Now I know who James R. Delp is. Remember the subpoena I got? And I thought it had something to do with Mick Pick, the man who was selling vehicles in Larry’s name? Well, Monday night I got a call from the Deputy County Attorney, asking questions about the upside-down pickup we found out on Shady Lake Road last January. Mainly, he wanted to know who had been driving. “Do you suppose they could’ve had the alcohol in containers in their pickup, and during the wreck the bottles broke and spilt on them?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, “That could’ve happened; but judging from the fumes that billowed forth each time they spoke, I think they not only spilt it on themselves, but they also spilt that stuff in them!”
James R. Delp was the driver. And he was saying he wasn’t. The DCA laughed when I told him about lecturing the fat kid with the big mouth, and the kid actually apologized. He said we should be proud; he didn’t know he had it in him, to apologize.
Tuesday, the day of the hearing, I got up earlier than I wanted to in order to call the County Attorney; his secretary told me, “Yes, the court hearing is still on.”
So I started getting ready. I’d made some coffee, taken a bath, washed my hair, and was getting dressed when Larry came home from the shop. (He thought that, since he was going to his shop at 8:30, and the court hearing wasn’t until 9:30, he’d be able to get in at least two hours of work.) His phone had been ringing when he got there; it was the County Attorney wanting to tell us that we didn’t need to come, because the driver had chickened out.
I was glad…there were plenty of other more important and enjoyable things to do, than to discuss drunk drivers in a dim courtroom.
Hannah, going for a walk Monday afternoon, found the littles outside playing, and Victoria looking longingly at a little blue bike that is just her size. The training wheels had been taken off, so she couldn’t ride it. Hannah put them back on. (She isn’t a rebuilder’s daughter for nothing, nosiree.) And wasn’t Victoria thrilled! She spent the rest of the afternoon pedaling up and down the walk.
Monday evening, I started fixing supper, then went off to put clothes into the dryer. In the meanwhile, Teddy came home from the shop, and, since no one was looking, he put a bushel basket of garlic powder into the vegetable stew. Aauucckk. It was stout, I tell you. A mere whisper of a breath from any one of us, from biggest to littlest, made tall oaks cower and small flowers croak.
Later that night, Caleb, coming out of the bathroom after a bath, announced, “I’ve got the boose gumps!” Then he stopped and frowned, trying to figure out exactly what he’d said wrong…
Larry, Teddy, and Joseph came rushing home at 2:00 p.m. Tuesday, with Joseph telling me, “It’s vacation time now!”
Larry had gotten a job hauling trailers to Columbus, Ohio. Another of those paid vacations…
Caleb, eyes wide, asked, “Why are we going to Columbus, Ohio?!”
I replied, “Because we are tired of Columbus, Nebraska.”
“Get everything packed,” said Larry, “and we’ll leave in the morning.”
He and the boys headed back to the shop to work on the mechanical end of things. Dorcas and Teddy planned to stay home, while the five younger children would come with us. I printed our list of supplies, and a list for each child, from a document I keep on the computer.
“And don’t mark anything off until it’s in your bag!” I admonished.
The littles rushed off to pack, lists in hand, beaming from ear to ear.
“I like packing!” Caleb remarked, and the others concurred with his opinion.
Such funny kids we’ve raised.
Hannah came visiting again. I was playing the piano rather unquietly, as I am oft wont to do… She knocked. No one came to the door; so, after knocking several times, she came in, just as I wound down. The door bumped a Tonka dump truck.
Hearing the noise, I called to Caleb and Victoria, “What in the world are you doing?!” and Hannah answered, “I’m coming in!” at the same time Caleb, coming down the hall, responded, “That wasn’t us!”
“Oh,” said I.
Still sitting at the piano, I told Hannah, “We are getting ready to go to Ohio; I’m busy packing; don’t bother me.”
She said, “Yes, I heard; you are packing the piano down into the turf.”
