La Buena Vida - 1970-1971

The assignment for the Life Writing class I'm taking was to make a timeline of important events in our lives, then write about one of those events. Here's my story (with added links and photos) about our move to Miami, Florida:

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In the summer of 1969 my husband, Richard, two daughters, eight-year-old Kim and six-year-old Kelli, and I moved back to our home in Orange, Texas after a six-month stay in Mentor-on-the-Lake, Ohio. As happy as we were to be home, it didn’t take long for us to realize at least one advantage of living away from there. Richard was my second husband. Our friends and families in Texas couldn’t resist giving us regular updates on the activities of my ex-husband or his ex-wife, reminders that plunged us momentarily into our separate, not-so-pleasant pasts. In Ohio it hadn’t been like that; new friends and neighbors there treated us like the bonded family unit we’d become since our marriage a year earlier.

That’s one reason why we didn’t hesitate to move again the next summer, 1970, when the number of East Texas construction jobs trickled down and Richard’s union spread the word that  the Turkey Point nuclear facility in Homestead, Florida, near Miami, was offering premium pay for highly skilled, certified welders. We put our house up for sale, sold it quickly, then waited around for both the closing date and my ten-year class reunion. Over the next few days we put our best furniture in storage, gave away the rest of it, then loaded up the station wagon and a small trailer, said our sad goodbyes, and took off early one morning for the bright lights and big city.

Our first bit of bad luck occurred about four hours into our trip when the station wagon broke down as we passed through a seamy-looking, industrial section of New Orleans. Richard managed to get the engine going again long enough to coax it to an auto-repair shop, where he parked and unhooked the trailer at the side of the lot. The family parked in the non-air-conditioned shop office, spending an entire afternoon and a hefty chunk of our savings there.

Upon our eventual arrival in Miami, we checked into a motel and settled in to stay for a few days. The next morning, after a Waffle House breakfast, Richard left to locate the nuclear plant, where he was tested for the better part of the day and hired to begin work the following day. Meanwhile, we began searching the newspaper for a furnished house in a good school district. The cantaloupe-colored, stucco-sided, two-bedroom house we found and rented was owned by a Cuban lady, Mrs. Phelps, who had recently moved to New Jersey, leaving behind cupboards full of dishes and an attic full of Christmas lights and decorations. The house was on a corner in a neighborhood of similar stucco, pastel-colored houses, the elementary school within easy walking distance. A fruit-laden mango tree grew in one corner of the backyard near a cluster of other small trees on which Mrs. Phelps had cultivated beautiful orchids.

Kelli and Kim in backyard of Miami house.

On our first full day in the house Richard went to work, I got busy putting the house in order, and the girls went outside to play. Moments later I heard a scream and looked out to see Kelli flat on the ground. She had tried to climb a tree in the front yard and had fallen from its branches. She was unconscious for a brief moment, her thoughts noticeably confused after she came around. I was panicking inside but tried to remain calm. We had sold our second car before the trip; I had no way to drive Kelli to an emergency room, even if I’d known where to find one. Our telephone wasn’t due to be installed for another day or two, so I couldn’t call for help, and we hadn’t yet met a single neighbor. All I knew to do was pray silently, put an ice bag on the bump on her head, and watch her constantly to keep her from falling asleep. As I remember it, she recovered long before I did.

On Richard’s first day off work we couldn’t wait to explore the tropical paradise we’d call home for the immediate future. We put our bathing suits on under our clothes, jumped into the station wagon, and drove over the bridge across Biscayne Bay to spend the day on glamorous Miami Beach. We were disappointed to discover that most of the beachfront property was inhabited by high-rise hotels and restricted to their guests. Finally, after driving around for a while, we spotted a stretch of beach that was accessible to us. Amazingly, it wasn’t even crowded. We undressed in the car, picked up our blanket, towels and picnic lunch, walked across an asphalt parking lot into the sand, and got our first clear view of the Atlantic Ocean. We were filled with excitement as we dropped our bundle and raced knee-deep into the gently lapping waves. The girls squatted down to immerse their bodies in saltwater up to their necks, and Kim stood up again almost immediately, saying, “Look! I found a balloon.” Kelli popped up right behind her: “I found one, too!” Each of them was holding up a used condom. Richard and I gaped at each other for a split second before he ordered, “Drop it and get out of the water; we’re going home.” Our first dip in the Atlantic Ocean had been in a stream of raw sewage from a nearby posh hotel. I don’t remember how we explained our sudden departure to the girls.

