-Gramps-

I have two installments of Eighteen Months to write, but I need a break from it. I feel the need to post something about Motor Coaching. Our coach is still stuck in the driveway. Not literally, but figuratively. Weather and time constraints have conspired together to keep it parked right where it is for some two months now without moving an inch. Boy, do I have the itch to (notice the word inch and itch are very close) to get away. With the idea that going somewhere is better than nowhere and looking at motorhomes at a show may be better than just staring at ours through the window, we decided to make a day trip to Richmond, Virginia. We made a visit to the 25th annual Richmond Camping and RV Expo at the Richmond Speedway. We left around 10 a.m. this past Saturday for our 90-minute drive up north. Just before we finished breakfast it started snowing, again. We spent a few minutes browsing the weather reports online just to make sure we would not get caught in some weather we could not get away from. The reports all said this was just a short snow shower, so we took off with our supply of water, energy bars and dollar-off admission coupons. We arrived just at 11:30. We drove through the gate and found ourselves in the Vendors area close to the main entrance. The vendors parking lot was nowhere near full, so based on the number of vehicles around us, I had no real idea if this show would be all that busy. We walked through the cold to the ticket booth, paid our sixteen bucks (including our dollar off each) passed through the glass doors, showed our tickets and had the back of our hands stamped with the word FUN in blue ink. There were quite a few people there. The main entrance was crowded with people around a tall counter. They were filling out some kind of sweepstakes coupon, the winning prize being twenty five grand, and the consolation prize being a call from a time share organization. I declined to enter the drawing. I was more interested in exploring a couple of class A coaches. One was a new small Class A made by Winnebago. The Itasca Reyo (or the Winnie Via) is a 25-foot-long class A with one slide out that due to its size and floor plan feels more like a Class C than an A. The coach we visited was the 25T model. It has twin beds in the back that can be converted to a queen. There is also a queen bed over the cab. The cockpit area, which has a class A view, is lower than the rest of the coach but the chairs can be rotated and raised 6 inches so they become a part of the living area. Good thing too, because there is only one small couch/dinette that serves as seating. Diane and I both agreed that the Reyo appeared to be a well built coach, with a yacht like interior, functional and attractive at the same time. However, it's tight and lacking in storage that she and I are very used to. The Reyo is built on the Dodge Sprinter Chassis, normally a C chassis. It is powered by a 154-hp five speed Mercedes diesel which I suspect adds twenty thousand to the overall price. The Reyo had a show price tag of 119,000, just a few thousand less than the sale price of my 39-foot rig. Parked next to the Reyo was an Itasca Sunstar, an entry level class A, with a one piece windshield and traditional interior styling. It had the fit and finish, with muted colors, and the pleasant interior that Winnebago is known for. I did notice that the basement doors were not the full size flush fit doors, but were the old style hatch covers. That is not a look that I care for all that much. Also on display was an Encounter 30SA. The Encounter is Fleetwood's new entry level Class A coach. The Encounter replaces the old Fleetwood Flair. I don't know how Fleetwood manages so many models with multiple floor plans each; then again I don't know how Winnebago does either. The Encounter 30SA appears to be a comfortable coach. The coach body was standard, no full body paint, and like the Sunstar, the retro look basement doors. It is what Diane calls a side isle coach with the bed, bath and kitchen all on the curb side of the coach. The dinette and the fridge are in the main slide out on the road side. We would have given this coach a lot of consideration when we first shopped for one, if it had been available then. It had a show price tag of 88,000 which I considered a very good price. I heard more than one visitor to the coach saying they thought it would sell quickly at that price. Across from the Encounter was a Tiffin Allegro Open Road, a Four Winds Hurricane and a Tiffin Phaeton. The Hurricane is a nice coach. A bit plain on the outside but pleasant on the inside. Nice big dining booth, pull out bar, a comfortable coach. The Phaeton was the highest end coach at a show obviously geared to mostly entry level rvers and as a result the coach was crowded with curious lookers, not shoppers. It was a nice coach, no doubt about that, good looking woodworking, wonderful choice of fabrics and colors, great lighting (and that is important to me) and with four slide outs, plenty of room. The only thing that left a bad impression was a bit of wood framing on the ceiling. It really didn't add to the overall look of the interior. I finally made my way out of the Phaeton and visited the Allegro Open Road. Maybe I should have visited them in reverse. I was not overwhelmed by the Open Road. It is a good entry level coach, particularly for families with kids. It has a bunk bed option and with most of the floor space covered in vinyl, dirt and water being tracked into the coach is not a big problem. I think a bit more ambient lighting and a few more mirrors or pictures would warm it up a bit. This coach was built on a Ford Chassis. We took a look into a couple of Born Free Class Cs. Nice rigs but a bit pricey. That brings up an observation. There were not a lot of Class As at this show. The majority of the Class A coaches on display were in the 30 to 34 ft range. As I mentioned the Tiffin Phaeton was the highest end new coach there. Camping World had a couple of used late model Monacos on display, a Knight and a Diplomat. There was also one new Meridian parked outside the main entrance. All the gas class As except one were built on the Ford Chassis. The one exception was a Damon Challanger (nice coach with comfortable interior) built on a Workhorse chassis and that coach had a sold sign on it. There were a lot of sold signs on trailers. More than I remembered seeing last year. I took the opportunity to chat with one exhibitor and he informed me that the show was one of the hardest to stage, due to the snowy weather, but it was a very busy show with many serious shoppers. He said sales were much better than last year, not only at the show but for the year as well. I gathered from him and from others I spoke to, that the RV market was showing signs of recovery. The RV industry may be recovering, but it has also changed. The dealers were not pushing large coaches. The show was packed with trailers. The show gave the strong impression that the dealers believe the RV market now wants smaller, less expensive, kid friendly RVs be they trailers or coaches. We visited the vendor area, chatted with some campground and resort folks, and then grabbed an overpriced lunch before visiting the second building. We caught the shuttle bus, and found out it would have quicker to walk. This building belonged to one dealer exhibiting Forest River, Four Winds, Damon and Winnebago products. It was packed with trailers and there were about 25 coaches, equally divided between As and Cs with a couple of fancy Bs. We visited two or three Damon Challengers. All were pretty basic coaches, not bad. We left the show around 3 p.m. and made our way home. We stopped at Outdoor World in Hampton just to see if anything was on sale and then we visited BJ's wholesale nextdoor. By the time we arrived back home, we were beat. The rest of the evening was devoted to Pizza and the Olympics, although I think I have seen all the snow I care to look at.

I would love to sit and talk at a rally sometime. If you can make it to the Galax area of Va just let me know.