Victoria, hearing Hannah’s voice, came rushing into the living room. She was carrying her doll basket, and it was full of all manner of things that she thought she should take with her: her biggest doll, a toy coffee pot, a stuffed tiger, a stuffed bear in a mint-green crocheted dress, books, Caleb’s corsage from Bobby and Hannah’s wedding, a tiny metal car, and a plastic bag from the veterinary clinic with the words Cat Stuff imprinted on both sides above a cute photo of kittens. Inside the bag were a large car and a kaleidoscope. But the strangest thing in the doll basket was a long plastic pipe that was part of a set of pipes that went on a big Tonka truck that used to be Keith’s many years ago.
Hannah said to Victoria, “Are you all ready to go?”
“Yes!” Victoria affirmed, showing her the basket. “Here’s what I’m taking!”
Hannah peered into the basket. “Oh!!” she exclaimed, pulling out the pipe, “This will really come in handy!”
She held it to her lips and spoke loudly into it, “I need to go to the restroom!”
Victoria looked amazed, then embarrassed, and her shoulders went higher and higher until they met her earlobes. A small grin played around her mouth, and she ducked her head to try to hide it, while her siblings cackled gleefully. Then, whispering, she told her sister, "I only say that without pipes."
I decided I’d better quit with the piano playing and get on with the packing.
Five hours later, I decided I’d better quit with the packing and get on with the bread pudding baking.
The recipe called for four slices of bread. Only four, mind you!! I used approximately two dozen slices~~all the unused heels from Hannah’s sandwiches for her wedding. I also used a dozen eggs, half a gallon of milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and raisins.
No, no; the bread wasn’t moldy; it had been residing in the freezer. And it turned out perfectly.
We left for Ohio at 9:00 Wednesday morning. First on the agenda was a stop at UnSmart Foods, where we bought several boxes of fruit and granola bars, milk, and juice. This, we ate as we drove~~and that was our breakfast. When we start driving, I always reach over press the all-lock button, clack! and Larry invariably howls, “Helllllpp! I’m being held against my will!”
We arrived in Beatrice, where we would load the trailers we were to haul, at 11:00. These Demco trailers held several large bins for different sorts of recyclable goods. The buildings where the trailers are built, along with an array of other sorts of trailers, including various contraptions of farming equipment, were constructed in 1878. At the front of the building, there is a display of a miniature tank truck, a Dempster fertilizer dispenser, and an old Dempster plow. I have heard somebody talk of the old plows; I wonder, was it my father? Did he use one in the field when he was young?
Each Demco recycling trailer weighs 5,000 pounds, so we were heavily laden when we pulled out of Beatrice at 1:30 with two recycling trailers on our 48-foot slant trailer. The motor was pulling so hard that it drew the fan back enough for it to hit the radiator and make a tiny hole in it. Fortunately, Larry had a short time earlier bought some sort of sealant made by Conklin Products. He poured it into the radiator, and within fifteen minutes the leak had stopped. Good goop, that!
But it was a hot, hot day, and when we turned the air conditioner on, the engine temperature rose to 200…210…220…so we turned the A/C off and rolled down the windows. Whewww…the heat from the motor billowed right out from under the dash, rather like James R. Delp’s breath.
Feeling all sticky and damp, I got out some powder I’d put into the glove compartment. I turned the lid…and made a huge dust storm~~or a powder storm, as the case was~~with clouds of powder rolling through the pickup toward the back.
And it was at that precise instant that we drove past a feed yard.
Larry remarked, “That powder is not good,” just as I said, “Whew, this powder sure stinks,” and several small passengers’ eyes grew large, thinking it really was the powder.
When Larry got back into the pickup after loading the trailers, Caleb belatedly notice something that had occurred four days earlier. “Daddy!” he exclaimed, “Did you get a haircut?!”
“Yup,” his father responded, “That guy on the forklift cut it for me.”
“Really?!” asked Caleb incredulously.
“No, sir,” Victoria answered quickly, looking at her brother as if she wondered how in the world he could ever believe such a whopper as that.
Victoria’s car seat is in the middle of the third seat in the pickup. Therefore, when we opened the window on the back of the cab, her hair suddenly blew wildly every which way. She looked astonished, then started laughing. I jerked out my camera, flicked the switch to ‘on’, and took aim…but she noticed the camera pointing toward her, stopped laughing, and smiled her nice camera smile… The wind whistling through the pickup wreaked havoc on more heads than Victoria’s, and the fluff from the cottonwood trees rushed into the windows as if they were magnetically attracted to our pickup~~and to my nose.
