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-Gramps-

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  1. -Gramps-
    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.....
  2. -Gramps-
    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.
  3. -Gramps-
    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.
  4. -Gramps-
    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.
  5. -Gramps-

    The Thankmas Party

    By -Gramps-,

    The Thankmas Party and the Christmas Bash
    Well, the weekend of November 20 was another short but nice trip. Diane, Nickolas and I, took off at about three o'clock on a Friday for North River Campground near the southern end of the Dismal Swamp in Currituck, North Carolina. We headed for our annual Good Sam's local chapter combination Christmas and Thanksgiving party; our Thankmas party. It is something we look forward to each year. It was supposed to have happened the weekend before at Camp Hatteras but the Storm of the Decade wiped out the road leading to Rodanthe so we had to move the location.
    We would have left earlier than three, but I waited until the last minute to purchase my gift for the party. We always have the give a gift/steal a gift ceremony. It usually works out better with a large crowd because someone will get into the spirit of things and steal something. When we have a small crowd, which was the case this time, things don't get quite so rowdy. I purchased a Mexican Train game in a metal travel case, along with a gift bag and some grocery items that Diane needed for the Saturday night pot luck and Turkey Dinner.
    It was a quick trip down. We setup camp and all was well until I tried to turn the 12 volts on for the water heater. I received a fault alarm. After some double checking I discovered I had no propane flow. Now why was that? It worked the last time I used it. Well, I switched to 110 volts and we left for the Friday night get-together without hot water to wash our faces first. We had some snacks, played some cards which was fun, and then went home.
    The next morning, after the group breakfast, my friend Jerry and I decided to take a look and see what was going on with the propane. The first thing we made sure of was that the tank was turned on. Which it was, but it didn't sound right. Usually when I first turn on the flow you hear a hiss, but we didn't get that familiar sound this time. We took a couple of wrenches and disconnected the rubber hose from the coach line and discovered some kind of olive oil like substance in the fitting. Once we blew that unknown substance out everything started working again.
    For most of the day I worked around the RV, repairing sweeps and some other small items. There was a group committee reworking our charter bylaws, so I stopped by the meeting room to offer some hopefully helpful input. Around five, we had our really good ThanksmasTurkey dinner followed by the gift swap. I was the master of ceremonies and I tried to liven things up a bit, but for some reason people were not in the spirit of stealing at all. I was the first one to draw a number and picked a gift which I later swapped. Afterward I did entertain us all with some tales of mine and Diane's first Christmas together as husband and wife and others piped up with some funny stories as well.
    We left the next morning pretty early, right after breakfast. As we were leaving we watched a bear cross the road in front of us. We were home by noon.
    For Thanksgiving, my daughter and her family drove up from Florida. I turned the coach into a temporary hotel room for her, her husband and the baby. We had a very crowded house for about four days. Diane loved it. I felt claustrophobic, so I hid in my office with my grandboys and played computer games with them. Austen and I swapped off sessions of Battlefield Heroes, a somewhat goofy online cartoon shooter. It was fun and helped me avoid all the Legos and Duplos scattered around the house. We went to my brother's house for Thanksgiving dinner along with about 25 other members of my extended family, including my parents. It was a very good dinner and lots of fun including a loud session of football watching. I really don't know how my brother and his wife managed to pull it off so well, but they did.
    Now this past weekend Diane, me, and our friends Gary and Janis traveled to the Beth Page Campground in Urbanna for the annual FMCA Colonial Virginians Christmas Bash. And it was just that, a Bash, a good one too.
    We planned on leaving on Friday around noon. Our two coaches would rendezvous at the inspection station for the Monitor and Merrimac bridge tunnel, the M&M as it is known around these parts, and then it would be about an hour drive to the campground. We'd set up camp and then have plenty of time to relax a bit before the group happy hour at five.
    Simple enough, right? It didn't work out quite that way.
    At 11:45 a.m. we were ready to go. That would give us just enough time to make it to the meeting spot. We headed out to the rig only to find that a car was parked on the street blocking the coach. Diane, on the walkie-talkie, tried to get the rig past it but it would not make it; just not enough room. So she walked up to the door of the duplex where she hoped to find the owner of the car and ask them to move it. I turned off the coach and then realized my tail end was still out over the road and I needed to move it. It wouldn't start. Dead. Nothing, No lights on the dash, no click, not even the dome light would work. The steps were dead, too. I was not getting any voltage from the chassis battery at all. So I jumped out of the coach, took a meter to the battery and I got 11 volts. My brain was racing now trying to figure out what was wrong, and how was I going to get this rig started and moved. Could we still make our trip? By this time Diane has found no one at home in the duplex and was standing behind me.
    "Can you jump it with the car?" she asked.
    Jump it? Wait, I can boost it!
    "I forgot about the battery boost!" I told her.
    I rushed back into the coach, hit the boost switch, turned the key and she started right up. Diane got on the phone with Janis to fill her in on why we are going to be delayed. We still had the problem of getting around the parked car. I fixed that. I had Diane back me straight back into the yard across the street, which is mostly gravel, around the car and then I made a forward right turn. She jumped into the coach and we were off.
    An hour and some minutes later, including the time it took to meet up with Gary and Janis, we arrived at Beth Page. Diane registered and we were led by a campground worker in a golf cart to our head to tail (or tail to head) site.
    It was really cold. My hands were freezing as we leveled, hooked up the power and ran out the slides. Lastly, I hooked up the water and discovered that the right door piston was shot. I found that out after the bay door dropped and hit me on the back of the head. Usually I bang into a door or the slide out not the other way around. I also discovered that there was no water. I knew that Beth Page was closed for the winter and opened just for this rally, but I didn't get the memo telling me to bring my own water or I would have arrived with more than a tenth of a tank. Gary didn't get the memo, either, and his fresh water tank was bone dry.
    We had no choice but to break down, go to the office, where there was one working faucet, and fill up. That's what we did, along with five other coaches. I left first, arrived at the office and with some help, threw my fresh water hose under the coach, hooked up and waited about 15 minutes to acquire three quarters of a tank of water. That was enough. While I was filling, Gary informed me his main slideout had decided to malfunction as he was bringing it in at the site. The bottom right corner had torqued itself so bad that the frame had broken lose from the outside of the coach. He had a heck of time getting it to come back in.
    With full tanks, or close enough, anyway, we headed back to the site and set up again. I was still having to use the boost to get the coach started so obviously something was going on, but I managed to get the coach leveled, slides out, power connected, not in that order, and the Snowmen that Diane had set out when we first arrived were still smiling at me from their place on the dining table credenza. I walked back to Gary's coach only to find out that now he can't start his coach either. I am beginning to find this a bit freaky. I suggested he use his boost. That worked and he was able to level the coach, which requires the motor to be running, and then he nursed his slides out a bit tentatively but they made it. At this point, Gary is now an unhappy camper. I don't blame him. I have been there a bunch of times.
    "What's going on with my battery?" he asks.
    "Not sure," I replied. "But since we both have the same coach and we both have the same problem, well it's weird, that's all I can tell you."
    Our common weird problem had to wait. It was almost five o'clock and time to head over to the happy hour, which by this time we both needed. I went back to our coach, changed into something a bit nicer, grabbed a plate of shrimp and a bottle of beer, shoved the beer into a picnic backpack, that I bought from one of our Sun chaser friends who got it at the Thanksmas party but didn't think they would use it, and we loaded everything and everybody into Janis's Vue and a couple of minutes later arrived at the evening's party.
    There was lots of fine finger foods there, including good sized shrimp, meat balls, cheese and crackers, hot wings along with brownies, cheese cake and other things that are easy to eat and easy to eat too much of. I did eat too much, but I didn't care.
    Along with the goodies we had pleasant conversation. Two friends of ours, Bill and his wife Mickey, were at our table. They are also members of our Good Sam's chapter. They didn't make it to the Thanksmas party and we missed them so it was very nice that they were at the Bash.