Just a note about what is coming next. . . I know that this story has gotten long, but it is about to get much longer. You might want to get cup of coffee or take a break before you continue. You are about to find out that I have set you up. I have spent a lot of time and words to set you up for a story that I wrote twenty five years ago. It was the first serious short story I have written as an adult. I submitted it to Guidepost Magazine and just basically forgot about it. After a few weeks, I received a call at work, It was from an editor at the magazine. He told me that he didn't usually call a writer to tell them that their story had been rejected, but he was making an exception in my case, because he felt strongly that the story should have been printed but he was overruled by the editor in chief. He went on to tell me that my story had caused the biggest argument the magazine had ever had over whether to publish or not. They wanted me to change a few things in it but this editor felt it would change the story to much and at the time I agreed.. He was very sorry to disappoint me; everyone agreed the story was very well written, by a "trained wordsmith", to use the words of the editor in chief. He asked if I had written anything else. I said no, the conversation ended and the story sat in a drawer for years. I took it out of the drawer a few months ago, dusted it off and made a few changes to it. Here is the story of the miracle that came to my family, just when we needed it. Take a deep breath and don't read it too fast. A Night in May We all have life defining moments, a moment that changes us and helps to make us who we are.. It may be for good, or for bad. We said yes to something when we should have said no. We stopped when we should have gone. We sat when we should have gotten up. Sometimes we run away from them. This is about one of those moments that happened to me. It was a moment in time when I got up. You may choose not to believe what you read here, that is up to you. I will tell you this. It happened just the way I have written it. My Mom and I argued that night. Was it a Tuesday or a Thursday? I don't remember. I do remember that it was sometime in May, 1968. I was fourteen years old, halfway between the time I first thought I should be treated like a man and nobody would and the time my parents thought I should act like a man and I couldn't. What did my Mom and I argue about? Was it clothes or grades or just my "attitude"? It must have been aright big fight because I remember doing what I usually did afterwards. I took a long hot shower, the kind where Mom would bang on the bathroom door, rattle the doorknob, and remind me that there was a water shortage or would be if I didn't hurry up and get out of there. No response from me of course. Ten minutes or two yells later, whichever came first, I would turn off the water as the words "it's about time" seemed to slide underneath the bathroom door. I will admit that I was not the easiest teenager to get along with. I was a know it all, stubborn as a rock, and at times just plain unfriendly. Simple things gave me a lot of pleasure, like removing my brother from his bunk bed, the top one, with a well placed kick in the middle of the night, or attaching a clothespin to the tail of the cat next door in order to watch it run in noisy circles. I did not do these things very often but my parents could not understand why I did them at all. I didn't know why either. I did know that something was wrong. I was frustrated. I was anxious. I was bored. I didn't like life. I certainly didn't understand it. Why was I here? Why was anybody here? Is there a God? Lots of questions like those constantly rolled through my head until I thought I was going crazy, It was usually in the wee hours of the morning that I would mull the possible answers to life's profound questions around in my brain, until out of frustration I would send my foot to the unseen, but still perfect spot, over my head which would send little Rodney flying to the floor where he would land with a thump, a wail, and a "Be Quiet In There!" from the room across the hall. I would respond by wrapping my pillow around my head trying to shut out everything. The questions with no answers just keep on coming. I finished my shower this particular evening, dried off and shoved the unfolded towel over the rack. As I was putting on, what I considered to be my unfashionable bathrobe, I looked at myself in the mirror. My face looked tight and drawn. The argument lines were still on my forehead and around my mouth. There was the red beginning of a zit forming over the right eyebrow, "Great that's all I need." I thought. "The girls will really like me now." I turned to leave the bathroom and stubbed my big toe against the door just as little brother was coming in; loudly claiming he couldn't hold it any longer. He also bet there wasn't enough water left to flush with. I cuffed him upside the ear and strutted angrily down the hall. I passed by my little sisters' room. They were both asleep. Kam was in her bed and Penni, the younger one, in her crib. Both girls were born with a twisted foot. Kam wore a cast for about a year and then wore corrective shoes so she was now cured. Penni's right foot was twisted so badly that she could hardly walk. She was due to have a cast put on her leg and foot in just a few days. She was a very active eighteen month old so the cast was sure to make things unpleasant for her. I loved my sisters very much. However at that moment as I passed the door of their room I was not thinking about them. I kept on walking. When I reached the den I sat down hard on the opposite end of the couch from my parents, folded my arms and stared blankly at the new color television. I couldn't stand it. They were watching that nutty religious channel again. I didn't mind religious things. Not a whole lot anyway. Well maybe I did. My Mom and Dad had been taking me to church all my life. I thought it was the right thing to do but I also thought it was boring. When I was small it seemed more important and frankly, then it was more fun. I liked the summer church programs with the games, the cookies and juice. I listened when I heard the stories about Noah, Sampson, David and Goliath. One thunder stormy Sunday night when I was about seven years old I asked my Father what dying on the cross must have been like for Jesus. "Did he hurt bad?" I asked. I don't remember the words that my father used. I do remember that while he talked I could almost smell the dust on the streets of Jerusalem. I could hear the shouts of the soldiers and the cries of the people as Jesus stumbled his way to the hill. The hammer struck the nail. The cross dropped roughly into the ground. As Daddy spoke the sky grew dark, the lightening struck and Jesus said, "It is finished." And somehow I knew that this had something to do with me. This terrible death of a man who healed children, made the blind to see, and the dead live again, had something to do with me. What, I wasn't sure. Not long after that, I was baptized and became a member of our church. It felt good for awhile. For a few years I continued to believe and to grow. Then something inside of me began to change. Church became a place to talk, to meet people (girls), to show off new clothes, and to complain that it was boring. Religion just did not have my attention. Religion didn't have my attention but this television show sure did. As I watched, I could tell the small studio was full of people. They were praying. I guess that's what it was. I had never seen anything like it before. Their arms were in the air. They looked at the ceiling a lot. They prayed out loud and I do mean loud. They moaned and swayed together. It made me feel very strange. A man named Jim, kind of small, with his hair slicked back and carrying a microphone seemed to take center stage. Two more men, a tall one and another one moved over next to him. The small one motioned to a lady who was standing off to one side. She was carrying a young boy who had a brace on one leg. On the same leg he wore a built up shoe. Obviously that leg was much shorter than the other. The boy also had one arm that was thin and twisted. He kept it pressed up against his chest. I found myself leaning forward on the couch. A piano began to softly play. Then the three men did something I had also never seen before. They put their hands on the little boy and starting praying. "Heal him Jesus. . . . Heal him God." I didn't like it at all, yet it was so compelling at the same time. The men started praying in some kind of Arabic sounding language. That really made me nervous. The piano began to play a melody that seemed to follow the sing-song pattern of the prayers of the men. The people in the studio joined in. One of the men asked the lady to put the boy down and when she did he began to walk, hesitantly, and then with greater speed. Then he started to walk unevenly, a kind of side to side gait. The camera took a tight shot. My mouth went dry. In awe, I realized that right in front of my eyes his short leg was growing! The lady looked absolutely shocked. She picked the boy up and hugged him. The people were shouting now. The music swelled and then as if on cue it stopped. The man named Jim held a pencil in front of the little boy. "Take this," he said. The boy reached out with his good arm. "Noâ€, he said, "I want you to take it with your other hand." It was obvious that the little boy had to think about this. He paused for a few seconds. I held my breath and then as if in slow motion he straightened out that little shriveled up arm and with a firm grab took the pencil. The people let out shout of joy that shook me to my soul. I breathed in a lung full of air. My eyes began to fill with tears. Then the man named Jim turned and faced the camera. He seemed to be looking right at me. "What just happened is real," he said. "Very real and it's just the start. Jesus wants to heal children tonight. He is going to heal children tonight, sick children, and crippled children. They will walk. They will see. They will hear." Then this little man with the round face, funny smile and slicked back hair pointed his finger at a boy sitting on a couch and changed his life forever. "Parents, go and pray for your children. Big brothers go and lay your hands on your little brothers or sisters and do it now! " Suddenly, without thinking, I got off the couch, ran down the hall, made a sharp left turn into my sisters' room and stopped in front of Penni's crib where her little form was asleep under her favorite blanket. My mind went blank. What do I do? Touch her. I did that. Maybe I should put my arm in the air like those people. I did that. Now ask God in the name of Jesus to heal this crooked little foot. Yes. I will. I did. "Oh please God, please, Jesus, please, please make her foot well." It was all I knew how to say. It was enough. I began to shake. I began to sweat. My knees became so weak I thought I would fall. Then a feeling or maybe it was a kind of presence seemed to be in me or around me. I became calm and peaceful on the inside while still shaking on the outside, and I started to cry. I felt like I was not me anymore. Somebody that was me, but not me, took my place and this somebody was better, cleaner, a new person. And this new person knew that Penni's little foot was now perfectly fine. I'm not sure how long I stood there. I was surrounded by something very special and I just keep breathing it in. After awhile I knew the moment had passed. Feeling a little weak and still trembling, I went back to the den to tell my parents what had happened. The next day watching Penni run around without the need to hold someone's hand was an amazing, wonderful sight. Just as wonderful was the change in my family and in me. For a short while I had been connected to something infinitely great. It was a power older than time itself. I was no longer centered on myself. I was at peace. The questions that haunted me no longer needed answers. But the story isn't over yet...

