-Gramps-

It seems like you may have a dead cell. One of those cheap floating ball checkers does work. I have one and it told me that I had a dead cell. It would act like it was charging but it would not start the engine. Once I replaced it a whole lot of things started working better.

Saturday morning was sunny, but a bit chilly. Gary and I broke camp and pulled in our slides. He had not put his main one out because it just did not work smoothly. We discovered, the night before, that my main slide had a fraying cable so it would not be deployed for our second night. This would make the interior of the coach a bit tight but that was the breaks so to speak. The night before, while Gary and I were repairing my bedroom slide out topper/telephone pole mishap we had a visitor from Ohio who was also staying in the campground. He happened to see me on top of a ladder that was on top of a picnic table with my arms under the topper. We told him the whole sad story and he told us that the campground staff had warned him about that pole when he made his reservation. We received no such warning. He also warned us that we would not like the stretch of Interstate 77 between Beckley and twenty miles past Charleston. He informed us the traffic would be intolerable. While all this chatting was going on the ladies decided on our Saturday itinerary. Get up; get out on the road with Canton, Ohio being our next stop for the night. First would be brunch at Tamarack. This was the place that Diane had wanted to revisit for many years. She had been there once before during an auto cross country trip from Oregon to Virginia that she made with her cousin Elaine and two greyhounds. It is a very nice marketplace for area craftspeople and it has a restaurant run by the Greenbrier, a famous West Virginia five star resort. Also Saturday the tenth was her birthday and we all felt that a stop there was a small present but it was what she wanted. We called it a night. I tried to eat a bowl of soup but my phone keep ringing off the hook with customer calls. I thought that calling me after eight pm on a Friday night was a bit ridiculous. I kept telling them to call me back on Monday. The next morning, right after we all sang Happy Birthday to Diane, Gary and I started dumping, disconnecting and rolling hoses up. I did have a problem with the bedroom slide out. The topper would not retract. I pulled the slide in and the topper folded up like a fan. I put it back out and pulled my ladder back out of the basement. I climbed up and opened the topper cover and gave the roller a bit of a spin. It made a snapping noise and wound up quickly, like a window shade let go of too fast. It retracted just fine after that and I never had another bit of trouble with it. The ladies drove our cars back to the mine country store parking lot. Gary and I secured our campsites; we had to attach cables and locks. Then we carefully drove our coaches down the steep hill and made a right turn at the bottom. We met up with our cars and hooked them up. A few minutes later we were on our way. We made a left turn, back up the road carefully past the offending pole and then to the main street through town. We had good directions to Tamarack. It was a quick journey of a couple of miles, located right next to I-77 at exit 45. It's red peaked roof made it easy to spot. Tamarack has a huge bus and rv friendly parking lot. That is a good thing when you are suffering from post pole collision syndrome. (At breakfast I attempted to make some jokes about the telephone guy hitting the telephone pole but no one thought they were all that funny, including me). Tamarack was great. I was impressed. There were so many fine crafts there. Handmade baskets, quilts, glass etching, textiles and photography were all on display and for sale. We could see that it would take some time to eyeball it all and we were hungry so we walked over to the food court. They served cafeteria style. I glanced at the menu and saw what I wanted right away, the West Virginia Rainbow Trout and Eggs. The good sized trout filet was pan fried with two eggs over easy and served with Home Fried Taters and the biggest fluffiest biscuit I have ever eaten. It was really good. Along with the fish and eggs I had a bottle of hot and spicy V-8. Gary ordered the same thing and the ladies each had the Appalachian Omelet with fried green tomatoes (in the omelet), Red Eye Country ham and Swiss Cheese. It also came with home fries and Biscuits all for 4.95. They raved about it. Breakfast was worth every dime. After eating it was time for some exploring. First though I got a call from my parents asking where we were. I told them our location and also let them know that we hoped to be at our place in Galax by the following Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. We hoped to have a visit with them at some point. I also made a call to Joel. He was having a yard sale, at our home, with proceeds going towards medical bills he received for treatment of a dislocated finger. That happened during a soccer game. If you ever dislocate a finger do not go to a hospital emergency room. Find an Urgent care or just put up with the pain until you can see a doctor. An emergency room will sock it to you cost wise. Some of the proceeds of the yard sale would also go towards funding the band he is a member of. Joel is the drummer, the band is called Long Division and they just self released a CD. You can sample the album by clicking here: http://www.longdivisionband.com/ The yard sale seemed to be going well. The band had made over 250 dollars by ten thirty. By the end of the day they would make 450 dollars. I found this out while we were walking around Tamarack looking at all their great craftwork. Around noon we were ready to continue our journey. We headed up I-77 and I mean up, to Parkersburg where we stopped for fuel. From there we continued to Clearwater RV Park in Uniontown, Ohio. It was quite the drive. We crossed the New River Gorge over the bridge that is famous for its wild bungee jumping. We traveled through Charleston. We made some wild stops to pay tolls and had some interesting encounters with slow moving truckers. At our exit for the rv park we had to make a right turn at the bottom of the exit ramp. Two cars in the left turn lane turned right instead and swung around Gary, who was leading us. The cars went into the oncoming traffic lane and then moved over and cut him off. It always amazes me how non thinking drivers believe our rigs can stop on a dime. We traveled without any more incidents down a long hilly country road until we reached the rv park. The park had a small water park that was not open yet. There was also a mini golf course. We parked our rigs, set up camp, had a nice talk with the park manager and then played a round of golf. The birthday girl won. After that I fired up my grill and toasted some hamburgers. We sat in Gary and Janis' coach and ate dinner while we chatted about our list of things we hoped to accomplish in Elkhart. The List of things included repairs as well as places we wanted to see. Top of our list of places to visit was the RV Hall of Fame. By nine we were all ready to call it a night. Diane and I avoided spending too much time in the too small living area (it was full of slide out) and decided to watch TV in the bedroom. I had recently installed a new 26 inch LCD and I figured that watching some old episodes of Christy would be a good way to end day two. I never saw the end of the episode. After about twenty minutes I was out cold. I woke up at the end of it. Diane missed it as well. So it was time for lights out. We wanted to get an early start. We hoped to be at Elkhart by late afternoon. Both coaches were getting anxious. So were the people in them.

All access to that campground is very tight. The way we went in you just need to be aware that when the road curves to the right just about a block from the Mine main entrance you have to drive down left of the center of the road,

It is the 100th anniversary of the RV industry, so it seems appropriate to make a trip to Elkhart. Actually, I had no idea that it was or is the RV Centennial until I walked through the doors of the RV Hall of Fame in Elkhart, but I am getting ahead of myself. Diane and I, along with our friends Gary and Janis, have been planning on a trip to Elkhart, Indiana, for some months now. We were hoping to go there this past March 2, but the weather gave us all cold feet. In some places in Ohio there was over 30 inches of snow on the ground and our coach lot at Deer Creek in Galax, which we wanted to visit on the way back, had over 70 inches laying on it. I figured that since a snow plow, not being standard equipment on a motor coach, and would be needed to park on our lot, made a trip postponement necessary. We made plans to leave for Elkhart on April 9. Oh, the purpose of our trip was to visit Elkhart Service and Collision. Both our coaches were in need of some major slide out adjustments. Gary's coach had trouble with both the main and one bedroom slide. My coach's main slide out had never functioned correctly. BAL, the RV products division of Norco Industries, the designers of the cable driven Accuslide were planning on sending over a tech or two to work on the slide outs themselves. You can't beat factory direct service. Not to mention it's hard to get. Now this trip had a twofold purpose. In addition to the slide outs being repaired, we both had a long list of things we wanted done. Nothing on our lists was too major, but still necessary. The first of April showed all the signs of being a good weather month. We had ninety degree weather a couple of days before we left. Thursday, the day before our planned departure, I was making an emergency computer network install at the Trellis Restaurant in Williamsburg. I left poor Diane at home to pack up the rig by her self. This type of arrangement happens all too often, but that is the nature of running one's own business I guess. I made it home around six o'lock and spent the rest of the night loading up my clothes and the heaviest of the food stuffs into the coach. Our plan was that the only thing we would have to do the next morning was back out of the driveway, pull into the church lot next door, hook up the Saturn and be on the road by nine. We would not have to stop for gas, propane or anything else. We had the coach ready to go by 8:55. That is a new record. At 9 on the dot Gary called to see how we were doing. I told him that we were pulling out right then. Diane and I said our normal prayer for a safe trip, and started on our way. We met Gary and Janis, as planned, at the Monitor and Merrimac Bridge Tunnel inspection station. We both turned off our propane tanks and headed through the tunnel. ( It should be named the Monitor and Virginian tunnel, in my opinion, but if it was you couldn't call it the M&M tunnel which has a nice ring to it.) We kept in touch with each other with family radios. We traveled down I-64 for some 20 miles or so till we arrived at the first rest stop. There we turned our tanks back on and then continued. We were headed to Beckley, West Virginia. Our journey to our first overnight stop was almost uneventful. Almost. The drive west on I-64 was really nice. Spring had sprung. There were red buds in bloom, the trees were turning green, and daffodils by the hundreds were showing off their yellow heads along the road side. Both our coaches made it up Afton Mountain, west of Charlottesville, across the intersection of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Skyline Drive. We turned south down I-81/I-64. It didn't take long to get to I-77/I-64 where we again traveled west, on to Beckley. We planned to stay at a small campground run by the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine. This is a nice tourist spot where you can take a mine car tour of an actual coal seam led by a veteran miner. We would have liked to do just that but we didn't have the time. Once we exited I-77 things became a bit dicey. Our gpses? gpss? I am not sure what the plural is, they both went crazy. We had conflicting directions and so we had to choose who was right, Tom or Ms Garmin. We choose Ms Garmin, but it turned out that neither gps was capable of giving good directions. We ended up going down a very small street barely large enough for two cars to pass each other. Gary was leading as we came to some kind of police check point. I don't know what they were checking for, but they waved us through. Gary made a right turn down an even smaller street that was also very down hill. Diane told me to ask the policeman for directions. This request came a bit late to help Gary and Janis, but it was still a good thing to do. I opened the window and asked the policeman if the right turn was the way to the Beckley Exhibition Coal mine. "You don't want to go that way!" He responded. He said this with a lot of emphasis so I immediately began to think that my friends and our coach's twin were headed for trouble. The policeman gave us more directions. "You need to go straight ahead to the next light, take a right and follow the signs. You can't miss it." We continued straight ahead. Diane radioed this info to the other coach. We went to the first light, turned right and found ourselves in downtown Beckley. Gary found himself in a tight neighborhood with small streets with telephone and power lines hanging almost lower than the coach's air conditioners. This made maneuvering a bit of a drag. There was nothing we could do for them except hope for the best, and find a spot to wait for them to disentangle themselves from a small place. We pulled into a food mart parking lot located alongside the narrow street that led to the campground. We waited about fifteen minutes, but it seemed like half an hour. As soon as Gary and Janis came into sight we made a very tight left turn. I held my breath as I maneuvered the coach around the grocery store sign. One thing was sure: We didn't want to miss this place and drive past it, so my eyes were peeled to the streets on our right. At a curve in the road we came along side a telephone pole that was very close to the right curb. A couple of feet past the pole was one of those small campground signs, the kind with the trailer on it, the word campground and an arrow. This arrow was pointing up a very steep hill. I stopped. There was no way I could make that turn. "There is no way we can make that turn," said Diane. "We are supposed to check in at the mine, which has to be up ahead. Let's keep going." I agreed to that so I started to pull forward. As I did I heard something funny. It was a scraping noise of some kind. "STOP! STOP! You are caught on the pole!" This terrible but very necessary instruction from Janis emitted from our radio. I quickly stopped, and of course thought to myself: "What have I done now?" I exited the coach expecting to see the side of it crushed like an empty tissue box. Gary was already outside. I looked up to see the pole nesting itself in the 1-foot-wide space between the patio awing and the bedroom topper awing. Two telephone guy wires were broken and caught up in the awing as well. There was no damage to the coach itself. We had 1 inch between the pole and the side of the coach. This would take some kind of driving to get off the pole. I had only one idea how to get away from it. Do the opposite of what put the coach there in the first place. I told Gary that I was going to turn my wheels hard to the right and back up, toad and all. Then, if we were lucky, the coach would be clear and I could pull it forward. He agreed that it might work and he would give me instructions on the radio. Diane and Nickolas decided to watch from outside so they exited the coach. Now it was up to Gary, myself and some prayer. I got back in and used the UFO 55-degree turning ratio for all it was worth. With Gary giving me precise instructions and to the amazement and amusement of many people living along the street we inched that big monster back and forth until it was clear of the nasty pole. I did have to force one driver to back up quite a ways but he looked like he enjoyed it. I continued the one block up the road to the Exhibition main entrance. Diane and Nicolas hitched a ride with Gary and Janis. No, I didn't forget her. I parked the coach and made an inspection. It seemed that the pole pushed the bedroom topper out of position. It was now back about two feet and the topper was obviously being pulled in a direction it didn't want to go. It looked fixable and after all we were heading for a repair facility. At this point I just wanted to park it, eat some dinner, have a beer (now you know what they are really for) and call it a night. We did all the above. First we had the fun drive back down to the offending pole where we made a left turn up the steep hill to the campground. It was small but not a bad place. Gary and I repaired the bedroom topper. It took a while to get it back into position. I discovered that the plastic cover at the top of the left patio awning arm was cracked. I felt very thankful that that was all the damage there was. I figured that ESC could take care of it with no problem. I hoped so anyway. For the most part it had been a good first day. It ended with a bang, so to speak, but hey it was an adventure. Tomorrow would be another day. The mountains of West Virginian awaited us, then on to Ohio and Indiana. But first......a stop at Tamarack.