    Gary and I mentioned our electrical problem, slide out problems, and how aggravating it was. That was nothing compared to the lightning hit that scorched Bill and Mickey's stored coach. The lightning did some fourteen thousand dollars worth of damage to the coach and took months to repair. After hearing their story I thought about that old saying:
    "I complained that I had no shoes until I met a person with no feet"
    Many times our coaches may have a problem, but many times someone else will have a bigger problem, one that you hope will never happen to you. It's best to just keep it in perspective.
    After too many shrimp and meatballs (for me anyway), a couple glasses of wine, a beer (also for me) and a lot of Mexican train we called it a night, packed up and drove back to the coaches.
    After Gary, Janis, Diane and I said our good nights, Diane and I decided to curl up with Nicolas and a good movie. Diane had experienced some minor back pain most of the day. A bit of self medication at Happy Hour seemed to help, but she still wanted to ice it for a while. She curled up on the couch with the dog; I started the Curious Case of Benjamin Button spinning in the DVD player and settled comfortably in my Euro chair. It wasn't long before Diane was out like a light. I watched the movie by myself, and enjoyed every minute of it.
    As soon as the movie ended I was ready to hit the sack. I woke Diane up so she could go to bed and go back to sleep.
    The next morning all four of us, with Diane's back feeling much better, headed back to the conference center for a catered breakfast and another opportunity to eat too much. There were good biscuits, gravy, bacon, light and fluffy scrambled eggs, and pancakes. All of it fixed really well. I didn't overdo it. I know-you don't believe me.
    Bill and Mickey were at our table again and this time the conversation was about the remodeling of their Allegro Bay that was done down in Red Bay Alabama. It sounded like they had some really fine improvements made so we all agreed that sometime before the rally ended we would visit their coach and take a look for ourselves.
    After breakfast and back at the site, Gary and I decided to tackle this strange electrical problem we were both having.
    We used my volt ohm meter to try to trace down where this problem could be coming from. While we were at it a couple of other campers, Jack and Buddy, walked over to see what we were up to. Jack was a bit of an electrician so he said "let's tackle one of the coaches and see what we find out."
    After a bit of poking around inside the electrical control panel, which was located in its own compartment, and some crawling around under the engine, we discovered that both coaches were suffering from a manual battery disconnect switch not making good contact. What are the odds of that? After some manipulation to shake the rust off so to speak, and some squirts of electrical silicon spray, the problem seemed to be solved. One down, who knows how many more to go.
    Well, we had some hours to kill before the big dinner and gift giving/gift stealing (yes another one!) party that night. We decided to head into the little waterfront town of Urbanna and see what there was to see.
    First we stopped at an auto parts store so Gary could buy a new gas cap for his coach. He misplaced his somewhere between Tampa and Tidewater. I brought mine along so that the store could match it. I have found it difficult to get parts for my coach at an auto parts store, makes no difference which one. As soon as you say this gas piston, light bulb, gas cap, whatever part, comes from a motor home, the guys or gals behind the counter look at you like you just ordered a cheeseburger.
    On this occasion the store had a compatible locking gas cap, at a good price so that problem was solved. I asked about a basement door piston, but not having the bad one with me, there wasn't anyway to match it. That would have to wait for another day. While there we saw something unusual on the counter. It was a large block of cement with shoes stuck in the middle of it. I am not sure what that item was for, but it did make for a number of in-law and ex wife jokes that I don't think I will repeat here.
    Our next stop was a good size flea/collectible/antique market located in a metal building. There were a number of interesting things in there including some Blue Danube dishes. Diane has a small collection of those and left the store with a purchase of a cup and saucer.
    We visited a couple of variety stores. No being in the market for variety, no matter what kind, I purchased nothing. Diane bought something else but I don't remember what it was.
    We did visit a nice clothing store where I found a black shirt with vertical colored stripes. It looked Christmassy and more important, it was forty percent off. Diane bought it for me along with a nice fleece vest for herself.
    The last thing we did was walk up the street to Olivia's Seafood Restaurant. We all had a cup, actually a bowl, of crab and shrimp bisque that was to use their words "Food of the Gods" and it was. I also had a fried oyster and shrimp salad with balsamic vinegar dressing. It was really good. I have not had good fried oysters in a long time.
    We made a stop at the local supermarket for a six pack of libations and then it was back to the campground.
    Diane and I showered, she went first, and I scalded myself second. I can never seem to adjust the temperature of the water when it comes from the water pump. Then I put on my new shirt for the evening's catered dinner. Once ready we grabbed our gifts, our picnic bag containing glasses and a bottle of wine and we were all off once more.
    I forget to tell you that Beth Page had the meeting/conf room decorated really nicely. There are beams on the ceiling, columns that ran length of the room on both sides and all had lights on them. There was a nice sized tree at the stage end of the room and all the tables had red tablecloths on them with a nice centerpiece, well in the center of the table.
    The night's dinner was a house salad, pork roast, very tender, with scalloped potatoes, and seasoned long green beans. We also really great dinner rolls and dessert, which I skipped, of hot apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.
    I tried not to overdue it. Before dinner was served, I started out with my own thermos of hot cider to which I added just a bit of Captain Jack's favorite liquid, Meyer's Rum. Two cups of that and I was feeling pretty good.
    As soon as dinner was over and the tables were cleared the gift giving and stealing time began. This took awhile, too long. People didn't attack their packages. They unwrapped them like they were wrapped with money and didn't want to tear the paper. At first no one wanted to steal anyone else's present. That changed as the evening went along. There were forty presents to give out, one per coach with a couple of exceptions Diane and I being one since we brought two gifts. The gifts that got stolen the most (and three times was the max) were animated mechanical singing floppy eared dogs. Diane took her gift and stole one of those cute singing Cocker Spaniels from someone. The very next person stole it from Diane and left her with a metal traveling case of grill utensils. I liked that present! It didn't matter that Diane was the one that bought it and brought it.
    The evening was fun and it eventually ended. We all had our pictures taken with Santa, we gave toys to the Marines Toys for Tots program, and we were all full of pork and other things. The only unpleasant thing was I was called a Rat Fink by the lady who lost her nice wine carrier containing two great bottles of wine to me and ended up with a bottle of Crown Royal with two matching glasses that got stolen by someone else. Hey you can't make everyone happy!
    By the time the party was over, Diane and I were pretty beat. We went back to the coach and took Nickolas for a long walk, and along the way chatted with other campers. Then we hit the sack and watched an episode of The Closer on the little bedroom TV.
    Next morning we had a continental breakfast, talked to some other campers, including the nice lady who thought I was a fink. After breakfast Bill, Gary and I went back to Gary's coach to help shove his slide back in. The girls all decided to walk over to Bill's coach to see the remodeling.
    As we were driving to the coach it started to pour down rain. Gary, who had tried to bring in his slide before breakfast and it stuck, now ran it back out. It dumped about ten gallons of water on me at the same time. Bill and I then grabbed a hold of it, he lifted while I pushed and with Gary on the in button, we man handled the slide closed.
    Bill then realized he had the keys to his coach. The girls were standing in the rain somewhere so we rushed to the car to go open the door. We found three wet ladies standing outside, but they were under umbrellas so it wasn't too bad. We visited the coach and found some really nice work had been done to it. There were new lights, couch, dining table, new floor, and other things. Having seen it before, I could tell a major difference. We visited for a few minutes and then said our goodbyes.
    It took Gary and me a bit to pack up our coaches in the rain. After he had a basement door that wouldn't close and I had a sewer line pop off and give me a brown set of shoes, we finally got underway. We were home after about two hours of driving in the rain.
    Yesterday I helped Gary diagnose his slide problems. We took pictures which were sent to the manufacturer and I spent some time on the phone getting advice about how to repair it. I relayed that advice to Gary and today he called me to inform me that most of the major repairs he was able to take care of himself. We both still need to get our slides adjusted and we both have some other things we want to get fixed. The thing is we are helping each other. That's what it is about.
    Diane said that one of the reasons we are so close to our RV friends is because they are there to help when you have troubles and there to share your joy when everything is going well. Friends are really the biggest part of the equation.
    They are there to help your coach to improve your life, if you let it.
    I think I have read that somewhere before.
    Merry Christmas!
  6. -Gramps-