I said that 1968 was a tough year for my family. It was. It was also a tough year for the whole country. The Vietnam War was going badly. Bobby Kennedy was killed. Martin Luther King was killed. There were riots, anti-war demonstrations. Everything and everyone seemed stressed out. Some say the only thing that saved 1968 from being a total loss was the Apollo Eight mission around the moon. I will always remember the Astronauts reading from the book of Genesis and reminding us, me, who was, who is, still in charge. Eighteen Months Part Two. I could name this entry Fish out of Water (in more ways than one) because that is exactly what it felt like. It didn't take long to realize that we came from a different world and that we would not fit into this small town. I got along fine with my Denton cousins and their families, but that is where it ended. It is always hard to come into a new school halfway through the year, but to come from a school with twelve hundred students to a school with less than a tenth of that amount was more than rough. I caught it from every member of my class. I didn't think like them, I didn't dress like them and I certainly didn't talk like them and they constantly reminded me of those facts. They didn't believe that the school I left was as big as it was and that we changed classes six times a day. They had no concept of large grocery stores, shopping malls, large airports, aircraft carriers, or anything much outside of their community. The biggest thing for some of those kids was to visit Thomasville, a somewhat larger town nearby that made lots of fine furniture. There they were awed by the Big Giant Chair, in the center of town. I told them I had been to Washington DC and seen the big giant capital and all I got in return was a bunch of boos, calls of liar, and some line like "No one has ever been to Washington, it's too far away!" Worst of all they called me a Yankee. I hated that. I told them they had no sense of history. I reminded them Virginia was the home of Robert E. Lee. I also reminded them that during the War Between the States (Lord help you if you call it the Civil War), Richmond, Virginia was the capital of the South! But that didn't stop them. They didn't seem to know anything about the Mason-Dixon Line or Petersburg, or Cold Harbor, or much else. I became the official Yankee of the class and there was nothing I could do about it. I didn't make things better for myself when I said that when General Sherman made his march to the sea, he took his army around Denton instead of burning it down because he didn't want to do the South any favors. I was sent out to the hallway for that remark. Things were no better for my brother. One day he took a large piece of lava my father picked up when visiting Mt Etna in Sicily, to school for his fourth grade show and tell. He showed it, told them about it, and the class ridiculed him. They said something to the effect that he was nothing but a story teller cause that stupid old rock could not have come from Mt Etna, "Because No one has ever been there, it's too far away!" Some kid in the class said in his best southern drawl, "Now I bet you will be telling us your old man has been to that big Volcano in Hawaii, what's it called Mt Killawhale or something?" "You mean Mt Kilauea? Sure, he has been there a bunch of times." That did it. With shouts of "Liar, Liar pants on fire!" my brother found himself at the wrong end of a ten year old fist. For show and tell at dinner that evening, my brother's exhibit was a black eye and a note from his teacher saying that my Mom's son was being a class distraction. We were The Yankee and the Class Distraction. The boys on the Porch. It didn't help that during this time, our father was rarely seen by either of us. He found a factory job in Salisbury with a company called Fiber Industries. They manufactured polyester thread, which they sold to numerous other manufacturing companies, such as Hanes, Burlington Mills and others. Polyester pants were popular in those days, so the factory ran twenty four hours a day; seven days a week and my father worked the swing shift. Some days he worked noon to nine pm. Some days he worked three to midnight, or midnight to nine am, but never nine to six. During the evening, when we were home from school, he was either working or sleeping. We saw each other on the weekend a few times, but on those days we were usually on our land clearing trees, trying to get the spot ready for our new home. Living on the front porch and in one bedroom of my Grandfather's house was becoming old really fast. Once our terrible school year (we had the grades to prove it) was over, things improved some. Dad was still working strange hours with lots of overtime, but now that we were out of school we did see more of him. The family savings was growing, but the nest egg was not allowed to get too big because it was necessary to make a couple of trips back to Norfolk to repair broken pipes and a broken bathroom wall, courtesy of our renters. Rod and I were starting to turn into country boys. We ran around barefoot, raised chickens, got ourselves a big dog and I bought a rifle. It was only a bb gun, but who knows what I would have wanted next. I was starting to adapt to my surroundings, but I am sure Dad was not. His peace of mind was starting to wear out. He wasn't comfortable with how our lives were changing. Five months and no new home, and it would not be long before another school year would be upon us, and being a long distance land lord only added to his unease. In late June of 1967 we made our big trip to Montreal, Canada. It almost didn't happen. A few weeks before we were scheduled to leave, my brother came down with a case of viral pneumonia. It wasn't his first time, quite the contrary. This was something he got quite often. He would cough, and hack, run a fever and his lungs would get so full of fluid that he had to stand on his head to drain them. It took him about two weeks to recover from this episode. I was afraid our trip was lost, Mom and Dad said not to worry, but I could hear them at night, discussing the very strong possibility that we would not be going. A few days before the trip Rod's illness seemed to get worse, and then I got sick. I suppose it could have been the stress of the idea of not making the trip of a lifetime that caused me to get ill. I had a blazing headache, a terrible sore throat, and plenty of nausea. One hot night, I couldn't sleep, and my head hurt more than it ever had. Dad, having two sick boys to deal with, figured that if one of them was unconscious, maybe we would all feel better, so he gave me a Darvon capsule. It did make me quiet, but it may have mixed with some cold remedy that I had also taken, or I may have been allergic to it. I don't know. I do know I had a terrible reaction to it. It didn't start out so terrible, but something was wrong. During the night I felt like I had water running down my face. It was really strange. I ran a hand over my face in the dark. My cheeks felt large and spongy and I could feel bumps on them. I got up, ran to the other end of the house, to the back porch and then to the bathroom. I turned on the light, looked in the mirror and starting screaming my head off. I looked like something from a cheap horror movie. My face, arms and chest had broken out with large hives. Big red welts with white bumps covered my face as well. My cheeks had swollen so that only the end of my nose was visible. One eye was swollen shut; the other was red as an apple. I looked, in a word, hideous. Dad reached the bathroom first, took one look at me and went white as a ghost. Mom came up behind but he wouldn't let her see me. She insisted, pushed around him, saw my face and started to laugh. I know now that it was hysterical laughter, but at the time I could not figure out what was so funny. I told her so too. "It's not funny!" I wailed. "Look at me! I think I'm dying!" "You aren't dying" Mom responded, "You look like you stuck your head in a bee hive." Actually, that was a pretty good description, but I didn't appreciate its accuracy. I threw up. Not a pretty picture, a big red swollen head spewing all over the bathroom. Mom stopped laughing. "Clay, I think you better take him to the hospital." Dad, thinking the same