Well, what a coincidence. I just posted a story of one of the days Diane and I were cruising. Sounds like you had a great time!

Just a few days before I had this dream Diane, while walking Nickolas our dog, was attacked by a Pit Bull. It almost killed her. Mayber that event triggered the dream. Who knows, the human mind and spirit are wonderful mysteries. I Had a Strange Dream Last Night I had a strange dream last night. I was having trouble sleeping. My eyes hurt. I couldn't take the light from the clock on my stereo on top of the dresser. I finally heaved myself out of bed and moved a glass candle holder in front of that blasted blue light. Then I stumbled into the bathroom and by the faint glow of a street light coming through the curtained window, opened the medicine cabinet and struggled with a bottle of Advil. I took one with a handful of water and headed back to bed. In the short time I was gone the dog had taken my spot so I told him to move, which he grudgingly did. I crawled in next to Diane and quietly waited for the pill to take effect and help me sleep. At some point it must have worked. Maybe it worked too well. I found myself drifting out of my body. Slowly, I drifted about the room. I turned and saw Diane and I curled up as one, Nickolas at our feet. And then everything started to zoom out smaller and smaller until my surroundings were just a blur. I realized I was traveling somewhere at an impossible speed, but I had no idea where, but I felt no fear just a sense of patient anticipation, a strange mixture to be sure. I slowed down and began to recognize where I was, my daughter Jeri's home in Florida. I floated in place, the front of the white house illuminated by the moon. I could see the brown lizards with the blue tails, maybe the same ones I saw on my last visit, running across the walkway to her front door. I wondered how she and her husband Mark were doing, and the thought had barely entered my head when I started moving toward the door and then through it, like it was made out of strings of beads. I could feel myself pass through it; see it separate into segments around me. Once on the other side it appeared to still be solid. I floated into their bedroom, they were asleep, Jeri resting her head on Mark's shoulder. She was gently snoring. I hoped that I did not have to be concerned about them. All is peaceful here I thought. The room shrank and disappeared. I found myself flying to wherever again, some things around me recognizable, palm trees, street lights, buildings all blending together in stretched shades of blue and streaks of light. Soon it became so black I could see nothing around me at all. The air became warm and I could smell salt. Then I heard it. I was over the ocean. I moved out from the blackness I was in, to a stadium of stars, a carpet of luminous blue below me. Off in the distance I could see the horizon and perched on it a moving light. I drifted toward it or should I say I was moved toward it, the sea wind blowing gently around me. The lights came closer and closer and then I saw that it was a ship. Is it?....Is it?....It is! The Voyager of the Seas! No doubt about it! But why was I here? I came along the port side of the ship, drifting forward and then up to the top deck, into the bridge, always wanted to visit there, out and then down like a fast moving elevator. I found myself coming to a slow stop in the Royal Promenade. There were only a few people about, all dressed up. Tonight is obviously Formal night, I thought, and it's very late….and …hey this is the Centrum and Wow, Back up! I passed through the decks, one by one and slowed down, turned through the pastel passageway past a familiar Egyptian art display in a glass case and found myself parked, my feet (I guess I had feet) a few inches above the carpet in front of a cabin with the number 1234 on it. I know this cabin. Diane and I stayed here! When was it? It must have been a long time ago. I could not remember, my memory suddenly seemed fuzzy for some reason. I slowly passed though the closed door, a sensation I knew I would never get used too, and into the cabin. There was a reading light on over the bed. In the bed was a couple, I assumed they were husband and wife. The balcony curtain was open and the door was cracked, letting the very warm sea breeze blow the shears across the foot of the bed. I could hear the sea massaging the ship. On the couch was a cast off tux, white shirt and tie. A long black velvet dress was hanging neatly from the divider next to the couch. I caught the glint of one gold cuff link sitting next to a gold watch on the nightstand. I hung there and made a slow spin. On the coffee table was a glass of water, numerous bottles of pills, and a partially consumed yellow cake. It has to be their anniversary, I thought. I turned around a bit more. I could see the reflection of the room in the mirror, but the reflection did not include me. I found that a bit curious. I took a closer look at the two people. Though the room felt very warm, she looked pale and was covered up to the chin, except for one arm, with a familiar brown blanket. They looked about my age, maybe a bit younger. I noticed that their hands were clasped so tightly together that the knuckles were white, like they were holding on to each other for dear life. "They have been together as Man and Wife for over thirty years." My heart leapt in my disembodied chest. I had never heard that voice before but I recognized it at once. A tremendous feeling of peace came over me. I could not speak. They have? I thought. "Yes, and they have known each other since second grade." I looked at those intertwined fingers, and thought there is something wrong. "She's dying" My feeling of peace started to leave. I found my voice "Why? From what?" "Does it matter what?" said the voice gently. "No, I guess not." I said "She must be really scared." "She is more afraid for him than he is for her" answered the voice. "Why, is that? She's the one who is dying!" "She is afraid for him because he does not believe in me." And then I understood her fear, and I began to understand something else too. "He won't ask you to make her well will he?" I said. "He refuses, only because he does not know how to ask me." "Hasn't she asked you?" "She loves him so much that she only talks to me about him." "But she believes you can make her well doesn't she?" "She believes." "So do I." "Yes, I know that", said the voice. There was a sudden burst of lightning off in the distance. It filled the room like a reflected flash. I looked down at the woman and I could see color come into her face and lips. Her breathing became deeper and a bead of sweat broke out on her upper lip. She let go of her husband's hand sat up looked around the room and I could have sworn she looked right at me. "It's hot in here" she said softly. And then she kicked the blanket off onto the floor, rolled over on her stomach and put her arm around her husband. It started raining, the wonderful sounds and smells of one of those random little Caribbean squalls being pushed through the open balcony door by a cool breeze. I knew it was time to leave. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the somewhat creepy pass back through the door but in an instant my eyes were shocked back open by the sound of loud techno dance music. I was in the Vault. The place was packed. The lights were flashing. I was standing in the back part of the lounge. And I was no longer disembodied. I was wearing my single button tux, wing collared shirt, and the blue brocade vest I wore to our daughter Jeri's wedding. This was weird to say the least. Even stranger was that I knew, somewhere in the room, was a man and a woman that I was supposed to meet. I had to talk to the man first. I went upstairs to the second level bar and walked over to a young man, with a military style haircut, in his thirties most likely, who was sitting at the bar sipping a Coke. "Scott?" He turned around and gave me a somewhat puzzled look. "Yes…do I know you?" he asked. "Not exactly, but we do have a mutual friend, who told me to look you up… can I sit here and talk for a minute?" "Sure'' he answered. "Who told you I would …" Before he could finish his question I had planted myself on a bar chair and interrupted him. "I know you recently returned from a very tough tour of duty in Afghanistan. I know you went active from the reserves so you could go there because your sister was killed in the World Trade Center on 911. I know you are on this cruise at the suggestion of friends, who think, or hope that you will meet a, or should I say, The girl who might help bring a little joy back into your life. Am I right?" He looked shocked and after a pause and a swallow of his drink he answered. "Ah, yea, correct on all counts" he said. And then with a smile added "They told me they were praying that I would find her on this cruise." I looked at him hard. "If I told you that the answer to that prayer is downstairs would you let me take you to her?" It was now his turn to look hard at me. He did not answer. I sang, "Wake up….Wake up Dead Man…Our Father...He's in charge of Heaven, and He made the world in seven… Scott finished for me…. "Would you put a word in… for me…?" A moment of silence. "That word has been put in. Will you let me take you to her?" I gently asked again. He choked out one word "Yes." "Okay, let's go" We walked down the glass stairs to the lower section. On the way I told him a little about Ginny, the girl that he was about to meet. "She likes daisies and roses. Her favorite food is seafood and she loves steamed mussels. She likes to dance swing, but she hasn't done it in quite awhile. Her favorite music group is U2. I saw the incredulous look on his face and told him it is my favorite group as well. "I am going to tell you one more thing and then the rest is better left up to you. Her fiancé was killed at the Pentagon." "On 911?" said Scott. "Yes." I led the way to a table with two attractive women sitting at it. One sat quietly in her chair, the other was more animated. It was obvious that they were sisters. Not twins but close. "Hello there." They turned around and look up at us. I took Ginny's hand and as I gently raised her out of her seat I said: "Ginny this is Scott. Scott this is Ginny. It has been divinely arranged for the two of you to meet on this night at this time and at this place. Now I think you two should sit down and start getting to know each other." Ginny looked nervously at me and then at Scott, who gave her a warm smile. She seemed to relax a bit and looked at her sister who was now on her feet as well. "This is my sister and I…' "Don't you worry about Barbara, she and I will finish this dance." I said I took the sister by the hand and as I led her to the dance floor I whispered to Scott "Walk on Scott, Walk on" He smiled. I am sure he got my message. Barbara looked at me like I was a mildly crazy person. We reached the floor just as the song Caught in a Moment finished playing (the evening was planned don't forget) I leaned close to Barbara's ear. "Scott is the direct answer to your very direct prayer. You have to keep this a secret; they will get married on your birthday." She started to cry. The song ended, the moment was over and I said goodbye. "I have to go." I said. "You, your sister, and Scott are going to have a good life; you just have to choose to live it." Barbara looked at me, nodded and said "Who are you? What is your name?" "My name is Derrick and I'm Diane's husband." I held one of her hands in both of mine for a moment and then walked out the door to the Centrum on deck three. I was not at all sure what to do next. Just a few minutes earlier I was practically a ghost and now I was literally standing in front of an elevator, by myself in a tuxedo with no place to go. I reached out and pushed the elevator button. It came; I stepped in, the carpet said Tuesday. When I went to bed it was Friday, and I seemed to remember that Voyager's formal