Tag Archives: Family

My Wheels — Chapter 30
1992 Chevrolet Lumina

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The Storm was fun to drive but was completely inadequate in terms of people hauling. As the 1992 model year came to an end, a bright red Chevrolet Lumina Z34 sitting unsold at the dealer where I’d bought the Geo caught my eye. Enough time had passed since the divorce to let my credit recover to the point I could buy it even though I still owed on the Storm and wasn’t trading it in. It became a graduation gift to my oldest son and he drove it to his new home in San Francisco.

I suspect there were several reasons why the Z34 was hanging around. One may have been price. The typical Lumina was a mid-sized reasonably-priced family-friendly car. The Z34 model not so much. As the performance model it carried a premium and having just two doors somewhat reduced its utility. The bright color and the manual transmission may have also eliminated a few perspective owners. While those things may have made it less desirable to some, they were — except for the price — the very things that attracted me. In the end, the need to “make room for the ’93s” made even the price kind of attractive.

The Chevy was an almost ideal vehicle for me at that time. It held four adults in tolerable comfort which made chauffeuring my daughter and a friend or two absolutely painless. I could even do the lunchtime driving for small groups of coworkers and that was something that had simply not been possible with the Storm. Plus it was fun.

I’ve always liked shifting my own gears. That’s something I’d been reminded of with the Mazda as well as the Storm so the 5-speed manual was a big plus for me. The front wheel drive Storm didn’t handle quite as well as the rear drive Mazda but it was pretty good. The FWD Lumina was bigger than either of those so did not handle as well as either but it was a long way from bad. Plus it could go — and stop — quite well indeed. The 34 in the model designation came from its 3.4 liter V6 engine. With two overhead camshafts on each cylinder bank, this was a pretty exotic engine for General Motors. To this day, it remains the only car I’ve owned with just as many cams as wheels. Output was 210 HP. Four-wheel ABS discs did the stopping. I’ve since owned other cars with this brake setup but the Z34 was my first. I was impressed.

The picture at the top was taken after I’d had the car just a couple of days. I did not tow the camper there. It was one of several rental units in a Kentucky campground bordering the Ohio River. I took my daughter and one of her friends camping there almost as soon as I picked up the car. The trip included a visit to the Kentucky Horse Park where the girls  enjoyed some gentle horseback riding. I quit smoking.

It wasn’t exactly planned, but I had finally reached the point where I was mentally ready to quit. What tipped the scale was that smoking had just become too much of a hassle and the acquisition of a new not-yet-smoked-in car seemed a good occasion to go for it. I took no cigarettes on the trip but did take a pack of Between the Acts cigarette style cigars to use in dealing with major nicotine cravings. I essentially finished the first few I smoked but it wasn’t long before a couple of puffs would make me light-headed. I resorted to the little cigars a couple of time after we got home but I never finished the pack and I never smoked in the Lumina.

I did go racing in it though. Once. Kinda. This was the first car I went autocrossing in. Autocrossing (a.k.a. gymkhana) is a race against the clock on a course marked by orange cones. Some friends were into it and I decided to give it a try. A common arrangement is for half of the entrants to line the course as corner workers while the other half raced and then switch roles. I had never even seen an autocross but figured I’d get to watch for awhile before launch time. Nope. Not only was I in the first drivers (rather than workers) group, my slot was so early that I was in line and unable to see much of anything when the few cars in front of me made their runs. To no one’s surprise, I didn’t do well. It wasn’t horrible but it sure  wasn’t competitive. I did a little better on subsequent runs but not much. The FWD Lumina was not a particularly good autocross car and I had no idea what I was doing. I would be back, however  — in a different car.

My Previous Wheels: Chapter 29 — 1991 Geo Storm
My Next Wheels: Chapter 31 — 1994 Chevrolet Camaro

Book Review
Not For Morbidity’s Sake
Malcolm P. Fletcher

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It’s a familiar story I’d never heard before. In no way is use of the word “familiar” meant to be dismissive. It’s just my way of acknowledging that many aspects of Malcolm Fletcher’s story are to be found in the stories of thousands of other World War II soldiers. Of course each of those stories is also unique in ways both small and large. Large happenings that make Fletcher’s story unique include the actions that earned him a bronze star and the day he watched his brother get shot and captured. Getting coffee and doughnuts from the Red Cross in February and washing clothes and shaving in May are among of the not-so-large pieces of the story that make it real. Numerous photographs, maps, and drawings — many by Fletcher himself — really fill things out.