“I do wish Charlotte would quit building her web on my nose!” I exclaimed, brushing at my face, making everyone laugh at me.
There were scores of bluebird boxes on posts beside the road; and many times the resident bluebirds could be seen sitting on fence posts near their boxes. The farther east we drove, the more we heard unfamiliar bird songs. I would have liked to track them down…but this was one of those paid vacations…
Every time Larry said something to me, it seemed, I answered, “What?” “Huh?” “What?” “Eh?” “Whuzzat?” “What?” “Howzatgain?” This, because he invariably turns his face to his window as he speaks. And since the windows were down… After he asked me for the third time if I needed a hearing aid, I pulled a new tack: the very next time he said something that I didn’t hear, I scrambled across the middle seat and peered out his window.
“What?! What?! WHAT?!” he cried, whirling to look out the window, too.
“I was wanting to see who was on the running board that you keep talking to,” I explained.
After that, he made a concerted effort to turn toward me when he spoke~~for a little while. Soon he was doing it again. I think the reason he does this is because, each time he begins to talk, I turn toward him. This automatically makes him want to see what I am looking at, so he looks, too. This is the exact phenomenon Laurel and Hardy exploited when together they walked to a busy street corner, stopped, and gazed up into the sky. They dropped their jaws as if indeed flabbergasted, then pointed wildly skyward in mute horror. Others, seeing this, rushed in alarm to the corner and tilted their heads back to stare into the heavens. Gesturing and jabbering in apprehension to each other, they did not at all notice when Laurel and Hardy walked briskly on to the next corner, where they repeated the hoax.
Three times we watch a close-up of this duplicity; then the camera is taken to the sky and we are given a view from far above the city. There, on street corner after street corner, stands clusters of people pointing at the sky, babbling excitedly about some perceived evil. Several blocks away, Laurel and Hardy are strolling serenely down an avenue, smugly cognizant of the mayhem they’ve triggered.
I conducted a scientific experiment: the next few times Larry said something to me, I turned away quickly and looked out my window. Lo and behold, he turned toward me each time, peering out my window as he spoke~~and I could hear him perfectly fine.
I tried another approach, for the fun of it… When he said something I couldn’t hear, I repeated back to him words that sounded somewhat similar, making certain that my own statement made no sense whatsoever. Case in point: Larry makes a comment; I don’t hear. “There were three fish reshingling that roof?” I query politely. The children titter. He repeats himself, turning toward me and enunciating clearly.
He soon says something else that I miss. “The Plutonians have landed, and they’re emptying Lake Erie?” I question courteously. The children giggle.
Before long it happens again. “Alligators pay through the nose for federal health care?” I ask. The children yelp with laughter.
Larry renewed his attempts to be comprehensible. “But I do think you need your hearing checked,” he muttered, slightly reproachful.
I turned my head toward my own window and answered him.
“What?” he asked, and the children went into peals of laughter.
Larry grinned. Then, “Quit heckling me!” he pouted.
We saw a couple of semis running something I had never seen before: ‘super singles’. These are extra-wide tires they run in place of duals, and they are spaced some distance apart. Convenient, I’d say~~until they have a flat. What then?
For a little while Wednesday evening, as we drove along, I was very occupied: I had one arm around Victoria, the other cradling her two dolls as they faced each other. She put a spoon into one doll’s hand and helped it ‘feed’ the other doll, using one of my empty film canisters for the baby food jar.
On many of the routes we took, we were delayed by road destruction. Well, that’s what it looked like, anyway. Larry remarked, “I like how they slow you down on the straight-aways~~” (he dropped his voice) “~~35 mph~~” (he went back to his normal tone) “~~and speed you up on the hairpin curves!~~” (good and loud~~) “~~45 mph!!”
