Something Good Out of the Sorrow

"The space shuttle fell out of the sky...."  That's how the song lyric went.  A bleak time of year, and a bleak day in our nation's history.  Who can ever forget the photo of the family looking up, and up--the photo capturing that moment, still in wonder and not quite in horror--not just yet.  It's like we forgot space was dangerous, that astronauts had died, even before leaving the launchpad.  The feeling around this mission was so lighthearted.  A teacher was going into space.  One of my own.  A new day, a new world, where routine space travel actually seemed in reach.  And then, disaster.  Horror.  Grief.  An auspicious beginning to 1986.

The darkness and depressive feeling of those days pushed my husband John to get moving, do something new, get himself out of the house.  In the wake of the shuttle disaster, he signed up for a painting class at the Indianapolis Art League in Broad Ripple.  It was there that he met a short, mouthy girl who was studying to be a teacher.  And the rest is history.  A small personal history...a small something good came out of that national depression and grief.  Twenty-five years ago.

Linger Longer in Kansas

A young friend I know is traveling throughout the west right now.  This morning, he posted a complaint about bugs on his windshield in Kansas, and it reminded me of this:

AGES ago, before the kids, my husband and I drove out west in his Isuzu pick-up truck.  Clancy, barking up and down the bed of the truck, chasing cars, antelope, and collapsing at night, flat exhausted, once we got to the campground.  We went as far as Idaho (Sun Valley, where Hemingway once skied) before we turned around to head back, full of memories, and the beauty of this amazing country of ours.  

As we neared the western border of Kansas, we were dreading the long boring straight drive across a pancake state after driving through the glory of curved mountain highways, beautiful vistas of red and black rock, crevice waterfalls, and rollicking mountain rivers.  As was our habit, we stopped at a rest area just inside the border, for a restroom break for ourselves and the dog, and for info on where we might be able to stay the night.  Taking turns walking the dog, we visited the facilities separately, so the dog could have as much time as possible out of the truck.  It was an easy routine we'd settled into after the second or third day on the road, and a chance for some quiet time, too.  Our plan for a quick 70-mph sprint through Kansas shifted as my husband's husband's 'turn' turned into a sprint back across the grass.  He was waving a piece of paper and shouting, "We can get a free cooler!  We can get a free cooler!"

Apparently, in an effort to boost tourism (since Kansas is so obviously a state people just pass through on their way to loftier destinations), Kansas-based Coleman coolers and the Kansas Tourism Commission created a program where, if you stopped at x number of locations and spent x number of dollars (and got your Free Cooler card stamped), you could send it in, and they'd send you a free cooler. 

Well, being in no hurry, we did just that.  We stopped all along the way--at Fort Hayes in Kansas, we took Clancy's photo in front of the Greyhound Racing Hall of Fame, and visited Old Town Topeka, where we (and the dog) got our picture taken at one of those old time photography studios.  It was a delightful couple of days and we did, indeed, "Linger Longer in Kansas".

A few weeks later, as promised, our small, durable, and used to this day cooler (with 'Linger Longer in Kansas' impressed in the top) arrived.  

Memory made--and kept.  :-)

Things My Mom Said to Me...#1

1)  It takes all kinds to make a world.

2)  Don't stick your fingers in the toaster.

3)  Something GOOD is gonna happen to YOU TODAY!

Another Person's Shared Memory #2

So we've had that first warm day, that first "windows-down-in-the-car-Beach-Boys-on-the-radio" day, and I have a memory that's not mine.  It's of two teenaged boys, throwing a frisbee at the drive-in, at Bummie's, the cool hang-out in my small hometown. 

Bummie's has been there as long as I can remember--a drive-in restaurant that can house probably 12-14 cars under the awning, and another 15 in the overflow.  A small cook-shack, always needing paint, the awning poles knicked and scraped from decades of automobiles pulling in and out.  An extensive menu for the little hole-in-the-wall place that it is:  Spanish dogs, Swamp Water, Bummieburgers, and root beer in thick chilled mugs.  Milk shakes with paper straws that collapsed before you finished the drink, and fat-fat fries.  Yum.  Bummie's--the taste of my teen years.  Learning to park between the narrow poles that support the awning is a rite of passage in Bluffton, getting the car-hop's attention by flashing your lights, knowing just how high to raise your lowered window to accommodate the tray hooked over the edge.  It's the south turn-around on the cruising circuit, and the place where Bluffton-born newlyweds drive through after the ceremony, honking their horns and dragging tin cans.