nights were Monday and Thursday. Space and time were a bit off. I took the elevator to deck 5 because I wanted to walk the Royal Promenade as long as I could actually walk. The elevator opened and instead of turning right towards the Café Promenade and all its goodies (I don't know if I could have eaten one or not) I had the urge to turn left into Cleopatra's Needle. I walked in. The place was packed with people. It was Karaoke night just like the Tuesday night on my cruise. I stood out of the way in the back. I felt a little self conscious considering I was the only man in a tux, but no one seemed to notice me at all. I began to wonder if they could even see me. A couple of people sang and the order seemed very familiar. And then I heard my named called. "Is Derrick here?" I hesitated to answer; after all I was not sure I was really here or not. Before I could decide what to do a man sitting on the edge of the dance floor stood up and walked over to the host or hostess. She handed him the mike and said tell everyone your name, where you are from and why you are here. "Hi, my name is Derrick; I'm from Portsmouth Virginia……" A big cheer went up from the section to the left of the floor. I almost fell over because I stupidly realized that I was watching myself. Talk about Déjà vu. I had to sit down. As I took a chair next to an older couple I heard myself say: "… and I am celebrating my 30th anniversary. I would like to sing this song to my wife Diane who is sitting over there". He or I pointed to where she was sitting with her shoes off and her feet up on the chair in front of her. The other I then stepped towards Diane. There was a big cheer, as I remembered it; only out in the audience it was really loud. The music started, this time I was a spectator. I watched myself look at my wife and she looked back and neither looked away, even for a second. Most of the people around me were chatting with each other. But as the song progressed they stopped talking and started to listen, really listen… If I called you every time that I think of you…the phone would be ringing, all day. I keep thinking these feelings will mellow with time but not yet, no way. We've had our share of heartache and trouble, we can look back and laugh at it now, but a mystery keeps haunting me, how we hurt those we love most somehow, somehow. A real love expression is long overdue, so hear my confession of my love for you-I just never say it enough, and before it's too late and time's up; you're more than all I dreamed you'd be, an answered prayer, a gift of God above. But I just never say it enough. I believe God inhabits the human heart. I believe it more now than ever before and I see His reflection in You, in You, and I'm sure, yes I'm sure.. that a real love expression is long overdue, so hear my confession of my love for you- I just never say it enough…so before it's too late and time's up, you're more than all I dreamed you'd be, an answered prayer, a gift of God above. Some of the women started to cry, some of the men too. I had no idea that the song had that much impact and then I realized my face was wet also. But I just never say it enough. I just never say it; I just never say it enough. Nooo, I just never say it, I just never say it enough. Noooo… oh…. oh." I finished the song, the crowd all came to their feet and cheered, and it was loud. I watched myself put the mike back on the stand, take a little bow and run over and kiss Diane. I knew she was crying also. The hostess then told the audience that I was not part of the competition; I just wanted to sing something special for my wife and she hoped that after thirty years that they would be as much in love as Derrick and Diane. It was very strange. I wanted to soak up the moment from this perspective but I could not help but notice the older couple sitting next to me. The man looked familiar and then I remembered that Diane and I met him on the pier in San Juan. We were both on the Explorer and he told me he was a retired Israeli fighter pilot. He had served during the Six Day War. During the song the woman, who must be his wife, took his hand and stroked it. At first he did not seem to respond. But now, he twisted his seat around so that he could look directly at her. "I'm sorry, so sorry. I should not have gotten so mad at her. But what could I do? Now she is gone and I am dying inside. I have hurt you so much. How will we be able to look back at this? How will we be able to smile again, how can I laugh again?" The wife looked at him. "I don't know how, but we will, the song says so, somehow with God's help, we will." They both looked so unhappy and full of sorrow. I had a feeling that they had lost someone very close to them "Tell them that Sarah is with me" The voice startled me. "Derrick, tell them that their grand daughter Sarah is with me and that she is fine." I had to do what He said. I moved over in front of them and went down on one knee. "Hello, my name is Derrick…" They both looked at me and then looked again and then both of them looked at the couple sitting on the edge of the dance floor, the man, me, with his arm around his wife. I hoped that they were not about to scream or pass out or both. The man was speechless the woman finally spoke. "How can you be here and there…" I put my finger on my lips. "Shh, that is not so easy to explain. Besides I have something very important to tell you. Your grand daughter Sarah is in heaven, she is doing fine, and loves you both very much" They both stared at me for a long, long second and then the man took my arm. Tears ran slowly down his cheek as he told me that he had argued with Sarah about the man she planned to marry. "I did not approve of him at all. I did not like his family. They are not of our faith. Sarah said he is a good man, an honorable man who loves God and her. I became very angry and told her that she was as good as dead to me if she married this man." He had to pause. I waited. "She did not get the chance to marry him.. She died, at the hand of a terrorist. She was attending a birthday party for one of his friends and it was bombed. She was with him. He barley survived. I blamed him for her death. . I was a fool." His wife smiled gently "Yes you were" she said. "What should I do now?" he asked. "Love your wife, have peace, and ask the man that was to be Sarah's husband to forgive you. And be his friend. Be the Grandfather in law that you would have been. That is what you should do." "I think I can do that." I stood up, they stood with me and I embraced them both. "God be with you " "And you" he answered. I turned and walked out of the lounge and into the Royal Promenade. I slowly walked the length of the ship looking up at the windows of the cabins and into the shops. I thought about my time on this ship. When I was here I was relaxed. I trusted the captain and the crew to look after me and my wife. I knew that the ship and its' crew would provide everything we needed and then some. I never had the thought of telling the captain that I wanted to be in charge of my trip, that I wanted to pilot the ship because I did not like where it was going or because it was not getting there fast enough. I put my wife and my life in his hands so to speak. Should I not put the same trust into the Captain of the greatest voyage of all, the voyage called Life? I wanted to see the ocean so I went through the glass sliding door out to the deck. I walked over to the railing and I put my hands down on nothing. I found myself passing through the railing and out into the open air the ship slowly moving away from me. I was not worried. I must be going home. I floated there for a long time, the ship moving farther and farther away until once again it was just a few lights on the horizon. I looked at the millions of stars above me and the luminous blue below. And then everything became a blur again. I flew quickly toward home, soundlessly. I began to slow and soon I recognized the lights of my town. I have seen them from the air many times. But something seemed different; things were missing and others out of place. I drifted down to an empty downtown street. Not a soul about. Now I knew something was not right. The brand new fifteen story hotel was missing. A completed condo now looked half built. I realized that I was looking at Portsmouth some years earlier. I was not concerned, not after what had taken place the last few hours or minutes or days. Slowly I floated down street after street until I came to a hospital. I drifted through the front door. There were only a few people about. This had to be the past because this hospital had been closed for years. It was obvious that no one could see me. I continued up through the ceiling and found myself in the maternity ward. It was very quiet, most of the lights turned off. As I passed by an open door I could hear the sound of a new mother singing to her new baby. I moved down the hall through a partially opened door into a room. Lying on the bed was a young man, a lot younger than me anyway. His hands covered his face and it sounded like he was talking to himself, no he's praying. He had on jeans and sneakers and a gray Swatch watch just like an old watch that I own. He dropped his hands for a moment and then I knew exactly where I was and when. It was eighteen years ago, the night that my son was born; the night that he was so sick and my wife almost died. I knew she was in recovery from emergency surgery and my son was in the neonatal unit of the hospital. The man lying on the bed was me. For the first time during this strange trip of mine, I felt fear. The same fear and near panic I felt that May night eighteen years ago, the fear that I would loose two people. I did not want to experience that kind of fear again. I wondered why I was here. "You are here to tell him everything will be fine." said the voice. "You are here to tell him not to fear. That I have heard him and his family will be well." "How do I tell him or me? Can I see me? I mean I think I would have remembered if I met myself that night. I would have had a heart attack or something" I was sure I spoke out loud and it I could see that the younger me did not hear a thing. "Whisper to his heart and to his mind, he will hear you." "Lord, I don't understand, can't you do that? Why do you need me?" "Derrick you know the future, you know that it turned out fine, you can speak with complete confidence and the younger you needs to learn that when I speak to people, I do so quietly to their hearts and minds, and with the sound of their own voice. I don't set bushes on fire anymore. I don't write on walls. I simply give peace, a peace that is hard to understand but is very real… so speak for me." I did not know what else to do but move close to my own ear. "It's okay. Joel is fine, relax, get up and go see him. And then go to Diane and tell her that your son is doing well." The face of the me on the bed no longer looked strained and worried. He stretched, got up, took a sip of water from a glass on the bed tray and then left the room. I followed and watched him go into the nursery where his son, his little body full of tubes, lay in an incubator. He reached in and rubbed the little boy's back. I knew that Diane was just down the hall. She lay there in a morphine induced sleep. I knew she would be okay. There was only one thing that I wanted to do now. "Can I go home?" There was a very quick blur and I guess at the speed of thought, I found myself back in my bed with my feet solidly under the dog, my wife, with her bandaged ankle and arm lying exactly where I had left her, curled right next to me. "Where did you go?" My wife asked sleepily. "Honey, I have been lying here the whole night, except when I got up to get an Advil" "Oh, you were gone so long. I'm glad you're back." "Me too, go back to sleep." The dog yawned, I yawned and I thought about this cruise we are on. This cruise called Life. I know the captain. No need to worry. Derrick

We now own lot number three.