Some people acted downright hostile when they were brought to a stop; others were courteous and polite, allowing us in our unwieldy rig to pull in front of them. In Illinois, there is a twenty-mile stretch of road with about forty or fifty bridges, give or take a dozen. Construction crews had been working on every bridge, competing to see which crew could make the biggest bumps and the deepest craters on either end of the bridge. Some of the potholes and drop-offs had signs warning of the impending concussion, but of course the worst jolts of them all were unmarked. Nevertheless, it was one of those paid vacations…
Most days it was hazy and steamy, and sometimes it rained. We discovered that we had a good deal of control over the rain: We could bring it on simply by leaving the windshield wiper fluid bottle empty, and make it stop merely by filling it back up again. Cunning, eh?
Wednesday night we got a motel room in Springfield, Illinois. After riding in a piping hot vehicle all day long, with the temperature over 90°, imagine, then, how it felt when, sweaty and tired, we stumbled into our room sometime around midnight to be confronted by a 57° blast of winter. Turning the thermostat up did nothing. The Arctic gale issuing from the vents blustered on. It finally occurred to our sleep-deprived brains to simply shut down the fan~~and the room gradually warmed to a tolerable temperature.
Poor Victoria was shivering something awful after her bath. “This is such a shivery room!” she told me, wrapping her arms around herself.
I dressed her quickly and tucked her into her sleeping bag, and she was soon warm again.
Thursday morning I came out of our room with the last armload of Stuff and Things to find Larry doing what Larrys do best: He was starting the grounds keeper’s big tractor/mower for him. The man had tried to no avail to get it running, until Larry, who’d been putting suitcases and clothes bags into the pickup, noticed his plight. He walked over and offered his assistance, and proceeded to get that mower started in less than fifteen seconds. People always like him, because he is neither conceited nor condescending; instead, he is helpful and understanding, and generally says that he, too, had just that same sort of difficulty, once~~although I’m quite sure he never did. If it has a motor, Larry will get it started; and it won’t take him long, either. In fact, I wouldn’t be half surprised if someday he manages to start something that isn’t motorized, such as my computer desk, or the couch, or the red maple, or something.
We once again ate cereal bars in the pickup for breakfast while hunting the Ever-Elusive Picnic Table, an objet d'art that is becoming all too rare, and will doubtless be soon put on the Endangered Species list. But we were having a paid vacation…
There was a big traffic jam on the turnpike east of Indianapolis. “Anyway, this sure isn’t the Speedway,” sighed Joseph. Luckily, we were almost at a rest area exit, so Larry drove down the shoulder of the road until he came to the ramp. We pulled in, found a picnic table under a big shelter amongst the trees, and fixed chicken noodle soup. We even had a bag of Sun Chips and some applesauce to go with it. While the soup heated, the children played catch with a football and a Frisbee.
There was one minor mishap when the football careened into the pan of soup, nearly upending it; but there was still more than enough soup for everyone…
Inside the tourist center nearby, there was a shirtless man who must’ve weighed all of 350 pounds using the phone…or, rather, abusing the phone. He was hoppin’ mad~~well, maybe not hoppin’; I don’t think he had that much bounce to him. Steaming. He was steaming mad because he was stuck at the rest area, and the cars on the Interstate were moving only in centimeters. He snapped angrily into the phone, then smashed it back onto the hook and stormed out the door, muttering darkly. People gave him a wide berth.
“Look at that great big man throwing a tantrum,” I said to the children. “Probably the reason for the gridlock out there on the highway is a serious accident; he ought to be thankful he wasn’t involved in it, and just be glad for life and limb.”
Caleb nodded soberly. “Yes! I’m thankful we got to stop and play football.”
Victoria’s head bobbed in agreement. “And I’m glad we got to stop so I could go to the restroom!”
We learned the next day that there had indeed been a bad wreck, and six people had been killed. I wonder if Mr. Frustration R. Flab III ever bothered to find out that news?
The chicken soup was good, but it didn’t stick to our ribs… Four hours later, we were starved again. That is, the rest of the family was starved. Joseph said, “I need some real food!” (He doesn’t regard chicken soup as being in that category.) So we got chicken salad sandwiches and Polish hotdogs with cheese, ketchup, mustard, and relish. How do they eat so much, I wonder? Why, Caleb can scarf down twice as much as I can. And since all the food they were ingesting looked so scrumptious, I kept eating…and eating…and eating… Ugh. Too full. Honestly, I didn’t have the opportunity to feel a hunger pang for three days. I thought for sure I’d gained ten pounds, but as it turned out, I didn’t, after all. And it was one of those paid vacations…
We arrived in Columbus, Ohio, at 10:00 p.m. Thursday night. We got a room at a motel, and the next morning while the rest of us got ready to go, Larry took the trailers to the place where he was to drop them off. I pulled a blouse out of my clothes bag. It was one I had once sewn for Hannah, but she’d never worn it, and just before she left, she brought it back to me, along with the matching skirt. I put it on.