Things got better after that. The girls made friends in the neighborhood and more friends once school started. I was Kelli’s first-grade room mother and did my share of walking the same path they walked to school, usually with cookies or cupcakes in hand.

We quickly established favorite places to go in Miami: the Steak & Brew restaurant for Saturday night family dinners that included unlimited pitchers of root beer; the rock quarry where the girls could swim in clean, crystal-clear, fresh water; and, best of all, the grassy inlet where we could wade out and surf fish in saltwater. We baited our hooks with long strips of mullet and caught two-foot-long, hard-fighting barracuda, one right after another. Richard cleaned them on the spot, storing thick fillets in an ice chest to fry when we got home. We left those fishing trips feeling tired but happy. Richard drove while I rode shotgun with my bare feet on the dashboard and sang along with the radio about "me and you and a dog named Boo.” In the backseat the girls munched on fresh peaches, the dripping juices leaving trails in the dirt on their arms. We fished that same spot many weekends, abandoning it only after staying there till nearly dark one evening when Kelli got her line tangled on her last cast and Richard slowly inched it back in to find a five-foot shark on the end of it.

Kelli and Kim in crystal-clear waters of rock quarry.

We visited the popular tourist attractions, too, mostly when friends from Texas came to see us. Unenlightened in those days about the plight of dolphins, we thoroughly enjoyed their leaps, spirals and splashes at Miami Seaquarium. We visited the Serpentarium, fronted by the towering head of a giant, concrete cobra, and made numerous trips to Parrot Jungle & Gardens, a mecca of tropical plants and brilliantly colored birds where we took turns being photographed with parrots on our heads and outstretched arms. We went several times to the real tropical beach, the kind we’d expected in the first place, at Crandon Park on Key Biscayne. We’d alternate playing in the ocean and resting in the sand, frequently treated to Calypso rhythms on drums and guitars played by dreadlocked musicians set up under a tarp a little way down the beach. We also enjoyed watching the ever-present Limbo dancers: young, suntanned men and women who threw their heads back and laughed as they competed to answer the challenge: “How low can you go?”

Top to bottom: Kelli, Kim and Linda at Parrot Jungle

Kelli and Kim on the beach at Crandon Park

One day we traveled north of Miami into the Everglades National Park to show Kim and Kelli the wilderness, a place untouched by time (if you don’t count the wooden boardwalks with railings to keep fools and children from falling into the swamp). We took off once for a weekend mini-vacation in Key West, driving seemingly endless miles across narrow roads and bridges to see sea turtles and spectacular sunsets. Another day we woke the girls up before daylight and drove to Cape Canaveral (called Cape Kennedy then) to see the launch of Apollo 15. A lot of other people must have had the same idea, because what I remember most about that event was a vast sea of parked cars that stretched interminably around us. We waited and waited, in and out of the car, and finally saw in the distance a big puff of smoke that obscured the rocket-ship headed for the moon. 

At some point we did get a second car. Having the station wagon always available made my life easier, and the little blue Corvette (used) that Richard had fallen in love with was perfect for him to drive to work and for the rare nights we went out dancing. Those were the days when hot pants were in fashion, so I’d put on mine, either with go-go boots or Roman sandals with long straps that wrapped around my calves and tied behind my knees, and Richard would wear his striped, flare-legged pants and a gauzy shirt that had puffy pirate-sleeves and a big, pointed collar, leaving the shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest. He’d pick up the kids’ favorite baby sitter, then we’d head out in the Corvette for a night on the town. Miami was known for its nightlife, but it was expensive. Most of the nicer clubs had a three-drink minimum, and we limited ourselves to that. Fortunately, I never acquired a taste for liquor, so we’d both order bourbon with Coca-Cola on the side. I’d drink all the Coke, and Richard would drink the bourbon.

Linda, Kelli & Kim with Richard's blue Corvette.

Linda, posing with Flamenco dancer at Miami Beach nightclub. 