It's Easter Morning. This is a morning to celebrate Life, new life. I can see it out my office window. I see it in my grand boys; they are here in my office, playing on my computers. Because it is such a good morning I have the urge to share something with you, something that celebrates life. In October 2002 Diane and I went on an eight-night cruise. The ship was Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Seas. We were there to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. Joel would be entering college the next year so it would be our last cruise for awhile. We didn't know at the time that we would purchase a land yacht (motorhome) and that it would be our last cruise for a very long time. We have not taken one since. Not on water, anyway. Now all our cruises are on land. We don't mind that one bit. Motorhoming is a better bargain when you consider the actual cost of cabin and food on a per cruise trip basis. Plus we are sleeping under our own sheets. I kept a daily journal (this was before the invention of the term "blog") of this cruise and published it as a 10-part series on the web at Cruise Critic.Com. It received thousands of views and many comments from around the world. It was very interesting to hear from people in Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and many other places. I suspect that some fellow Land Cruisers here also like to take a sea cruise every now and then, so maybe you would enjoy reading one part of the series. What does the journal have to do with my opening paragraph? It's a bit hard to explain. One Sunday morning, a few weeks after our cruise, I was sitting in church. The pastor's message was not resonating with me and I found myself thinking about a dream I had. The dream turned into a partially fictional story that I wrote in my head while sitting there. I put it down on paper as soon as I got home. Many people, who read it, said they wanted to believe it is a completely true story. Read it for yourself and you will find out how it celebrates life. It needs to be set up though, so you need to know what happened the third day of our cruise, then the dream story will make sense to you. If you have taken a cruise before, then you have an idea what goes on aboard ship and you should you enjoy reading this. If you have not been on a cruise I hope you enjoy my story anyway. Part V Day Three-Tuesday and Labadee is over there. Another morning of delight began, another morning with no alarm clocks, no Katie Couric, no disturbing pager calls. Today is going to be a great day; a day of nothing to do and happy to do it. I awoke slowly, very slowly, and took a look out the open balcony door. I could see the village of Labadee. The resort area was on the other side of the ship. I slipped on my robe and stepped out on the balcony. It was already very hot. I looked down at the blue-green water and immediately noticed large jellyfish swimming by the dozens, ghostly white beach umbrellas opening and closing. I was seeing these creatures from deck 10, they had to be really huge, not something that I wanted to meet at eye level. This was not swimming with the sting rays. The bay's salt content must be down due to a lot of rain water pouring into the bay from the mountains. We could thank Kyle for providing optimum conditions for these unpleasant creatures. However, the heat and the jellyfish were not going to be a problem for us, Diane and I had no plans to leave the ship. Unless you were kayaking (we did that the year before) or wave running (book them before the cruise) Labadee was a day of lying by the sea. Reclining around the Solarium pool with a good book and a good woman seemed a much better plan to me. I stepped back in, leaned down on the bed and ran my hand slowly down Diane's bare back. After thirty years the touch of her skin still causes my fingers to tingle. She rolled over and smiled. We were ready for breakfast, a brisk walk and then lounging around the pool with a great selection of chairs. Diane put on her swimsuit and cover-up; I put on my Speedos, (Remember? They are big red shorts) a Del Sol T-shirt and sneakers. We retrieved our sunglasses from the swans. We ran the stairs up one deck and aft to the Windjammer. No line, this IS a great day. We sat there eating our eggs and smoked salmon, melon, and sausage as the wave runners zipped around the ship sounding like a herd of wet weed whackers. They did look like fun. Off in the distance, I could see the parasail and the blue, green and orange kayaks. This was a most pleasant sight. We took our time sipping our water and nibbling on a second helping of cantaloupe. Off to deck 4, of course, for our morning constitutional. We had the urge to put on some speed this morning. I tended to get ahead of Diane so I would circle the helipad until she caught up. The section of deck around the dining room was closed for cleaning so we had to detour through the auto sliding doors past La Scala. If I hit the sensor just right and made a circle, we could slip through without breaking our pace. It looked weird but it worked. And the icy blast of air felt great. We were flying, around the deck, up the stairs, down the stairs, through the doors, around the port side, and....what is that awful smell? "Diane do you smell that or is it just me?" "It is you" she replied. I sat myself up for that corn toss. But there was a bad smell coming from a large blowing vent on the port side. I am guessing that it was the exhaust port for the garbage incinerator. We never noticed the smell at any other time. The source is still a mystery. We finished our walk; we worked up a good sweat which should make the cool pool feel great. We headed topside with a stop to pick up towels, (the note said to return them or be charged twenty dollars, this prevents people from leaving them on the chairs I betcha) and we grabbed sun screen, and books. The Solarium had about five people there when we arrived. The hardest decision of the daytime now faced us. Where do we sit? There? No. Over there? No. Here? Okay. Weary from decision making, we stripped to our swimsuits and I started to sit down. "I going to the spa at the party pool, this one is closed." Get in hot water? Okay. We walked to the main pool area and entered a spa. We had it to ourselves just long enough for me to figure out the controls and get the jets moving when another couple entered the pool. We chatted with them and found out the lady could not tolerate a lot of sun, and they also noticed the jellyfish. They were enjoying the cruise; she had been in the spa the day before and received the seaweed wrap, which she found to be wonderful, and afterwards bought 600 dollars worth of stuff. I could tell by the look on her husband's face that he did not find that so wonderful. We sat in the soup for about fifteen minutes and then went back to the Solarium pool. Without hesitation, I dove in. The water felt great, we splashed each other for awhile and then hit the chairs and did nothing until lunch time. Well, not exactly nothing. I did a lot of thinking. I reflected on the last year, all the emotional, mental, and physical pain that Diane and I had to share. The main reason for this Cruise was to have healing moments like this one. I was reading an inspirational book titled God's Psychiatry: One of the finest ways to relieve tension in your life is to picture still water clearly in your mind. Maybe a little lake nestling among some pines. Maybe a tiny, cool spring on some hillside. Maybe a calm sea with gentle rippling waves. After the picture becomes clear, then start repeating and believing, "He leadeth me beside the still waters." Such an experience produces a marvelous surrender and trust that enables one to face the heat of the day confidently, knowing there is refreshing and relaxed power awaiting under the leadership of one wiser than we. I did not have to imagine a still sea, I was on one. I must have slept some, because the next thing I knew it was after one. Diane, not wearing a watch but in tuned to her internal clock, informed me it was time to eat, so off to the Windjammer. It was closed. If you wanted a big lunch you best be on the Island or in the dining room. Wait! How about Johnny Rockets? That would be different. Up another deck and we were there. I liked the place; it reminded me of the Silver Diner. Good food and good music. We ordered the chicken club on wheat and one strawberry milkshake to share. The shake was so thick I thought I was going to pass out trying to suck it through my straw. After lunch back to the pool. At about three the Solarium started to fill up with people, I am not sure why. Some time after the Ships horn blew we were pretty sun soaked so we headed down to the cabin. Once there we took our time showering, and we were both on the balcony when the ship started sailing a bit late for Jamaica. I snapped a few pics. We lounged around the cabin reading and after five we started getting dressed for dinner. Diane put on a long form fitting purple dress with a red and purple scarf around her shoulders; I put on a Jones New York gray plaid suit with an iridescent purple-blue shirt and a color coordinated J.Garcia tie. I put a silver pocket watch in my right pants pocket. I also put something special in my inside coat pocket. We left with a little time on our hands, so we moseyed around the shops and had a couple more pictures taken, which we did not buy, and went to dinner. We may have gone down to the photo area and played "who can find the picture of us first game." I always loose. Tonight was Venetian night, and I looked forward to it, just like all the nights. We sat down and noticed that the younger newlyweds were not present. Wanich, who always addressed us by our first names, gave us a cheerful greeting and made his recommendations. We ordered a bottle of red wine, Mondavi, I think. I don't like red, but I liked this one. I ordered the tomato salad, roasted garlic soup, and went for the steak again. Diane ordered a lamb dish as her main course. Everyone went to Labadee except us. Mike and Betty said they wished they had not. Due to the extreme heat they decided to return. They spent more time waiting to board a tender than on the island itself. I commented on how quiet it was around the pool. Dessert was great as usual and all of us left a little earlier than usual because we wanted to attend the Crown and Anchor welcome back reception. The reception was in Cleopatra's Needle and there were free drinks and chocolate covered strawberries and such. Captain Olsen made a speech and recognized the couple that had made the most cruises with RCCL, one hundred and eleven, and awarded them a big bottle of champagne. Lynn made her Crown and Anchor pitch again. I considered that to be unnecessary since all present were already members. The floor was then opened to questions for the captain; any kind of question. I thought this should be interesting. It went something like this: Q. How do you spend time with your wife? A. How do you spend time with your wife? Q. How much money do you make? A. Not much but we have great vacations. Q. How many miles to the gallon does the ship get? A. It doesn't, it gets 55 feet to the gallon of fuel. Q. How did you meet your wife from Kentucky? A. I meet her on a cruise ship. You get the drift, really intelligent questions. From behind me a women jumped up and yelled Tor! And then asked something in what was obviously Norwegian. I looked around and it was the windmill lady. The Captain looked perturbed at the question and answered in English. "No, I have no plans to visit (somewhere) when I return to Norway and that was not my mother asking." The woman let out this huge and I mean huge laugh. And that was the end of that. Do not address the Captain by his first name even if you are from the same country. It was now time to see Two Funny Guys, I first excused myself to the men's room but that is not where I went. I walked back to our seats and took Diane's hand and we went down to deck 3 and sat very close to the stage. We were now in the most crowded section, so I looked longingly at a couple of empty seats in the mezzanine. We did not move. The Two Funny Guys were funny. They came on after Jeffrey made his very funny comments about the Hey Mon, smoke sellers in Jamaica. The Two Funny Guys interacted with the audience, yelled at them for being late, that sort of thing. After the show it was back to Cleopatra's Needle for the big Karaoke semi finale competition. We sat down up front right next to the dance floor. The singing started. Diane picked up a song list and started browsing through it while I sat there with my right leg bouncing a mile a minute. I was thirsty and needed some bottled water. I took my coat off, and then I put it back on, and then took it back off. Diane said "are you okay?" Just thirsty. "we can go to the promenade and get some water and come right back" No, I don't want to leave. A few people sang, some good, most bad. After the fifth or sixth person sang, the hostess, Michele I think, asked if Derrick is here. I stood up and walked to the microphone in front of the video prompter. Diane looked shocked. She knew I had no interest in singing a Karaoke song. Michele then said for me to tell the audience (the place was packed) my name, where I was from, and what I was doing. "Hello, my name is Derrick, I'm from Portsmouth Va. (a big cheer came up from my right) and I am celebrating my 30th anniversary. I would like to sing this song to my wife Diane who is sitting over there". I pointed to her where she was sitting with her shoes off and her feet up on the chair in front of her. I then stepped away from the monitor and moved toward her. A big cheer went up. The music started, it was not a Karaoke song, it was music that I had brought myself, a very slow but jazzy ballad called I Just Never Say It Enough, by Wayne Watson. I sang to Diane. I looked her in the eyes and never looked away. If I called you every time that I think of you, the phone would be ringing all day. I keep thinking these feelings will mellow with time but not yet, no way. We've had our share of heartache and trouble, we can look back and laugh at it now, but a mystery keeps haunting me, how we hurt those we love most somehow, somehow. A real love expression is long overdue, so hear my confession of my love for you-I just never say it enough and before it's too late and time's up; you're more than all I dreamed you'd be, an answered prayer, a gift of God above. But I just never say it enough. I believe God inhabits the human heart. I believe it more now than ever before and I see His reflection in You, in You and I'm sure, yes I'm sure that a real love expression is long overdue, so hear my confession of my love for you- I just never say it enough…so before it's too late and time's up, you're more than all I dreamed you'd be an answered prayer, a gift of God above. But I just never say it enough. I just never say it; I just never say it enough. Nooo, I just never say it, I just never say it enough. Noooo...oh...oh. I finished the song, I have sung before at my Church, but never in front of a crowd quite this happy. The all came to their feet and cheered, and it was loud. I put the mike back on the stand, took a little bow and ran over and kissed Diane. Michele then told the audience that I was not part of the competition; I just wanted to sing something special for my wife. Sometime later a gentleman with a large group won the competition with his great rendition of Proud to be an American. We all cheered for him. He was good, but not as good as me. That was Diane's opinion, not mine. Karaoke ended and many people came over to congratulate us, including the right side people, who were there from Virginia Beach, thus the reason for the cheer. The man who won said "you had us all crying over here". An hour or so later, after a walk and a snack, and a trip to the Vault that did not last long, we went to our cabin and found a cute dog sitting on the bed. I knew it was going to be a good day. It turned out better than planned. Derrick

Not all coaches are set up to charge the chassis battery when on shore power. My coach will not. I added a device myself that remedies this. It is called a Trik-L-Start. It runs off 12 volts and "borrows" voltage from the house batteries to keep the chassis fully charged. It also has a maintenance mode that helps to keep the battery healthy. It is very easy to install and cost about 56 bucks at Rvupgrades.