thing, got me cleaned up and half carried me to the car. It was thirty miles to the nearest hospital in Lexington. I had my head in a trash can the whole way there. Dad drove like a mad man. If we had lived in Norfolk, a trip to the hospital, civilian or navy would have expected results. You would go to the emergency room, see a nurse, then a doctor, be poked, prodded, a thermometer jammed under your tongue, blood pressure taken, what ever. The main thing is you would just walk in and see somebody. We arrived at the Lexington hospital. There was no emergency room. We had no choice but to go to the front door. By this time I was feeling very dizzy and light headed, and my heart was racing a mile a minute. Dad had to carry me. The door was locked. No one in sight but there was a door bell. Dad pushed it and finally someone came to the door. The person was a janitor not a doctor. He said can I help you, and before anyone could answer, he took one look at my face and well, seemed to get sick himself. He pushed open the door, grabbed a wheelchair that was close by. I ended up in it and found myself being pushed down the dark green hall to a desk where a nurse was sitting looking over a clipboard. She looked up. My face sure could produce a powerful reaction. I looked at her. She stared at me. Along with the big nasty hives, she saw something in my face, because she quickly opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic container and handed it to me. Yes, I threw up again. "Oh my stars honey, you sure are a mess, let's see what we can do to help you." Her kind voice seemed so distant. She asked my dad some questions, about what medications I took, what I had to eat and so on. She took my blood pressure, and stuck a thermometer under my tongue, which wasn't all that easy considering how hard I was shaking and how stiff my jaw was. Then she picked up the phone and called the doctor on call. After about a minute, she got up went to another room and came back with a tray on which lay a syringe and a cotton ball. She rolled up my pajama sleeve, dabbed the alcohol soaked cotton ball on my arm and then stuck me with the needle. Whatever was in that syringe started working almost as soon as she squeezed it. My heart rate dropped, my nausea went away, and at that moment I just wanted to go to sleep. The rest of the night is just a blur. I remember waking up the next morning, feeling well, a bit hung-over, and hungry. I made my way to the breakfast table where I proceeded to frighten my sisters, which tickled my grandfather. Obviously I was still a handsome sight, as handsome as Quasimodo. It didn't take long for the cousins to hear about the new face in town. The two oldest girls, Dawn and Pam, decided to look after me. They told everybody else to have a look and then leave me alone. They fed me lemonade, and iced down my ugly fat face. In a few days I was a good as new. At the end of June we left for Canada. I will tell you right now that our vacation was absolutely great. We stayed in hotels, rode Monorails, and trains, roller coasters, a Hugh Ferris wheel, ate out, went shopping in large malls, saw, heard, touched and experienced things at the Expo that were fantastic. We concluded the trip by staying with old Navy friends in a cabin on the shores of a beautiful lake, Otter Lake, in Ontario to be exact. We went boating and fishing. The only bad thing was the kids we met, thought that Rod and I talked funny, like real Southerners. They would come over to our cabin just to hear us speak. I found it amusing, but I don't think my parents did. Well, Dad didn't anyway. The trip gave him time to think. He was thinking it was time to make the trip home. Home to North Carolina, but ultimately back to Virginia. Our Canadian adventure ended all too soon. We headed back to North Carolina. July soon ended. We did have some good times. We hiked, fished, and went swimming. Papa killed some of my chickens and we ate them, well that part wasn't so good. Dad gave notice to our renters that we would be coming back. We gave notice to our relatives that we would be moving back to Norfolk. None of them wanted us to leave. Papa, my normally strong grandfather, broke down and cried. My Mom was miserable. She knew it was the best thing to do, but she didn't want to give up her dream of being close to her family while living in her house in the woods. Sometime around my birthday, in August 1967, Rod, Dad and I went back to our home in Norfolk. We would spend the next two weeks scrubbing floors, cleaning out cabinets, painting walls in order to get our home back in order for the girls. It was a tremendous amount of work. We cleaned during the day, slept on the floor at night, ate off paper plates. It was a male bonding time. We made the house ready and just before the start of the new school year, Mom and my sisters arrived. At the same time, the moving company that back in February, moved all our stuff out and put it in storage, now moved it all back in. It took us some time to unpack boxes, get settled in, enroll in school and try to pick up our Norfolk lives where we left off. It wasn't easy. Dad spent a lot of his time looking for employment. He was hired by a commercial heating and air conditioning supply company but it wasn't much of a job. In late November he found a Civil Service position. He went back to working on navy aircraft. He would speed the rest of his working days in Civil Service employment, driving to the same base that he retired from, and happy to do it. Christmas 1967 is not a time I remember many details about, except we were broke, again. I remember participating in my high school Concert Chorus Christmas cantata wearing dress shoes I borrowed from Dad. We drove past the ships on Christmas Eve; at least I think we did. I am sure Dad put out presents for the girls. The old glass ornaments were on the tree. 1968 looked like it would be a good year, nice and quiet. We were back in our home, had our old friends back, we were back in our neighborhood church, same neighborhood schools we could walk to. All seemed right with the world. February ... Soon it was one year from the day Dad retired from the Navy. We received a call from Denton. Papa had a stroke. We rushed back to Papa's house. It was so sad to see my Grandfather, who had been so active, looking after his farm, his animals and all his grandkids, including us, not able to do anything for himself. We had to leave after just after a couple of days. He would only live a few weeks. It just didn't seem real, another trip down to Denton for another funeral. My Mother was devastated. It was crowded but quiet during the drive down. Mom quietly cried almost the whole way. When we pulled into the driveway of Papa's home, our home just a few months earlier, she broke down. There was nothing I could do except hug Penni, who just didn't understand what was happening. We were there for about four days and it was time to leave again. My poor Mom now had lost two parents, her dream house and her family all in less than eighteen months. We had also pulled up roots twice during that same time. All of us were sad, exhausted and not sure what our future would bring. My grandfather's death was a sad time made even sadder when it was discovered there was no will and as a result the family decided to auction off everything he owned with no exception. So in March we made another trip to Papa's farm to help with the auction. I asked for a birdhouse that Papa helped me build that I had left hanging under the eves of one of his barns. No, that had to auctioned off as well. I tried to buy it myself but three dollars wasn't enough. Something happened to us as all of Papa's possessions were being carried away by strangers. We all felt like a part of us was leaving as well. We made our way back to Norfolk and once there a dark cloud settled over our family, over my Mom and over me. Mom struggled with grief and guilt. I struggled with her and with school, I argued with my teachers and both my parents and my siblings. I became impatient and angry, and Mom didn't know how to deal with me and became even more depressed. Dad tried to hold everything together but it was almost impossible. From March to May things got really bad. We truly needed a miracle. We received one.....

