Last Monday, we were working away in the kitchen...the girls and I washed a second load of dishes in the dishwasher...we washed the rest in the sink... (Why does it take the littles three or four hours to empty the dishwasher and refill it, but it only takes me, all by myself, ten minutes, I wonder? Hmmmm...must be one of those strange wonders of the world.) (Together, it takes five minutes, tops.) Next, Hester swept, Lydia mopped.
And then--Hester knocked Caleb’s Mason jar of grasshoppers off the counter. Bye-bye, Mason jar. Hello, kitchenhoppers.
By the time the Great Grasshopper Roundup was wrapped up, it was time for supper. So, while Hester cooked almost five pounds of frozen hamburger, I cooked two boxes of chili cheese hamburger helper, to which I added two bags of frozen noodles and a volley of spices. And, surprisingly enough, it was good. Really good.
But what about dessert? Popovers! I hadn’t made popovers for a looong time. So popovers it was. I put banana pudding inside them. Mmmm, yummy.
After supper, Larry took Caleb and Victoria to Gehrings’ big lot so they could drive the go-cart. I went too, camcorder in hand. We saw a flock of Canada geese fly over low; they are the resident geese from the nearby sandpits.
Hester and Lydia stayed home to play at the new playground; there were several Walker cousins there, which is an even bigger draw than the playground.
When it got dark, we went shopping at Wal-Mart, where we purchased a big rolling dufflebag/suitcase for Teddy, partly as a late birthday present, and partly as an early wedding present. We filled it with socks and handkerchiefs and such like. We got Lydia and Hester an alarm clock for school, just because Wal-Mart was having a five-dollar sale on alarm clocks, and a few other necessities that are cheaper there than at the grocery store.
There are mountain lions in north-central Nebraska, a couple of hours north of us, along the Niobrara River. They’ve probably been around for a few years, but lately more people have documented them on film. The Game and Parks people won’t believe anyone has really seen a mountain lion unless they have the pictures to prove it. (“No, ma’am, you must be mistaken; I’m sure it was nothing more than a gopher; they have the same tawny coat, you know.”)
Just after noon Tuesday, Caleb asked if we could have the Butterfinger brownies he’d found in one of the bags from grocery store. I, assuming he meant ‘have them for supper’, as we always do, said yes.
So he made them.
Right then and there, on the spot.
So I had a Butterfinger brownie for breakfast.
Yes, breakfast. That’s when I eat breakfast--in the afternoon. I can eat breakfast anytime I choose, you know; I don’t have to ask the Queen when I can eat. If I don’t feel like looking an egg in the face till I’ve been up several hours, that’s my business, so there.
But what I had really wanted was a slice of twelve-grain toast with a liberal amount of butter soaking into it, and a drizzling of honey poured over it. That’s what I really wanted. But if I’d waited till suppertime to eat that brownie, it would have been cold!--and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. And neither could I eat both the brownie and the toast, or I would turn into the Graf Zeppelin, although without the ability to fly around the world. Or the dirigible Hindenburg, which was 812 feet long and 135 feet in diameter. 7,063,000 cubic feet, mind you!
I took Victoria to her cousin Amanda’s birthday party at 1:30 p.m.; she gave Amanda a box of colors, markers, and a coloring book. Annette brought Victoria home a little before 3:30, and she had a headband, a couple of bracelets, a helium balloon, and the Barbie paper plate off of which she’d eaten her cake and ice cream. When I asked her what she’d eaten, the first thing she told me was, “Gummy bears.”
I think, nowadays, that the kids who attend the birthday party end up with more than the child for whom the party was thrown!
As I was driving away from Kenny and Annette’s house, I met Christine. We waved...I thought what a sweet person she is...and suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, my eyes were full of tears because David is gone, and Christine is left alone with five dear little children to raise and love.
I wiped my eyes and went to fill the Suburban with gas...just in case we went somewhere...
Home again, I found a big box in which to wrap a couple sets of flyswatters, a bottle of mosquito spray, and a cute little mosquito lamp. I was sending it to a friend of mine who lives in Louisiana. On a sheet of paper in big, colorful, stenciled letters, I wrote, “WEST NILE VIRUS PROTECTION KIT”. As I wadded newspapers and tucked them in, the first two lines of a poem that was begging to be written popped into my head, so I rushed for pen and paper and finished it:
WEST NILE VIRUS REMEDY
When mosquitoes are vicious, vehement, and vile,
And you fear they have come from the far-off West Nile,
One thing alone is left you to do: Fight!!