Well today was a rare day. Actually it has been a beautiful day. I took advantage of the great weather and did some work on our coach. I installed a Trik-l-Start to keep the chassis battery charged. The install was quite easy to do. I mounted the thing in my outside front wiring bay under the drivers seat. I read the directions first so that may have helped prevent a problem. I aslo added an over the door awning arm lock. I think there should have been two of them to begin because I ordered the lock and they only come in pairs. For some reason the coach came with only one. With one lock, one side of the awing would try to unroll, while going down the road, and that made a very unpleasant thumping noise. That irritation is now resolved. The best modification I did to the coach was to change the wiper arms and blades yesterday. I now have blades with a smaller j-hook which allows me to use the new 32 inch frameless wiper blades made by Tru Vision. These blades should hug the big curved windshield and hopefully the blade on the driver's side will no longer fly off and end up over the rearview mirror during a heavy rain. Last week I removed the twenty inch CRT telly from its swing out cabinet in the bedroom. I installed a 26 inch LCD in its place. I think my work looks pretty good. Now I have a digital convertor box that may end up, along with a tv, in a furture yard sale. I still have a few coach things left to do. Add a wall paper border in the bedroom and purchase some cleaning supplies. All this is in preperation for our trip to Elkhart. We leave on Thursday. I am looking forward to a good long road trip. It will give me something new to write about. Derrick

This past weekend we traveled to Shawboro, North Carolina for a camp out with our Good Sam's Chapter. Four coaches were there and our small group had a great time. Friday night it was a quick group dinner of steamed shrimp, potato and bacon soup, cornbread, tossed salad with blue cheese crumbles and plenty of good cookies for dessert. Then the ladies played Mexican Train while us men shot the breeze for awhile and then we played a number of hands of King's Corner. Saturday morning it was scrambled eggs, biscuits with sausage gravy, yogurt with tropical fruit and some huge muffins. During the afternoon Diane and I worked on the coach. After three months of sitting it needed some work. Saturday night it was corned beef and cabbage, in honor of St Paddy's day of course. We played a bunch of rounds of bingo for prizes, finished up our game of King's Corner and then played a rousing few rounds of Sequence (my new favorite game). It was good to get out again. We had a lot of simple fun. The only mishap was the almost loss of a wiper arm on the way down. That would not have been the first time. It seems my coach suffers from a too curved windshield and if the wipers are set to high while driving (in the rain of course) above fifty five, the wind may lift the driver side blade off the windshield and then it wraps itself around the rear view mirror. I am glad that there is a lot of Rain-X on my windshield or I would not have been able to see at all. Not a fun moment when it happens. On my list of bad moments I would put it down around twelve, which brings me back to the real purpose of this blog entry: Another Not So Good Coach Moment: Road Rage? This not-so-good moment happened on the same day my coach was stuck in the mud. Not long after the Bounder was pulled from its trap, Joel, Diane and I said our goodbyes to my parents and we were on the road again. For miles we could hear mud coming off the sides and the undercarriage of the coach, but other than my normally shiny coach now looking rather shabby, we were not bad off. My nerves were a bit shot, but I expected them to settle down while driving home. We had one stop to make first. We had planned on visiting Diane's cousin Elaine in Raleigh, North Carolina, spend some time with her including dinner together, continue on home and arrive around dark. Due to our muddy misadventure we were now running late. We would have to shorten our time with Elaine, but dinner was still on the agenda. We had plans to meet at the Cracker Barrel not far from the Raleigh Durham airport just off I-40. After about an hour on the road we found ourselves near the busy intersection of Interstate 85 and 40. We made it through the intersection. Diane and I were chatting about the confusing directions coming from our GPS when this small dark car zoomed from directly behind and came up next to my window. I looked down at the driver. He was leaning over to the passenger side of his car, yelling at me. I had no idea what he was saying. He started waving his right arm around, then both arms, yelling even louder, but with no clarity at all. "Diane what does that guy want?" "I don't know, but he sure is acting strange." She got up and leaned over my seat. Suddenly he speed up. As soon as he was way out in front of me he headed over to the shoulder of the road. I glanced over to my right so I could keep an eye on him as we passed. Then I watched him in the rear view mirror. I figured that was the end of it, but it wasn't. A couple of seconds after we passed him, he took off. He crossed the right lane, coming up on my left again. This time he was practically hanging out of the passenger window yelling like a mad man, arms going like a windmill. I still had no idea what he was doing or trying to tell me. "What does he want? Do we have a flat? Are we on fire, I don't get it?" I said. "I don't know" Diane replied as she opened my window in an attempt to understand what he was yelling. "I can't understand him at all." Joel, one to never miss life's little comparisons made an observation. "He would make a good trunk monkey." That could have been funny except for the fact this guy was weaving in his lane. I was beginning to think he might swerve over and hit us. I found myself edging to the far right of my lane. I hit the zipper. I moved over. This was getting scarier by the moment, then the guy zoomed off in front and moved over to the shoulder again. Something told me he wasn't going to stay there. I was right. The third time was not charming. He zoomed up even faster this time, with a new tactic. He hit his horn, adding the noise to his arsenal of gestures. We could see that he was still yelling but we couldn't hear him over his horn. I resisted the urge to push my horn in return. "Why is he so mad? Did we cut him off or something?" I yelled. "Maybe we threw mud at him and he suffers from road rage" Joel responded. I almost believed that was possible, but I figured we lost the last of the mud off the coach fifty miles behind us. He was swerving and most likely swearing a lot now. It was getting harder to keep my eyes on the road in front, and keep my eye on him at the same time. Diane saw an exit sign. "Pull off there" she pointed to the distant off ramp just to the right of an overpass. "Maybe he won't follow us." "MAYBE he won't follow us? What if he does?" I asked. "Well, we will be safer off the interstate that is for sure." I had to agree with that, so I was going to signal a turn, but something told me don't. I decided that I didn't want this person to see my side blinker. He would then know what I was going to do. If we exited at the last moment, hopefully it would leave him no time to get over, follow us, then shoot us all, or whatever it was he wanted to do. He made it easier to get away because for the third time he zoomed ahead. He passed the exit. Now was our chance to get away. At the last possible second I moved to the right, punched the gas and headed up the ramp. The light at the top was green so I took a right turn. We headed for a shopping center. "Did he follow us?" I asked no one in particular. Joel, from his position on the couch, responded first. "I think we lost him." I parked the coach. I sat there for a moment. Then I opened a console drawer and pulled out my tire gauge. "I'm going to check outside." I left the coach for a quick walk around. All the basement doors were closed. The awing wasn't open, the antennae was down. My Crossfires showed proper rear tire pressure. The fronts looked normal, but I checked them anyway, just to be sure. They were fine but I wasn't. That diver had really scared me. The reason for his behavior was a mystery that would not be solved, which may have been a good thing. I really didn't care for my family to be part of a headline. I went back in the coach, used the bathroom, threw some water on my face. We were back on the interstate again in about ten minutes. We didn't talk much for the rest of our trip. I put on a Frank Sinatra CD and tried to calm down. It had been a rough day so far. Diane was trying to call Elaine to tell her we were still on our way, but would be arriving a bit late. We would arrive later than any of us realized because we missed a turn and ended up at the Airport. I was not happy with trying to drive a large vehicle past all the gates with their confusing traffic of taxis, cars, buses, and people with suitcases but we managed it. We got back on the right path to the Cracker Barrel. A good coach moment: Having a place to sleep after a good meal at the end of a very rough day. Elaine was waiting in the parking lot. She visited our coach for awhile. We retold the story of our stay in the mud, and gave her our account of the mad driver. "Well, it seems you have had a rough day today." My whole family practices the art of understatement. Joel summed the day up best. "We are here now, lets eat!" We did. We walked in to the restaurant, had a good meal, told some funny stories. Elaine told us about the things going on in her life. It was good moment but it was also late. I was exhausted so I told Diane that I was not up to the drive home. We already knew that the area had no campgrounds close by so she made a great suggestion. "I bet they will let us stay here." We asked the manager if we could spend the night. He agreed. So we left, said good bye to Elaine, and went back to the coach. We moved it to the far end of the parking lot. I put out the slides over the curb side. I started the genny so we could unwind with a movie. It was not long after it ended that we were all in bed. I hoped I wouldn't have crazy dreams about mud holes and trunk monkeys. I was so beat that even the planes flying directly over head couldn't keep me awake. I didn't dream at all.

We have all had them, moments when we are so overjoyed to be motorhome owners and those other moments, the ones where you take a deep breath and ask yourself: "Why did I ever buy this big blasted thing?" Stuck! A few years ago, when Diane and I were still Bounder owners, we spent Christmas with my parents and my daughter Christine's family. We took the rig down to their home in Lexington, N.C., and parked it in their backyard. It was not a bad place to camp. Dad provided power and water and he told us we could dump our gray tank down the side of the hill that we were parked on. We had room to set up our patio, and a nice lighted path through the woods led up to the house. Behind us was a shuffleboard court. It was a fun holiday. I roasted a turkey, we played games and other members of our extended family showed up to see the coach and join in the festivities. The first couple of days the weather was a bit chilly, then on Christmas Eve it warmed up and started to rain hard. It poured all night and most of the next day. The day after Christmas, our last day, it was nice again, not warm but comfortable. We played a lot of shuffleboard, ate leftovers and enjoyed ourselves a lot. That night Diane and I started packing up the rig to leave the next morning. The morning of our departure it was really warm. It hit the seventies in the sun and everyone was outside to say goodbye to us. I had to back the rig down the driveway past the shuffleboard court to a downhill point off Dad's driveway where I would then pull forward and make a right turn to exit. So with Diane guiding me I backed up, but a bit too far to the left and backed off the road onto the spot where my Dad's vegetable garden used to be. Now, before I started to back up Dad warned me I needed to keep to the right, close to his grape arbor so that when I left the driveway I would be on hard ground rather than on top of his old garden, which was now a lot of mud. While backing up I heard his grape vine scraping along the side of the coach. Worried about a damaged gel coat, I eased over to the left, which turned out to be a big mistake. The passenger side of the coach missed hard ground; the driver's side was on rock. The passenger side started to sink; the driver's side didn't. My heart dropped to my shoes as the coach listed to starboard. I jumped up from my seat and tried to go out the door. My steps wouldn't open because the ground was in the way. Dad was standing on his driveway, that place I longed to be, just looking at my muddy predicament. "I guess you didn't hear me tell you that you were too far to the left?" "No, all I could hear was your vines dragging down the side of the coach!" I said with some emphasis. "Now what do we do? It looks like it's about to roll over!" "We can get it out," Dad said. "I'll be right back." He took off at a fast walk for his workshop. Diane, Mom and I just stood there looking at my mud-covered coach, the steps stuck open. I was thinking very big expensive tow truck, if one would even come out this far, and I doubted that would help anyway. "A tow truck can't pull it out of that hole," Dad said. He was standing there with an armload of boards while reading my thoughts. "Here's what we are going to do," he said. "We put some boards under the jacks, lift the coach and then dig the mud out under the wheels and put boards down. One rear wheel is on rock so we should be able to move it, once we get it upright." We gave it a gallant effort. The jacks lifted the rig, we dug and put down boards, but as soon as we raised the jacks the coach pushed the boards back into the mud and couldn't make it out. Now I was starting to panic. "Don't panic." This time it was Diane reading my thoughts. "I'm not panicking," I lied. "I just don't know what we are going to do." "Yes, you are. Just take a deep breath. We will figure out something." I think this is the point where I took a deep breath and asked myself, "Why did I buy this big blasted thing" We all know the answer to that: Because I wanted to. I heard Dad talking on his cell. He hung up. "Well, I just talked to Marion and he is sending help." Marion was my cousin who owned a construction company in the area. He said he would be over and not to worry because if he couldn't get it out no one could. That didn't make me stop worrying. While waiting for Marion and his solution, whatever that was, we leveled the coach again. Just as we finished I heard a loud vehicle coming down the driveway from the road. Marion was heading our way with a bulldozer. He told me his plan of attack. I told everyone that I only wanted directions relayed from Diane, because I knew everyone would want to help and I was scared and confused enough already. I got in the coach and pulled up the jacks. Marion, with a chain connected under the coach and attached to the dozer, yelled, "Ready!" and started to back up. He dragged the coach until the front wheels were on solid ground and then yelled "Hit it!" I punched the gas pedal and with the roar of the motor and mud flying everywhere, and to the sound of cheers from my family, she came loose. Up on the driveway she went. A good motorcoach moment: Coming out of the mud.