    Mortality, Chapter 2

    By -Gramps-,

    There is no cure for birth or death, save to enjoy the interval.
    -- George Santanyana
    Jonah gave Sarah a sly look. He was about to give her a surprise and I hoped he was not going to let the cat all the way out of the bag.
    "He is not really my little brother. He is my father."
    I am sure I gave Jonah the "now look at what you have started" look. Sarah had this somewhat puzzled expression on her face.
    "You're joking aren't you?" she asked, or maybe it was a statement. "You would have to be about..."
    I could see her mind doing some quick math.
    "You would have to be way past eighty, closer to ... wow!" She paused.
    Jonah quickly nodded his head. "Yep, it's been a long, long, time since Dad saw eighty in his rear view mirror. He is literally my old man," he said with an even bigger grin.
    Sarah was looking at me the same way she would a waffle that suddenly sprouted legs and starting dancing in the middle of the table.
    "Mr. Christopher, you sure don't look anywhere near that old," she said.
    She must have been struggling with believing this concept and needed an explanation, because she then asked:
    "Come on, how old are you really?"
    I stood up and grabbed my trouble making son by the arm.
    "We take a lot of vitamins, by the handfuls," I said. "We need to go. Thanks for the waffles."
    I hastily pushed Jonah from the kitchen, past the wooden grandmas and out the office door, the bell loudly proclaiming our exit, before she could ask me anything more.
    Jonah laughed all the way to the motor coach. For just a minute I wished he were 6 instead of 10 times that. That way I would have a better way to express the displeasure I was feeling at that moment.
    But all I said to him was, "Let's get packed up."
    By the time most of the morning had passed, Jonah and I were finishing up all the inside and outside things that we needed to do to break down camp and take off.
    Inside, we secured all loose items in their overhead compartments, fastened all cabinet doors, turned all seats around and returned them to their full upright positions. Outside, it was close to noon but still freezing. I dumped the tanks and packed up the sewer hose and the water hose. Both hoses fought being curled up and stuffed away like a couple of coldblooded creatures with minds of their own. Some fellow camper always walks over to watch you do this, but because the campground was practically frozen and deserted it was left up to Jonah to be my only observer.
    I was still perturbed at him. I thought he had made light of "my secret." Jonah constantly tells me that I guard my age like an old woman. As I was fighting with the gray tank flush hose, I reminded him that on the rare occasion that my age or any number close to it is revealed to someone, either by accident or on purpose, it makes them and me uncomfortable. And people don't like being uncomfortable.
    "That's kind of redundant isn't it?" he responded. "Not being comfortable being uncomfortable. Can you like being uncomfortable? Is it possible to be comfortable being uncomfortable? I need to ponder this," he said while holding his chin.
    "Oh, shut up."
    "Oh, lighten up little brother."
    "That's not funny."
    "I think it is. Come on, Dad, it was a logical mistake that allowed me to have a bit of fun. Why let it bother you? I am the one who should be upset. She thinks I am a 66-year-old man who looks 10 years older than his father who she thinks is about 90 years old. It's a funny situation."
    "Not to me. What what do you think she would have done if you had told her just how old I really am?" I paused and answered my own question.
    "She would have done what a person does when they think someone is crazy."
    "We take vitamins. That was a good one, Dad," Jonah said. "I think she would want to know what kind. Let's go tell her!"
    He laughed at me, again, obviously enjoying my displeasure with that idea.
    "Just kidding. Come on, it's time to go. If we're heading back to Florida we need to get moving." He pasued. "We are heading back to Florida?"
    "Eventually, but we are going to Cozy Acres first."
    "Oh, so the next stop on this trip down memory lane has to be someplace cold?"
    Our next stop was very cold indeed, and not just because of the weather.
    We had stayed five days in Smithfield waiting for the weather to improve and for some mail, composed of a few bills, a couple of checks, and a package, ironically containing vitamins, to catch up with us.
    We had stayed longer than I wanted to, so I was glad to be back on the road.
    It was about a three-hour drive by car from Smithfield to Powhatan. It would take us a bit longer in a 39-foot-long motor coach, of course. We did not need to stop for fuel, neither for the coach nor for ourselves. We had plenty of gas and energy bars. Jonah was behind the wheel, I was in the copilot's seat, with Alex on my lap. He would sit there for awhile staring out the windshield and after a few minutes the passing trees would bore him, so he would usually end up on the floor, on his dog bed, happily chewing on a rawhide that he took from his stash that he keeps under the dining table.
    Jonah said a quick prayer for a safe trip, and then loaded his King Crimson CD, into the player, fastened his seat belt, and pushed the yellow knob to release the parking brake. He slowly coached the coach out of its spot, glancing in the rear-view video monitor to make sure our towed car was following correctly, not wobbling back and forth.
    "Okay, all looks good," he announced.
    We drove past the office, Sarah unseen inside, and eased out of the campground. After a right turn onto the service road and after about a minute's drive we were zipping north on Interstate 95.
    We were headed to a secluded and comfortable campground in Powhatan, Virginia. From there we would drive the car to a spot northeast of Richmond, named Cold Harbor. It had been a very long time since I was last there. Jonah had never been there and I wanted him to see the site of one of the bloodiest battles ever fought in any war. I also wanted him to travel with me to a country church cemetery not far from the battlefield.
    There were many Civil War veterans of that terrible battle buried there, men from both sides of the conflict. Some men died on the battlefield. Some men died later, much later, but wished to be buried there. I planned to see the final resting place of one of those men.
    I wanted to visit the grave of my father.
  7. -Gramps-
    As a kid I enjoyed serial stories in magazines. Works of fiction published one chapter at time. I read them and couldn't wait for the next installment. The next chapter.
    The number one thing that all good fiction writers say is common about writing is that writing should be about something that you know about. I know about communications, photography, history, RVing, and I know about myself and my family. I have also read that you should write about something that you love. I love all the above. (Yes, I can be a bit self-absorbed, at times.)
    So with those directions in mind I have written the first chapter of a novella or novelette. A novella is defined as a written, fictional prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The novella has a word count of between 17,500 words and 40,000 words. A novelette has between 7,500 words and 17,499 words.
    So it remains to be seen what this will be. I don’t know where this work will take me, or us, because you the reader will be on this journey with me. I will try to make it enjoyable for us both, but I will need something from you. Your input is necessary. So please comment. If you don’t I will not know if my work is going to make you want to travel further on.
    Thanks.
    Gramps
    MORTALITY: Chapter One
    "It's a funny old world, a man's lucky if he gets out of it alive."
    -- W.C. Fields
    If the sun is shining through my motor coach bedroom skylight, wherever the location or whatever the time zone that happens to be at the time, I have the ability to always wake at exactly 7 a.m. If there is no sunlight shining into my bedroom, then I wake at exactly 7:30. I know because I always verify the time on my glowing blue-green cheap Timex watch. My wife used to tell me the time by pressing a button on her alarm clock and it would shine a red light with the time on the ceiling. But that doesn't happen now because that side of the bed is empty and cold.
    It is now morning and, like most mornings, I can hear my son Jonah moving around in the living area of our motor coach. He has already folded up the air mattress bed back into the couch. I can hear him pouring fresh water into the dog's bowl as he talks to Alexander, my elderly Cockapoo. That is a terrible name for a breed of dog. I prefer Spoodle as a better moniker.
    Alexander sleeps on the fold-out bed with Jonah. The dog doesn't seem to like the foot of my bed anymore, now that he realizes he has his choice of humans to curl up next to. Of course, my recent bout of restless leg syndrome, which causes him to fly off the bed in the middle of the night, may have influenced his decision to change his sleeping arrangements.
    "Dad, are you moving around in there? I taste waffles already"
    "Yes, I am getting up,". I answer as I crawl out of bed and slip on a pair of Tommy Jeans that has been neatly hanging on the back of one of the bedroom chairs all night. I pull on a long-sleeve green T-shirt that says "Outer Banks" on the front, slip my feet into some worn-out Topsiders and then hit the head.
    As I said, this morning is like so many mornings. We keep to certain rituals, with some variations. If there is coffee available in the office of the campground we are staying at, we grab our own mugs -- I can't stand Styrofoam cups -- and we walk over to procure some. If there isn't any coffee we make our own. If there is breakfast available, we make every effort to be there. This morning, like the last five mornings since we arrived here in the Smithfield North Carolina KOA, we are going to make our own waffles. The office has easy-to-use waffle makers, waffle ingredients of course, and real Mrs. Butter-Worth's syrup to go with them. None of that fake Mrs. Butter-Worth's will do.
    Jonah, who just finished feeding Alex his morning breakfast of the same little brown nuggets of nutrition he gets every morning, hands me my jacket.
    "Dad," he says as he glances down at my feet. "There is still snow on the ground; you need to put some socks on."
    "I won't loose any toes to frostbite, let's go."
    I almost fall on my skinny butt as my tread-less Topsiders hit the ice at the bottom of the two outside steps. It is cold so I zip my jacket up to my chin.
    Jonah closes the door, makes sure it is locked, and we slip and slide our way over to the office.
    We don't talk much as we carefully walk toward the waiting waffles. We mostly watch each other breathe the crisp air in and out, human steam curling around our heads.
    "Did you sleep well?" one of us may ask the other one.
    "Fine. How about you?"
    "I had one of those nasty leg cramps last night again."
    "You need to drink more water. That should help."
    Like most mornings that is about as exciting as it gets.
    We walk through the office door, me first, and the bell attached to the top announces our arrival.
    The KOA office is typical of most campground offices. A camp store in the front with vinyl sewer hoses and connectors, water hoses, soap, light bulbs, fuses, overpriced useful things that you buy in a hurry, well, when you need them in a hurry. Also for sale are not-so-useful things like wind chimes, ceramic thimbles, spinners, light thingies you hang around your neck, stupid things like wooden grandma back ends that you stick in the ground. Off to one side there is a rack of brochures of tourist traps and attractions. Some groceries on the self, a glass top freezer with Nutty Buddies and Eskimo Pies, maybe some pints of Ben and Jerry's. Every campground that Jonah and I have traveled to, it's the same stuff. The quantities and the quality may differ a bit, but the fact that it is always there is comforting in a way.
    "Good morning, Mr. Christopher," said the young lady in the yellow golf shirt, behind the counter, looking at me. I didn't respond fast enough for my son.
    "Good morning to you too, Sarah," answered Jonah.
    Jonah learned her name in the first five minutes of the first day. After five days I still didn't know what it was. Maybe I should have looked at her name tag.
    "Now I told you to call me Jonah," he continued, smiling that big smile of his.
    Sarah glanced over at me. She tried again.
    "Good morning to you, too, Mr. Christopher."
    "His name is George."
    I smiled at her and told her good morning. I guess I didn't smile big enough.
    "Mr.Christopher, there is a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen and the waffle makers are nice and hot, too. Go help yourself and if you need anything just holler."
    Jonah just laughed, grabbed me by the arm and led me to the kitchen.
    "Come on George; let me make you some waffles."
    If I let it, it could really make me mad when people think I'm not friendly.
    After dispensing myself a cup of hazelnut coffee, my wife's favorite, I sat down to nurse it and my slightly bruised ego.
    Jonah operated the waffle irons to his satisfaction and placed a paper plate with a one large plain waffle in front of me. He sat down with a plate of four waffles, with lots of butter and Mrs. Butter-Worth's dripping down the sides. He could still eat with the careless abandon of an athletic 18-year-old without it affecting his much older waistline. I also ate without much thought. Actually half the time I just didn't think about eating. I live on very few calories. I miss my wife's cooking. I miss sitting across from her when eating someone else's cooking. For over 50 years just having her there with me made everything taste better. Without her, there was not much taste at all.
    While Jonah was eating and I was nibbling, Sarah came into the kitchen with another camper. She was showing him how to operate the waffle irons and pointed to the chilled carafes of juice, and milk next to the coffee dispensers. As the obviously new guest started to pour some waffle batter into the iron, she turned and sat at the table with Jonah and myself.
    "So, are you two still planning on leaving today or can we help you to stay around a bit longer?" she asked.
    I looked up at her.
    "I think we will be pulling out today, kind of late tough. Is it okay for us to leave a bit after check out?"
    "Sure, as you can tell we aren't that busy. What with the snow and all. Stay as late as you like. If you decide to stay any more days, just come by the office tomorrow."
    "Thanks, Sarahâ", said Jonah. "We have enjoyed it here, especially the waffles." He gave her another one of his big smiles.
    I saw her face light up and I knew he had done it. He had opened the door.
    "Where are you two off to next?" She asked casually.
    Jonah answered just as casually.
    "We are not sure, maybe Florida, somewhere along the coast. Maybe I can talk George here into going back to Fort Wilderness, but I think he wants to go farther south, so he can warm up his ancient old bones a bit."
    I understood Jonah's choice of words, and he knew it too.
    "Mr. Christopher, are you going to let your brother call you ancient?"
    "How old do you think he is? Make a good guess now,'' prompted my still smiling son.
    "You don't look over what, forty-something...I guess forty five?"
    This comment really tickled Jonah, which is what he wanted. This was a game he liked to play with me, and that guess just egged him on even more.
    "Forty-five?" He grinned at me. "You are so close. How old do you think I am?" he asked.
    Sarah looked him over for before answering "mmmm..I'd say about the same. No, maybe a few years older...so fifty-five?"
    Jonah smiled at her. "Why, thank you, darling, but nope, I will be sixty-six on my next birthday."
    Sarah looked very surprised. "Really?"
    He looked over at me. "Isn't that right, little brother?"
    I just gave him the same patient smile I always gave him. I was thankful that Jonah didn't tell Sarah that at the exact moment Robert E. Lee was surrendering his sword to General Grant, that I was coming, kicking and screaming as they say, into this world.
  8. -Gramps-