It’s a great story and well told but there’s no denying that the mere fact that it is being shared plays a big role in setting this story apart from most of those others. The majority of those soldiers never told their story to anyone. A relative few did write it down or record it but not many saw an audience beyond family, friends, or a veterans organization. That Malcolm Fletcher wanted to share his story is obvious. He expanded his wartime notes and produced a “diary”. The title is his. Not For Morbidity’s Sake came from the fact that, as his son Michael says in the foreword, “…he took no pleasure in telling most of this story”. Malcolm Fletcher died in 1994 and Michael, with help from his brother Mark, made publication of the diary a reality. To a large degree, this meant editing their father’s writings but they also augmented the story with information gathered from other family members, friends, and even some of the men who served with Malcolm.

As mentioned, not many World War II veterans made any attempt to share their stories. In addition, not all who did were particularly good at it. Malcolm Fletcher was. At twenty-four, he was a little older than most of the enlistees he headed to Europe with in 1944. Maybe that made him a little more observant or maybe that just came natural. Either way, his observations fed some rather good sketches and some articulate writing.

Those observations also fed some slightly philosophical thinking on the horrors of war and the brotherhood of man. He had personal experience with both. Whether the deeper of Fletcher’s thoughts came during his time in Europe or while he subsequently transcribed his notes in safety in the USA is unclear and unimportant. He was in the midst of battles where men destroyed each other with cannons, bombs, rifles, bayonets, and flame-throwers. He saw many and met a few French, Belgium, and German civilians whose world was ravaged beyond comprehension. And he was there at the end of the conflict interacting with German and Russian soldiers to learn that “These Russies are just like us.”

He was there as a strange calmness came to a devastated Europe and plans were being made to send him and lots of other men to tackle the Japanese. He was there when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed and the war ended without an invasion. He came home to a world that was damaged in its own way. He stumbled. He regained his balance. He wrote his story. The basic plot may be familiar but the details are unique and personal and the telling is something special.

Not For Morbidity’s Sake: A World War II Yankee Division War Diary, Malcolm P. Fletcher, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (December 10, 2017), 6 x 9 inches, 226 pages, ISBN 978-1981114696
Available through Amazon.

I know Michael Fletcher through his work as a bassist with several local bands. I’ll admit that’s it’s rather unlikely I would have found this book on my own otherwise. But, if I had, there is no doubt that I would have enjoyed it. Knowing Mike or even knowing who Mike is is certainly not required to appreciate his father’s story. On the other hand, I probably enjoyed this book more than many and it’s certain that the story is more familiar to me than most. Malcolm Fletcher’s time in the military more or less parallels that of my own father. Both probably crossed the Atlantic in the same convoy although Dad landed in England rather than France. Both were at the Battle of the Bulge and both were early crossers of the Siegfried Line.

But there were definitely big differences. Dad was a courier and spent most of his time driving a Jeep or truck. He was usually at or near the front but was not directly involved in the fighting in the way Malcolm Fletcher was. And he never talked about it the way Malcolm Fletcher did. I kind of wish he had. I’d certainly like to know more but I think his “silence” was rather typical. There were occasional, seemingly spontaneous, reminisces that provided cherished glimpses but no long stories and no writing or recording.

Dad served with the 78th “Lightning” Division. Until about four years ago, there was an associated veterans group that published a quarterly newsletter called The Flash. Veteran’s memories were an important part of its makeup and I read many of them. There are, naturally, similarities between the stories of every soldier in every war in every location but I was thinking specifically of the stories I’d read in The Flash when I called Not For Morbidity’s Sake “..a familiar story I’d never heard before.” I wrote about the newsletter’s end in One Last Flash in 2013.