That is, I tried.
That is, I tried.
That’s when I discovered~~I had sewn the buttons on the wrong side. The buttonholes were on the left, as a man’s shirt is.
Men, being rather askew in the first place, find this to be no problem. I, on the other hand, being of sound mind and body, must stand on my head, cross my eyes, and hum I’m A Yankee Doodle Dandy in order to get those buttons through the holes.
When Larry returned, we loaded our baggage and headed North to Alaska.
Uh, well, that is, that’s what we wanted to do. I tell you, it was hot.
In Avon, Ohio, we pulled into a vacant lot across the street from a convenience store for one of our multitudes of pit stops. Yes…we need forty acres to turn that rig around…
We walked across the street. After filling our hands with a variety of such things as extremely hot coffee, extremely hot water (to pour into the extremely thick coffee, unless one didn’t mind using a fork with which to eat one’s coffee) (just what one needs when the temperature is in the 90s and one cannot run one’s AC), pop, juice, and granola bars, we headed back across the busy street. Joseph and Hester ran ahead and were already in the pickup as the rest of us were preparing to cross the road. I was holding the extremely hot coffee in one hand and the extremely hot water in the other (to pour into the extremely thick coffee, because I am not Turkish). Larry was holding a large glass of pop in one hand and Victoria’s hand in the other.
Suddenly, a block to our left, just beyond a big intersection, there was a blinding flash and a horrific BOOM!!
Flames shot every which way, high voltage lines sizzled and crackled~~and began popping loose and falling, one loop after another, fast coming our way. I stood and looked at it with interest.
“We’ve got to get back!” Larry said urgently, stepping back and pulling Victoria with him.
I abruptly came out of my mesmerized state.
“Get back!” I shouted, and then for good measure, “GET BACK!!”~~~and 7,214 people~~the entire population of Avon~~leaped back from whatever they were doing, whether sitting at a computer terminal, standing at the water cooler, waiting at an elevator door, washing dishes at their kitchen sink, trimming rose bushes in their yard, or sitting in an easy chair reading the evening news. So far as I know, all those people are still standing in mute shock, gazing at whatever it was they were near, and whatever it was they so suddenly ‘got back’ from, just because of the sonic sound waves their subconscious minds heard, wondering what in the world happened.
A woman at the gas pumps, upon hearing my shout, jumped a good six feet backwards and upwards, both at the same time, and commenced to running in midair whilst shrieking simultaneously.
Meanwhile, the Jackson Five skedaddled backwards like skeert chickens, gazing skyward, looking for a place where there were no high voltage wires overhead. About the time things settled down and we decided we would attempt to cross the street again, some trucks passed by the downed lines, sending them swaying and bumping into each other. Once again, it sounded like the Fourth of July, snapping and popping and spitting fire. More wires burned and fell, coming altogether too close for comfort, and we backed farther away. The box on the side of a metal pole at the corner burned swiftly, and it looked as if the poles on both corners, including the one nearest our pickup and trailer, were wiped clean of their creosote coating with one swipe of a giant eraser.
We were glad that Joseph knew his safest course of action lay in staying put. Just as we deemed it safe to go across the road, the police arrived to block off the route where the wires were down. We crossed the street, climbed into the pickup, and started to go~~a difficult piece of work, because the stop-and-go lights at the corner were out, and the traffic was backed up on all four sides of the intersection. We wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, because those wires continued on right over the lot where the pickup and trailer was parked, and we were afraid they would catch another breeze, touch each other, and start their flaming, crackling descent again.