    A Quick Weekend

    By -Gramps-,

    This past weekend, Diane and I took the coach, the dog (can't leave home without him!) and the grandboys to Virginia Beach, Va. We stayed in the premier sites at the Holiday Travel Campground. The premier sites are a bit larger pull-thrus than the rest of the sites. The campground is about 40 minutes from our home. We left about 2:45 in the afternoon and arrived about 3:30 or so.
    We didn't do much the first night except grill some burgers while the boys explored the playground next to us. Later that night, we moved back to the sitting area in the bedroom. The boys curled up on the bed, and I took a chair and read to them.
    We have been reading "The Magician's Nephew." It is book one or book six, depending on which release of the set of books, of the Chronicles of Narnia. After a few pages of Uncle Andrew's Troubles we decided to watch a movie. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. My wife loves the movie and the boys seemed to like it as well. While the movie was playing, I snuck back to the bedroom, sat down in one of the rockers and put up my feet and opened a Clive Cussler novel. I needed some time to myself.
    It had been a rough morning. It seems that I can have a slow week, but the day we plan on leaving in the rig for anywhere, some phone system decides to go down for some reason. On this particular morning a major medical practice had trouble due to an expiring Internet IP address. This is not an easy problem to fix, so I figured it would take all day and our trip was going to evaporate. However, Diane decided that I would resolve the problem with time to spare, so she packed up the coach by herself while I drove nine miles away to the site. She was right. I was home by 1 p.m. We finished loading the coach with enough food and clothes for a weekend, pulled the coach out and hooked up the tow. The only thing left was for the boys to be dropped off by their Mom.
    The boys were on the pull-out bed while the movie played and so by the time it was over, they were out for the night. Tomorrow would be a Saturday with no emergency phone calls. I hoped so, anyway.
    Saturday morning began with plenty of sunshine. We ate a quick breakfast of cereal for the kids, cottage cheese and pineapple for Diane and me. Our dog, Nickolas, figured that he would be left alone for the morning to guard the coach, so he decided to sulk and not eat his breakfast. Hey, you can't please everyone!
    After breakfast we took a brisk walk around the campground, dog and all. After that we secured the pup in the coach, locked up and took the car to the Virginia Aquarium to catch the 11:15 showing of Disney's A Christmas Carol 3d Imax film. We planned to get there early enough to buy good seats.
    The aquarium was only 10 minutes away. We got there and found out that the first show was not full and we also had time to visit part of the aquarium, see the film and then see the rest of the facility. Sounded like a plan to me.
    So we watched the fishies swimming around, observed a SCUBA diving demonstration and then headed for the movie.
    I love wearing those goofy 3D glasses over my glasses. A Christmas Carol was, or should I say is, a really good film. Jim Carrey wonderfully plays Scrooge and all three Christmas Spirits. The 3D effects are mesmerizing. In other words, I highly recommend this movie. It should really put you into the holiday spirit unless you are a pre-converted Scrooge.
    After the movie we picked up where we left off in the museum/aquarium. We visited the aviary, just in time for the feeding of the birds with lots of dead mice, crickets, squid and all kinds of other appetizing things. We watched the otters for awhile, then walked back to the parking lot and drove back to the campground.
    At this point I needed to get ready for the event of the day. The official chili cookoff was set for 6:30 that very evening. It was four o'clock by the time we got back from the aquarium, so I need to get to work. I knew that there were about 11 entries and I planned to win this thing. Diane won the last time we were at this campground. As a matter of fact we were using the two free nights that were her prize for being the only one who entered the contest! Hey, a win is a win in my book. This time though, it was going to be a bit harder.
    I think I make a really good chili. It has a bit of a kick to it. My special ingredient is a bottle of lime and salt beer. There are a number of different kinds and I use what I can find at the time. I also use red, orange and yellow peppers along with lots of chili powder, black pepper and some other spices that, well, are my secret. Also, I add frozen corn for color and a bit of texture to go along with the kidney and black beans.
    Around 6 p.m. we headed over to the dining room where the contest was taking place. There were supposed to be 12 entries, but two were no-shows. I was number 11. The judges started taking small samples of each starting with number one. After they finished, the rest of us lined up and hit the Crock-Pots. I went for a white bean and chicken chili that tasted more like chicken soup with white beans. Two entries were made with cubed beef instead of ground. Both tasted like beef stew. No kick. As a matter of fact, the only one out of the five I tasted that had any spice to it was mine.
    So I was a somewhat surprised when the two blandest entries, that didn't even taste like chili, won first and second place. I have entered four or five cooking contests now and I cannot figure out what these judges are thinking or tasting. It must not have been the same thing I ate! Well, my grandkids, Diane, and the people running the event said mine was the best, so that's good enough for me. Plus, the boys really enjoyed themselves filling up on chili and bread, cheese and sour cream.
    We headed back to the coach and since we were kind of in a food mood, we stuck Ratatouille in the DVD player. That movie was also a lot of fun. You really can't beat a good Pixar film.
    Once again we timed it good. The movie ended and so did the boys. The next morning we had a quick breakfast and went and played a game of miniature golf. That was fun for all involved even though some of the holes were almost impossible to play. Afterward we packed up after meeting our camping neighbors, who toured our coach. By 2 it was time to leave.
    Our trip home was short and uneventful. We pulled into the driveway and unpacked the coach. It was a quick weekend, but sometimes those can be really good. By the way, the boys are named Carson and Austen. Two good kids. I think you would like them.
  9. -Gramps-

    A Different Perspective

    By -Gramps-,

    Woof!
    The last two entries of this blog have been kind of serious and sad. Too much for me, to tell you the truth. I think we should go back to having some fun. Gramps' rules for owning a motor coach, especially number four, are just that. So, in order to lighten things back up, I have decided to hijack this blog and post one entry for myself. I don't think Gramps (I know him as Dad, but he really is my person) will mind all that much.
    This entry is about Motor Coaching, but from a different perspective.
    I love traveling in the bus, as Mom (Diane to you) calls it. I love watching my people load the bus up with all kinds of interesting things. I think they carry too many things out there, but it isn't my place to suggest they may be over packing. I love to see what goodies they are bringing, especially the things that go into that big cold black box they call a fridge (it doesn't look like the fridge in the house!).
    Dad is a sucker for a couple of big brown eyes, so I usually end up sharing things like cheese and sardines with him. I love sardines. He split a beer with me once. I didn't like it. It tasted bitter and it made me sneeze. You may have read that on one occasion, he "shared" a lot of Turkey Soup with me. Now, that was a happening feast that a creature like me usually only gets to dream about!
    After awhile it makes me dizzy, all the trips out to the coach, boxes of cans, and crackers and clothes and stuff. I am always told to stay by the front door while they march back and forth to the coach parked in our driveway. After about 10 of these trips I can't stand it anymore, so I make a dash for the coach steps. Mom and Dad usually fuss at me a bit; sometimes they let me into the coach. Usually they send me back to the house. I will admit that I don't like that.
    When they finally get everything loaded, and checked and then double checked and I hear the word that it's time to hit the road, I am more than ready. At my age the steps can be a bit rough on the ol' back legs, but I get excited and take them two at a time. I have one responsibility, so the first thing I do is head to the back of the bus where a big white container with an air-tight lid is stored. That is my supply of chow and it better be there. The trouble is, I have not figured out how to let the folks know if it isn't. Well, so far after five years of checking, I haven't needed to. But you never know, there could be a first time!
    Moving down the road in the coach is great. I sit on Mom's lap and that gives me a terrific view out of our huge windshield. I love the air that blows on me, too. Dad makes it cold somehow. He must be a genius. Mom doesn't always like it as frigid as Dad, but with me on her lap she puts up with it.
    Sometimes I push a button next to Mom's seat just to see what happens. Usually Dad will say something like, "Why is your map light on?" or "Hey, what's going on ... the shades are coming down!" He gets really excited when the step cover starts opening on its own.
    I sometimes get sick in the car. I don't know if that is because it is a small moving space or if it is because sometimes I do not care for where it takes me, like to see Miss Vickie, that woman who hoses me down and then sticks a blow dryer in my face! But, the coach is a very different thing. It is relaxing. I can get down from my perch on Mom's lap; sleep on the couch or on my pillow on the floor or just grab some water if I want it. Try that in a big truck pulling a trailer ...
    Oh, arf ... I have to end this for just a minute. I hear Dad coming down the hall and I do not think he would be pleased to see me messing with his computer. He yells at the cat when she jumps on the keyboard, and yells really loud when he is writing at the time. Oh, in case you were wondering, the cat never travels with us. She hates the coach and would just hack up a big yellow hairball or two and leave them on the dash, right where I like to sit. Got to go ...
    I am back!
    I am not sure what else I can tell you. This is my first dog blog, after all, and writing is not that easy. Let me think of something else, oh ...
    I have enjoyed most all the places we have been. I love visiting rallies with lots of other coaches (hey, I get invited in all the time!) I love meeting other people, both two and four leggers. I love hiking with Mom and Dad on a trail through the mountains. The smells are exciting. I like the ocean, well running on the beach to be precise, the water I don't care for. Now when we travel to the beach, my Mom gets out my (I don't claim it!) tropical shirt and puts it on me. I can stand the shirt, but the hat ... one day when no one is looking I plan to chew that thing into tiny pieces!
    My favorite place to travel to in the motor coach is, for the most part, wherever my people are headed, but there is one stop that is really great: our new home in the mountains. It is the one place where I get to run around without my leash, and the other people there ... well, they are wonderful friends to my people. I have a friend there as well. Her name is Godiva. At mealtimes, everyone shares all kinds of tasty things with us both. I do prefer Dad's cooking. Now I am thinking about that soup again!
    I need to wrap this up, so:
    Here are my rules for owning a motor coach:
    Do not leave home without the dog in the coach.
    Do not leave home without the dog's food in the coach.
    Do not leave home without the dog's food bowl in the coach.
    Do not leave home without the dog's water bowl in the coach.
    Do not leave home without the dog's treats in the coach.
    Do not leave home without the dog's leash. It makes the person I am leading feel safer.
    Do not leave home without the poopy bags. I don't really care, but Mom and Dad don't think I should leave stuff on the trail for some reason.
    Go figure.
    Nickolas

