayor of Phoenix, Phil Gordon. I stopped him so as to introduce my mother-in-law to our mayor. Jutta was quite surprised because had never met a mayor in all her years in Germany but come to America, and there they are just strolling through the market.
Our next stop was out in Glendale to take Jutta to her first-ever baseball game. And how else could she better appreciate America’s great past time? With a beer and hotdog, that’s how. Our seats were perfect just behind the catcher but between the three of us, we didn’t much have a clue as to what was really going on so after the third inning and enough beer and hotdogs we took off.