And it's one of those days, those first warm days of spring before we all shut the doors and turn on the air conditioning.  The first day of shorts, and short sleeves, a day for the ages--and the two boys are in their glory, out to see and be seen, tossing that frisbee, in a celebration of youth and renewal and spring and life.  All smiles and laughter.  Tossing and catching, tossing and catching, with ease and precision. 

And suddenly, the frisbee goes awry.  Whoops.  A false flip of the wrist sends it towards the cars of families eating, unsuspecting families, not expecting a frisbee to suddenly fly through the window, and knock over one of the freshly poured, chilled root beers perched on the tray in the window and into the lap of the driver.  Surprise, then profanity, and a refusal to surrender the offending frisbee. 

The boys are contrite, apologetic, desperately concealing grins.  Their frisbee confiscated, the fun over--but a chuckle-inducing memory for decades to come.

Long live Bummie's.  Long live frisbees.  Long live spring.  Long live youth.

Another Person's Shared Memory #1

So I finished filling out the FAFSA.  For those of you who don't know what that is, it stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and you need it if you think you're going to get any money at all for college.  Anyway, I can't say that word without thinking of Hudson and his mom and the meeting the two of them went to about funding for college.  The presenter kept going on and on about the importance of filling out the FAFSA.  He told me that his mom said, "If she says the word FAFSA one more time, I'm walking out."  Well, she did, and they did.  Hilarious.

It's not even my memory, but the memory of the telling makes me laugh every time I think of it.  FAFSA. 

The Day the Movies Changed

So, I'm downloading the Star Wars Theme for CVett to use for her one-act.  And the minute that music starts, I'm taken back, back, back to 1977, and sitting in a darkened movie theater that has long since been torn down.  I sit, anticipating a movie, that as a 17-year-old female, I've really heard very little about.  But I'm there.  What the heck.  A 25¢ box of popcorn and a box of milk duds.  A 100% real Coke (I didn't drink diet soda back then....).  The lights go down.  The music plays and the words role forward across the screen.  Then, literally, from behind my head, a small ship zips forward followed by an unbelievably massive imperial star destroyer--the roar of the ship coming from behind and all around, swallowing us up in intergalactic noise.  I actually looked up and behind to see where the ship was coming from.  It was just so...awesome.  Then the two robots:  "They'll be no escape for the princess this time...."  And really, the rest is history.

I need to put that theme song on my "Chris's Joy Music" CD.  It never fails to make me smile. 

A Different Year, Another Ice Storm

Years ago, at least ten years, when I was teaching, we woke up in the morning to find bad weather moving in.  But since IPS NEVER closed, my husband and I and our young son all went about our business, getting ready for school, and watched the front of plunging temperatures and freezing rain move from northwest to southeast across the center part of the state.  And then we watched as the schools closed almost as soon at the front touched them.  We waited, and watched.  Would ours be next?  Finally, too late to wait any longer, I got Charlie into the car and into his car seat and backed slowly out the driveway.  I had to make a stop to stick a letter in the mailbox.  I got out of the car and inched my way around it, holding on to what I could, moving towards the mailbox; but then I lost my footing, and would have slid completely UNDER the car, if I hadn't managed to grab on to the rear view mirror.  I could hear my phone ringing in the car.  I struggled back and managed to answer it before the caller hung up.  It was my husband shouting, "Come back!  Come back!  We closed!"  I laughed--"I haven't left yet.  I'm still at the mailbox!"  I got back in the car and pulled back into the driveway.  I'm sure the rest of the day was all fireplace and movies, a nice family day.  I just remember that pink front moving across the radar and the schools closing, and hoping against hope that ours would be next.  I think teachers like snow days better than the kids.