    I hate the hat. But I love Mom!
  10. -Gramps-

    25 Years Ago, Part 2

    By -Gramps-,

    I wrote the story about Wayne two or three years ago, maybe longer. I don't really remember when I wrote it to tell you the truth. I wrote it in response to a young lady who was a member of a Medal of Honor online gaming clan who posted a request for prayer on our clan forums. Her fiance had just been killed in a car accident and she was devastated. The story was originally addressed to her. Shannon was her name. For the most part that was the end of it until two days ago. That was when I got the urge to post it on my FMCA blog. Which I did, yesterday afternoon just before Diane and I left for a local church event.
    It's funny how things work out sometimes..
    Twenty Five Years Ago, This Month, Part Two.
    As of last night there is a definite connection between being a coach owner and what happened twenty five years ago. Twenty five years ago the 24th of this month to be exact.
    A week or so ago Janis and Gary our twin coach owners invited us to a special event at their church. It is a walk through play called Judgment House. This is a nationally sponsored play that takes place in many churches around the nation, but the subject of the play usually is based on some local tragic event. This event is used to illustrate and dramatize the final consequences of the choices, some good and some bad, that people make. We agreed to attend one of the performances of this play. I did not know much of anything about this play until the day we went, yesterday, last night to be exact.
    The subject of this drama was a bit of a shock to me.
    The play was called the Arlene Jones Story.
    This was the same Arlene that was my friend Wayne's girlfriend and fiance.
    Not knowing what to expect, I was not sure I could watch it all. I decided, since I try not to believe in coincidences, that for some reason, it was meant for me to see this play, so I made up my mind, took a deep breath and drove us to the church where we were met by Gary in the parking lot at about 4:45 in the afternoon. He took us into the staging area, the church gymnasium, and it was packed. I had heard that due to a wave of word of mouth that as many as 1400 to 1500 people were waiting to see the performance each night.
    I didn't think anybody even remembered the event. I had tried to forget it. But here I was, standing in line and a few minutes later, sitting in the middle of a church gym, feeling a bit uncomfortable, waiting with Diane and Gary in a crowd of chatting people, none of whom I knew at all, for our names to be called and then to observe a reenactment of what I thought was a completely senseless, and meaningless event. An event that cost me a good friend and, my first business.
    After a few minutes of just sitting there, with my left leg bouncing nervously, I began to feel uncomfortable, a lot. I started looking for the closest exit..just in case I needed it.
    We had some time to wait, so Diane and Gary got up to buy some popcorn at a concession stand in the back of the gym. This was the perfect time for me to make a dash for it. To leave this play before the memories that might come flooding back caused me to squirm, over heat, be ill, maybe even throw up or worse yet have a big nasty panic attack (and I have had them before), which would really make me do all the above.
    I didn't leave; instead I got up and moved to the back row, and sat down next to a man a bit younger than myself, with a name tag on, who was engaged in a rather animated conversation, and waited for a chance to introduce myself.
    While standing in line to sign up for the play I had overheard a conversation between one of the staffers and one of the attendees. From that conversation I learned that the son of Arlene was sitting in the back of the gym. His name was OC and now I was sitting next to him.
    It became apparent that, reluctantly for him, he was now a bit of a church celebrity. Ladies of the church both young and old kept coming up and introducing themselves. I patiently waited for a chance to tell him who I was.
    He turned to me and I put out my hand and told him that I was Derrick Parker, that I knew his mother and that Wayne had worked with me. He looked very surprised. We, with some two or three interruptions, had a short but extremely important conversation. Details that I had heard over the years, some big, some not, were verified, some corrected. I told OC things he didn't know and he did the same for me.
    I learned that the killer only killed himself after accidentally wounding himself with his own ricochet bullets from the fireplace in the living room. Once he knew he could not catch the boys, and escape from the scene, he finished himself off. OC learned that I had seen his Mom just a few days before at the trade show, and that I had tried to get Wayne to bring her to dinner on the night that they were both killed. His response was it just wasn't in the cards for them to live.
    I think then I realized that we both had been hurt, were still hurting...a lot more than we, or maybe just me, knew.
    OC told me that he would still be there after I went through the play and to come see him if I wanted to talk some more. I responded "okay".
    I wasn't sure that I would talk to him again. I wasn't sure I could even make it through the play.
    But I did.
    I don't think I can describe it that well for you. If I was an official theater critic, I could tell you that the play was a bit amateurish at times. I could tell you the concept of walking from room to room and seeing various scenes of Arlene's life and death play out, even the graphic ones, were interesting and effective, but for me it was not at all about how well the scenery and props looked or how well the actors performed. For me it was about something going on inside of me.
    I was watching the play, but I was also somewhere else at the same time. I was back in my office on the last day that I saw Wayne alive, or I was back in my kitchen when I got the terrible phone call, or I was in my car, miserably driving to an appointment that Wayne should have been keeping.
    At the end of the play is a scene of Heaven and of ****.I remembered my own private **** that I was in after Wayne's death and it was then I realized I had never really left it.
    I also realized the loss of Mike had only made it worse.
    I walked out of the last room, the last scene of the play and while my wife waited in the car, I went to find OC.
    I found him standing along the side of the gym, up against the wall, surrounded by a bunch of young ladies. Once again I waited patiently for a chance to speak to him.
    "What did you think?" he asked.
    "I think your Mother and Wayne would both have approved" I responded. "They would have appreciated some good coming out of that night."
    And then I said something I didn't mean to say.
    "Because Lord knows I haven't seen any good before now"
    OC looked hard at me, and then leaned in closer.
    "I haven't either, not for twenty five years, not until this week."
    Then I told him about losing Mike. That this was my second time losing a friend and partner.
    Then he wrapped his arms around me and said "Maybe this will give you some closure. It finally has, for me."
    He was only fifteen when he lost his Mom and the man that would have become his step father. He loved them both. Years before that he lost his father and yet now he could hug me and hope that I would finally be healed of my hurt. His concern for me broke my heart.
    He let go. I stood there with tears in my eyes. I could hardly speak but I managed to give him my card and said I would like to keep in touch.
    "That would be great, how about we go to lunch and just talk sometime? Would you like that?"
    "Oh yea, I really would."
    Then he was once again surrounded by others and I quietly walked to the car. I asked Diane to drive us to dinner, where we had a quiet conversation over soup and sandwich. I hate to admit it to my Baptist friends but I really wanted a beer.
    It was during dinner and over a short draft, that I realized a long string of events had led up to this moment. It started with a purchase of a Bounder that had a simple brake failure that led to a test drive that led to buying a particular coach, that led to a nice married couple contacting us with questions about the same coach, which led to a friendship that helped with one recent loss, and now...
    Now I realized that God had orchestrated something bigger; he used my RV and the RV world to provide the means to have many friends, but two in particular named Gary and Janis who without knowing it, were used by Him to open a scarred over twenty five year old wound that had never really had the chance to heal....until now.
    Now faith renews and the healing begins.
    Derrick
  11. -Gramps-
    This blog entry doesn't have anything to do with the motor coaching lifestyle. Not directly, anyway. But the event does have a lot to do with how much I appreciate the friends that RVing has provided to my wife and I. Friends who have helped me get through the loss that I wrote about in The Course of Dreams. That story was about the second time I lost a close friend.
    This story is about the first.
    WAYNE
    In the summer of 1984 I moved my start-up small business out of my home into a small office in a really neat old building in downtown Norfolk, Virginia. I had a secretary, a salesman, and one installer -- me. My salesman was not giving the business much attention, and as a result was not very successful. I needed an additional person to spark a little competition.
    One fall day I was talking about this problem with the pastor of our church. He was familiar with my dilemma and my business because my current salesman also attended the church and the pastor also worked with me on large installation jobs. He suggested that I talk to a new member of the church named Wayne.
