Tuesday, September 02, 2003

 

I am reading a book called "Ten Little Indians" it is a collection of stories by Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Indian. The first story in the book is about a Spokane Indian college student who comes across a book of poems in the college library written by another Spokane Indian thirty years earlier,and then sets out to find out who this poet is.

When I was about nine our family took a trip from where I lived in New York to Spokane, Washington. My father's brother and his wife lived there with their two children, a girl K, who is a little younger than me, and a little boy C ,who was about two. It was my first plane ride. I can remember the night before the trip not being able to sleep. I think it was more the excitment, than being nervous of my first plane trip. Here are some of the things I remember about the trip: Going to see the Grand Coulee Dam, swimming in a big lake with a slide in the middle of it, eating spaghetti at a fancy restaurant in Cour d' Alene, Idaho, going to a outdoor rodeo, that had a animal on a spit that people later ate, snow in July that came off the mountain, picking strawberries, going to a haunted house(they wouldn't let me and my cousin K go thru with the lights out, we had to go thru with the lights on), seeing a falling star,visiting my uncle at the air base and seeing his plane/jet, my cousin K crying when she found out that my parents decided to take the train home instead of the plane,and that her playmate would be leaving a few days earlier than she thought, singing say-say oh playmate with my cousin K,and of course the remarkable train ride home.

Sherman Alexie also wrote the screenplay for the movie, Smoke Signals.

posted by Caroline 9/02/2003 07:38:00 AM