We cautiously pulled under wires that were still live~~and it was at that moment that a truck with a tall load, the driver not noticing the downed lines, turned the corner and started under the low-hanging lines. It looked to us as though he was heading right into direct contact with those wires…
“His tires are going to blow right out from underneath him,” said Larry quietly, and we watched in wordless dread as that big truck rolled closer to disaster.
And then the driver saw the police cars and stopped, in the nick of time.
It took us a moment or two for our hearts to start beating again, and another moment or two to catch our breaths. We carefully jockeyed around the rear of the truck as it sat there in the middle of that junction, and then we were off down the road and out of danger. Whew! These paid vacations…
We have decided that Indianans and Ohioans like to mow. Around many homes, there are vast acres of what looks like Kentucky Blue Grass, mown right up into the woods. It looked so pretty… We saw many large, well-kept farms with big barns. One in particular caught our attention, as two of the biggest barns we’d ever seen were connected together.
Caleb stared. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Those are huge! Those must be for really big pigs!”
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| Victoria and Lydia at Marblehead Lighthouse |
After crossing over Sandusky Bay on the Bay Bridge, we drove around Marblehead Peninsula, stopping to see Marblehead Lighthouse. This lighthouse has been in continuous service longer than any other lighthouse. Construction was completed in 1822, and it’s been working ever since. As we walked nearer, we could see people far above us, walking around the light up at the top, holding the railing. We headed for the door.
It was a big old wooden door, painted green~~and it was stuck. I pushed on it, succeeding in getting it open a few inches… I braced my feet and determinedly pushed.
What I didn’t know was that the lighthouse keeper was trying to shut and lock the door from the other side. He pulled it open, looking a bit disgruntled at this persistent tourist who wouldn’t take no for an answer~~and I, still shoving with all my might and main, nearly tumbled in onto his feet.
I gathered myself together and grinned at him.
“Oops,” said I. “Sorry!”
He quit looking peeved and laughed. “The last tour went up at 4:30,” he told me. “I’m just locking the door; you can come back tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.”
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| Lydia and Hester at Superior Lighthouse |
Four-thirty. We were fifteen minutes too late, and ‘tomorrow’ would find us 500 miles farther west. But I thanked him, and we trekked off to the rocky shores of Lake Erie, where we used up handfuls of film and a good deal of energy clambering about on the boulders. Whitecaps sparkled snowy white in the sunlight, and breakers crashed against the rocks at our feet. Boats in the distance rose and fell on the waves, and sea gulls wheeled overhead, their cries drifting down like tinkling chimes.
Nearby, a friendly black man reeled in the twentieth fish he and his wife had caught, and tossed it into a five-gallon bucket with some of the others he was keeping. Caleb, wanting to look into the bucket, and feeling timid about doing so, crept closer…closer…closer…and then he jerked back quickly and almost fell between the rocks he was jumping, for one of the fish slapped its tail so vigorously it sprayed water all over him.
In the village of Lakeside, we stopped at a gift shop and purchased a few souvenirs, including magnets with a picture of the lighthouse on them.
Leaving the Peninsula, we went through Toledo, after which we got on the Ohio Turnpike and headed east. It was raining, and must have been raining much harder minutes earlier, for there were people parked alongside the Interstate and under overpasses, and they were just starting to pull out again. The sun came out, and there to the east was a glistening rainbow.
We stopped at one of the Turnpike’s Plazas, commandeered a picnic table, and fixed spaghetti and tomato juice soup. Yogurt and Fig Newtons were the next course, and we washed it all down with strawberry kiwi V8 Cocktail. Caleb’s tooth, which has been getting looser and looser, was bothering him so much he couldn’t even eat spaghetti.
“Let me see it,” I said. He obligingly opened his mouth. I touched it carefully~~and then I pulled it out. I laid it on the picnic table beside him. “There you are.”
“There!” he said in relief~~and then he looked down at the table. He stared at the tooth. “Aaaa!” he yelped. “My tooth’s out!”
We drove to Elkhart, Indiana, Friday night, and got a motel room. When Joseph is showering, the rest of us, listening to the horrendous bumps and crashes and splashes, wonder, Will the bathroom be fit for human use, afterwards? and further, Will we get tossed out of this motel onto our collective tin ears before he comes out of there? I am quite sure that I heard a tsunami, a cyclone, and three typhoons go through while we waited.