Fight them with swatters, with sprays, and with glue!
Besiege them with torches; don’t let them escape!
Chase them! Rout them! Don’t stand there agape!
Fearlessly march forth in sun or in rain,
Search out mosquitoes in bayou or plain.
Demolish their houses, stamp out their nests!
Recruit your children! Engage your guests!
If mosquitoes malevolent are landing on you,
Slap yourself silly with palm, paper, or shoe;
Whack ‘em! Cuff ‘em! Flay ‘em with whips!
Teach ‘em regret for their despicable nips!
And then if all that has failed you completely,
And upon your poor pate the vermin perch neatly,
One final solution I have here to offer,
A rectifying remedy, the best I can proffer:
Relocate to Nebraska, where the drought drones along,
For there the mosquitoes aren’t nearly so strong.
They just can’t compete with these Cornhuskers sturdy,
Who are tough as old boots, though not nearly so wordy.
So suitcase your articles, pack up your shoes,
We’ll come rushing to greet you upon hearing the news!
Monday’s popovers were so scrumptious that I decided to make more the next day. And, since a few urchins had complained about the banana pudding, this time I put chocolate pudding inside them. We took some to Christine (in the dish I’ve had ever since a couple of days after David died, when we went to visit and wound up going home with a pile of food). I had not yet given the bowl back, for my mother, you see, taught me that I should not return dishes empty. Because of this, I often have quite a collection of other people’s dishes awaiting my ambition to come to life and fill them with something delectable.
Christine gave us a big envelope, inside of which were a picture of David, a picture of David and Christine together, and a billfold of David, one of my favorites of him. So then I cried over that.
Hester, Caleb, Victoria, and I then took a birthday gift to my brother Loren. I had a nice visit with him and Janice, and the children had a nice visit with their moose of a dog, Bullet. He is always glad to see us, and makes all sorts of commotion about it. Loren and Janice’s deck was full of birds, and the finches and even the doves are on their second--and some on their third--set of fledglings now. I didn’t know doves had more than one clutch per season!
We came home, fixed some soup and baked the rest of the popovers, after which I more than made up for not having that slice of twelve-grain toast with butter and honey. I have now bypassed the Hindenburg and am nearer in size to the U.S. Navy ZPG-3W, which was the world’s largest blimp. 403 feet long, 118 feet wide...and a gas capacity of 1 ½ million cubic feet.
(Pooh. I’ve known humans with a bigger capacity than that.)
I shall have to stay out of strong winds; airships seem to have the nasty habit of sailing into hangars--or hills, or trees, or flat ground--during violent windstorms and thunderstorms. Sometimes they even commit suicide by plunging into the sea.
I think I’ll wait a while before I make popovers again.
Joseph has been working with Gehrings at Excel Meat Packing Plant in Schuyler. It’s a huge place, with untold cattle trucks rumbling in constantly, all day and all night.
Also, it stinks.
Joseph told of the dangers of toxic gas buildup in certain areas of the plant, and how they have different ventilators set up in strategic places to cope with it.
“There are wind socks on all sides of the building,” he told us. “Do you know why?” he asked Larry.
Larry thought for a moment. “Why?” he queried.
“To tell you which way the wind is blowing,” replied Joseph, straight-faced for only a moment before he couldn’t help but grin.
Actually, it’s so they know which ventilators to turn on, so as to blow the gases away from the plant.
Larry and I went for a bike ride to the north side of town. There are a lot of pretty, new houses there...and, at 8:30 and a little later, people often have their lights on and all the draperies still open, so we are granted views of libraries, dens, kitchens, living rooms, and bedrooms, replete with beautiful bookcases full of books and figurines, old-fashioned rolltop desks, exquisitely carved cupboards with enough countertop space to equal a dozen of my small kitchen, luxurious couches, divans, and recliners, four-poster beds, canopies, rattan headboards--and huge ugly paintings on the walls that Victoria could outdo with her eyes shut.
When we were finished drooling and making scintillating remarks about the artwork, we pedaled back home. The littles were playing in the new playground again. They especially like the tire swing. I hope no one breaks their neck on that thing! But they were having loads of fun.
