Lamont's new old Volvo station wagon.

Lamont came over Sunday to take me to the grocery store and to show the new old Volvo station wagon to me. He told me he parked here in particular because he knew I would want to take a few pictures of the car, so he figured the fall foliage should be in the photos, too.


The car came with that Thule pod and the rack! Wow! How cool! Well, he said that maybe all of the decals made him look more like a soccer mom than ever. Somehow I don't think anyone's going to mistake my son for that, just his car. Ha, ha.


One last photo to share with you. It better shows the actual color of the car. He's now the third owner of this vehicle, which I think is super.

Now for the story of why Lamont has a new old Volvo station wagon. (After the story, see photos of the old old Volvo station wagon.)

For the past few years, Lamont has enjoyed driving a 1989 Volvo station wagon, when he didn't walk to wherever he was going. He bought it from Kailey, Leland's girlfriend. The Saturday night before Halloween, three weeks ago today, he drove along a shadowy, curved road on the way home from a friend's apartment--I think it is a two-lane road, too. In front of him, a Ford Econoline van stopped all of a sudden. He stopped. It started again. He started again, wondering what was going on. The van stopped again; he stopped again. Just as he was about to blow his horn, the van's driver put it into reverse and rammed the front end of his Volvo. Alarmed, he locked the doors and rolled up his windows. Who would get out of the van? Turned out it was a woman who admitted that she was trying to find somewhere and thought she'd driven past it, so she backed up! Ruined his car is what she did. Totaled his car is what she did, $3000 to fix it, which of course didn't make any sense due to its age. She does not want to ever meet me.

That Volvo station wagon had been the car that Lamont drove to take Mama to all sorts of doctor and physical therapy appointments. It was the vehicle we picked up and dropped off my brother at the airport when he came to town to help move me to my new place after she had died, early January this year. In November, 2008, it was the car that took Lamont, Leland, and me to the woods, mushrooming. Earlier that same month it had taken Lamont, Mama, our friend Lucy (visiting from Mississippi), and me on a great tour of the Columbia River Gorge and over to Hood River, Oregon, then south around Mt. Hood and back to Portland. And since then he's driven it out of town several times camping and/or bouldering, having fun with his brother and/or friends. For his 36th birthday I had given Lamont a repair of the passenger window motor and a general tune-up of that car. All of that for naught now--blast that irresponsible woman. Good memories remain, however, and serve to dim the aggravation.

Also dimming the aggravation. The woman's insurance put him in a rental car and paid him $75 less than he needed to get the new old Volvo station wagon. Serendipitously a woman where Lamont works had the car for sale. By the end of the second week of dealing with an insurance company in a different time zone while working 40-hour weeks, Lamont got that money from Farmers and sold his old car to this wonderful repair place just east of where I live, Atomic Auto, for a fair price. He ended up with the new old Volvo station wagon and $25.

The new old Volvo station wagon checked out fine with the Atomic Auto guys (they were the ones who fixed that window, etc.), has half the mileage on it that the old old Volvo station wagon had on it. For all of us, this entire event turned out so much better than we could have ever hoped. Prayers answered.

Now for some photos of the old old Volvo station wagon and our mushrooming trip. If they make you hungry for all of the trip which was quite a lot of fun and very successful, the posts are on November 26, 2008; November 28, 2008; and November 30, 2008. You won't believe the forest and the mushrooms and the ferns and the trees and the guys.


Lamont and Leland arrive at our old apartment--I was waiting out front, excited about our pending adventure.


Lamont and Leland in the old old Volvo station wagon, as we pulled away from the curb.


Lamont and Leland getting ready to hunt chanterelles.


Just before we started the hunt, the guys posed for me.


Once we got back to the old old Volvo station wagon, hours later, the guys posed for me again. Look at our mushrooms!


We got wet, but who cares? I didn't fall down once, thanks to my wonderful sons. And I found the very first golden mushroom, too!

Thankful for mushrooming, Part III

To get this photo, I held one of the largest mushrooms we found in my left hand and the camera in my right.

Lamont got close to the ground among the ferns and evergreens.

Sweet smile to me, his mom.

If you look closely, you can see Lamont on the left and Leland on the right, diligently searching and harvesting chanterelles among the ferns.

Lamont's find.

Leland's find.

Wow--what a mushroom!

See its size in relation to Leland!

And here it is in my basket.

At times like this, the woods seemed like a maze, but I had not a single worry, trusting my sons as I did to get me, themselves and the mushrooms back to the car.

Look at this terrain behind the guys and their baskets. Fallen trees of all sizes cover the ground.

Lamont heads up and over a fallen tree.

