Other states, other lives, other souls

My daughter invited me to visit her for a week in Helena, MT, in mid-February. The purpose was to help her and her husband to convert his rental house into a second Airbnb.  It sounded like fun, as it was a particularly boring time in Minneapolis, and I also love designing interior spaces that are both practical and with an interesting aesthetic.  I have stayed in many, many Airbnb’s in the US and abroad.  I love the one-offiness of them, in contrast to the sameness of many hotels and motels.  Each one has story to tell: the lonely senior widow in a big house in Arkansas; the former sheep farmers in Isles of Scilly; the New Orleans Mardi Gras crew member and her deep-sea submarine engineer husband; the Albanian immigrant who nearly poisoned us with an unrepaired sewer gas leak in Montreal.

This Airbnb-to-be is situated on a splendid hilly lot looking north to the mountains outside of Helena. It will be a great whole house option, but first it needed some furniture, a style makeover, better lighting, and some personality.

By the end of 9 days, we had mostly accomplished my daughter’s goals for the week: establishing the plan, sourcing the materials, and giving her a sense of momentum’ as she dances between careers of massage therapist, herbalist, urban farmer, elementary school mom, and imminent mother-to-be.  However, there were a few bumps in the road that week that caused me to entitle this post “Unbroken”.

While listening to the local NPR station enroute to Home Depot for outlet and switch covers, I heard the classical music hour host introduce a piano piece by a Navaho composer called “Unbroken”.  It was written by Connor Chee to honor the 29 Navajo code talkers used during WWII to send encrypted messages to and from the front, based on their oral Navajo language.  The CIA claims that it was the only secret code never to have been broken: hence Unbroken. You can hear it through the link. It is quite beautiful.

In my case it exemplified what can happen when one plans one’s own travel. Those of you who are previous blog readers know that one goal of this travel blog is to encourage people to plan their own travel. Self-planned travel can result in many more unique experiences that make memories that are fonder and deeper than simply crossing off items on a bucket list and signing up for a group.  Self-planned travel, however, can also include some tense or frustrating moments that require some serious problem solving.  For me, that is part of its charm.  I enjoy overcoming these obstacles, and so far, they have never spoiled a trip.

This trip was no different.  I am a bit of an absent-minded professor when it comes to keeping track of my possessions. Last February in the Minneapolis airport on the way to Merida, Mexico, I realized that I had left my mobile in the car when I got dropped off.  Too late to retrieve it, I was panicked at the thought of landing in a Spanish-speaking country without a phone–needing to reach my daughter when I got there, ordering an Uber, etc., etc.  But that’s a story for another day.

Part one: On the second day in Helena, I managed to lose my phone as I disembarked from my daughter’s car and entered her house.  I figured that it could only be one of two places: It was either hidden somewhere in her car, after falling out of my ski jacket pocket; or it was somewhere out in the snow between her parked car and the gate into her yard.  After a thorough search, it was neither of those places.  Since her house is in a heavily trafficked retail area, I decided that someone must have picked it up.  It was locked by now, so they wouldn’t be able to use it except for emergency calls.  Many of you may have already used the “Find My Phone” app by now with mixed results.  I had never used it and it was a lone Android phone in a Helena Apple family. I gave up after futilely trying to find a Find My Phone website for Androids on my daughter’s Macbook.  But my daughter, a chip off the old maternal block, had not given up.  She did find a Google version of Find My Phone on her MacBook and the app proceeded to map my phone to a house about a mile away.  It also allowed me to lock it and send a message. “Please return my phone”-with her phone number for the emergency call.

Her husband Adam and I took off in his truck for the address.  A note to those unfamiliar with Helena: Despite it being the capital of a very large state, it is a town of under 40,000 people.  It does not have a city vibe.  People often leave their cars unlocked and the guns that are owned by a great number of people are used for hunting.  I have only seen one man with a holstered pistol on the street. He was waiting in line for his morning latte in Starbucks.

We arrived at the designated small house.  We knocked at the front door and an old woman wearing a robe and an oxygen tank answered.  Although we were unknown to her, she listened while we explained that we were looking for our lost phone, shown at her address. She denied knowing anything and invited us to come back when her daughter “came home from work.”   We asked if there was another rental unit in the house and she said yes. “Go round the back and it is in the basement.”

Adam said he wasn’t sure if we were acting out a scene from Silence of the Lambs or a British detective show.  The cement stairs to the basement apartment were very creepy, with bits of dog poop here and there. Adam knocked and we waited a while listening to the sounds of angry barking dogs.  Finally the door opening a crack and the youngish woman called out to a second unseen person “It’s two old people.” Adam was amused and miffed, as he is only 46, but sports white hair and a white goatee.  We told her about the lost phone and she called out to a sleeping teen. “Did you pick up a phone last night?” “No!”, called out the disturbed sleeper.  “Are you sure?” “NO!”.  We thanked her and trudged back up to the front of the house toward the truck—discouraged.  As we were about to get into the vehicle, my daughter called and said she had just gotten the emergency call from my number, had her on hold, and she lived at the mapped address at the front of the house! Back we went to the front door, which opened and a young woman was holding up my phone with a smile on her face.  She claimed she was watching TV and couldn’t hear the phone making the 5-minute alarm noise triggered by the Find My Phone app.  Whatever!!  Problem solved and no one got hurt. It was an episode of a British detective show after all.

Part two: I had intended to return to Minneapolis after seven days, but the heavily hyped “snowmageddan” storm starting that day caused me to postpone my flight two days.  Since the two kids who alternate between houses and ex-spouses every week were returning that Wednesday night, I decided to rent a room at the Howard Johnson for the last two nights, to prevent overcrowding. Ho Jo’s is more than a mile away, and the temperature was dropping, so my daughter lent me her very old Subaru Outback (the farm car) to get back and forth.  Of course I forgot my phone charger at their house, but I figured it would last me until the morning.   The temperature dropped to -11 deg Wednesday night. Everybody in town hunkered down.  To my shock and surprise, the Subaru would not start the next day.  That has not happened to me for decades.   I decided to call a cab to get to their house. My phone had also dropped dangerously low in battery power, so I prioritized the cab call first.  I rang the desk clerk to ask for a cab company number and she threw me a business card and ran back to her office, where she was in a multi-day training on new company software.  The Howard Johnson’s, like the Subaru, was also past its expiration date since I last stayed there pre-pandemic.  I called the cab number and, of course, they were no longer in business.  I jumped on my remaining phone time to Google any other taxis in Helena. There was a statewide car service. When I reached someone and told him my tale of woe, the driver agreed to come get me, despite the frigid conditions.  Only $20 to go 1.5 miles. He would only take cash. I didn’t have any, but I spied an ATM machine near the front desk. For a tolerable usury fee, I was ready to proceed with my day.  Even though the car was broken, I was not.