David, Team play is for me as well. I was part of a big gaming clan that played Medal of Honor-Spearhead and Call of Duty. But like a lot of good things it life, it died. People got older, had more responsibilites, games got old, some members couldn't afford the PC upgrades to keep up. So now I play a free simple cartoon shooter called Battlefied Heroes. Its an online team based game. If you care to try it, I play as LtGramps, or PvtGramps or HerrGramps.

I posted a link to this entry over at RV.net. I received this response: Speechless!! Just plain speechless!! Thats exactly where I am. I did what I thought was right and believed I paid my dues. Grew up in New York City and beat the odds. Raised by a single parent along with a younger brother and two younger sisters, graduated high school, achieved college degrees, honorably served 23 yrs in Coast Guard and retired. Somewhere, somehow something went terribly wrong. Well maybe not wrong but....okay here it is......been married coming up on 16 years, daughter who just moved back home (with young grandson), son who still has six more years til he graduates from high school. Let me break it down for you....married for so many years means I have a mortgage; daughter back home because financially she can not stand on her own,this means I STILL must provide for her and grandson (when she left there was no grandson); twelve year old son is too young to (legally) get a job yet old enough to ask for pairs of sneakers that cost the same amount or more than filling my RV gas tank up. They don't know nor do they understand that underneath this calm, peaceful, poised, gentle, caring, exteria is a calm, peaceful, poised, gentle, caring husband,dad, granddad that wants to just go. No more hard times, no more bad times, no more sad times, just the open road to whereever and whenever I want, being seen through the windshield of my motorhome...............speechless! If I was granted just one wish that came true........ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Darius....the "Rookie RVer" U.S. Coast Guard Retired "RVing....cause life's a trip"

I know all about that desire to get away from responsiblites and hit the road.....

I suspect that many readers of this here blog of mine (notice my use of a bit of Southern Speak) wonder what most of my last few entries have to do with motor coaching. My initial response is: not much. However, there might be a connection. I have a restless nature. I can't sit still for long periods of time doing nothing. I have to be reading, writing, watching something very interesting, and usually commercial free, on the LCD. I might play a World War II FPS online. For you non computer gamers, a FPS is a First Person Shooter. My restless nature may have been a large contributing factor that helped produce the mindset that led me to become a citizen of the RV community. I have always thought about places that I have not been to and places that I want to return to. I think about places that are anywhere except where I am at the moment. That has to be one of the reasons I bought a Motor Coach. What does a MOTOR coach do? It takes you to other places. My restless nature also contributed to the purchase of my motor coach lot. I love where it's located, near the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway is a road. What do roads do? They lead you to other places. I can take the coach down that road or some other road at a moments notice. Well sometimes I can do that. The reality is that I am still constrained by time, money and business responsibilities. But those things don't stop me from dreaming and planning and hoping. As I said, I have a restless nature. I am sure that I inherited it. My mother and father were the youngest of seven and six siblings respectively. My Mom was the only one of her family to move away. My Dad was one of two. Every other sibling stayed very close to the place where they were born. There is nothing wrong with that. I am still living just across the water from the city I was raised in. I am presently living in the city I was born in. There was a time I couldn't wait to get away from here and leave my parents behind. I did just that and then I moved back, close to my parent's home, but not too close. Then sometime later, my parents became somewhat restless living here so they moved away, back to where they came from and left me behind. They live in Lexington NC just north of Denton. Dad did manage to see a lot of the world long before they settled down here and then again in their cabin in the woods. My Mom saw some of it with him. The part she saw was inside the borders of this country; however she could not allow herself to travel with Dad overseas. The pull of family, and those country roads, was always too strong. The ties to Denton just would not stretch to Sicily or Manila or Barcelona. I wonder to this day what my life would be like if part of my childhood had been adventurously spent in Italy or somewhere. I wonder even more when I think about the places I have traveled to and the people I met there. Yes, I have had some opportunities to feed my restless adventure craving nature. I have been around the world in ten days. Diane and I have been on numerous cruises to many islands surrounded by a Caribbean blue sea. I have been to the west coast many times. Many years ago I met Danny Thomas, Ephram Zimablest Jr, Francis Ford Coppola. Many years ago I was friends with Kathy Lee Gifford before she became Kathy Lee Gifford. I used to work for Ted Turner before he became rich and famous. Diane and I worked for Jim and Tammy Bakker back when they first started and traveled with them over most of the Eastern half of the United States. I worked for Pat Robertson as a roaming news videographer. I have installed phone systems on merchant vessels in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. I have taken weapons classes just in case the ship I was on was attacked by pirates. Diane and I have been camping in our first coach during a terrible Cape Hatteras nor'easter. I have seen fall colors while driving the coach around Grandfather Mountain that are so gorgeous it made me want to shout. We have been to some great coach rallies. I have been to Disney World multiple times. I felt like a kid, and loved every minute of it. I have been awed by the Grand Canyon. All of these experiences, friendships and encounters now seem short and sweet. What it boils down to is that my restless nature, at times being transported by plane and now by coach, has driven me to collect a lifetime of experiences that constantly fly through my mind. When I am sitting in front of my computer and mulling all these memories I look out the window at my coach, and ask myself the same questions. The First question gets overridden by all the following ones. First One, how do I keep paying for that thing? The following ones: Where is that thing going to take me to next and who am I going to meet when I get there? When is the next time our coach is going to add to my collection of dreams, hopes and memories? I always hope it is soon. I think you might be starting to understand why I write so much about my past. My past, your past, each has so much to do with who we are, what we believe, what we hope for, and what we will become. I sometimes want to retire now, retire from the phone game and become a full timer, free to go pretty much where my coach can take me. Once I get there, if it doesn't work out the way I thought it would or if I just feel like it is time to leave, then I may just pack up the rig and go. That is what I would like to do, but I also inherited a sense of responsibility from my parents as well. I have to look after my family until all members can look after themselves. I have to be settled and stable. What I want to do, when I can do it, and what I have to be now seems so far apart. I don't want to give up, but there are times I think the distance between responsible reality and my dreams is so great that it might drive me crazy. Do you understand what I am trying to say? Do you understand how your past pushes you to dream for something better only to find that it may be slipping away? You may have to let go of it because it is the responsible thing to do. I am quite sure that my Parents know exactly what I mean. How is that for a lead in to the rest of my story?

Spring, right now that seems far away from here....what with all the white stuff all over the place.