Wednesday, I finished Victoria’s suit and cut out her black kiana blouse shortly before church.
Later, after church, Teddy informed me that he and Amy were going to have their prebridal pictures taken the next afternoon. This meant that Teddy needed his new pants hemmed--and he wanted cuffs. And I was too tired to care. I did a few loads of clothes so the menfolk would at least have shirts and jeans for work the next day, and then I went to bed.
Thursday, the first order of business was to hem Teddy’s pants--adding the requested cuffs, if you please, and thank you very much. Sooo...I put cuffs on the dear boy’s britches.
After that, we spent the rest of the afternoon packing. Yes, we were going on a little vacation!!! That full tank of gas was going to come in handy. Larry came home a bit early--5:00--and spent a little while fixing curtains and putting new screws around the icebox in the camper, the better to keep the eggs from coasting out onto the floor.
We departed at 8:00 p.m. After Grand Island, I drove--all the way to Loveland, Colorado.
Somewhere around Ogallala, I pulled out to pass a UPS truck, one of those sorts with double trailers, the rear trailer usually doing a reasonable impersonation of a friendly dog’s tail.
The truck started drifting into my lane.
I backed off.
He got back where he belonged, and I started around again.
He took a jaunt onto the shoulder, then veered through his lane and into mine.
I slowed and stayed back.
Then, after he stayed in his lane fairly well for the next thirty seconds or so, I stepped on the accelerator and sailed around him, hoping I wouldn’t meet up with a speed-checking state patrol before I returned to the right lane and slowed down to the posted speed--75 mph. About the time I was even with his front bumper, he started yawing left again, and I pressed the pedal right down to the floor and drove on the outside yellow line.
As I pulled in front of him, I looked in my rear-view mirror. The truck, having blundered far onto the right shoulder, was churning up a cloud of dust. Even from my position directly in front of him, I could see the second trailer oscillating along at the hindmost, looking entirely perilous and hazardous.
If that idiot makes it to his destination without cracking up, I’ll be surprised, I thought.
Somewhere between Julesberg and Sterling, I topped a hill to see brake lights glowing in the dark on the next hill. Hurriedly slowing, I came to a stop behind a van. People were out of their vehicles, walking about; but no one knew what the trouble was. Larry awoke, climbed out, walked over the hill, and found a sheriff’s deputy who told him that there was a four-vehicle pileup--three trucks and a car--in the next valley. We had to sit and wait until wreckers were able to move things out of the roadway.
Finally traffic started advancing. Coming over the next hill, we saw a wrecker towing off a smashed car of indeterminable lineage--and then we saw one of the trucks, lying on its side in the median, the rear end of its second trailer partly on the road.
It was a double-trailered UPS truck.
Of course, I have no idea if it was the same one I had passed earlier; and I do not know what the cause of the wreck was; but ... it makes one wonder, doesn’t it? And I had stopped to fill with gas, so the UPS truck could have gotten ahead of me.
We got to Loveland at about 4:30 a.m. Not wishing to travel through the beautiful Big Thompson Canyon in the dark, I looked for a campground. We settled on Boyd Lake State Park north of Loveland. It was a pretty park, but the poor lake was nearly dry.
Luckily, there was room enough in the campground for us to park a little ways away from the other campers---luckily, I say, because our popup camper says, ‘SSSSSS-sssqquueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaakkkkkkKKK!!!’ whilst it is getting itself cranked up. Larry is generally of the attitude that we can (and should) snooze in the Suburban until other campers are awake before raising our pop-up camper, so as not to waken and irritate them.
I, however, am generally of the attitude that, even if we do rouse someone, it is not possible that they will be more tired than I will be during the coming day, and therefore I am completely unsympathetic. If I am to be miserable, so should everybody else, and I will help them if they cannot do it by themselves, that’s my motto.
After all!--I’m the one who had to drive all night while everyone else was snoring happily!
And there’s another thing: I am generally of the attitude that the real reason Larry doesn’t want to roll up the camper has nothing to do with disturbing the neighboring campers. I am generally of the attitude that it is because he does not wish to waken, irritate, and disturb himself.
The starry sky was just beginning to lighten with the approaching dawn, a full moon on its way down behind the jagged peaks of the Rockies, when we sprawled into our beds, exhausted.