There were plenty of ordinary days in Miami, too. Richard worked from four to midnight, so I slept in shifts. I’d stay up until he got home around one in the morning, fix him something to eat while he unwound and we shared the news of the day, then we’d go to bed. I’d sleep for a few hours, get up to get the girls off to school, then go back to sleep another hour or two. After a while it began to feel normal. We had a house to clean, grocery shopping to do, dentist appointments to keep, all the things people need to do wherever they live. Somehow, though, surrounded as I was by dense greenery, vivid flowers and bright sunlight, I didn’t mind those chores and errands as much as usual.

In Miami I felt alive, almost electric, with a grand sense of freedom and adventure. We lived there for just over 18 months. When the nuclear expansion became operative and Richard’s job ended, we moved on to new places and new adventures, but I don’t think we were ever again as carefree as we’d been during our Florida days.

I’ve been told that Miami has changed in the forty-plus years since we were there, that it’s a harder, harsher place to raise a family now, not as safe as it once was. I guess that’s true of most places.

"I just looked around and he's gone..."

What I remember most about that day is the overwhelming sense of despair, a heaviness that settled over America's shoulders in the hours after the news broke and may never lift entirely.

JFK was my president. I hadn't voted for him -- wouldn't be old enough to vote until four days after his death -- but I'd stood toe-to-toe with my parents and other potential voters more than once before the 1960 election and argued vigorously on his behalf. He was an inspiration to me and to so many others whose hopefulness and innocence would be shattered by the bullets fired on a November day in Dallas, Texas.

I've been to Dallas, toured the museum at the Texas School Book Depository, and paid my respects to President Kennedy there by writing what he meant to me in a book provided for that purpose. I was there with my younger daughter, Kelli, and her daughter, Kalyn. Because Kelli was the baby I'd carried in my belly on the day the president was shot, it was especially meaningful to be with her at that museum, to give her a sense of the historical events that took place shortly before she was born and to affirm for both of us that life goes on beyond our bleakest days.

We stood outside the Texas School Book Depository on a sunny July day and watched the people come and go. It seemed such an ordinary place, a downtown building typical of its era, a structure incongruous with its tragic history.

Texas School Book Depository - Dallas, Texas - July 1996

We walked on the grassy knoll, a patch of green that wouldn't have drawn a second look until the people who stood on it fifty years ago today witnessed the assassination of a United States president.

Grassy Knoll - Dallas, Texas - July 1996

It's been half a century since those fatal bullets flew. The wounds still feel fresh.

__________

The song is "Abraham, Martin & John" by Dion.
Thanks to Somewheremaybe for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

Road Trip

One-a-Day Redux
Day Sixteen:  Morning

I'm not usually a big fan of mornings, only because they come too early in the day, but I have to acknowledge that the mornings I've spent on road trips have been some of the finest hours of my life. There's something enchanting about getting up while it's still dark, piling the kids into the car, and watching the sun rise in your rearview mirror. There's little or no traffic at that hour, so the road ahead of you lies open as you travel toward new sights to see, new adventures to unfold.

The kids, naturally, fall back asleep as soon as the car begins moving. It'll be a while before you'll need to mediate disputes about who's touching whom, who's intentionally putting one foot over the unmarked halfway line of the seat, or who won't stop looking at whom. For the time being, the silence is broken only by the sound of the tires singing on the pavement.

A couple of hours later the sun is above the tree line, and the workers of the world are arriving at their jobs. It's a good time to stop for breakfast; the kids are awake now and they're hungry. If you're passing through a town, you begin to salivate at the thought of a pecan waffle at the local Waffle House. If you're on the outskirts, you look for a truck stop, where you're pretty sure you'll find thick, fluffy biscuits served with peppery white gravy on the menu. Whatever you choose, there'll be bacon on the side and cold, fresh orange juice. You pull into the parking lot, brush the kids' hair, open the paper bag at your feet and pull out the Baggie containing the wet washcloth to wipe the sleep from their eyes, then you walk single file across the parking lot, following the smell of food.