    "Wayne?" I said. "He retired from the Coast Guard; I don't think he knows anything about selling phones."
    My pastor assured me that Wayne could learn. I was not so sure. Wayne just did not fit the mold of the typical telecommunications salesperson. He was short, bald, with a full gray beard and most of the time wore all black clothes and sandals to church. He seemed like he was some kind of ex hippie to me.
    "What do you have to lose?" said Pastor.
    "Nothing except a lot of time and energy" I responded. But I agreed to talk to Wayne.
    Wayne had to retire on medical disability due to liver problems. I think he may have caught hepatitis at some point and he also at one time had a drinking problem. He was a Master Chief and the CO of a Coast Guard cutter, so he had some leadership skills, or so the Pastor kept telling me. I just needed someone who could help me; it sounded like the pastor wanted me to help him. I was not thrilled with the whole idea.
    I talked to Wayne after church one fateful Wednesday night. He told me that he wanted no salary or draw, that he would work on straight commission and he would learn the phone business. He was all smiles and seemed excited about working for me. Someone excited -- that would be a change in itself. I agreed to give it a try. Wayne would start the next Monday. I hoped he would at least show up with shoes and socks on.
    I did not see Wayne in church on Sunday. I don't remember if he was not there or if I was working. On Monday morning when he showed up at the office with a haircut, trimmed beard, dark suit, starched white shirt and tie and carrying a new brief case complete with gold name plate, I was completely shocked.
    "Where is my desk?" was his first question. I showed him one of the large computer tables that we used as desks in the back office. He wanted some documentation and brochures on the equipment that we sold so he could learn it. He sat down and started studying and about four hours later asked if we could chat for a couple of minutes. He told me he wanted to go out with me for a few days and see my customers, ask for referrals, and he wanted me to go on his first appointments with him. No problem. He also said that since I was one of the owners of the company that I should dress the part.
    "What?"
    "You can't go on sales appointments with me in jeans and work shoes; you need to keep some dress clothes here in the office that you can change into when I need you."
    I was trying to figure out where I lost control. I was worried about his dress and now he is telling me that I needed to change mine. This was getting weird. But it was obvious that the Wayne I knew in church was not the Wayne sitting here in my office.
    "If you need help shopping, we can go together."
    "I think I can handle it."
    "Good, a nice sports coat, dress shirts -- they don't have to be white -- some sporty ties and nice shoes should do it."
    I got over my shock and, I hate to say it, my resentment, and took his advice.
    We started to work together as a team. Wayne figured it would take a couple of months to get rolling and he was willing to foot his own bills and that is just what he did. We had lots of evening conversations as I helped him configure systems and taught him what was best for each of his prospects. He eagerly learned. We went to conventions together, and his prospect list started to grow. Bill, my original salesman, also perked up and started selling a bit more. Things started to look up.
    During this time I learned more about Wayne. He used to be a partying man. He was a good Coastie, but a bad husband until he became a Christian and started attending our church. Unfortunately, his wife did not like the new Wayne, a more patient guy who did not drink or swear or smoke, so she left him. She took their teenage son and moved to Florida. Wayne was still in touch with them and it was his son who bought him his brief case.
    Wayne kept generating leads and keeping appointments, but after a few weeks I could see that Wayne wanted to reel in his first sale. He was getting anxious and wanted to make something happen. It did not matter if it was big or small.
    It was small. But to Wayne the first one was big. After six weeks he sold a system to a small auto repair place that needed four phones. We would be installing it in a couple of weeks.
    During the two weeks, we started to plan our own trade show in cooperation with a wholesale food distributor whose owners (one being my brother) were the partners in my business. Hotel and restaurant people would be attending. There would be lots of food, and cooking demonstrations from Johnson and Wales University. The manufacturer of our phones sent Doug Stewart, a great factory representative, to work with us. It was a formal affair. The three of us looked sharp in our black tuxes and red cummerbunds. The evening was a great success. During the next two weeks Wayne talked to two major hotels and was sure that he would sell them, too.
    I realized that I had found a very good salesperson who also was now my friend, and I knew that I would soon officially offer him a partnership.
    The day came to install Wayne's sale. He helped me put it in, we trained the staff and they wrote a check for the system. Back in the office I wrote Wayne his first commission check. It was not that much.
    "Well, its small but it will pay for the gas to keep on going." Wayne said.
    I invited him over for dinner with Diane and I, but he declined, saying he was not feeling so well, his medication was not agreeing with him. He thought he would see Arlene that evening. She was a nice lady whose husband had been killed in Vietnam and she and Wayne had recently discovered each other.
    "That crazy ex real estate partner of hers has been calling and making a jerk of himself the last few days," Wayne said. "She's upset about it, so I'm going to go over to her place."
    For some reason I felt strongly that he should come to dinner with me, so I insisted he invite Arlene, but he declined. I became very uneasy and could not understand why.
    That night was an untypical sub freezing cold October night and very late when the phone rang. It was Bill calling me.
    "Derrick, are you awake?" he said.
    "Yes, what's going on?"
    "Derrick, Wayne is dead."
    There was a long pause while I really woke up.
    "Dead! How is that, why?"
    "He was killed and so was Arlene. That partner of hers shot them both. I was heading over there just before it happened but Steve (Bill's son) had a flat and I went to help him."
    I realized that I could have lost both Bill and Wayne. Arlene's real estate partner was upset that she planned to press charges against him for embezzling money out of the apartment complex that they owned together. She was also planning to sell the complex to cover the losses. He was not happy about this. Plus, he was not happy about her relationship with Wayne. The partner was a lot younger than her and, although married himself, had an obsessive crush on her. This was a volatile mix.
    The night he killed them he dressed up like a Ninja, all in black, including a hooded mask. He carried a whole bunch of ninja weapons to a field just behind a canal that ran behind Arlene’s house. This field was the property of my church. Bill's house was two doors down from Arlene's. He laid all his spears, throwing stars, and swords in the grass, loaded his Uzi, waded the canal and headed for Arlene's house. His approach set the neighbor's dogs barking and Wayne opened the door to see what was causing the noise. The guy shot him down, jumped over Wayne's body and went into the house where Arlene was in the living room. Her son and a sleepover friend were upstairs. He shot the living room to pieces, chased Arlene around the first floor of the house, and killed her and then himself. The boys were hiding in the stairwell and of course heard the whole thing.
    The news media was not too sharp and did not know that Wayne worked for me. There were stories on the front page of our local paper and it was the lead story on the local newscasts for about four nights. Not once did anybody contact me and I was very grateful for that oversight.
    I quietly attended Wayne's funeral at Arlene's church along with 300 members of the Coast Guard.
    The next day, as I was cleaning out Wayne's desk and shipping his briefcase to his son, it all sank in. My secretary became so upset that she quit and virtually so did Bill. My brother came to fill in, but that did not help much.
    Wayne sold; I mean I sold the two hotels that I mentioned, along with quite a few other things that Wayne was working on. The business continued for two and a half years until I sold it. I was depressed; I could not see any good coming out of the loss of my friend and partner. It took me a long time to realize that it is not that important for me to understand. God was still in control and loved me; that was all I really needed to know.
    In May of 1985 I almost lost my newborn son and my wife and it was the strength that I received from going through Wayne's death that sustained me and helped me to pray. They both survived.
    Wayne is still someone that I think about a lot. I just recently found the worn-out and faded Polaroid of the three of us at the trade show. Every now and then it does me some good to look at Wayne's smiling bearded face, looking sharp in his red bow tie.
    By the way, I now own a successful communications company that I started in 1991. My wife is my only partner. My first two customers were the same two hotels that Wayne would have sold. Life goes on.
    Derrick
    Doug Stewart, Wayne and myself at the trade show:

  12. -Gramps-
    Number 4. (Maybe the Last Rule!)
    Owning a motor coach is a never-ending learning experience.
    And just when you think you know it all, you find out just how stupid you really are.
    I have learned a lot about my coach, more than I ever wanted to know. I have had to study the mechanics of my engine, my slides, and my power seats as well as learn how it is wired for Surround Sound and cable TV. And, how it is plumbed including the ice maker, the fresh-water tank, the whole coach water filter and on and on. I have had to learn how to drive this big thing, including parking, turning, merging and more.
    I have learned that trees and rocks are harder than fiberglass.
    I have also learned, in no particular order, that:
    It is easy to lose arguments with inanimate objects located at various points inside and outside of my coach.
    Coach dealer mechanics are just like me -- they don't know as much as they think they do, which is why I have had to learn more for myself.
    Don't wait to consult the owner's manual. Read it before you start breaking something you are trying to fix. You might find out it is supposed to work that way!
    Two helping hands are better than one, especially when one of the hands is controlled by a brain other than your own.
    Still, the best helping hand is the one at the end of your own arm.
    Most things that break on a motor coach cost $650 to fix. Having owned two coaches I have had to:
    Replace a bent jack- 650 dollars.
    Replace two slideout toppers: dealer cost 650 dollars (I did it myself with some helping hands for a third of the cost).
    Have a non-square slide out modified so it would actually slide all the way in: 650 dollars.
    I have learned that when your rear end gets in a fight with a coach closet mirror, your rear end will win.
    I have learned that when my big motorhome gets in a fight with my little mailbox, the mailbox will win.
    I have learned that screws are better than staples for keeping things in their place (see above).
    Having friends with the same coach really helps trying to figure out if something is really broke or not (like a hard-to-open pantry and entry door).
    Wal-Mart has everything that the smart camper needs, like lots of beer.
    Don't throw any small plastic or metal things rolling around in your coach away until you find out where they go and what they do. Put them in a special drawer so you can find them later.
    I have learned that the tool you need to fix the problem you have is the tool that is still at the store.
    When emptying your tanks, at least two people will walk over to talk to you.
    I have learned that I find my self looking for the locations of the nearest Wal-Mart and Lowes no matter where my RV is parked at the time.
    Own good tools, not cheap ones. Why waste your money or your CCC?
    I have learned that CCC doesn't actually stand for carrying crappy cargo.
    I have learned that I sometimes have way too much crap; I mean cargo, in my coach.
    A 10-cubic-foot RV refrigerator is way too small when I load it.
    A 10-cubic-foot RV refrigerator is huge when my wife arranges its contents.
    I have learned that a cheap sewer hose and hot sand don't mix.
    I have also learned that a brown sprits bath from a sewer hose with hundreds of pin holes in it may be funny to a couple of people but not to me.
    .
    The day after you empty your overflowing special little parts drawer, you will open a cabinet, or crawl under a seat or something and then you will say, "Oh, that's what that strange little screw was for."
    Protect All really does work when used outside of its container.
    Washing and waxing a coach, aside from making it look nice, is great exercise.
    The day after washing and waxing my coach, I can't lift my arms above my head.
    I have learned that when a rear engine right access panel is open while going down the road, it makes your right turn signal and brake lights pretty much useless.
    All the above things are not so funny when you live through them, but then I think that one of my rules is about being patient. That is much easier to do if you have a well developed sense of humor. So if you don't have one of those, I suggest you learn where to get one!
    Try Wal-Mart, they have everything. Oh, Remember rule number 1!
  13. -Gramps-
    You know the old saying; it's the Journey not the Destination.
    There is a church two doors down from us. The church allows us to hook up our tow in their parking lot and we leave from there. It is quite convenient. When Diane and I have a trip it starts for us the moment we leave the church parking lot. Actually it starts the moment we start packing up the coach, no, it starts the moment we start thinking about THE TRIP.
    The trip, made up of two important parts, the route, and the destination also know as the goal.
    So this is my lead in to:
    Rule number 3:
    Enjoy the View!
    Where are we going?
    What route do we take to get there?
    What do we need to take with us?
    How much time do we have?
    What will it cost?
    These are the questions I am sure we all ask ourselves. Some of us may worry over the answer to one or more questions more than others. Can we spend the money? Can we spend the time?
    Did you notice I used the word worry? Worrying and rving should be mutually exclusive, but it isn't. We worry over the price of gas, the temp in the fridge, the amount of air in the tires, along with lots of other things, including the time it takes to get where we think we want to be. It can be hard to just sit back and enjoy the view.
    The view. The one outside my great big windshield can be wonderful at times. I remember being on the Blue Ridge Parkway coming around Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina one crisp, cool, fall morning. The sky was a fantastic blue and the colors of the trees sucked the breath right out of me! The only thing I could say was Oh God! I meant it. I knew who painted that picture, the same person who painted the sunset over the Albemarle Sound and the light bouncing off the waves at Hatteras Island, the green rolling pastures of the Shenandoah Valley, and the majesty of the Smoky Mountains while heading down I-40. All of these had two things in common. They were made by God and they made me want to slow down and take a longer look.
    At night in the campground I play back the day's windshield views in my head. My mental slideshow. I look at them later after our trip is over and I am back to my daily routine of answering business calls and driving around fixing problems.
    Where am I going with this?
    Owning a motor home is a metaphor for life itself. We all have a destination, but we also only have one journey to get there. I encourage you to sit back, try to relax, and Enjoy the View!
    Remember rule number 1.