Problem #1: I had put on a pair of socks, one of those sorts that gets tighter the longer you wear them, until the pads of your toes are folded under till they touch the balls of your feet. Arthritic toes do not appreciate this. I popped up all in an aggravation and yanked the stupid socks off, throwing them onto the floor, not caring where they landed.
I laid back down.
Problem #2: Joseph, still suffering from a bad cold and sinus infection, kept coughing.
Problem #3: Hester, still suffering from a bad cold, kept coughing.
I thought I would not be able to sleep at all. “There’s cough syrup on the counter,” I called softly.
A flashlight went on, and somebody retrieved the medicine.
I suddenly awoke to bright early-morning sunlight blazing down on us, creating a sauna-like effect inside our closed camper.
Aauugghhh!! Claustrophobia City!
I scrambled over Larry and started unzipping windows. “Open this place up!” I exclaimed, making him grumble. “Hurry!” I continued, crawling over him again, en route to the other side. “Get these windows open before we die!”
The children came to groggily, a few reaching for zippers on their side of the camper, a few simply staring wonderingly at their mother.
A refreshing zephyr, replete with the scent of pines, was soon breezing its way through. Joseph turned over, re-covered himself to the gills, and closed his eyes.
“Time’s a-wastin’!” I cried, grabbing my bag and heading for the showers.
They were the pay-as-you-scrub type. Seventy-five cents for the first three minutes, another quarter for each minute thereafter. I think the people who thought up those things ought to be forced to shower in cold water, get their hair all sudsed up--and then someone should turn off the water. Do that every day of their life, for the rest of their lives. It’s only what they deserve.
Once upon a time, long, long ago when I was very young and traveling with my parents, we came, after a long jag of journeying, to a rest area where the stall doors only opened upon the inserting of a coin. I remember watching with amazement as grown women who either didn’t have the correct change, or simply didn’t wish to pay it, shinnied under the doors. One lady, evidently finding such things beneath her dignity (or maybe she didn’t fit), dropped her coin into the slot and opened the door. Upon exiting, she held the door for another lady...and that lady held it for the next...who held it for the next...and she the next... while the less decorous went on clambering under the other still-locked doors.
My mother, who had already extracted a coin from her purse, got in line with the doorholders. I got in one of the scramble-under lines.
Back to Boyd Lake...
Half an hour later, freshly scrubbed and coifed, I walked out of the little building--just in time to see Larry, with several of the children, heading off toward the lake, or, rather, what was left of the lake.
I called his name.
He strode on.
I called again...but on he went. The children apparently didn’t hear me, either; and I didn’t want to whistle, because it was early, and some of the campers were still in their tents and trailers, making no signs of movement.
I stuck my bag into the camper, where Joseph was still sawing logs like a logging trooper, grabbed a camera, and rushed after my wayward family. As I trotted past the Suburban, I noticed: the fishing poles were out.
AAAuuugggghhhhhh!!!! What on earth was that husband of mine thinking, wasting time fishing at this dried-up puddle on the barren prairie, when only thirty miles to the west loomed the majestic, beckoning Rockie Mountains??!!!
I hastened my pace.
There was a curving walkway around the lake, and I followed it for some distance in the way I had seen them go.
They were nowhere to be seen. I marched along, stopping now and then to take pictures of mountains in the distance, wildflowers beside the trail, and a dog frisking through the golden prairie grasses.
And I whistled. Over and over (so long as nobody was nearby), I whistled. But there was no answer. So, after fifteen minutes of walking, getting hotter by the minute (whether from the heat of the scorching sun or from exasperation, I cannot tell), I returned to the camper.
“Wake up!” I said to Joseph. “Everyone is gone, and every minute we waste here is that much time lost from exploring in the mountains! Let’s get ready to go.” I scowled. “Let’s leave them all behind!”
Joseph laughed. “Well, I’ll get the camper ready to go; but I’m not sure I want to be party to leaving Daddy behind.” He cleared his throat. “He might find us again.”
Soon the camper was rolled down and fastened. We quickly ate breakfast at a nearby picnic table...and then Caleb came back. He directed us to where Larry and Hester were fishing; Lydia and Victoria were playing nearby. Victoria had collected a pile of big clam shells, the insides of which were luminescent purples, blues, greens, golds, and silvers.
“Can I keep them?” she begged.