Back in the car forty-five minutes later, on the road again, everyone is full, happy, and ready to ride. You'll all be tired and snippy by the end of the day's travels, but you don't think about that now. Now, in the full glory of morning, all your thoughts are on the bright, blue sky, the changing scenery you pass, the next curve in the road, and the miles and miles of possibilities that stretch out in front of you.

Mornings like that? Those, I like.

A Place Untouched by Time

A few weeks ago my online friend and fellow blogger, Patsy, posted a 1992 song I'd never heard before. I loved it instantly and downloaded it from iTunes after listening to it only once. The piano and violin music at the beginning and end of the song are hauntingly beautiful, but it's the lyrics that capture my imagination. They tell a story about the changes that have occurred in Florida's Everglades as a result of man's intervention. That story immediately evoked this memory:

When we lived in Florida in the early 1970s, my husband, our two daughters, and I took a day trip into the Everglades. That was the first time we'd ever explored a real swamp, with its cypress knees sticking up out of the water and Spanish moss hanging from the trees. We walked above the water on a wooden boardwalk, a welcome safety feature that didn't detract from the sensation that we were in a place time had forgotten. The air was hot, damp, and thick with an almost mystical wildness.

We stopped at one lookout point and studied the nature that surrounded us. Directly below us was an alligator, one at least ten feet long, lying perfectly still. We watched a number of big fish swim back and forth in front of the gator's face, fish we thought might make a good meal for a hungry animal, but the alligator didn't blink an eye. We watched for several minutes. Just as we began to wonder whether the gator might be fake, another tourist standing near us opened a cellophane snack pack of peanut-butter-filled cheese crackers and dropped one over the railing. Before the cracker sandwich hit the water, the huge alligator began to roll. Roiling the water with the speed of its movement, it opened its mouth and caught the snack easily, then slammed its powerful jaws shut and settled once again into its own lookout point under the boardwalk. So much for a place untouched by time.

With a nod of thanks to Patsy for introducing me to this song, I'm choosing it for this week's Saturday Song Selection: 

The song is "Seminole Wind" by John Anderson.

Thanks to morgan7852 for posting this video on YouTube.

Click here to read the lyrics.

Sofas, So Far - Part I

Golden to Silver Val is currently participating in an A-to-Z challenge, choosing daily post topics in alphabetical order. In the last paragraph of yesterday's post, "C...is for Couch," she wrote: "Take a little trip down memory lane sometime when you've got nothing better to do and think about all the events that took place during ownership of different couches. You know a couch is a pretty intimate member of the family.....just look at all the photographs it managed to get into."

So I did. As soon as I finished reading her post, I opened my photo-organizer software and began browsing for pictures of sofas. I used to call them couches, too. When, I wondered, did my word for them change? Or where did it change? We moved so often, and I picked up bits of regional dialect every place we lived for any length of time. Regardless of what it's called, Val is right: each couch has a history.

The first sofa of my adult life came along with the first husband. It was a shrimp-colored, textured-vinyl one from his bachelor pad--not my taste at all. I don't have any photos to show you, but there's a vivid image of it in my mind.

Midway through the fourth year of that marriage, my father made a rare cross-country visit. Seeing the sparseness of our living room, he took me furniture shopping, and part of that excursion included picking out the style and fabric of what would become a custom-made sofa. I chose a Danish Modern sectional arrangement, two long straight pieces with a wedge-shaped center piece to connect them. The fabric, a mixture of slubby brown and orange threads, would bring the texture and earth tones I loved into our home. For the next couple of years that sofa sat with one long arm stretched out under our big picture window, where it witnessed babies grow into little girls and a marriage shred to pieces.

When the marriage ended, the girls and I moved into a tiny rent house with a living room too small for that huge sectional sofa. I moved only one long piece of it with us, along with two chairs that had also been gifts from my father. This photo shows that sofa-section in the little rent house, where it watched me struggle to make ends meet and saw that fabulously modern turquoise chair catch fire when it was accidentally pushed too close to a space heater:

Kelli (left) and Kim with Julie (our four-pound poodle). 

The next photo shows the same sofa and the other amazing chair a little over a year later in another new home, a lovely, roomy one purchased with a new husband who would complete our family by being a loving dad to my girls.

Kim (who currently hates almost all of her childhood pictures).