I went into the waiting room and had a good cry. My wife's sister held me tight and she said, "It's all right. We don't understand, but we love ya and we'll see you through it and it will all be all right. Clay, you're a good person. We don't always agree, but you're a good person." She had come on my side enough to minister to me. The sisters went back home with the two girls and left me with the boys. The doctor said, "Make your arrangements to care for your family for several weeks, several months, maybe forever because this is a very serious case." I believe that it really would have been easier to take my wife to her grave than to leave her at that hospital. If that had been the case, I would have had no choice; it would have been a decision that was finally made. But the unknown and the wonderings and the whys of reality were very difficult. I remember thinking this as I sat by myself for a few minutes afterward. The house was quiet and the boys and I got together and had a talk. I remember Derrick, age 15, and Rodney, age 13, saying, "Don't worry, Dad, we'll make it. Everything will be all right." I called the pastor of the church because I knew it would spread throughout the neighborhood very rapidly. I told him what had happened and he said, "I was afraid it would come to this" He made some effort to tell me how he had warned me. I just made the conversation as short as I could, tried not to be rude, and got off the phone. Catherine's sisters agreed to keep Kam, and Penni, as long as necessary. I am sure that when they finally arrived in Denton, North Carolina it was a chance for the whole family to come by and examine Penni's new foot. They knew about the healing, so I have no doubt that they questioned everything. Whenever the Lord has done something, it will stand up to questioning. If the Lord has moved in my life and I have been healed or delivered or set free of something, I can bear the brunt of the questions because when His glory is manifested, it will stand the test. The boys and I tried to start putting things together a little bit in order that we could just live. They saw the predicament that I was in and they were very good. I would go over each night to visit Catherine and they would stay home and do dishes and fold laundry. I would come home from work and we would all pitch in and start cleaning and try to keep things as near up to par as we could. I just felt like this was necessary. The Lord was good even in times like this, because I didn't have the physical strength to face people at work or anywhere. I was a metalsmith and, as I recall, an expert welder. As it happened, I was the only welder around and there was a big project at work that required my skills. For the first several days, they put me back in a welding booth to do some work. It was an opportunity for me to be by myself and hide my face behind the welding helmet and cry inside. God just allowed that as a hideaway for me for a while. As the word passed through the church, a dish garden came to my house on behalf of Catherine's illness and was left on our steps. The doorbell rang and no one was there when I answered it, just the dish garden. I supposed it came from the ladies of the church. We kept it around for quite a while, or pieces of it, as a reminder to pray for them. We had a few friends that kept calling. Of course, Bobby and Peggy came over each day to check on me and she pitched in and helped prepare food and so forth. But I was numb, I couldn't pray, I couldn't read my Bible. There was just a numbness inside. There's no other way to explain it. I just kept going step by step. I tried not to ask "why?", I tried not to ask "œwhen?", I just tried to keep the things that I had to do done and somehow or another I would sleep. It was almost like I would turn everything off and I'd finally go to bed and sleep. The only thing I could do was watch the 700 Club. They called me and said brother Pat wanted to see me. He pulled me into an office and we sat and talked for about forty minutes and cried together and prayed together. He gave me a ray of confidence, of hope, and said, "God will not allow these things to end up in this situation" He's a Deliverer." Though I was still numb inside, I kept hearing this from a man who I respected. "God is a Deliverer and He will not allow things to remain in this state." Pat was a very precious friend. On the 700 Club each night, if I had not called in to give a report, Pat would ask, "By the way, have any of you counselors heard from the brother whose wife is in the psychiatric hospital?" If there was no report he'd say, Brother, if you're listening, give us a call. We want to know how she's doing." So I would call and he would read it back over the air. This was encouraging. He said, "I want you people to fast and pray for this sister." I remember one night Pat came on strong against pastors who were mistreating their people who were filled with the Holy Spirit and believed in the Full Gospel. He poured it out heavy-real heavy. By realizing that there were some people on my side, it didn't change me within, but it gave me a ray of hope. I continued to just hold on. I would go over to the hospital to visit Catherine and, of course, they wouldn't let me in to see her. The first few trips I could hardly find anyone who knew she was there. I would go over and tell them I was there to see Catherine Parker and they would say, "Who?" I'd say "Susan Catherine Parker." So the lady would go back and say, "Yeah, she's here." And I'd say, "Well, may I see her?" And she'd say, "No, you can't see her. She still in solitary." "What's the report?" I would ask. "Well, no change," would be her response. I finally had a session with the caseworker that, I suppose, was the psychologist. He took down a history of the troubles that we'd had in our marriage, and the troubles Catherine had had as she was being raised as a child, and what might have brought this on. He asked me an awful lot of questions. I didn't get a chance to ask him any. Finally I had a talk with the doctor who happened to be a very devout Methodist Christian. He had some understanding and I felt freer in his presence. He said to me, "Except for what God can do, make your plans for your wife never to recover because it's one of the most serious cases I have ever seen that has come on without a history. Many times there will be a history and you will see it come and go, but there's no history of this in her family, no history of it in her life." I said, "How long?" He would give me no estimate of how long she would be confined. She was not in a coma, but she was totally unaware of reality; all of her talking was disconnected from reality. They had asked me for pictures of the family, so I took pictures of our kids. They did what passed for a brain scan in those days and they showed her those pictures among other pictures that they had. There was no reaction, no change, when she saw a picture of her own children. I found out later that she saw no difference between pictures of her own children and those of a stranger. One night that I was there, a little nurse who heard me ask about Catherine asked, "Are you Mr. Parker? Come with me." She called me back to her desk and she started telling me, "There is something different about your wife. I'm not supposed to tell you this, but I just have a feeling that she's going to be all right." Whenever I would come there for a visit, she would always meet me, call me back, and give me a little briefing. All of this took place over a few nights, but it seemed like months. One night sometime during the first week, I came back home from the hospital, laid across the bed, and cried out, "Lord, why?" I cried--not with tears, but with a total spiritual effort and said, "Lord-help me! He heard my cry and spoke to me and gave me a clue as to when she would come out of this "coma" or whatever it was that she was in. And then He clearly told me when she would come out of the hospital. It was so clear that I got up, turned the light on, and marked it on my calendar. As I recall, I marked a Tuesday. The next time I went over, they said, "Your wife came to today; she called for some help and said she wanted to know where she was." Catherine realized what was taking place around her. She related to me later that when she came to, it was like she had been asleep and woke up. Although she had been in the same little room now for five or six days, she said she did not recognize her surroundings. She thought she had been kidnapped and that I didn't know where she was. The nurse said, "She came to, she knows where she is, she's answering questions," I said, "May I see her?" The doctor told me I could see her tomorrow. Well tomorrow was her birthday, that's what the Lord had told me: that I would see her on her birthday. I asked if I could bring the boys. On December 10, 1968, we went by the supermarket and got her a little cake and some cards. We knew we couldn't take her any gifts but we could do that. They gave us a room where we met and she just seemed to be so much herself. I thought, "Well, praise God, it's all over." We talked and had a real good visit. The next day I went back to see her knowing everything was going to be all right, but she did not remember our visit the day before. It went on this way for quite a while. I could see her, but she wouldn't remember my being there the day before. All she would know was just me at the time I was there. In the middle of all of this, there was a flu epidemic taking place. First Rodney then Derrick and then I came down with the flu. We had to call for some help, so my sisters came up and helped us a bit, and they went over to see Catherine. I look back now and see that the Lord was exposing so many people to what was taking place. After the Lord told me when Catherine was going to get out of the hospital, it brought hope. When I would go back day after day and see that she didn't remember, it brought discouragement again. I don't remember if I said, "Lord, but You promiseed!" There didn't seem to be eneough improvement. It was getting close to Christmas. Holiday cheer and our present situation seemed mutually exclusive. I couldn't think about Christmas trees, presents or anything like that. I was having enough trouble just getting Rod and myself to school on time. One morning I just felt terrible. I couldn't think straight and I was an hour late to school. I think I should have stayed home because at the end of the day I was sick as a dog. I kept the flu for two weeks and missed a lot of school days. My brother came down with it also and poor Dad had his hands full. I remember one night after work around bedtime, he lost his temper over something simple and used words I had never heard him use before or since. It shocked both Rod and me. Dad apologized and we said our good nights. I could have sworn I heard him crying in his bedroom. As the days went by, and Christmas was just a couple of days away, our Aunt Hazel, who had been nursing us through our sick days, left before she came down with it herself. We boys managed to put up a tree, hang a few decorations on it, including the old antique glass balls. Dad and I made a wooden model of the Apollo Eight Command Module and I hung it from a string that was tied to the top of the tree across the high peaked ceiling of our living room to the top of a closet where I had placed a globe of the moon. Each day as the mission got closer to the moon I moved the model to mark the occasion. Christmas Eve came and my Mom was allowed a visit home. I am not sure she knew where she was, but we tried to make the best of it. I like to think it was a new beginning, for the Parker Family. I held on to that hope while I listened to Astronauts Landers, Lovell and Frank Borman read from the book of Genesis. "In the Beginning, God created the heaven and the earth...." The Lord and I are talked and I said, "Lord, send her home in her right mind and I will do whatever I have to do to make sure this never happens again." I guess I had been somewhat of a chauvinist as a husband and had stood my ground "this is your job" and "that is mine" and so forth. I don't think I was too hard-nosed about it but.... I needed to receive mercy. In order to receive mercy, I had to give it. I had to learn mercy, learn compassion, and learn sympathy and patience and many other things. The doctor had talked to me about what they were doing for her and then told me about the treatment they do for mental patients. He said, "We don't know how to treat mental patients yet, we're just doing some ball-park guessing as to what we can do. We're going to try some shock treatments electrical shock and insulin shock." One day I went over there to visit and she came out with all of her get-well cards in her hand and she told me some things that had happened to her while she had been in the hospital a few days before. I saw that she had moved into a new state, that she was starting to stack up one day on top of the other. When that happened, they allowed her to come home. I brought her home for a few hours one Sunday and when I did, it was like she had never been there before, because on the way over she kept saying, "What's the name of our street? What does our house look like?" and asking questions. As as soon as she saw our house, it snapped back into her memory again. On one of the visits she said, "Let's get in the car and drive around to all of our friends' homes so I can see their houses and that way I can remember what they look like." We had a picture album of our church, so we sat down and she would read and look and say, "Oh, yeah, I remember,I know them!" Once when I went over to visit her in the hospital, she and her roommate (who was about in the same state) were laughing and they said, "You know we can't even remember our children's names?" So I took pictures her pictures of the kids, and went over each one's name, and how old they were. I took pictures of her sisters and showed them to her and told her who they were and which getwell cards were from whick sister. The shock treatments had totally destroyed