My Wheels — Chapter 27
1985 Mazda RX7

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Details of timing are lacking for both this and the following My Wheels chapter. I think I’ve got the sequence right but I’m not even entirely certain of that. The two are connected by more than a lack of precision in dates but I don’t expect this chapter to explain things very well. Hopefully I’ll be able to make things clearer in the next chapter when all the pieces have been identified.

The subject of this chapter was my oldest son’s car. I cosigned the loan and he made all the payments on time and handled all other expenses, including insurance, right up until he needed it. At some point the financial load became a bit too much and he decided to sell it. No need to insure a car you’re going to sell. Right? As often happens, the decision to sell and the decision to drop insurance preceded the decision to stop driving and, pretty much on cue, there was an accident. It wasn’t a huge one and it was a single vehicle thing but it left him with something that could neither be driven or easily sold. What happened next was pretty much on cue, too. Dad the cosigner became sole owner of the undrivable, unsalable, uninsured, and unpaid for Mazda. That’s not the actual car in the photo but it’s a perfect match except for the sunroof.

I got the damage repaired and the car insured and I drove it for awhile. It was a rather a fun car to drive. The rotary engine seemed like it would accelerate — at least a little — forever. It was, however, a toy I really couldn’t afford at the time. As I said at the beginning, details of timing are lacking and some of the related details involve my second marriage and divorce. I know I had the car both before and after the short lived marriage but I’m understandably just not capable of fitting all the pieces together.

Either during or shortly after the marriage, my younger son bought the car. I’m fairly certain he did it for my benefit. He was in the Navy with no expenses. He also had no driver’s license. He hadn’t felt the need in high school and had entered the Navy on graduation. Plans were made for him to get his license then see a bunch of the country driving the Mazda to his assignment in San Diego. There was only time for one shot at a license and it was a miss. As I recall, the big dig was activating turn signals way too early but I’m guessing that a general nervousness contributed a lot. He flew to San Diego and the Mazda was parked in the garage to await his return.

Although he did eventually get his license (The Navy needed him to drive something.) he never took possession of the car. After a year or so he/I sold the car to a friend. I had let it sit idle for too long and it took some effort to get it running again. It became a daily driver for its new owner until a winter ice attack in traffic brought about its demise.

My Previous Wheels: Chapter 26 — 1986 Acura Legend
My Next Wheels: Chapter 28 — 1978? Yamaha 400

Swede Mysteries of Life

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DNA testing has recently uncovered a family connection with seventeenth century Philadelphia area settlers from Sweden. An uncle, two cousins, and I are off to poke around a little though we sure don’t know enough to dig very deep. On the other hand, we actually know so little that it will be hard not to learn something. Even if we return home knowing no more than when we left, we are sure to enjoy looking into our nation’s earliest history. We have arrived in the big city and the first day is posted.

The trip journal is here. This entry is to let blog only subscribers know of the trip and provide a place for comments and questions.

My Contribution to Science

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At various points in my youth I dreamed of making major contributions to the welfare of mankind. Maybe discovering a cure for cancer or inventing an anti-gravity machine or a device for traveling through time. But chemistry and I barely became acquaintances let alone friends and my relationship with higher math and hard core physics wasn’t anything to brag about either. I had some success playing with computer software and I believe that some of what I did was actually creative but it wasn’t the sort of thing that advanced the state of computer science. But there’s still a chance. I’ve just made arrangements for my body to go to the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine so maybe someone will discover that cancer cure after poking around in my physical remains on the way to becoming a doctor.

Yeah, it’s definitely a long shot and that possibility wasn’t really much of a factor in my decision. That decision was based on one thing: practicality. Putting my body in a fancy box then using even a tiny bit of real estate to hold it just isn’t practical to my way of thinking. I won’t condemn those who consider this attempt at preservation extremely important but for me it seems wasteful and ultimately futile. The obvious way to avoid the fancy box and cemetery plot is cremation and that was a decision I made long ago and verbally communicated to friends and family. But even cremation isn’t free and it doesn’t happen automatically so I’ve gone beyond just telling my kids to cremate me.