I have been suffering from a bad case of the blahs, so I have not made a blog entry for some time. You could call it a case of the blags. Today, however, I seem to have a sudden burst of energy. I am looking out my office window at my snow-covered coach and at the 10-inch-thick white blanket that is covering my front yard as well as the rest of the neighborhood and I feel inspired to write something. What, I don't know. I have not done any RVing lately. Nothing except trying to keep my coach warm, so that the batteries and the tanks and the water heater won't freeze. I have been successful so far, although I think I may have a damaged ice maker solenoid. I forgot to disconnect the water supply line and let everything drain. It's not a big deal; we don't use the ice anyway. I suppose I could write another chapter about my past Christmases. Seeing all this snow makes me think of that time of the year, even though it's the last day of January. Why not go ahead and tell you about one of them? It might do us both some good. It's a Christmas that I love to remember, the events leading up to it ... well, not so much. Christmas 1968 was the end of a very rough time for my family. That rough time started some 18 months earlier. In February 1967 my father, George Clayton Parker, at the rank of AMHI (for you non-military folks, that translates to Aviation Metal Smith first class), retired from the Navy. He had a distinguished career that spanned twenty one and a half years starting in July 1946. A few days after his 18th birthday, he enlisted. Just months after the official end of World War II, my father, then a member of the Military Police, soon found himself in the Philippines as part of a combined service task force whose assignment was finding and apprehending Japanese soldiers hiding in the mountains around Manila. He also had to do the same in Guam. These desperate men had either refused, or in many cases didn't know how, to surrender. This was a dirty and potentially a very dangerous job with no glory attached to it at all. Like many vets of the War, he has never talked at any great length about that time. My dad's last position in the Navy was as a career counselor, and his job, ironically enough, was to try to keep people in the Navy. The Navy couldn't keep him. Our family was growing faster than his military paycheck could keep up with, and Dad came to the painful conclusion that he could support his family only if he became a civilian. That wasn't all of it, though. My mom wanted to move back to Denton, North Carolina, to be closer to her father. To that end, Mom and Dad purchased four acres of land from my grandfather for a very low price. The plan was to move in with Papa, and live there while Dad and my Uncle Hubert, who was in the home construction business, built our family dream home. It was not a bad plan, I suppose. Dad could find a job in the area. There were many booming textile factories in Salisbury and other towns around Denton. All of us would pitch in to clear our new property and start building. At the same time, my mom would be near her dad and the rest of her clan. My brother and I would attend school in Denton. My sisters, too young to attend school, would have all kinds of female cousins and aunts to fawn over them. When summer came my brother and I would be living on a farm with mountains and lakes and cousins close by. It would be one big vacation! Or so we thought. I remember the day my dad retired. The ceremony started at 7 a.m. and took place inside the enlisted men's gym. I sat nervously on a hard chair, with my hands under my backside because they were shaking so hard. I watched my dad, wearing his starched Dixie cup hat and in his crisp Navy Blue dress uniform, with lots of gold hash marks on the sleeves, walk between the ranks of Navy Men also in their dress blues. He was making a final inspection, a privilege usually granted to retiring officers. My dad, however, had an exceptional career and was given a retirement ceremony that recognized his service. Before the inspection a Navy band played the National Anthem and the Navy Hymn. The Commanding Officer of the Norfolk Naval Air Station made some complimentary remarks; my dad, at times choking back tears, said some farewell words. He finished his inspection, was piped out of the building and his days as a sailor were over. I was no longer a Navy brat with trips to the base theater, the bowling alley, the exchange and all the other perks that I took for granted. It was now time to go to our no-longer home, pack up our lives into various-size boxes, rent the house to strangers, then say a lot of goodbyes, and head to a small town where everybody knows everybody else. My grandfather's house was a two-bedroom place with a large glassed-in front porch, a dining room, formal living room, den and an enclosed back porch. It was built long before indoor plumbing was in style and so the bathroom was an ad-on that you got to by way of the back porch. The house was heated by an oil circulator in the den and there was also a potbellied wood stove sitting on a stone slab on the front porch. I would get to know that stove very well. We moved in during a bitter cold spell sometime around Valentine's Day 1967. My sisters shared a bedroom with my parents. Rod, my younger brother, and I, we moved into the enclosed front porch. The porch was divided by a curtain to give Rod and me some privacy. We had a couple of twin beds with electric blankets, a desk, and some shelves. Underneath the shelves we fastened some iron pipes to hang our clothes. We also had a chest of drawers and on top of that our own television set. It was black and white, of course. The antenna was attached to a 10-foot pole just outside one of the porch windows. One of us would go out there and stand on an overturned wash tub so we could see the television. Then we would turn the pole until we got a picture that was viewable. We did this every time we changed the channel. It's a good thing that there was only two or three of them. I remember twisting that pole on Friday nights, so that Emma Peele of the Avengers could be viewed without being in a blizzard of electronic snow. We twisted it on Saturday mornings in order to watch the Three Stooges. There were times when my fingers froze to that pole. There would be other times when it was too hot to touch. It was quite an adjustment to learn how to live in the dead of winter in a porch room heated by a wood-burning stove that went out in the middle of the night. Having no heat was not good. Some of our first nights, the temperature dropped down into the low teens. I liked to shower before bedtime (my grandfather didn't have a tub) and many a night I would wake up with my hair frozen to my pillow. Rod wrapped himself up in his electric blanket. In the moonlight shining through the windows, it looked like a white body bag in the bed next to mine. Not long after we moved in, Mom took us in to town to register us for school. Denton had one elementary school, one junior high, middle school as it is called now, and one high school. So we knew where we would be going, it was the same school my mother attended, her brother and sisters, and most of my cousins. We would be riding on the bus with one of our first cousins and a distant cousin was the driver. The bus picked us up in front of my grandfather's gas station and country store at seven am on the dot. Rod and I were the first ones on the bus and the last ones to get off. It took one hour to get to our destination. The day Mom registered us we took the car into town. That took only twenty five minutes. The principal was in charge of all three schools and he had been there forever. My mom told me that Principal Harper (not his real name) was known, without affection, as The Frog. Everyone in the school office knew us, and knew we were going to register that morning. I think they knew it before I did. That is just the way it was in that town. As a matter of fact, later that summer my parents planned a trip to Expo 67 in Canada. They wanted to surprise my brother and me, but the surprise was spoiled by the local barber, who told me about the trip while cutting my hair. How he learned about it is still a mystery. Let me get back to my story. Mom registered us without a hitch and just before we were to go to our new classes Mr. Harper commented on how we would like our school here more than the big city schools we had moved away from. "Why is that?" I asked. Mr. Harper's response was totally unexpected. "Because young man," he said with a smile, "we have no coloreds here in our school." I didn't know what to think about that. I was a Navy brat. My former school was mostly Navy kids, so it was integrated. My family had lived in Navy housing, it was integrated. Our church was integrated. My dad's second floor Navy office was integrated, so was the enlisted men's club that was on the first floor. The Navy exchange and the Marine exchange, the theater, the commissary, all of these were integrated. I knew about people being separated by rank. The house in Norfolk we just left was in a neighborhood of homes owned by mostly Navy officers. I went to school with their kids, but I had never been in the officer's mess or in the officer's club. I was used to that but this statement by the principal didn't seem right to me. Not right at all. I looked up at my Mom. Something seemed to come over her. She lifted her chin up, stood up straight and looked the principal right in the eye. In her best "you better listen to your Momma" voice, she responded. "Mr. Harper, I have no choice, I have to enroll my boys in your school, so I am going to ignore that remark and I will hope that in spite of the fact that there are, as you so proudly put it, no coloreds here, that my boys will still manage to get a decent education." She grabbed both our hands and jerked us toward the door. "Now would you be so kind as to let me take my boys to class." Mr. Harper's mouth flopped open and his eyes bugged out. I knew then why they called him The Frog. Once outside Mom started walking so fast toward the Junior High School across the street, that she pulled Rod off his feet. As she was helping him back upright I said to her: "Way to go Mom, you sure let The Frog have it!" She turned and glared at me. I had seen that look before. That look could kill flies in mid air. "Mr Harper is still your principal and don't you ever forget that, do you hear me?" "Yes, maam," I answered meekly. "I hear you." "Okay, now let's go to class." It seemed like the best thing to do. I had a lot to learn. As it turned out, we all did.