  14. -Gramps-
    It's been so long since I blogged anything that I find this blank page a bit intimidating. But I will get over that rather quickly.
    "What's it like owning a 38 foot coach?"
    I was asked that question just a few days ago. I had to stop and think for a minute or two.
    I have always thought that having that big thing sitting in my driveway is nuts. It really is crazy. It cost too much to buy, to own, to keep on the road, and to pay the taxes that come along with it. It is insane to own it, but at the same time owing it keeps me sane. How can that be? Owning a coach, or any rv requires a certain mentality, a different perspective, or philosophy as it were. Maybe it requires more than a philosophy it requires some rules. I have set a few for myself anyway. I will cover rule one. If you remember it, all the others will not be as hard to keep.;
    1. Remember owning a coach improves one's life, if you let it.
    Well, a coach allows you to get away, to visit God's handiwork. It will take you to all kinds of places, some of which you might not go to otherwise. Rving provides friends, life long friends. Some of them will stick closer to you than your own family. Rving not only makes friends, but rvers become friends with each other really fast. It's almost magical how easy it is to make friends when you own a coach. I can talk with people on the road, at a rally, campground, rv show, or at a rest stop and after just a few minutes its like I have know them my whole life. How can I put a price on that? I can't. It is part of the priceless experience of being part of a unique community that loves the road and the people who travel it. I know from first hand experience.
    This last Tuesday, I received an interesting e-mail. It was from a gentleman named Gary who lives just a few miles down on US-17 in Suffolk, just west of us. In other words, he is practically a neighbor. He and his wife Janis have been shopping for a new coach for almost a year. He wanted a diesel pusher, she didn't. She didn't want the front coach entry but he wanted the quiet ride and handling of a diesel. On the internet they found a coach like my Vacationer. With only pictures to look at, she loved the floor plan so much that the front entry door was no longer a problem; he found a chassis with a quiet engine and good handling. At least they hoped so. They needed to know more about this coach, so after searching "UFO" and "Vacationer" on MSN they found our FMCA profile and emailed me wanting to know if I would contact them and answer a few questions. I did just that. After talking on the phone with Gary for about an hour, I hung up, and my wife said to me "Silly man, why didn't you invite them to come over and see the coach?"
    It never occurred to me. But not being totally stupid, I listened to her, called back and suggested to Gary that he and Janis come over to walk through our coach before going to New York to see the one they are interested in. He didn't hesitate to accept, just wanted to know what time.
    So at three pm that same day, I started giving two people who have never owned any kind of rv the complete skinny on owning a really nice 38 foot motor home with a gas engine in the rear, made by a company that is presently in Bankruptcy. Three hours later they left with plans to travel to Buffalo and purchase a new coach that the dealer realy wants to sell.
    Gary and Janis consider us a Godsend. They were so nervous about this crazy thing they are about to do and having friends close by, especially ones with the SAME coach, who can answer questions, share experiences, and help them, why that is just too wonderful for words.
    God works in mysterious ways. He provides new friends to you in most unusual ways. And these new friends give you the opportunity to improve their lives and at the same time, they do the same thing for you.
    You must have gathered by now it was Gary and Janis who asked the simple but at the same time complex question.
    "What's it like owning a 38 foot coach?"
    My answer is its great. It has helped make new friends, taken us to places we have dreamed of going to and allowed Diane and I to be closer together. It has improved our lives because we let it.
    Derrick
  15. -Gramps-
    I am not sure if taking pictures of a Great Horned Owl nesting in a large live oak over our coach made me think of this old FMCA blog entry or not, but if it did then that is okay.
    I wrote it not long after we lost our grandson.  I re-read it myself this morning and I like it so maybe you will too.   Looking Up!
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