all memory. It had to be fed back in. It's like a computer where someone has pushed the delete button and then you've got to put all the software back in. I believed we could do it together. The doctor was encouraged and said to me one day, "She is responding 100% more than we expected to these treatments, so you're going to be able to take her home." He gave me a date. I don't recall if he said "a week from Saturday" or "next Saturday." I felt like she was ready to come home. Of course, I was anxious and I could see that she needed me and I needed her and the boys needed her. I felt like if we could just get back together again, that everything would be all right. The day came when I was to go pick her up. I made some quick preparation and went over there to find that no one knew that she was supposed to be discharged from the hospital. The doctor had signed no papers, left no word, and he was out of town until late the following Monday night. This was the first time they had really let me down on things they had promised. I was so despondent. They wouldn't even let me see her that night. I came back home and had a tough weekend. Early Tuesday morning I called and said, "Dr. Pyle, you promised me I could bring my wife home this past Saturday and I went over and..." "No, no, I didn't. It was Saturday..." He gave me a date that was for the next Saturday. "No, you told me last Saturday." I was getting a bit frustrated. "No, it's next Saturday. Let me pull her chart." He went and got her chart and said, "you're right...I did tell you last Saturday. I am so sorry. Why don't you come get her today?" I was at work and as soon as he said that, I hung up the phone, went and told my boss, got off and headed home. I started straightening up the house a little bit and looked and realized that I hadn't turned my calendar. When I did, I noticed it was Tuesday and there was a big red circle around today's date! So I knew that God was the Deliverer and He was working it out. I got everything ready and went over after her. The traffic was heavy and I stopped at a stoplight. I looked over at the Bible lying on the seat and read Mark 19:2 where it says "Now go and tell your friends what great and mighty things the Lord hath done for you." God is a Deliverer. When I look back and see all the things that we went through and then remember the moment when I looked at the calendar and saw the mark around the day, I knew Who was in charge and that He had made available to us the strength to go through the trials. And I know when He said, "Go and tell your friends what great and mighty things the Lord hath done for you." that he was talking to me. It was good to have Mom home but it wouldn't be easy. I spent many hours trying to figure it all out. I take that back. I have spent years trying to figure it all out. I believe that the loss of two parents, a bunch of stressful life changing moves and then this wonderful, inexplicable miracle and its aftermath was just to much for the mortal mind. But all is well that ends well isn't it? That's it. Part Four done. Why, why have I felt the need to write about these things? I don't know. Maybe I have thought about my own mortality a bit more after losing my close friend a year ago this week. And when one thinks about one's mortality, then memories come flooding back. Or like my Dad it is just Mark 19:2 talking to me. Hopefully there will be nothing but rving related stuff posted here from now on. But don't bet on it.

This part of my past is very hard for me to write about. I guess that is why I haven't blogged for over a month and it has been even longer since I wrote the previous part of this story. I guess I am afraid I run the risk of having people read this story and think I am crazy, just like the people in our church, close friends, and eventually family thought my whole family was crazy. They all thought we had "gone off the deep end." I am not sure what good, if any, these words will accomplish. But like my father, I am a writer, and as such I feel compelled to continue typing and let the reader be the judge. From Wikipedia: A miracle is an unexpected event attributed to divine intervention. Sometimes an event is also attributed (in part) to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that God may work with the laws of nature to perform what people perceive as miracles. Theologians say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through created nature yet is free to work without, above, or against it as well. A miracle is often considered a fortuitous event: compare with an Act of God. In casual usage, "miracle" may also refer to any statistically unlikely but beneficial event, (such as the survival of a natural disaster) or even which regarded as "wonderful" regardless of its likelihood, such as birth. Other miracles might be: survival of a terminal illness, escaping a life threatening situation or 'beating the odds.' Some coincidences are perceived to be miracles. I have heard the word miracle tossed around a lot. It is used to describe someone surviving a bad car crash (I used it myself after I was in a fiery car wreck in California-but that's another story) or a plane crash. I have heard someone talk about the miracle of surviving cancer. I remember the Miracle Mets and the USA Hockey Team and the Miracle on Ice after the 1980 Olympics, but how many people have experienced a "see it with your own eyes" miracle of Biblical proportions and suffered the consequences of such a miracle? Not many in this land. When I was a child I wished for one, I prayed for one and I got one. I had no idea what would come along with it. The morning after Penni was healed I floated off to school. I figured I could tell everyone about this life changing event. I believed that all who heard my words would believe me and would be just as excited to find out that God is real, just as real as I knew Him to be. I, being naive, could not have been more wrong. As I was walking to school, my Dad was struggling with his own thoughts about the night before. I think it is told best with his words. I remember the night, every bit of it. I lay facing one wall and Catherine lay facing the other and we didn't say a word to each other all night. I don't know if there was any sleep or if I froze in one position and allowed my body to rest a bit, but I managed to get up the next day and go on to work. At work, I tried unsuccessfully to bury myself in whatever I was doing. My mind was preoccupied and I don't know what I did. I'm a metal smith and I might have made cornbread that day, I don't recall. In my mind was a turning and churning of "what if, what if? and if it isn't?, if it isn't?" and how to handle it. This went on until about 10 o'clock in the morning. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I got to a telephone, called home, and when Catherine recognized my voice, in tears she said, "It's healed. And it looks great!" I don't know what my answer was to her, if I answered her at all. I managed to get through the rest of the very long day. I managed to get home at my usual time about 4:00 P.M. and as I pulled in the driveway, the screen door opened and this little 18-month-old girl came running out. Because of her foot, it had not Penni's nature to run on cement--she had always walked very cautiously. But she came running out and when she got to that little step in front of the house, she just passed right on down, past me and around the car, back up the step and over the door, turned around and came back down the step and around the car and back up a couple or three times before I could get hold of her. Finally she just came running up to me and I picked her up. I don't recall saying anything to her. I just remember picking her up and realizing then a kind of peace--that it really had happened, that this was no fantasy anymore. I walked into the house and I don't even know what conversation went on between Catherine and me. All I can tell you is that we were realizing that we'd had a visitation from the Lord in our home. It was Wednesday and we were going to church that night. We only lived four blocks from the church. We would often walk, but most of the time we drove because of Penni. That night when we started to get in the car, Penni said, No. She wanted to walk. As usual, I reached for her finger, but she shook her head and started running on down the street ahead of us....all the way to the church. I saw a whole new personality in the child. She was trying out new feet. I knew that one of the things we had to do was deal with Derrick about it because he didn't totally understand what had happened. He had seen us through the hassle of Kam's leg in a cast, for the same situation. He had also seen us ministering to Penni with corrective shoes, putting them on the wrong feet, and always helping her across the sidewalk, and holding onto her finger and so forth. When we did sit down to talk, Derrick explained in detail what had taken place when he had gone in that night to pray for her. He related that he had picked her foot up in his hand. Penni's foot had had no instep at all; it was twisted in at almost a 90-degree angle toward the other. He held her foot in his hand, which was similar to the therapy we had done before. In his hand he felt the muscles shape and move back where they were supposed to be. As he held Penni's foot firmly in his hand, he said it was almost like it wanted to force his hand open. He knew it was God because he had been exposed to a healing a few moments before on television. For a fourteen-year-old child this was a tremendous experience. We talked about it, and yet we knew we had to put it into perspective. We had to figure out what we could do with this, what we were supposed to do. I guess my question was Why? Why me? What had I done to deserve this? What was God looking for in my life that He would come and visit my home? What was it all about? What was my obligation now? I had not been taught this; I had not been exposed to this type of thing. It was not something that one could just get up before the church where we were going and testify about. I realized that there would be some problem with their accepting it, and yet there would also be a lot of problems with my denying it. I finally said to Catherine, "I don't know why, but God wants our attention and we'd better give it to Him. Above and beyond all other things that might happen in our lives at this point, we'd better give God our attention." So we pledged to do that. I found out real quick that some people didn't want to hear about this miracle. I found out at school the first time I tried to tell my friends in study hall. Some looked at me like I had gone crazy; some told me to shut up. One said he didn't believe in God so he could not possibly believe my story of a miracle. After telling me this, he got up and moved to the other end of the table. It wasn't long till the word got around the ninth grade that Derrick Parker was now some kind of religious nut. It was like being back in Denton, sharing stories of my traveling to Washington and being told "No one has ever been to there, it's too far away!" The hardest part was being cold shouldered by my friends who knew my sister, who could see for themselves but still said there is no such thing as a miracle. I didn't get it. How could one deny what one could see with one's own eyes? Apparently it was pretty easy to do, even if you attended church with the people who "claimed" to have had a miracle. It was even easier to deny what your eyes told you if the pastor of that same church didn't believe in miracles either. I wish I could tell you all the things that transpired after the people in the church saw my sister running up and down the hallways, climbing steps and being a normal, active eighteen month old. The things that transpired were shocking to me. We became the epicenter of a controversy. This controversy erupted out of the maelstrom of questions this miracle created. These questions were about the power of God and what our church believed. Let me some up the questions this way: Is God real or does the church just give lip service about him? Does God use His power through His Son Jesus like it says in the Bible or are we coming to church every Sunday for a Mythology-History lesson? The church split into two groups, those who believed what we told them and believed their own eyes. The second group, unfortunately the larger of the two, was composed of those who thought we were some kind of troublemakers and denied what their "lying eyes" told them. The pastor of our church was the leader of the second group as my Father soon found out. We were totally aware that God wanted to get our attention, so we were leaning in that direction like we never had before. Above and beyond anything that our church was teaching, above and beyond anything we had been taught in our lives, we were seeking the will of the Lord. By doing that, we were getting involved in home meetings in our house where we had prayer and studied the Full Gospel. We could feel the tension in the church growing like an epidemic. It wasn't just us, but we seemed to be the center of it. The word was getting out about Penni's healing. Anytime something like this happens, there's an aftermath. In an aftermath, there is some good and there is also some onslaught from the enemy. Our little Baptist church was very conservative in its doctrine with gracious, lovely people; but this was not a part of their program. Peggy Stewart, (one of our church Bible study friends) came to me one day and said, "Clay, you must tell the pastor." Well I knew already that I had to tell him because the evidence was there. I knew he was not the type of person who would understand with a lot of sympathy what was going on with us, so this was not going to be an easy task. He and I saw things a little differently and he knew anytime that I approached him that "Here comes the thorn in my flesh." I sought the Lord and prayed, Lord, You know where I'm coming from and You know what I'm facing, so if You really want me to tell him, tonight when we go to church, let