I’m fortunate to have lived long enough to truly recognize that death is inevitable. We all claim to recognize that and say things like “No one lives forever” but what we’re actually thinking for much of our lives is “No one’s lived forever — yet.” Over the years I’ve come to accept that I really won’t live forever and that I probably wouldn’t like it if I did. Part of what I consider fortunate about this is that I have the opportunity to arrange a few things myself. I have benefited from my parents’ pre-planning and I’d like to spare my kids the need to hurriedly deal with some awkward decisions. They’re going to have enough trouble dealing with all those books, maps, and CDs. Arranging for my cremation while I’m still alive saves others from having to deal with either the arrangements or the cost. Doing it via a body donation saves even me the cost and the body might provide some small benefit before the fire hits. Getting even a tiny bit of use from an old man’s dead body seems like a true something for nothing.

It is not a perfect solution. The program itself is not flawless. Donors can chose between having the cremains returned or buried at a group site. The possibility exists that the specific cremains cannot be returned and “representative cremains from the Body Donation Program” are substituted. The family is informed of this but it’s obviously a big negative if something special was planned for the ashes.

The group burial site is in Spring Grove Cemetery. The site is marked but individual names are not recorded there. They are recorded by the Donation Program and the cemetery.

I recognize the value of grave markers to descendants and researchers. It’s an upside of cemeteries that even I see. I’m going with something of a compromise and intend to make use of real estate already in use by placing a plaque with my own birth and death dates on my parents’ tombstone. I also recognize that this means I’ll be taking advantage of something not available to my own offspring. Sorry, kids.

After raising the question with my daughter, I selected the return option rather than burial at Spring Grove. Even so, I’m not overly concerned about the unlikely possibility of “representative cremains” being returned. I have no sacred spots where I feel my ashes absolutely must end up. In fact, I’ve told my kids that if I die somewhere that makes getting the body back to UC overly expensive, don’t bother. Just burn me there. You’ll hear no complaints from me.

But if things do go as planned and my sons and daughter eventually end up with a bucket of ashes they’re pretty sure is me, I’ve suggested I be sprinkled along roads and rivers that have played a role in my life. A river’s current could carry those ashes some distance downstream and roadside dust that was once me could end up on the hood of a passing car in the middle of a long road trip. Both situations offer the possibility of taking me somewhere I’ve never been and that’s very much alright with me.

I’m Not Moving Like I Used To
— Places I’ve Lived (Part 2)

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The reason that I only began my sophomore year in that old apartment building that ended last week’s Part 1 post was that I got married the day after Christmas 1966 and the bride and I moved into an apartment at the rear of this building near campus. We had almost no furniture and I remember laying on the floor of the empty living room watching news of the Apollo I fire on the tiny black and white TV my wife brought from her home.

In the mid-1960s, the Forum was one of Cincinnati’s newest and fanciest apartment complexes with a bar and restaurant that attracted both residents and non-residents. It was definitely a rather posh address for a poor college student. My wife’s sister and her husband had been among the earliest lessees and had arranged a honey of a deal. The long term lease that was part of that deal became a big negative when the husband was offered a major promotion in New York. To avoid significant penalties, they arranged for my wife and me to take it over and we found ourselves in some pretty classy digs. The in-laws had literally gotten in on  the ground floor.

I finished my second year of college and started my third but the discovery of a pregnancy in the family made continuing unrealistic. I got a full time job and my wife started shopping for houses. I recall sort of dragging my feet and pushing for just a larger apartment but she found an offer I couldn’t refuse. A middle aged couple had just moved to their dream home and were dealing with two mortgages. We bought this three-bedroom house in Pleasant Ridge on land contract. After two years, we converted to a normal mortgage with payments of $137 a month. We spent about five years here and this was our home when both sons were born. The oldest was ready to start kindergarten when the marriage was ready to end.

I spent several weeks with friends then rented a trailer in a park near Morrow, Ohio. I figured that renting a mobile home was about as non-committal as you could get. I can’t be completely certain that this is the very trailer I lived in but I believe it is. There was no storage shed when I was there and the deck is much more substantial than the steps I climbed and it’s possible that another trailer has replaced the one I rented. That means it’s possible that a second of my homes is gone but this looks to be old enough and it seems quite likely that it’s my old home box.