I told her she could--so long as they were not still alive. She beamed.
All across the sand that had once been the bottom of the lake, beer bottles lay where they were probably tossed from boats when the lake was full.
I walked down to the edge of the water. “Having fun in this stinky, dried-up ol’ beer joint?” I queried sourly, more annoyed than ever after stumping through sharp-edged weeds and getting hot sand in my sandals and all over my clean feet.
Larry had the audacity to laugh.
I hurried everyone back to the Suburban, scolding like a fretful fishwife all the way, and then we were off through the Big Thompson Canyon toward Estes Park, gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park.
Larry and Joseph heckled me as we drove through the town by exclaiming over such things as the go-cart track and the dirt bike rentals, as if that could possible hold a candle to exploring in the mountains. I put my nose haughtily in the air and gazed out my window, not deigning to answer.
This time, while in the Park, we did something I have always wanted to do, but haven’t, because every other time we were there, some of the children were too little: we hiked up to Bear Lake, and then on to Alberta Falls. I saw a bird I had never seen before, and even managed to get a good video of it as it scampered up the trunk of a fir tree: a brown creeper.
At the base of the Falls, we saw an older man painting. His easel and palette were secured amongst the boulders on which he was standing, while raging waters swirled right at his feet. His painting was a beautiful rendition of the falls, and Larry and I climbed down to the river, the better to get him in our pictures. I peeled off shoes and socks, partly to keep my balance on the rocks in the stream, and partly to keep them dry on the chance that I should tumble in.
I thought how funny it would be if the artist turned around to catch a couple of tourists, in the throes of trying to take his picture, suddenly sitting down ker-SPLOOSH right into the rapids. Perhaps he would flip his canvas around and paint us?
Stellar’s jays, downy woodpeckers, Cassin’s finches, and gray jays abounded. Striped chipmunks and ground squirrels scampered all over the place.
We drove over Trail Ridge Road, which takes one well above tree line, to 12,183 feet, stopping several times to take pictures and admire the awe-inspiring vistas. Long’s Peak is the highest mountain in the Park, at 14,255 feet. Chipmunks and Clark’s nutcrackers came begging for food, and Hester and Lydia obliged them with small pieces of bread. The chipmunks delighted Lydia by climbing right up into her lap, and then sitting there while they ate, turning the pieces of bread this way and that in their tiny paws. A young man and woman arrived and begged a piece of bread from her, too, the better to feed the chipmunks and birds themselves.
And then along came a young version of Janet Reno, long braids sticking out self- righteously, leaning down in an indignant posture to loudly inform Lydia, “You aren’t supposed to feed the wildlife! It’s illegal!”
Lydia ignored her and went on feeding the wildlife.
The girl leaned still farther, arms akimbo, putting herself in quite a perilous stance. “DON’T feed the wildlife!!!” she howled. “It’s ILLEGAL!”
Lydia ignored the girl.
“They’re not wild; they’re tame,” I told Reno Junior, “Just watch them.”
She glowered at me. “No..they’re..not,” she spit, “They’re WILD.”
“Not as wild as you are,” I remarked, and laughed.
“I..don’t..think..so,” snapped Ms. Stiffbraids, and she turned and stalked off in high dudgeon.
Hester and Lydia resumed their criminal activities with the tamelife until their mother decided that the family needed the rest of the bread more than the local lions and tigers did.
“She was probably hungry, poor thing,” declared Larry. “Why didn’t you toss her a crumb?”
Lydia giggled. “I think she just wanted to feed them, herself, and her mother wouldn’t let her.”
That evening, we camped near Winter Park at Mountain Meadow Campground. Hummingbird feeders hung all around the office building, and broad-tailed hummingbirds teemed about them, making high-pitched chirping noising, wings whirring as they hovered and flitted. High mountains surrounded us, and the sun went down in a blaze of scarlet and gold fire.
Now, this night we were going to bed at a decent hour, and I was indeed looking forward to a peaceful night’s sleep. Ooooo, how badly I needed it.
It was not to be.
Problem #1: The socks I had donned were made of the same wretched fabric as those I had worn the previous night--some sort of Lycra SomethingOrOther that maliciously increases its elasticity the longer one has them on.
I sat up abruptly and jerked them off.
Problem #2: I had injured a muscle closing the camper the previous day, and it complained loudly when I sat up suddenly like that.
