While Segelke was feeding her quilting addiction in California, her niece Arlene, now 37, was following a parallel path. During a brief separation from her family, she joined a quilting class to fight loneliness. Smith has long since returned to Yuma and taken on a full-time job with the Monfort cattle concern, but she's never working on fewer than twenty quilts at a time.
"Usually I don't even count," Smith admits. "Whatever you're in the mood for or whatever the deadline is for--we quilt for babies and weddings and all like that. I don't like to keep my quilts, either. I own less than ten."
Segelke agrees that it's more fun to give quilts away. "The greatest compliment would be to see one of my quilts all in shreds because it was being used so hard," she says. "And I hate when people hang them up. How can you cover your friends with love when they hang your quilt on the wall?"
Various members of Segelke's family, all of whom are sitting and sewing, nod their heads. Smith is working on a pattern known as Love Ring--a variation of Drunkard's Path. Her mother, Ruth Segelke, is finishing up a Checkers and Rails design "for a boy's room," she says--but in this family, there are no gender distinctions when it comes to sewing. Smith's husband, whose other hobby is hunting elk, has made several quilts. Her sister, Naomi James, is married to a man acknowledged to be the family expert at "embroiderying."
"Did anyone see that How to Make an American Quilt movie?" James asks.
"Well, I saw it, but I don't think my husband would appreciate it," her sister Kim Vondy replies. "The older people were all quilting, but the youngest one was a little too modern for my tastes."
"The older ones were awfully modern, too," Segelke says. "I don't know why that was necessary."
"Did you hear, ladies?" Mrs. Ramus interjects, her hostess instincts kicking in at the slightest suggestion of disagreement. "Over the years, we had a bear and a little fox, and a mountain lion who ate up the dear little angora goats. We've had an awful lot of animals here."
"Oh, it's nice here," Ruth Segelke says. "I thought this weekend would never come."
"You gals," Mrs. Ramus says. "You drive all the way from Yuma, stopping at any store along the way that might have even one piece of quilting fabric."
The companionable silence descends again until it is punctured by Cathy Robson, a retired teacher in her seventies who has come to the inn for an unspecified amount of time to help Mrs. Ramus. Robson is wearing old polyester pants, new white tennis shoes, a T-shirt that reads "World Rhubarb Festival" and thick prescription glasses. She has the air of someone who is never happier than when she is in the mountains.
"I have a quilt," she offers. "I found one my mother quilted. I'm using it even though it's not finished and it's full of pins. So what," she concludes.
Robson has been busy washing the lunch dishes. The Blue Jay's kitchen is the kind of place where you might suddenly discover a trove of photographs from 1953 along with several souvenir plates sent from Alaska by friends, but you might have no luck in locating a dish towel.
"I finally found one to use, Catherine," Robson says, "and I used it, but it had a big hunk out of it."
"That's fine," Mrs. Ramus replies. "And do you know, when we make toast tomorrow morning, we're going to have to unplug all those heaters or the fuses will all blow. Do you know, I was here in 1947, when a dear little man wired the inn for electricity."
"Really," says Robson, who loves Mrs. Ramus's stories.
"Have you looked at the plates on the walls in the dining room?" Mrs. Ramus asks. "They are all very interesting, and some of them are very old."
A lace curtain moves in the breeze. A scent of lilac passes through. A snatch of talk drifts in from the porch.
"We meant to tell you," Monnie Segelke is saying, "that everyone in our family very much enjoys reading the Bible. And we very much like to sing the old hymns. On Sunday. Together."
"That's fine," Mrs. Ramus replies. "Our old cottage organ works just fine. It was in the 1903 flood in Topeka, you know. We are happy to play it on Sundays," she adds, "if you wish.