A co-worker had found this place a few years back and when he moved out another moved in. When he moved it was my turn. First time visitors seemed to always have trouble finding it despite being told it was “right under the bridge”. They just didn’t believe it. The bridge passing overhead carries US-22 and OH-3. The address was on the Old 3C Highway which predated the bridge and its numbered routes. The Little Miami flows under the bridge and was our front yard and playground. The four apartments can be seen better in this view. The large one on the right is where the owner and eventually an onsite manager lived. I lived in the rightmost of two apartments on the second floor and there was another smaller apartment below. This is where I lived when my kids came to live with me and for a few weeks the four of us shared the suddenly tiny apartment. They got the bed and I got the couch and the last place in the line for the single bathroom. When we went looking for a place to move, the only thing I cared about was having my own bathroom.

This place in Loveland won me over with a bath in the master bedroom and decent rent. Like many rentals, it was adequate but nothing special. The location was close enough to my job to not be an issue. Although the bedrooms were small, everybody had one and, most importantly, I had a bathroom.

While living in the rental house, I left the corporate world and went to work for a startup. This would not ordinarily be the time to buy a house but there was Cincinnati Milacron stock in a profit sharing account that I had to do something with when I left. I decided that using it for a down payment on a house was the thing to do. After considerable shopping, we moved into this eleven year old split-level where everybody again had their own bedroom even though one was officially called a den. The boys’ early school years had been split between a number of locations and they didn’t like it. I also knew that my sister had not been overly pleased at changing schools for her last few years. That had been part of the discussion in moving to the rental but was an even bigger part of the purchase decision. I stayed here until the last kid was out of school which puts it in second place on my length of residence list. My second marriage started and ended here.

This is where I’ve lived for twenty years now. The kids and wives were gone and I was ready to stop mowing grass and raking leaves. A buyer appeared for the house and I bought the second unit in a condominium in the process of being built. Construction targets were missed and I had to negotiate with my buyer for a late departure from the house. The two week delay still wasn’t enough and I spent a couple of nights in a motel and a couple of weeks in the master bedroom with furniture stored in the garage while workmen completed the rest of the unit. There are two bedrooms and the second bedroom initially held a left over bed from the house. My daughter eventually reclaimed that and I’ve never replaced it. I do have a large airbed so guests can be accommodated but just barely. Condo fees take care of cutting the grass, raking the leaves, and clearing the snow. I have no pets to feed or plants to water so nothing dies if I’m gone for awhile. Works for me.

So, after having eight homes in twenty years, it took me nearly thirty years to add another eight and the count’s held steady since then. As things now stand my lifetime average is 4.375 years per location. I really don’t like to move so that number is pretty much guaranteed to increase. In fact, the odds are good that I’ll stay right here until I’m carted off to a nursing home or a crematorium.

I’m Not Moving Like I Used To — Part 1

I’m Not Moving Like I Used To
— Places I’ve Lived (Part 1)

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“Of course not,” I can almost hear you say. “You’re a creaking old codger on the verge of decrepitude. You’re lucky you can move at all.” While that’s certainly true, it isn’t what the title refers to. The sort of moving this article is concerned with is the changing of residences and I recently realized that I’ve occupied my current domicile longer than any other. I moved in over the Memorial Day weekend of 1997 which means I’ve been here twenty years. That’s two decades, a full score, a fifth of a century. The times for second and third places are just thirteen and twelve years.

The photo at the top is of the first place I called home. It’s a house Mom bought in 1945 while Dad was overseas. I don’t know when it was built but it was old enough to need new siding when Mom bought it. She personally covered it with that fake brick tar paper that used to be fairly common. That covering remained through my high school years when a classmate lived there. Since then it has obviously had the siding replaced and it has been painted at least a couple of times. I recall it being blue for several years. The porch and garage were added long after I lived there and I’m sure there have been other upgrades as well. The house was never high class but it apparently is of pretty high quality. It looks better now, seventy-two years after Mom tacked on her tar paper, than at any other time in my memory. It’s in Woodington, Ohio, which is the birthplace of Lowell Thomas. Lowell’s former home has been moved to the grounds of the museum in the county seat. Plans to preserve and relocate my former home have yet to materialize.

