Cherokee Baptist and the Inland Northwest
CHEROKEE BAPTIST AND THE INLAND NORTHWEST
“If I say I love you
I want you to know
It’s not just because there’s moonlight, although
Moonlight becomes you so.”
--Bing Crosby, singing ‘Moonlight Becomes You’ in The Road To Morocco
What is love? A personal chemistry so strong it moves you to act beyond your usual cowardice? A common dedication to something higher than just your own needs and desires? My great period of serious girl friends was during college. After Luther’s Daughter chose another man, ending a three year relationship (see the previous chapter ‘Poolside’) my heart felt like a crystal chandelier that had been dropped from the ceiling of Grand Central Station. But there had been previous eventually been indications that she had not been satisfied with me as a marriage prospect during my first serious love, and I could be partially satisfied that I had helped midwife her from a sad fate to a better option, although it wasn’t me. There were other interesting women in the Christian Fellowship to which I belonged, and after considering several options, I pursued a close friendship with Cherokee Baptist.
Also a PK (Preacher’s Kid), she had in many ways an opposite temperament. Where Luther’s Daughter had been outwardly assertive and challenging, Cherokee had a quiet, gentle manner in the mode of her interest in Biology. Many scientists find love in their subject, an aspect of the natural world, and so did she in the world’s abundant plant life. She actually was part Cherokee. So one day in the cafeteria, I complimented her long, black hair, and she smiled. That turned out to be the physical feature of which she was most proud. We remained together for the rest of school. After our graduation in 1973, I rode with her family to where her father had just been transferred, which was a new environment for all of them. After a short visit, I decided that I’d come down there to try and make a go of things, both personally and occupationally. But following several months of working retail as a manager, and seeing her did not work out. She had plans to go far away that did not include me, and I was fired after mentioning that I was going to take a break and go home. So I rapidly decamped, and headed back to New York City. I saw her once more for a mutual friend’s opulent wedding a year or two after that, and she came up to visit me for a short time.
Years later, in February of 2000, I was off to visit her in Spokane, Washington. We had re-explored our teasing and tender relationship on the internet, and since we both had little money, I was paying my plane ticket fare and she would be covering my expenses there. We both still had lonely and open hearts, and you never know. If nothing else, we’d have a good visit and catch up with the last 25 years. After a plane change in Salt Lake City, where we took on a cargo of happy young missionary Mormons in white shirts and ties (no, not the girls), I arrived in the largest city between Seattle and Minneapolis. Just over the border from the narrow neck of Idaho, not far from Montana which I had visited previously, I was now in the Inland Northwest, the land of The Spokane Indians “The Children of the Sun” (pronounced Spoke-Can, not Spow-Cane). This area, centered on the city, included parts of these states and a bit of southern Canada, which had been known as The Inland Empire.
We had a warm reunion, Cherokee showing me her amazing smile once again, revealing that one crooked tooth. When we visited the campus of the small college where she had started teaching, I saw her friends show interest in me when I was introduced. Clearly they felt she’d stayed single too long. Cherokee Baptist drove me on a tape guided city tour, the narrator for which was a friend of a friend. We strolled along lovely Riverfront Park on the Spokane River. Local specialties always taste better where they originate, and we ate the most amazing salmon I ever tasted before or since at The Flour Mill, which had been operating as such from 1895 to 1972, but was now a group of specialty shops and restaurants.
She put me up in a motel, and we rented a VCR, so I could show her my favorite movie of the time which I’d brought with me, Defending Your Life, (Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep). I felt it said what I had to say about love and a possible afterlife in the framework of a light romantic comedy. Now that film makes me cry, but it didn’t seem to mean much to her. Likewise, at moments where we were being quite together, I failed in telepathy, and missed some of what she was trying to show me silently. She made me a meal at her house, which was good of her, but she didn’t spend much of her time cooking. She usually had no unscheduled time at all, and had clearly gone to some trouble to free herself up for our time together. My jokes about moving there fell flat. When we ate at Rancho Chico, her favorite Mexican restaurant, which was both good and inexpensive, the waiter made romantic suggestions which only embarrassed her.
At Gonzaga University, we stopped at the Crosby Student Center, where the local son was honored with a large memorial room. Here I saw his Oscar, movie posters, and other memorabilia from his life and career. Bing was always a favorite of mine, with his smooth style and crooning voice. Like hearing swing music, seeing the old movies from my parents generation gave me comfort, because the adults were in charge, and everything was going to be okay, even though there was usually a war on.
From the city Cherokee was able to take extended field trips for her work to the wild areas far from the urban center, where she could study her beloved plants life. So she had become deeply rooted a continent away; a country girl at heart. We took a ride out of town to a weird rural area of ploughed hills which made you dizzy, and apparently made compasses inoperable; the crops patterned in odd lines on the hillsides. I remembered how uncomfortable she had been when visiting me in New York for a few days, although she saw it was my home.
And yet there was true affection between us. As we get older, we cherish the deep feelings that are so hard to restart in new friendships. By the time I left, she was looking at me affectionately, but clearly nothing serious was going to happen. It had been a trip well worth taking, without spectacular result. As they say: Man proposes; God disposes. Recently I heard she did get married, and I hope she’s doing well out there.