him be available. This was not normally the case; he was very reserved and did not come out and mingle with the people a lot. That night when we went to church, we started down the hall and looked into the Sunday school office and there sat one person: the pastor, looking through a new Sunday school quarterly. It didn't seem like he was too engrossed in anything, so I stepped inside and said, "Pastor, may I talk with you a minute?" He said, "Sure you may." I imagine he already had some idea of what was taking place. I started from the beginning. I didn't hide any of the terminology and I didn't pull any punches. I told him that we had been watching The 700 Club with Pat Robertson and we saw a healing take place before our eyes on the television. Without taking a breath, I added, "and Jim Bakker turned and explained to the audience what God had done and we all heard. Derrick then went down to Penni's room and prayed for her and her foot was healed. We don't know why, but God has visited our home and we know it's real and we're gonna lend ourselves to Him and we're concerned about this church. I would like to have an opportunity to stand and tell the whole thing to the church so that there will be no rumors". I just spit all this out without giving him a chance to make any comment in return. Finally, when I gave him the chance, the pastor said, "We've not known your little girl that well, so we can't be sure of wha's happened. Since you haven't received a confirmation from the doctor and we plan our services quite a ways in advance, there's really no time or room for this type of thing, so I couldn't allow it to happen. And another thing, I need to talk to you further about what's going on at your house. We don't want any trouble in this church, so I want you to make an appointment when we will have more time to talk about this." That was the end of this conversation. I still had a lot to say. I made an appointment to came back. I thought that I was prepared to take my stand and to be firm about what I was going to say to this Baptist minister. It didn't take courage; I was anxious now. I wanted to go in and tear things up. When I got in his presence, I was ready to take my stand. The pastor has his own stand to take. "Clay, you know we're a Baptist church around here. I don't know how much you know about our denomination's background, but the Baptist church is a well-established church, one of the largest in the nations, led by men of many years of Bible research with many degrees and awards, men that stand strong and tall and are well-versed in their field. They are heroes of our time in the entire church world. They've set up the bylaws and the doctrines and of them we can be proud. They're our heritage." He continued, "What you are saying to me is not for us today. The healing as you've described it, is not a part of our doctrine. We Baptists, of course, believe in healing, but through the modern means that God has provided in this day. You see, in earlier times, doctors and hospitals and nurses were not available, so certainly Jesus intervened and He met the needs of His people just like we're meeting the needs of our people today, but through modern medicine means." He was very polite, very precise. He had done his homework, no doubt about it. "So, you see, Brother Clay, you're being swept into an emotional fantasy which is not for us and it will bring trouble, not only to your family, but to the church. And I will not allow it to disrupt things herere while I'm the pastor. It will bring nothing but trouble, and I'm asking you to be careful if you want to continue as a part of this church." I was starting to boil a little bit, I guess, because I knew what I was after and I was being careful what I was listening to-very careful. I was finding things in the Bible that confirmed all I was hearing from Pat Robertson and other Full Gospel ministers, so I was waiting for my turn to lash back. Just before I had a chance, the telephone rang. The pastor turned and talked for a few minutes and when he got off the phone he said, "That phone call requires me to leave. But we'll pick up right where we left off in a few days." A few days, a lot can happen in a few days. You can loose friends, your church, maybe even your family. I have to admit that of all the thoughts that could go through the human mind, I was battling with "What have you gotten your family into? What is all this that you have done?" I was getting letters from my family saying, "It's okay to be religious, but you can go off the deep end." I was getting letters and calls from Catherine's family that said, "What âre you two into? What's going on? What's happening?" I was trying to be very discreet in my explanations to them. They were Baptists too, you see, and I knew I had to be very tactful in any explanation that I gave. Fact and truth are always the best measures to take, so I wasn't denying anything, but I was being very careful in the way I approached my explanation. Catherine called me one day at work and I knew something was not right. She said, "We've got to go back and see the pastor." So we had another conference with him one evening and in that conference the conversation that Catherine had with him was not connected with reality and I finally reached over and asked her to be quiet and I said, Pastor, we'll end it here. We won't bother you anymore. We'll just do what the Lord wants us to do." He made some request that we not bring this back to the church anymore. I said, "Well, if the Lord asks us to stay here, we won't have any choice." The next night the deacon board came to our house. "Can we talk to you for a while?" I said, "Sure, sit down and make yourselves comfortable." "The pastor has asked us to come and to make sure that you not bring any more of this Full Gospel issue you and your wife are involved in back to our church. If you can't get yourselves uninvolved with this and just be a good Baptists," One deacon would start to talk for a minute and he'd ask another one to explain. It was like they had a final blow, a package, that they were to deliver and no one had the courage to lay it on us. Three or four of them talked. I had asked them to sit down but only a couple sat down and the others were kind of pacing around. They continued to gave me a pretty good spiel about how much trouble we were causing....followed by "we may have to ask you not to come back." Finally I said, "Are you trying to tell us that the pastor has sent you asking us not to come back to the church unless we deny what has happened?" They said, "Well, that's pretty much the story." "Go tell the pastor he has no problem, we won't be back." They left our house. I can't exactly describe the realization that this was God. It was a heartbreaking experience but at the same time there was peace. After the deacons walked out, Catherine and I didn't discuss it a whole lot, but we went on to bed. It was now about Thanksgiving week and my wife's family was coming up to visit. I think what was bringing them to visit was curiosity more than need to visit with us. To be perfectly honest, I dreaded this visit, because it was not a time when we needed outsiders. There were many things that we needed to face. A few days efore the family was to arrive, Catherine called me from work and she said, "I need some help, I can't handle it. I don't know how to clean up the house." I came home and realized that, emotionally, she was not able to handle the very basics. I knew something was seriously wrong. I started relating back in my mind the break that she had had in the pastor's office and I realized that she had not been herself since. I took her to the emergency room at Boone Clinic and we got no consolation at all. I took her to see our friends Bob and Peggy Stewart and they prayed and Bob called me upstairs and said, "Clay, you need to get some professional help. We can't do anything. I didn't want to admit that there was something wrong, but yet I knew there was. I called and explained the situation to Pat Robertson and he said, "Get her out of town. Take a trip, go somewhere." My car was in trouble, so a neighbor let us have his car. We went up to Richmond and it was a night of horror. I had not slept Friday or Saturday night because I was attending to her. She locked herself in the bathroom. She attempted to somehow open the windows of the Holiday Inn on the sixth floor. Driving home, we came through Williamsburg and the boys wanted to go in and see a movie. While Catherine and the boys were watching it, I slept through the whole thing. It was a terrifying time in Richmond. The trip there was mostly quiet, the kind of eerie quiet before a storm. We checked into the hotel and then went next door to a Chinese Restaurant. I loved Chinese food, and I still do, but that dinner was without taste that night. We went back to the room and Dad gave me some change and told me to take Rod downstairs to the game room. We played some pinball, and some kind of computer quiz game, roamed around the lobby for awhile and then went upstairs. I don't remember sleeping much that night. The next morning I woke up to my sound of my mother screaming. "The world is gone!....Open the window and you will see that there is nothing there!" I ran and pulled back the drapes from the big window and told Mom that everything was just the same. Rod started to cry. "What's wrong with him?" Mom wanted to know. "He had a nightmare Mom, don't worry about it." We were all having a nightmare. After we checked out of the hotel, we walked down the street to a breakfast place. I knew I needed to eat something, and thinking this may be my last good meal for awhile I ordered a big omelet. We said a prayer and I ate with gusto, like I was worried someone would take it away before I could finish. Dad reached across the table, grabbed my hand and told me to slow down and taste it. I looked up at him and with a shaking hand grabbed my glass of water. I knew it wouldn't help anything if I lost control The drive home was not so quiet as the trip up. After we left Williamsburg we crossed the James River Bridge. As we reached the high drawbridge, Mom screamed that the bridge was out and dove to the floorboards. That was it, for me. I burst out in tears and then Mom became calm. "What's wrong with him?" She asked. What was wrong with me? I was watching my whole family come apart. After we came back home, I took Catherine over to Portsmouth Naval Hospital on the pretense that we were going to visit a friend who was there. I went in first to the emergency room and pleaded with the doctor. "We've got a problem. My wife is having a nervous breakdown and I need some help bad." "Well, bring her in." I don't know whether or not you've ever dealt with someone who's going into a total nervous breakdown, but one moment they're perfectly normal and the next moment they're someone that no one knows and the next moment they are normal again. In the emergency room Catherine talked with the doctor and she seemed perfectly fine so he looked at me as if to say, what are you trying to do to your wife? I walked up the hall and prayed, Lord, there's nobody else that can help me but You. At that point, Catherine made a statement to the doctor that was totally disconnected from reality and he said, "Wait a minute." He started making some arrangements and gave her some medications and said, "Take her on home. This medication will cause her to sleep. If you need to sleep, you take some also." I said, "I don't need a thing." "If you have any problems, call me back." said the doctor. We went home. Our folks came and it was a horrible two days that they were there. I cooked the Thanksgiving dinner and I wouldn't have wanted to eat that turkey because it might have had the marshmallows inside and the stuffing in the banana pudding. We got through the days but our relatives couldn't communicate with Cathering...They realized something was seriously wrong. On Saturday morning they left, didn't say a word to me, but on Monday afternoon two of her sisters were back with a whole different attitude. They didn't come back questioning and trying to slaughter me, they said, "Clay, something is wrong and we came back to help." In the meantime, I had already called the hospital and made arrangements to have Catherine admitted. One of the sisters stayed with the children and the other sister and I took Catherine over to the Naval Hospital on a Monday afternoon during the peak of the rush hour traffic. It was rainy and foggy and a setting for a mystery movie is the best way I can describe it. They gave me the paperwork and we headed from Portsmouth Naval Hospital to the psychiatric hospital. Bayberry Psychiatric Hospital sat way down in the deep woods of Queen Street and there was moss hanging down all around and a swamp that surrounded three-quarters of it. Its physical surroundings couldn't have been worse. It was the longest, hardest trip of my life through all of the traffic and the rain and every red light was red in my favor. I finally pulled up to this great, big steel-barred door and rang the bell and somebody came out and opened it his deep low voice said, "Y-e-e-e-s-s?" I gave him my papers and he said, "Come on in." They talked to us and finally they completed all the paperwork. When they asked Catherine if she would sign herself in, she looked at me for direction. By now, she would do almost anything I said and nothing else. If I said, "Comb your hair" she would comb her hair. If I said, "Put a little lipstick on she'd put a little lipstick on. I wasn't always sure where she'd put it, but she'd put it on. If I said, "Wear this" she would put on her dress. She might put it on backwards, but she'd put it on. So I was tending to a person who was almost a robot. So when they said, "Mrs. Parker, will you sign yourself in?" She looked at me and asked, "Is that all right?" and I said, "Yes, sign your name right there. Sign yourself in." They took her back to the back and came out with all of her clothes, her hairpins and everything, and handed them to me. That was my darkest hour. To be Continued of course.