While I was living in Woodington, my maternal grandparents were living on a farm just around the corner. Sometime before my third birthday, the generations swapped places. I doubt it was a real trade but some sort of family arrangement resulted in my grandparents and about five of my aunts and uncles taking our place in the village while we three moved into the house pictured at left. My sister arrived not too long after the move. The house is certainly no younger than the one I started out in and could be considerably older. The barn and other out buildings are gone and a large garage has been added. Like the house in Woodington, this one is looking better than it ever has.

We weren’t long at the farm. I recall Dad once reminiscing about the move with the comment “I guess I thought I wanted to be a farmer.” My sister was born in March and by winter we had moved to the house at right in the nearby village of Hill Grove. We were there for the “Blizzard of 1950”. The northeast corner of the state was hit the hardest but all of Ohio got lots of snow and frigid temperatures. In Columbus, Michigan won a trip to the Rose Bowl by beating Ohio State 9-3 in a game with 5° temperature, 40 MPH wind, and not a single first down by either team. During the worst of the cold snap, our whole family slept in the living room with my baby sister wrapped up in a dresser drawer. The Facebook “on the road” profile picture I use for wintertime trips was clipped from this photo taken in front of this house. A little more of the house — and sled — can be seen in this photo. It’s been well treated by subsequent owners and falls into line with the others by looking better now than then.

I think we only spent the one winter in Hillgrove before moving into the village of Ansonia. I’ve referred to both Woodington and Hill Grove as villages but they are technically “unincorporated communities”. Ansonia was a real official incorporated village. with a population of 877 in the 1950 census. Our house was directly across the street from the American Legion and the school athletic fields were at the end of the street. In high school I would march past this house on the way to and from every home football game. It was newer than my previous abodes and, while I don’t know that it looks better than when we lived there, it looks at least as good and has clearly had some caring owners including someone who added the garage and connector.

This is the place that’s currently in third on my length of residence list. It occupies a two acre plot in the midst of large farms about three miles west of Ansonia. We moved here in the summer of 1953 and Dad remarried (Mom died in 1959) and moved in the summer of 1965. Those dates exactly bracket my school years. Initially my sister and I shared one of the two bedrooms but that was quickly seen as a problem. Dad was both clever and handy and first divided the room with a wall that included storage with my bed on top. Step two was enclosing a porch area on the back of the house and moving me into it. It’s visible in this photo of the other end of the house. The third and final step was finishing the attic and squeezing in a stairway. I spent about seven years sleeping on the other side of that window near the peak of the roof.

A 2015 article on Dabney Hall talks about the faded bricks and old AC units hanging in the windows. It is now the oldest residence hall on the University of Cincinnati campus. When I lived there in 1965 it was, at five years old, one of the newest and there were no signs of air conditioning anywhere. Shortly after my 1974 divorce I dated a girl a few years younger than me who had a friend a few years younger than her who lived in Dabney and we attended a party there. By then what had been an all male dorm was co-ed with refrigerators and microwaves in every room. I marveled at the changes but it’s hard to say whether the presence of girls and fridges would have kept me in school longer or led to me dropping out sooner.

This is the house Dad moved to after remarrying when I was about to leave for college. I spent the summer between my freshman and sophomore years there and it is where my stepmother still lives. Not visible in the picture is an attached brick workshop, added in the 1970s, where Dad spent a lot of time re-caning and refinishing furniture.

This is the location but not the building where I began my second year at UC. The aging apartment where my friend Dale and I lived has the distinction of being the only one of the sixteen places I’ve lived that is no longer standing. This seems particularly astonishing in light of the fact that the three earliest of my homes were all pretty old when I lived there. The pictured building is a nursing home so it’s at least possible I could return there someday.

Because of its length, I’m spreading this subject over two posts. As mentioned in the first paragraph, I’ve called just one place home during the most recent twenty years of my life. The eight residences covered in this post filled the first twenty for an average of roughly two and a half years each. I’ll get to the second eight next week.