“If I say I love you
I want you to know
It’s not just because there’s moonlight, although
Moonlight becomes you so.”
--Bing Crosby, singing ‘Moonlight Becomes You’ in The Road To Morocco
What is love? A personal chemistry so strong it moves you to act beyond your usual cowardice? A common dedication to something higher than just your own needs and desires? My great period of serious girl friends was during college. After Luther’s Daughter chose another man, ending a three year relationship (see the previous chapter ‘Poolside’) my heart felt like a crystal chandelier that had been dropped from the ceiling of Grand Central Station. But there had been previous eventually been indications that she had not been satisfied with me as a marriage prospect during my first serious love, and I could be partially satisfied that I had helped midwife her from a sad fate to a better option, although it wasn’t me. There were other interesting women in the Christian Fellowship to which I belonged, and after considering several options, I pursued a close friendship with Cherokee Baptist.
Also a PK (Preacher’s Kid), she had in many ways an opposite temperament. Where Luther’s Daughter had been outwardly assertive and challenging, Cherokee had a quiet, gentle manner in the mode of her interest in Biology. Many scientists find love in their subject, an aspect of the natural world, and so did she in the world’s abundant plant life. She actually was part Cherokee. So one day in the cafeteria, I complimented her long, black hair, and she smiled. That turned out to be the physical feature of which she was most proud. We remained together for the rest of school. After our graduation in 1973, I rode with her family to where her father had just been transferred, which was a new environment for all of them. After a short visit, I decided that I’d come down there to try and make a go of things, both personally and occupationally. But following several months of working retail as a manager, and seeing her did not work out. She had plans to go far away that did not include me, and I was fired after mentioning that I was going to take a break and go home. So I rapidly decamped, and headed back to New York City. I saw her once more for a mutual friend’s opulent wedding a year or two after that, and she came up to visit me for a short time.
Years later, in February of 2000, I was off to visit her in Spokane, Washington. We had re-explored our teasing and tender relationship on the internet, and since we both had little money, I was paying my plane ticket fare and she would be covering my expenses there. We both still had lonely and open hearts, and you never know. If nothing else, we’d have a good visit and catch up with the last 25 years. After a plane change in Salt Lake City, where we took on a cargo of happy young missionary Mormons in white shirts and ties (no, not the girls), I arrived in the largest city between Seattle and Minneapolis. Just over the border from the narrow neck of Idaho, not far from Montana which I had visited previously, I was now in the Inland Northwest, the land of The Spokane Indians “The Children of the Sun” (pronounced Spoke-Can, not Spow-Cane). This area, centered on the city, included parts of these states and a bit of southern Canada, which had been known as The Inland Empire.
We had a warm reunion, Cherokee showing me her amazing smile once again, revealing that one crooked tooth. When we visited the campus of the small college where she had started teaching, I saw her friends show interest in me when I was introduced. Clearly they felt she’d stayed single too long. Cherokee Baptist drove me on a tape guided city tour, the narrator for which was a friend of a friend. We strolled along lovely Riverfront Park on the Spokane River. Local specialties always taste better where they originate, and we ate the most amazing salmon I ever tasted before or since at The Flour Mill, which had been operating as such from 1895 to 1972, but was now a group of specialty shops and restaurants.
She put me up in a motel, and we rented a VCR, so I could show her my favorite movie of the time which I’d brought with me, Defending Your Life, (Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep). I felt it said what I had to say about love and a possible afterlife in the framework of a light romantic comedy. Now that film makes me cry, but it didn’t seem to mean much to her. Likewise, at moments where we were being quite together, I failed in telepathy, and missed some of what she was trying to show me silently. She made me a meal at her house, which was good of her, but she didn’t spend much of her time cooking. She usually had no unscheduled time at all, and had clearly gone to some trouble to free herself up for our time together. My jokes about moving there fell flat. When we ate at Rancho Chico, her favorite Mexican restaurant, which was both good and inexpensive, the waiter made romantic suggestions which only embarrassed her.
At Gonzaga University, we stopped at the Crosby Student Center, where the local son was honored with a large memorial room. Here I saw his Oscar, movie posters, and other memorabilia from his life and career. Bing was always a favorite of mine, with his smooth style and crooning voice. Like hearing swing music, seeing the old movies from my parents generation gave me comfort, because the adults were in charge, and everything was going to be okay, even though there was usually a war on.
From the city Cherokee was able to take extended field trips for her work to the wild areas far from the urban center, where she could study her beloved plants life. So she had become deeply rooted a continent away; a country girl at heart. We took a ride out of town to a weird rural area of ploughed hills which made you dizzy, and apparently made compasses inoperable; the crops patterned in odd lines on the hillsides. I remembered how uncomfortable she had been when visiting me in New York for a few days, although she saw it was my home.
And yet there was true affection between us. As we get older, we cherish the deep feelings that are so hard to restart in new friendships. By the time I left, she was looking at me affectionately, but clearly nothing serious was going to happen. It had been a trip well worth taking, without spectacular result. As they say: Man proposes; God disposes. Recently I heard she did get married, and I hope she’s doing well out there.
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