I am going to have to start paying more attention to these forums! Hopefully any questions you have about the UFO I can answer or find the answer for you. I am fimiliar with the Destination, it was one of the coaches my wife and I considered before we purchased our Holiday Rambler. I will answer anything you post here and/or I can make myself available to you over the phone as well. I have spent many hours talking with other UFO shoppers and a few have become owners after talking to me. I will help in anyway that I can. Derrick also known as Gramps

Welcome to FMCA and to the forums. You will find a wealth of info here along with some freindly coach advice, if you want it. I only pretend to know a few things so I may not be the best person to listen too! Once again, welcome and we are glad to have you onboard! Derrick also known as Gramps

Thanks Tom, Part 2 is up, you said you were looking forward to it. I didn't want you to have to wait long!

There are so many memories washing about in my head. Putting them down "on paper" is not all that easy. Some come out bright and fresh, others faded and worn. All become more comfortable with time. The baked cookie ornaments on our tree were created for a special family Christmas that took place in Martinsburg, West Virginia in 1980. My aunt Hazel invited all of her family and her husband's family to spend the Holidays in a very large two story unheated garage. No one was allowed to bring any store bought decorations or presents. Everything had to be home made, the things hanging on the tree, under the tree and on the dinner table. Sounds like fun, right? It was. There was close to thirty of us inside that garage. It was four degrees outside, while we camped in the basement on mats and sleeping bags. We stayed warm by a pot-bellied wood burning stove, until my sister Kam let it go out. Then we fired up a bullet heater and pointed it at the cinder block grease pit until the blocks turned red. It provided enough heat to keep the place above freezing, but a lot of odor and noise at the same time. Dad and I hunted for a tree in the woods surrounding the garage. We found a nice Juniper, cut it down hauled it back to the garage and suspended it from a beam into a bucket of soon frozen water. Diane, our girls and cousins, strung cranberries and popcorn. They also blew eggs and painted them. The tree looked quite old fashioned by the time they finished manufacturing and hanging their hand made ornaments. Christmas morning there was lots of food for breakfast, even more for dinner, that didn't need to be refrigerated, not in the conventional manner anyway. We ate a lot; we sang songs, told stories and had a grand old time. I took a bunch of kids to visit Harper's Ferry. All of us froze but nobody cared. That adventure was the icing on a wonderful Christmas cake. It was a very unique time that no one who was there will ever forget. Just a couple of nights ago, my father and I were talking about that West Virginia Christmas and other ones as well. He reminded me that the three Shiny Brite glass ornaments that Diane and I have were part of a set that my parents bought in 1952 while in the Navy and stationed in Jacksonville Florida. I don't know anything about that Christmas, I wasn't there. Most of my early memories are a blend of little thoughts and feelings mixed with some things that have happened. Christmas dinner on base in Norfolk, parties where there were lots of Marines in uniform, trips to downtown Norfolk to look at window displays at Smith and Welton's Department Store and while there waiting in a very long line to visit Santa. If you have watched the Parker Family in A Christmas Story, you know what I mean. As a side note my Mom had a hard time getting my little brother to eat also. There is one Christmas memory that is very vivid. I think I may have been eight or nine, my brother Rodney four or five, so it could have been in 1961 or 62. We were living in a little two bedroom, one bath bungalow in the Ocean View section of Norfolk, Virginia, not far from the Norfolk Naval Base. We did what we usually did on Christmas Eve; we boys would put on our jammies and then the all of us would pile into our yellow Chevy Bel-aire and take a drive on base to see the Christmas lights on the ships. It was an impressive sight. Each ship had hundreds of lights strung from the bow to the highest point on the ship, and then to the stern and there were more than a hundred ships. It was so beautiful it hurt to look at them. After cruising by the ships, it was home for hot chocolate, the reading of the Christmas Story from The Gospel of Luke, prayers that God and Santa would both be good to us and then to bed for what little adrenaline laced sleep we could get. This particular Christmas eve, Dad and I did something special before I hit the sack. We fried a hamburger and made a sandwich for a nighttime visitor. Dad said that he figured Santa might need something more substantial than more milk and cookies. We placed it on a white plate, along with a tall glass of iced tea on the living room coffee table. Early the next morning, Rodney and I dashed into our little living room. The tree with its glass ornaments and big lights was all ablaze. We found lots of toys and goodies spread all over that small space. My brother with an excited yell, rushed over to an electric toy car wash. It came with a number of cars and it wasn't long before he figured out how to run them through the wash, brushes turning and water spraying. I found myself becoming the new proud owner of a shiny black and red Murray Paper Boy Bicycle. It had a carrier on the back wheel with a spring catch and a big wire basket in the front. That bike thrilled me. I would not get that excited about a vehicle again, not until Diane and I found ourselves inside our first Motor Home. In the middle of the room was a large Radio Flyer Red Wagon. The wagon was lined with some kind of gray egg carton like packing material. On top of that was a white plate with a half eaten Hamburger and an empty glass. What can I say? To a believer like me that was quite a sight to see. It was a great Christmas. Things would change however. It would not be long before I would be forced to grow up and look at future Christmas days from a more mature perspective. A couple of days before Christmas 1966, we packed up the old antique glass tree decorations and drove from Norfolk to Denton, North Carolina to be with my grandfather. My grandmother had died from a cerebral hemorrhage just a few short months before. I understood my mother's desire to be with her father on Christmas, but being the immature thirteen year old that I was I didn't want to make the trip. This was to have been the second Christmas in our new home in Norfolk, and I looked forward to being with my friends, having a big tree and just enjoying all the other things that we normally did. The thing that bothered me the most was that I was told that we would be taking presents with us for my sisters, but that left no room for anything for us boys. We would have to wait till we got back to have our Christmas gifts. My youngest sister was only a couple of months old. She was only eight days old when we made a quick trip so that my ill grandmother could see her. Penni Creola was named after my grandmother and we hoped that she would give our Memaw a bit of a spark. The visit didn't help. Memaw never realized that we were even there. We made the trip home and it was not long before we had to make a return trip for her funeral. So, now we were on our way for the third time is as many months. It wasn't an easy trip under the best of circumstances, so it didn't help that I moped the whole way down, plus Penni was carsick most of the way. Once there Dad had a talk with me. He explained that Papa, my grandfather was lonely and ill, and he really needed our company. He told me we could still have a good Christmas, that it was time to give and receive love, and not worry about things that were not under the tree. I thought about his words for awhile and then I figured I was thirteen and it was time to grow up a bit, so I agreed to do what he said, I would make the best of it. Dad and I went tree hunting. This was something I liked to do. We couldn't find a suitable one on Papa's property, but just over a ditch that divided Papa's land from his neighbor's, and next to a barbed wire fence was a pretty, seven foot tall, cedar. Dad took a look at it and said that it would do just fine. So, technically, I guess we stole a tree. We also managed to knock a big bunch of mistletoe out of a large tree with a good size rock. We took our prizes home and started our Christmas. We hung some of Papa and Memaw's ornaments on the tree, plus some tinsel and our old set of Shiny Brites went on the tree as well. Dad asked me to help play Santa and set out the Fisher Price toys for the girls. By this time we were all beat and so, without a Christmas Eve trip to see the lights on the ships, we went to bed. I lay awake for quite awhile, thinking about the table top hockey game and the clothes and the long play albums that I had on my list, none of which I would see tomorrow morning. I also thought about my agreement to make the most of it. So I prayed to the Lord that I would remember what the day was really all about and asked him to help me to grin and bear it. I closed my little prayer with a thank you and good night. I figured that I would be doing more bearing than grinning and so I didn't have that child-like anxious anticipation that I usually had so many Christmas eves. The next morning I woke and quietly made my may to the living room to find my sister and brother playing on the floor with her new toys. The window behind the tree looked out on Papa's yard. I was shocked to see something I didn't expect to see at all. The ground, the bushes, the trees, they were all covered with snow and it was still falling. I was looking at my first and to this day....the only White Christmas I have ever seen. I grinned and made the most of it. My cousins came over with gifts, and food. We had snowball fights, built a snowman and had a good time. It was a blessed Christmas and a few days later we made our way back to Norfolk. Upon arrival I found a table top hockey game on my bed. Dad told Kam that Santa must have not known we were going to North Carolina and delivered it to the wrong place. I didn't say one word. I just made the best of it.