I’m Not Moving Like I Used To — Part 2

Trip Peek #53
Trip #96
Hail, Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll

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This picture is from my 2011 Hail, Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll trip. As you probably suspected, its selection is not at all random. In anticipation of an approaching trip, I had just finished scheduling this blog’s next few posts when I learned of Chuck Berry’s death. I immediately thought of the only time I had seem him and, with the scheduling of posts fresh in my mind, of posting a “Trip Peek” of that 2011 trip. Even as I began to do it, I was unsure about whether or not breaking with the random selection of “Trip Peeks” is proper. I did it once before when I picked a Christmas related “Trip Peek” to appear during a Christmas road trip. If I can break the sequence for a Christian holiday, I can sure as hell do it for Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Berry was doing one show a month in 2011 and I had secured a ticket to the May 25 event. As the date neared, my father, two years Berry’s senior, was hospitalized and it seemed likely that the trip would not occur. But Dad’s condition improved a few days before the show and I went ahead with my plans. The idea was to spend two or maybe three nights on the road with some time on Route 66  in Saint Louis on the way to the show and some time on the National Road as I returned. The first day went pretty much as planned culminating in an extremely satisfying concert in the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill. Somewhat to my surprise, Berry was on stage for the entire show and performed almost all of his familiar hits. The featured photo was taken near the end of the concert when Berry invited adoring ladies from the audience to join him on stage.

Dad’s health took a turn for the worse during the night and I headed directly home in the morning. He died one week later.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Trip Peek #51
Trip #18
Big E, DC, and the Cardinal

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This picture is from my 2004 Big E, DC, and the Cardinal trip. The trip appears in my top ten “Decent” list and it certainly deserves to be there. The Big E in the title is the USS Enterprise, the world’s first nuclear powered aircraft carrier. My youngest son was serving aboard the huge carrier at the time and I was privileged to be part of a three day Tiger Cruise as she moved from Florida to her home port at Newport News, Virginia. With no military experience of my own, those few days sleeping and eating with my son’s crew mates was quite educational even though it was a spruced-up danger-free family-style version of life at sea. All airplanes were removed from the carrier before we civilians came on board but a few returned to provide landing and take-off demonstrations. The photo shows a S-3B Viking being launched.

After a couple of days in Newport News with my son and his family, I took a train to Washington, DC, and checked out a few museums and monuments. The Amtrak train that runs between Chicago and New York City is named the Cardinal. It provides Cincinnati’s only passenger rail connection and it carried me home at the end of the trip.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Another Christmas Squirrel

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Exactly two weeks ago I pulled out of my garage and waited, as I always do, for the door to close behind me. As it rolled down, I glanced up to my left to see a squirrel perched like a sentry at the peak of my condo’s roof. He or she waited as I thrashed around the car for a camera. I found one and hastily snapped an insurance photo through the window in case opening it spooked my subject. No worries. The squirrel held its position as I snapped more pictures through the half-open window. It darted down the roof’s far slope when I finally started moving the car forward.

The scene and the season connected in my mind and reminded me of my four year old My Christmas Squirrel post. The photo at left is quite a bit different from the one leading off that post but some of the key players are there. In particular, the tree, the snow couple, and the merry-go-round are in both.

My recent west coast trip provided an opportunity for a friend to tackle some sorely needed cleaning and repairs in my home. As my return would be just after Thanksgiving, she saw fit to not only expose (for the first time in years) the surface of my dining room table but to give it a Christmasy look. The aforementioned tree and snow people were joined by the basket of small stuffed critters which, while not specifically Christmas creatures, looked very much at home. I added the merry-go-round and brown bear.

The merry-go-round is one my Dad made. The figure I called “My Christmas Squirrel” in that earlier post rides on it. Other than being a toy, there is nothing Christmasy about it and my sister, who also has one, expressed surprise when I mentioned that it was among the things I displayed for the holiday. Makes sense to me, though. There’s also a connection between the bear and my Dad. Dad collected stuffed bears and had a double bed in a spare bedroom covered with them. Xavier Roberts, the guy who created Cabbage Patch Dolls, also made a series of Yonah Mountain Bears and I bought one as a gift for Dad when I stopped by Babyland General Hospital in 2004. After his death, Dad’s bears were divvied up among the grandkids and I accepted the return of the bear with the “Santa’s Favorite” bib. It is now part of my Christmas menagerie. Snowmen and squirrels and bears. Oh my!