Shortly after that last photo was taken, we locked up the house and all its furnishings and moved from Texas to Ohio, where we rented a furnished house for the duration of what we knew would be a temporary stay. I don't remember the sofa in that house, but it must have been a bad one, because the next photo shows we kept it covered with a blanket:

Sweet sisters: Kim (left) and Kelli, with butchered haircuts.

That rented sofa saw a family on an adventure, seeing new places, meeting new people, and, in the case of my daughters, experiencing the wonders of snow for the first time. I remember huddling with the girls on winter afternoons after school as we watched Dark Shadows on the tiny TV set that came with the house. We lived there for six months, then moved back to our home in Texas.

A year later we were moving again, to Florida this time, and we didn't know how long we'd be there. We sold the house and either sold or gave away most of the furnishings, including the orange-and-brown couch. The tall orange chair went with us. In Florida, needing to get settled quickly to get the girls in school, we rented another furnished house.

Christmas in Miami: Kim (left) and Kelli.

The ugly sofa in the Florida house watched us open gifts on two Christmases. It saw us eating mangoes picked in the backyard and fresh fish we'd caught while standing knee-deep in the surf of the Atlantic Ocean.

From Florida we moved to Georgia, where we bought a charming little house but never got around to buying a sofa. We put new carpet in the living room (more orange and brown, shag this time) and lounged in there on an assortment of oversized pillows. If somebody needed to sit upright, there was always the orange chair.

(L-R) Kim, Jennifer (my little niece) and Kelli with 

my beautiful mother, who turned 50 that same summer.

We lived in Georgia for two and a half years, then moved to New York. We bought a traditional split-level house there, for which I chose a very non-traditional (but very '70s- influenced) orange, crushed-velvet, freeform sofa. What was I thinking? It consisted of two pieces, an extra-long sofa section with a chaise longue at one end. You can see the chaise end of it here:

Here I am dressed for a formal event in a knit-and-feathered

evening ensemble. Yes, I said "knit." This was the early '70s,

when everything that could be made out of knitted fabrics was and 

men wore double-knit leisure suits with shiny, paisley-printed shirts. 

That sofa saw our family in a state of flux. I returned to the workforce while we lived in New York. My two girls made friends in the neighborhood, but their school experiences were vastly different. One made the transition as easily as usual; the other was bullied because of her deep southern accent. Our family grew when the troubled teen who was my stepson moved in with us.

We lived in New York for three years, then moved back to the same Georgia town where we'd lived before. We rented an unfurnished house there while we were having another home built, but the new home was abandoned in the middle of construction after our marriage took a big hit. My husband had an affair. I suspected it, but it was my stepson who discovered it and told me what was going on. That was the most difficult period of our entire marriage. We worked through it because we had to. My husband didn't want to lose his family, and I had no place to go with the girls. We lived nearly 800 miles away from my only support system, my family in Texas.

I stayed mostly in the kitchen and den of that rented home in Georgia. That's where all the sunlight was during the daytime, and that's where we spent our evenings watching television, including Alex Haley's Roots, on floral-print-covered daybeds that had been in my older daughter's bedroom in New York. The orange sofa stayed in the near darkness of the living room, its only company being my husband, who frequently brooded in there alone, drinking scotch, listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" and a handful of other songs that still bring back painful memories.

We patched things up and made them work for awhile, long enough to move our family one more time. This time the fancy orange sofa moved with us to Louisiana, where it resided in the den of our beautiful new home and was wallowed on by enough grown and almost grown people to wear it nearly threadbare after a few years.

My two daughters and our dog, Radar, none of whom was willing

to let my mother photograph their casual early-morning faces.

We furnished the living room in that house with a beautiful combination that consisted of two sofas, an armless love seat, and an oversized ottoman that could be pushed together into a big, square "conversation pit" or separated and arranged in a variety of ways. We bought all those pieces, plus a coffee table, two end tables, and two lamps at a warehouse close-out price of $295, a grand bargain even in 1978. Here's the only photo I have of the bargain sofa in that particular living room:

Radar liked to sit on these comfy cushions and watch 

out the window for joggers and the mailman.