Saturday morning we drove to Michigan City, and then took a route along the south shore of Lake Michigan. We paid five dollars to enter Indiana Dunes State Park, just to eat breakfast beside the Lake…but we nearly got ourselves stuck like a bug in a jug, without a place large enough to turn around. Larry wound up driving that big rig practically cross-country to get back out again. But it was a paid vacation…
Still hungry, we renewed our Search for the Uncommon Picnic Bench. We finally found it~~at the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. It being Saturday, this enormous steelworks was closed, so we had a colossal parking lot all to ourselves. After eating breakfast~~shredded wheat and Berry V8 Cocktail juice, we tried our best to wear off the calories with a fierce, fast game of Frisbee. And then we were off again.
We traveled along the coast of Lake Michigan, turning onto Lake Shore Drive in southern Chicago~~and there, just ahead, the street rose high into the sky: it was a drawbridge, and a ship was passing through. There were both United States and Canadian flags flying from the decks, and a giant letter ‘P’ painted on the smokestack. I wondered what it stood for. Persimmons? Parasols? Pabulum? Pachyderms? Pacifiers? Padnags? Pajamas? Panthers? Papayas? Papaws? Platypuses? Platoons? Pantaloons? Prairie chickens? Hmmmm…
The children oohed and ahhed over the size of that ship. The bridge began to lower.
“It’s turning into a road again!” exclaimed Caleb.
As we crossed over the drawbridge, we looked off to the east~~and there, sitting at the mouth of the harbor, ready to come up the Calumet River, was a ship that absolutely dwarfed the first. It was almost twice the size of the one that had just passed through.
We drove along Lake Shore Drive, watching the many sailboats tacking along in the harbors. A few sizable yachts clipped smartly through the water. Some sort of celebration must’ve been in progress, for there were people barbecuing all along the grassy and sandy shores, and the scents drifting past our inquisitive noses set our for-once-nearly-empty stomachs to rumbling. Some of the people looked as if they had moved in for the duration, for their small corner of the shore boasted large umbrellas, big ice chests, grills, and lawn chairs.
A couple of old planes flew over several times in formation. A group of nattily-arrayed men on horseback put themselves in order and prepared for action.
I wonder what was the occasion? Do Chicagoans have to have occasions to conduct Celebrations by the Lakeside? Maybe it was Shrewmouse Day; who knows.
When we came to Interstate 55, we turned to the southeast and followed the route back to Interstate 80, which we would stay on all the way to the western edge of Iowa. As we passed through middle Chicago, we drove alongside a mammoth curved overpass in various processes of construction. Hundreds of men in hardhats scurried over it like ants on an anthill. Part of the bridge consisted mostly of huge I-beams, while some of it appeared to be almost ready for the cement to be poured, having waffled rebar covering the steel platform entirely. The rebar was coated with something of a Teflon consistency, colored grass-green, to keep the acid in the cement from eating the rebar.
“Look, kids!” I said, “First they set the foundation; then they put everything together, including the I-beams; then they lay grass on it.”
“Oh,” said one Gullible Guppy from the rear reaches of the pickup.
“You sure that’s right?” I asked.
He giggled. “Hee hee hee! Oh!” said Caleb, “No, I guess not.”
The day was so foggy or smoggy, one or a tuther, we could hardly see the skyscrapers. We came over a bridge, and there was the Sears tower. Joseph, abruptly deciding he needed the camcorder, jerked the bag out from under Larry’s arm, where it was masquerading as an armrest.
Larry flung his arm up and made as if he nearly fell out the door, only saving himself at the last minute by snatching onto the steering wheel and dragging himself back into his seat. “Skewwz me!” he exclaimed in exaggerated courtesy, as if he had been in Joseph’s way.
“You’re excused,” replied Joseph in overstated civility.
It rained again in western Illinois. We passed a couple of motorcyclers, making life more miserable for them than it already was. Soon the sun came out and shone on the eastern clouds, creating another rainbow. As we headed west from Sofa (alias, Davenport), Iowa, the sky near the horizon turned orange and pink, before changing sharply to indigo blue and dark purple.