The guys stopped for a moment to stand beside this huge stump! In the background, see the trees lying across the clearing? In a few moments after I took this photo, I decided to take a seat and rest there while the guys went across a little creek and into a darker part of the woods. They said they'd come back in a little while and get me.

Lamont took a few steps and found a mushroom.

Here he is with it. You can see my downed-tree-resting-spot even better in this photo.

I placed my basket on the tree trunk beside me and got this photo.

Lamont came back and got me. When I looked back at one point at what he'd helped me climb and clamber over, I couldn't believe it. I don't think this photo does it justice, but it's all I could get. Little space existed between trunks and limbs, all with moss everywhere. I said, "Hey, guys, I feel like I've landed in Ewok land." They agreed, and Leland said, "That's Endor, Mom." "Right, I remember now. Endor," I said.

Lamont has both of our baskets--I'd need both hands free to help myself over the terrain. And when I saw this part of it, I thought, "Ah, less obstacles!"

Here's a lavender-purple mushroom that we left right where it grew.

And a brown one, too.

And these little ones, growing so sure of themselves.

How about this little crowd of mushrooms?

A drop of gold, found by Leland. He waited for me to get there so that I could take photos.

Harvesting it from the earth, carefully.


Not long afterward, Leland disappeared behind some low branches, only to find a great chanterelle. "You ought to see this one," he cried. "It's huge!" "Hold it up above the limbs," I said. And he did.

Here it is from the stem side.

Lamont took this photo for me, to show you those trees in the background. I managed with his help to get up and on and over them. Only casualty--my pants leg came out of my boots, but I didn't even notice that until I saw the photo.


Sorry, y'all, but I took so many pictures that I can't finish yet! Mama said, "Don't put so many pictures on there." I replied, "Mama, this is for me, too, because some day when I can't remember some of this, all I'll have to do it look at the blog." "Oh," she said, and she then remembered what she'd understood after reading through the printed sheets from Lucy's visit. I'm mailing them to my Aunt Baker in Puckett, Mississippi, who doesn't have a computer. Mama had looked up from the kitchen table and announced, "I know what your blog is. It's a journal." She's so right. And I thank you for indulging me!

Thankful for mushrooming, Part II

First, let me wish everyone who celebrates it a very Happy Thanksgiving today. Of course, each of us can find some one thing, or hopefully many things, to be thankful for every single day.

This is the next mushroom that I found right after the boys got me atop that steep, soft bank--Leland behind, giving me a boost, Lamont ahead, holding onto my hands and pulling. Too bad we didn't have one more person along to take that photo! Two chanterelles glow among the duff, which is the partly decayed organic matter on the forest floor, according to Merriam-Webster OnLine. Those are my fingers and the Gerber knife that Leland let me use for our mushroom hunt.


Isn't it amazing that such golden-sunshine-color could appear deep in the forest floor, at a spot where the rays touch only softly?

The guys found a few, too, and stopped to pose for me with the woods in the background. You can get an idea of one kind of terrain we covered in this photo. And when you see subsequent photos of the baskets, you'll get an idea of the bounty we harvested. Oh, by the way, I imagine that right after I took this photo, I asked Lamont once again, "Are you sure you know where the car is?" Every time his answer was the same, "Yes, Mom, I know where the car is." I promised I only asked about four times in three hours.

A critter Lamont saw.

Lamont's explaining where he's found mushrooms before, processing that information and deciding which way we should go next.

The guys never got too far in front of me. Even if it looks like they're not paying attention in this photo, they constantly turned to check on me or stopped when I said, "I see one!" just to make sure I was OK.

We saw other mushrooms, inedible ones, like this coral one.

And this black one.

While this shot is blurry, I wanted to include it so that you could see what I meant about chanterelles among the knee-high-evergreen-thickets. How Lamont found these amazes me. He's holding back the greenery so you can see where the chanterells grow. I'm standing on duff which often shifted with my weight and made me move just as I snap the photo.

One of the neat things about chanterelles is that when you find one, you just might find more. I know, the mushrooms don't show up very well here--too much light reflected off them, but you can see what I mean about finding more than you originally expected. And you can tell through all of these photos that we were not being rained on--hooray! Just a mist every once in a while, or lots of big drops if the wind blew through the woods.

Yes, I managed to make my way over fallen, moss-covered logs, sometimes all on my own, sometimes with the aid of one or both sons. Like the song says, "I had the time of my life!"

Lamont demonstrated how you can tell a real chanterelle from a fake one. When you peel about the top layer and you see white, you've got a real one; if you see the golden color, you've got a fake one.

Look at the size of these, in relation to Leland's hand!

Leland gently harvests these really big ones.

See what I mean?


I have to stop now to get dressed to go to the guys' house for Thanksgiving lunch. I'll finish the thankful-for-mushrooming soon!