As frequent readers here already know, my second marriage eventually ended, too, which happened while we lived in our first home in Louisiana. My daughters and I stayed in the house for nearly two years afterwards, until one got married and one moved to New York City. Then I sold the well-worn orange sofa for $50 in a garage sale and gave one of the beige-and-white, conversation-pit sofas to my younger daughter and her new husband. The matching sofa, along with the love  seat and hassock, moved with me to an apartment in Baton Rouge.

At this point in the story, with all of us going our separate ways, it seems like a good place to break what's turning into a much longer post than I had imagined it would be. I don't know why anyone outside my family would find this sofa history interesting, but I'll finish it tomorrow anyway.

Bound for Beaumont - The Epilogue

For those of you who wanted to know what happened after the conclusion of yesterday's post, here are a few more paragraphs that were included in my first draft. Once I remembered that the assignment was to write about the trip--not about everything that came afterward--I had to brutally chop off this ending.

I'll pick it up with the last sentence of yesterday's story:

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. . . I didn't know that our summer vacation would turn out to be a life-changer.

My sister was happy to have a daddy at last. I, on the other hand, was convinced my life was ruined. I cried for days. It turned out that Judy was right and I was wrong. School started in late August, we made friends, and by the time 1958 rolled around, we had all adjusted remarkably well. In the spring of 1960 Mammaw and Packy sold their Springfield home to Southwest Missouri State University, which was expanding its campus. They followed us to Texas and bought a small house a few blocks away from ours. Judy and I, along with our new stepsister, Donna (Tommy's daughter, a year older than Judy), and our new baby brother, Joe (born in the summer of 1958), grew up, got married, had children of our own, and survived our joint and separate struggles with as much grace and dignity as we could muster.

Judy and I are now best friends. The events that followed that trip to Beaumont set us on different geographical paths, but the bond between us is strong. Twice we've traveled together back to Springfield. Twice we've stood side by side, remembering, on the university tennis court that now covers the ground where our childhood home once stood. Judy still lives in Texas; I've been in Louisiana for the past thirty-six years. Each of us is surrounded by children and grandchildren; both of us are happy where we are.

Yet both of us, after all these years, still call Missouri home.

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UPDATE:  Feb 23, 2013, 6:53 PM:

Having once again realized at the last minute that it's time for a Saturday Song Selection, I checked to see what was the number-one song at the time of our 1957 vacation to Beaumont. I learned that the most-played, most-sold song from before our trip until after Mother and Tommy's wedding was Elvis Presley's "Teddy Bear." I had it on a 45 rpm record back then, but it wasn't one of my favorites. I much preferred the flip side of the record, which also happens to be more suitable for a post about one romance beginning (Mother's) and one ending (mine).

The song is "Loving You" by Elvis Presley.
Thanks to mountain824 for posting the video and lyrics.

Bound for Beaumont

The following is what I've written for my first Life Writing homework assignment, which was to write in detail about a trip. It's my understanding that I'm supposed to read this aloud at our next class. (Note to self: take water bottle.) You'll have to read it to your own self if you're interested, but I'll make it up to you by throwing in some pictures at the end.

**********

There were five of us packed into my grandparents' maroon-colored 1949 Chevrolet Coupe that summer we went to Beaumont, Texas. It was 1957, I was fourteen, and I was the only one in the car who had never seen the ocean. The aunt and uncle we were traveling to see had promised us a trip to the beach, which would have excited me if the prospect of being away from my 15-year-old boyfriend for an entire week hadn't made me so gloomy and grouchy.

Our trip had begun at home in Springfield, Missouri. I was born in Springfield, as was my sister, Judy, four years after me. About two years after our father came back from fighting in World War II, when I was five and Judy was one, Mother and Daddy divorced. Mother took Judy and me with her to her parents' home, and we'd lived there ever since.

Mother was doing most of the driving on our way to Beaumont. Packy, my grandfather, rode shotgun. He never was a big talker, and on this trip he seldom spoke up at all except to tell Mother what she was doing wrong. Packy's name was Lewis Saunders. Martin's Furniture Company had made him retire from driving their delivery trucks when he'd turned 65, but he still considered himself an expert driver. "Wanda," he'd say, "you ought not to be so close to that center line. Get over." Or, "Wanda June, slow down, now."

