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.

Seeing the Grand Canyon

I've been listening to a book on CD about the history of our National Park System--a book based on the documentary created by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan.  It is fascinating and inspiring, and truly the concept to create and preserve lands in a National Park System is indeed "America's Best Idea".   Listening to the actualization and the ensuing struggle to set aside lands for public enjoyment has made me want to retrace my steps through the parks I have visited--Acadia, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Rocky Mountain National Park, Cape Cod National Seashore, Arches, Bryce--and...walk slower this second time through.  Ha.  You knew I was going to say that, didn't you?

And it has reminded me of my first view of the Grand Canyon:  "We had driven a long way over several days along Route #66, the Mother Road, dipping down into southern New Mexico and Arizona to get a taste of Roswell and the O-K Corral.  Once we had those touristy places under our belts, we headed north through the center of Arizona, bypassing Phoenix, Tuscon, Flagstaff, to get to Williams, AZ, the Gateway to the Grand Canyon.  Williams offered old-fashioned rail service to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and being train aficionados, we decided that we would take the train, and then take a guided bus tour along the edge to some of the more well-known spots.  This we did, and the trip was...meh.  Nothing special.  I wouldn't pay that much to do it again. The landscape is unremarkable until you reach the canyon itself, but the entertainment on the train--some cowboy musicians and train robbers--made the rather slow trip enjoyable.  As we neared the station, we were told that we would have a relatively short amount of time to find sustenance, and then board our bus for the tour.  I had two hungry, but picky, eaters as my traveling companions and it was going to be up to me to locate a restaurant that served pickyboy food, get us fed, and back to the train station in, as my dad would say, short order, to catch the bus.   


I studied the map of the village where we would disembark.  We agreed that I would scout ahead as rapidly as I could, while they walked along the main thoroughfare at a 'younger and slower' pace.  When I'd located a place to eat, I'd meet them coming back and guide them to the restaurant.


It went as planned.  I hustled off that train and raced to the top of a hill where the main walkway was.  And suddenly there it was; the Grand Canyon.  I literally gasped to see it all spread out before me, millions of years of erosion, the work of water, ice and wind.  And tears came into my eyes.  I have seen a lot of gorgeous scenic places in this great country from coast to coast, but that first view of the majesty of the Grand Canyon will stay with me forever.  No painting, photo or television documentary that I'd ever seen did it the justice it deserved.  The Grand Canyon.


I hurried on, bucking the crowd, stealing glance to the meaning of the word awesomeness on my right, and found the reasonably-priced hamburgers and french fries I was looking for.  We ate; we took the tour; and rode the rails back to Williams.  We then drove back up to explore on our own the next day and the next.  I got plenty of opportunity to look at it, to gaze, to take pale and sorry photographs of my own.  But I will always remember that first, breathtaking vision of the Is-What-It-Is Canyon--the Grand Canyon.  Put it on your bucket list.  Now."

New Year's Day on West Wiley

My parents, being part of the Bluffton jet-set (or at least, my perception of it), usually went to a New Year's Eve party, leaving us with a babysitter:  Marcia, Inez, Mrs. Hutchinson, Mrs. Scaffa.  It was always a treat to wake up on New Year's Day and find their party hats and noise makers on the kitchen table or in the living room or elsewhere.  One year, my mom came home with a little glittery tiara adorned with blue confetti-like tissue-papery trim.  It was very delicate and feminine, unlike the boxy metallic gold soldier hat that was my dad's.  I'm sure my parents appreciated being awakened much earlier than planned with the attractive nuisance that were the noise makers they'd left downstairs, along with the hats. 


I also remember that, once we got up, we headed over to my grandparents' house on West South Street to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl.  They had a color TV.  We didn't.  Amazing, huh?  This would have been pre-70s.  Mid-60s probably.  A New Year memory.

Written and Remembered

I'm 51 now.  I feel old.  I am old.  My brain feels cloudy.   Very clear on some things; not so clear on others.  I love telling stories of my adventures, recent and past, and it bothers me when I repeat myself.  So I'm worried that I'm starting to forget stuff.  Stuff I don't want to forget.  Hence this blog.  Here, the insignificant, and maybe the significant will be remembered.  Written and remembered.