Because we wanted to drive all the way home Saturday night, and we had many miles yet to go, we bought Campbell’s Potato Soup from a dispenser at a truck stop. Stop sneering! It was good! In fact, it was really, really, really good. Victoria said so, herself, so there. Furthermore, we were having a paid vacation…
About the time the sky grew inky black, the kids had their final fling, and finally the last giggle faded away. I pulled my sun visor down and watched them for a few minutes through the mirror on the visor. They looked like candles in a breeze, flickering…flickering …going out, one by one. Hester had Victoria all cuddled up beside her, and was carefully tucking Victoria’s favorite blanket around the little girl’s legs. Caleb and Joseph were in the middle seat, and they were both laying down, heads together on pillows in the center of the seat. Lydia was curled up like a kitten on the other side of Victoria, and by all appearances was already sound asleep.
I closed the mirror and lifted the visor…and then I pulled it back down and took one more look at those dear children of mine…
We have noticed, on a few of our last excursions where we only had four or five of the younger children, that people treat us better than they did fifteen or so years ago, when we traveled with our oldest four or five children. What do they think? Do we look old enough now that they figure we have all these children because we wanted to, and since they don’t know about the other four or five children, they think we wisely waited until we were older to have children? And would they still smile upon us fondly, were they to learn that these five children have four older siblings?
In the middle of the night, we stopped at a rest area. Larry put money into a dispenser and pushed the buttons for a small bag of Grandma’s Cookies. It dropped into the receptacle. He put more money in, pushed the buttons. The machine spun and whirred~~and the bag got stuck. Larry thumped on the side. The bag fell to the bottom. He put more money in. He pushed buttons~~the same buttons again, because, of course, he wanted more of those same cookies… Spin…whir… The next bag got stuck, too. He thumped on the side of the machine. Nothing happened. He thumped harder. Grandma hung onto her cookies. He thumped on the front of the dispenser~~and, all of a sudden, an ear-piercing siren went off, startling several half-asleep kids in the pickup into wide-awake amazement.
I fully expected the National Guard, the entire Des Moines Police Force, and the United States Navy Reserves to hit the scene immediately or sooner…but that shrilly blaring alarm eventually turned off and nothing further occurred…except Larry lost more money in the machine, trying to make the next bag push out the first. Joseph got himself a package of Hershey’s Kisses and we departed.
Victoria, hearing the rattle of Joseph’s plastic, awoke, sat straight up, and asked, “Can I have a kiss?”
“Yep,” replied Joseph, and he leaned over and gave her a big smack on the cheek.
“No, no!” Victoria protested, “Not that kind! I don’t want a~~” (and here she made a loud smacking noise) “~~I want a kiss to eat!”
Joseph grinned and gave her one.
Larry, in a hurry to get home, was in the left lane, because it was smoother, driving 80 mph. Lydia, now in the middle seat, having traded places with Caleb, peered at the dash.
“Daddy!” she said, “Didn’t you see that sign telling you how fast you’re supposed to go?”
“Nope,” answered Larry shortly.
“It’s 65!” Lydia told him.
“No; no,” he disagreed, “That’s for the people in the right lane. You don’t see any speed limit sign on the left, do you?
“Daddy, you know better than that,” scoffed Lydia, and then giggled.
The pickup did not reduce its speed. After all!~~it was on a paid vacation!
It wasn’t long before Larry was looking as if he would like to join the children in their slumbers, so I took over the wheel for the first time that trip, driving from some distance east of Des Moines to the rest area east of North Omaha. Larry drove the rest of the way.
We got home a little after 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning, and everyone rushed for the showers and bathtubs. I curled Hester and Lydia’s hair, and everybody went to bed. Perhaps we would have gone to Sunday School and church, but several of us didn’t feel quite “up to power”, as a friend of ours used to say; so we stayed home and slept.
Eventually we pulled ourselves from the feathers to indulge in several stacks of Larry’s delicious pancakes, and then he cut Joseph and Caleb’s hair. That night we attended the wedding of Ronnie and Joy, classmates of Hannah’s. Joy is Bobby’s cousin. It was a lovely wedding…particularly since somebody had the sense to put three mints, rather than the customary measly two, into each nut cup.
And on that note I shall close.
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