Diane and I had a pleasant and mostly uneventful Christmas. I was busy trying to cure a large phone system suffering from hiccups for some days leading up to The Big Day. As a result I became a last-minute shopper (I have always believed I work best under pressure) and visited Macy's on Christmas Eve in the late morning. I intended to purchase just the RightSomething for my wife. Apparently many other procrastinating men had the same idea. After carefully shopping I found a Murano blown-glass heart pendant on a gold chain with matching earrings. Judging by the look on Diane's face as she unwrapped her present the next morning, my last-minute quest was successful. I am not sure what she was the most surprised at, the quality of the gift or the fact that I had the ability to find it and buy it; the second most likely. We hosted Christmas brunch for our families. We then broke with Christmas tradition, skipped a big meal, and took our kids, Joel and Christine, and Christine's boyfriend Rob to a neat movie theater/restaurant called the Commodore Theater. There, we ate dinner and watched Sherlock Holmes. The next week was a quiet one, and on Thursday night we had clam chowder and chips with our friends Gary and Janis. We played Sequence until 2009 turned into 2010. Now we are into a new year and some say a new decade. New Year's Day, when the ball drops, the balloons go up and the cork pops out, has past. The Holidays are over. Christmas, a time for overeating, overspending and overindulging in many other activities, is now a memory, one more, to be added to all the other Christmas memories past. Christmas day has always been the day that my internal personal calendar pivots on. I tend to look back on my life and ask what was going on around Christmas when I was 6, or 16. Hanging an ornament on the tree may trigger a trip down memory lane. Just like in the motor coach, the trip may not always be a great one. When I hang one of the handmade clothespin people on the tree, whether it is the fireman or the nurse or one of the Three Kings, I remember Charlotte, North Carolina, and the third Christmas that Diane and I celebrated as husband and wife. She was three months pregnant with our first daughter, sick every morning and even though both of us were working we were always broke. That Christmas we sat in our little living room in front of our little color TV with snack trays watching the Waltons while painting clothespin people to hang on our very dry Christmas tree. We could hear the needles falling off that tree that we bought on sale at some gas station. It lasted about six days. I dragged that stark naked tree out the back door on New Year's Eve, leaving behind a thick trail of needles leading to the living room. The white round glass ornament that has Silent Night etched on it is as old as me. My parents mailed it along with a couple of other antique glass ornaments and a string of bubble lights to Diane and me in time for our very first Christmas. We, along with our two kittens, were living in an old house in downtown North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. We had been married two months and, well, we were as poor as the field mice that shared our home with us. The house was two floors and we lived on half of the bottom floor and all of the second. Our main source of heat was an old oil burning circulator in front of the bricked up living room fireplace. It was cold our first Christmas and we barely had enough extra money for kerosene for the burner; there was nothing for a tree. My uncle Jonah, who lived up in the Blue Ridge on his apple farm, heard that we were in need of tree assistance. He telephoned us and said he had one we could cut down and take home. So we made the nine-mile trip up the mountain in our old Chevy II to get our first Christmas tree. We arrived somewhat early evening; the sun was starting to set over a line of 25-foot-tall cedar trees that grew beside my Grandmother's old farmhouse. No one lived in the house and Jonah was using it for storage. Jonah was standing there armed with a large handsaw. I figured a walk in the woods was needed to find a tree, some kind of pine, most likely. "Well, there it is," Jonah said while pointing to the first cedar on the left, closest to the house. "What?" I said. "You are going to cut down that tree, it's hugh!" "Just the top," he said with a laugh. "Up the ladder you go, and you will need this." He handed me the saw and pointed to a somewhat hidden 20-foot wooden ladder leaning against the tree. I looked up at the perfectly shaped top of the cedar. I could see that it would make a great Christmas tree, but I couldn't let Jonah disfigure this beautiful cedar that had been growing there for so long and I told him so. "I have to top them every couple of years, because they put out rust that's bad for my apples," he said. He went on to explain that it was a spore that was harmful to his apple crop and that the tree would not produce any if he cut it back. Gratefully, I climbed the ladder with the saw and took off the top 10 feet of the tree. Jonah and I tied it to the top of our car. It was almost as long as the car itself. It wasn't the easiest trip down the mountain, but we made it. Once home, I carried into our old formal dining room, removed the bottom foot of the tree so it would not hit the roof, placed it in an old Christmas tree stand that I found in the attic, added some water, moved it in front of the floor-to-ceiling window. We decorated it, and then stepped back for a look. It had a few strings of lights -- the old-fashioned big bulb kind -- and one string of bubble lights, a few glass ornaments, some ribbon ornaments that Diane had been making for awhile (with the hope of getting a nice tree), along with some tinsel. At the top was one of our cats. Diane and I standing there, hand in hand, agreed that it was the prettiest tree we had ever seen.