Problem #3: We were at an elevation of about 8,500 feet, and nights get downright cold up there. And Larry had not turned on the propane or lit the pilot light for the furnace.
Problem #4: Joseph kept coughing.
Problem #5: Hester kept coughing.
“Take some cough syrup!!” I hissed impatiently.
They took some cough syrup.
Problem #6: Victoria, sound asleep, suddenly made a loud, smothered, strangled cry, sounding decisively un-Victorialike.
“Hey!” I yelled, forgetting all about Thinness of Popup Camper Walls and Proximity of Camping Neighbors, “Stop that, what’s the matter?!!”
She didn’t make another peep. Hester sat up and covered her small sister with another blanket, and she didn’t even wiggle.
The next day Victoria told Lydia, “You know what?” She giggled. “I dreamed I was playing in the camper, and Daddy started driving, and I fell out and started crying!”
So that was the explanation of that.
Problem #7: As previously stated, arthritic toes do not appreciate any sort of pressure on them, including heavy blankets. And our sleeping bags, which we use zipped together and flat as one big blanket, are heavy. But if I gave the covers a kick, I could create a little air pocket for my feet in which they didn’t suffer from Crushed Toe Compression Syndrome.
Finally comfortable, I was just starting to doze off... ... ...
Larry muttered in his sleep, lurched sideways, and pulled the covers down tight on my toes. I made a noisy exclamation in his ear, which didn’t faze him in the slightest, and kicked the blanket back into its little pyramid over my feet.
Waiting only until I was starting to get drowsy again, he groaned and wallowed miserably about. The spread descended with all its bulk.
I shoved on him ineffectively and repositioned my Toe Tent.
Throughout the night, the Great Sleeping Bag War raged, until eventually I had had enough.
I sat up wearily, grabbed the bag, and threw the entire thing atop Larry. Then I gathered up my quilt and velour blanket and pulled them over me, making sure to keep them off of Larry. Sequestration has its merits, you know.
Larry made a muffled noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. I poked him, and heard the noise again. That time, I pretended not to hear.
The blankets weren’t quite warm enough, but they would have to do. Anything to keep my toes from getting squished.
In the morning, I got up and headed for the showers.
Guess what.
Yep, they were the pay-as-you-scrub ilk.
But these seemed to be better than yesterday’s; these only cost $.25 for every five minutes.
First, I made the error of putting both my quarters in at once. The old relic of a coin grabber begidget, unbeknownst to me, ignored the second quarter.
Next, the ancient shower, evidently drawing its heat from Mt. Etna, that distant Sicilian volcano, took nearly all of five minutes to get warm.
Thinking I had a little more than five minutes left, I stepped in and began shampooing my hair.
I had not finishing rinsing out the conditioner when, quite rudely and abruptly and without warning, the shower turned off.
And I had no more quarters.
Aaarrrggghhh!
Well, at least one didn’t have to pay to use the sink. I finished my ablutions in the sink, making sure to use up at least five minutes of hot water.
One of the nice things about going places this late in the year is that most children are back in school, and we aren’t awoken sooner than we want to be by screaming, howling banshees. If Norma calls brats in houses ‘house apes’, do you think she would call brats in campgrounds ‘campground apes’? Of course, Lydia is a bit regretful about not finding someone with which to make friends and play games. (And Janet Dear didn’t fit the bill.)
Saturday, we headed for Leadville, hoping to visit some friends we have known for about fifteen years, but have never met. On the way, we traveled past Dillon Reservoir, where we stopped for a snack at a wayside picnic area.
Dillon Reservoir is usually a vast lake, with arms jutting into mountain canyons on all sides. But the drought has been so severe that that huge reservoir is shrunken to a few stagnant pools. It looks more like an immense desert than anything else.
The front page of the Rockie Mountain News announced that many of eastern Colorado’s reservoirs had completely dried up, and a number of little towns were looking for water elsewhere--perhaps they would have drinking water brought in on tanker trucks.
Unfortunately, the friends we’d wanted to see were in Denver and would not be home until Sunday afternoon. Nevertheless, we decided to drive by their house.
Now, we knew their address, but we did not know where ‘Four Seasons Boulevard’ was. Larry, of course, thought he could find the house without any problem whatsoever. After all, he knew the house number, didn’t he? What one does, you see, is to drive round...and round...and round...and round...hunting for a house with number 1823 on it. Logical, yes?
