Author Archives: Dixie Elder

On the island of Acadia, Maine, my family lived in the state park the summer I was fifteen. My father was ‘checking points’ (cartography term) on another survey team’s data. There, I met a college boy from Ukraine. Borys Stopnyski was studying geopolitics at Oswego U. Dad kept a close eye on me and IContinue reading “Boy From Ukraine”

My brother Bob told me, when he was forty and I was forty-two, “Dad never talked about his experiences in WWII. It was too much for him to bear.” But our father told me, in gory detail, about navigating Fletcher class USS Hopewell all over the South Pacific, when I was a young teenager. He’dContinue reading “Swamp Woman”

Somewhere between Michigan and West Virginia, when I was nearly eleven and my brother was almost nine, we moved into a small brick house near a huge cornfield. The first day there, my brother Bob and I went exploring. As we carefully trod (like Indians) along the road’s shoulder, we reached a spot where thatContinue reading “Fly!”

Hank Williams and My Father As we drove through El Paso, Texas, Dad began singing “Rose’s Cantina,” his all time favorite song. His baritone was beautiful. Bob had a deep voice, even at two. He echoed “Mexican girl!” “You fall in love everywhere we go.” Mom hated the song. Before they met, Dad had datedContinue reading

Dixie J-Elder’s family moved forty-eight times before Dixie turned thirteen, due to her father’s job as a cartographer and explorer.  She lived in America’s deserts, swamps and mountains. Sometimes in motels, tents or boarding houses for two weeks, when her father was “checking points” for topo maps. Other times (rarely) for a whole school year.Continue reading “Bio’ Dixie Elder”