I griped and grumped. “Stop and ask for directions, won’t you?!” I said for the hundredth time, and all of a sudden Larry decided to do just that. He’d spotted a construction worker.
“He won’t know; he’s probably not even from Leadville!” I predicted.
Larry stopped and asked.
And then, in a distinct southern drawl, the man replied, “Sorry, Ah cahn’t tell y’all; Ah’m from Ahklahahma; Ah don’t know this town inny better than yew dew!”
“Toldja’ll,” I said disrespectfully as we drove away.
So we continued round...and round...and round...and round...until Victoria saved the day by needing to make a vital pitstop, at which point Larry ate his pride and asked for directions. The clerk gave him a map, and circled the area where Four Seasons Boulevard was located.
We found it in five minutes.
We spoke to some friends of the friends whom we’d missed, and took a picture of their home.
That accomplished, we strolled down Main Street, stopping in a few souvenir shops, because Joseph had promised his siblings he would buy them souvenirs. Proceeding on to Johnson Village, we regretfully turned northeast and headed for Denver and home. Since it was getting late, we bought sandwiches in Brighton, rather than stopping to cook supper at a park somewhere. In any case, the parks seemed to be few and far between, judging from the vantage point of Denver’s Interstate systems.
In eastern Colorado, tall thunderclouds rolled up from the horizon. Some time after nightfall, we noticed piles of whiteness on the sides of the road and in the median. When a little later we stopped for gas, the clerk told us that it had hailed, with stones the size of softballs, and it had hailed so long and gotten so deep that they had to call out the snowplows to get it off the roads. By the time we’d come through, the hailstones had melted enough that it looked like snow. There were tornadoes to our south and west. Thank goodness we were later than we’d intended to be, or we would have driven smack-dab into that storm!
We saw a lot of lightning, and a little bit of rain, but that was all...until we were almost to Grand Island. There, I drove into fog so thick at times that the fastest I dared go was 25 mph. Sooo...with eyelids drooping, we finally arrived home early Sunday morning.
Fortunately, everyone but me had been sleeping. We hurriedly showered and got ready for bed, which included curling the girls’ hair--and then we couldn’t find Victoria’s curlers. They were nowhere to be found. I guess the cats ate them.
So I tucked her into bed and set my alarm ten minutes earlier than usual to give myself time to curl her hair with the curling iron.
While waiting for Hester and Lydia to blow-dry their hair, I tried to watch my video--but the VCR had died while we were gone and was sitting there decomposing. Rats, rats, rats.
We slept as fast as we possibly could the rest of the night, so as not to look foggy during Sunday School and church.
Robert’s sermon was about Saul (whose name was later changed to Paul) on the Damascus Road. I especially love that story because Daddy always said that his own conversion was just like Paul’s: suddenly a bright light shone around him, he understood, was converted, and realized he must preach. It doesn’t happen that way to many people, does it?
We had Larry’s yummy pancakes after church. Then Larry hooked up my camcorder to use as a VCR, so we were able to watch a little bit of my video; but we don’t have the right kind of adapter to plug it into electricity, and we had to use its own battery, and I didn’t want to run it down needlessly, so we simply went off and collapsed straight into bed until time to get ready for the evening service.
I stayed with Mama, and showed her part of my video. I gave her some of my favorite Campbell’s soup: chicken and dumplings. I finished my bowl in short order and looked up to see Mama pawing through hers, rather like Kitty when we’ve put something detestable in her bowl.
I laughed. “Don’t you like it?” I asked her.
She shook her head, then attempted to be polite and truthful at the same time, which doesn’t always work. “It tastes good,” she said, smiling at me, “But I just don’t like it.”
haha Now that sounded like something one of my children would say.
After I went home, we went to Wal-Mart for food for Larry, Teddy, and Joseph’s lunch the next day. I sent off my film to be developed, and we also got a new self-cleaning VCR. VCRs are a lot cheaper than they used to be, on account of everyone wanting DVDs, instead.
We came home and started watching the video, but, of all things, I was falling asleep at the same clip as Larry, which is a real aberration, for me. I gave up and went to bed. It was only 1:00 a.m.. That’s got to be some kind of a record.
Ah, those wonderful vacations! So relaxing.
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