Mother had a quick answer for every one of Packy's driving tips. Mother was smart. She worked for B.C. Christopher & Sons, a brokerage firm, where she spent much of her day standing on a step-stool in her high-heeled shoes, transferring stock prices from ticker-tape to chalk numbers on a blackboard. She was beautiful, too. She would turn 34 a couple of weeks after this trip, but she regularly lopped seven or eight years off her age. She could get away with it, at least until I showed up next to her, skinny as a rail but as tall as she was, and called her "Mother" in front of everyone. It hurt my feelings how much that annoyed her.

Judy sat on one side of the backseat, and I slumped on the other side in a deliberate demonstration of my abject misery. Mammaw, our grandmother Lola, rode between us. Mammaw was a peacemaker, a happy person who appreciated the grace of God, the beauty of nature, and the goodness she believed was in the hearts of all people. Judy and I needed that buffer. We had a classic case of sibling rivalry, fussing and feuding over everything from toys to clothes to the nuances of each word that poured forth from the other's mouth. Mammaw would keep us from sniping at each other and from leaning into one another's space, even if it meant riding for twelve hours with her feet straddling the drive-shaft hump in the floorboard.

The '49 Chevy was a two-door car, so no one could get out of the backseat unless someone first got out of the front. I felt trapped in there. The July temperatures only made it worse. We couldn't have survived the heat with the windows up, so Mother and Packy kept theirs rolled down, creating enough wind in the car to keep our hair blowing over our eyes and into our mouths. The little windows next to the backseat were small, triangular in shape, and could be opened about three inches by sliding them back. Judy and I opened ours as wide as they would go and pressed our faces against the open spaces. We deemed the additional air movement worth the price of getting peppered with road grit and smacked by the occasional flying insect.

We drove straight through from Missouri to Texas without stopping to spend the night. Occasionally, between restroom and gasoline stops, Packy would take over the driving so Mother could get some rest. She slept with one eye open when he was at the wheel, her opinion of his driving being at least as critical as his opinion of hers. Somewhere along the way, after hours we'd spent napping, complaining, heaving dramatic sighs, and consuming homemade sandwiches while the wheels kept rolling, the hills of the Ozarks gave way to the flatlands of East Texas. I saw my first mirage on a two-lane Texas highway and was mesmerized as I watched what appeared to be water in the road disappear magically at our approach. That may have been the first moment it occurred to me that this vacation might not be all bad.

Eventually we pulled into the driveway of my aunt and uncle's single-story, white-painted-cinderblock house. Their sons, Gary, Lew, and Kenny, spilled out the front door to greet us. The boys were stairsteps--eight, seven, and five years old, respectively--and were much taller than they'd been the last time I'd seen them. The whole family had lived down the street from us in Springfield until a couple of years earlier, when they'd moved to Texas to be near my aunt's brother.

My uncle, Neale, was Mother's older brother. He was a quiet, gentle man. He smoked a pipe, handling it in a way that gave him the appearance of being lost in thought, though if he ever had a deep thought, he didn't express it. In Springfield Neale had worked at the U. S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. Now, in Beaumont, he worked as a television technician at an appliance store. That seemed to me like a smart career change: the new job was safer than the old one, and television was getting to be a really big thing. At home we could  already get three channels.

Neale's wife, Yvonne, had grown up in Beaumont. Later she'd been a member of the Women's Army Corps (WAC) and had served in England during World War II. That's where she met Neale, who was also in the service. Now her full-time job was reining in those three boys. Yvonne was rather plain in appearance, except for her pretty eyes, and I'd once overheard Mother uncharitably questioning her intelligence behind her back. Yvonne's strengths were kindness (unlike Mother), tolerance, and resilience. Whatever happened, she rolled with the punches.

Once, during our visit in Beaumont, my uncle invited his boss home for supper to meet the Missouri part of the family. Yvonne baked a cake for the occasion. Unfortunately, ants found the freshly baked layers cooling on the kitchen table and quickly swarmed over them. Yvonne was unperturbed. Judy and I were shocked to see her scrape off most of the ants with a table knife, hand-pick the stragglers, and proceed to frost the cake. When she produced it at the end of our evening meal, we kept our mouths shut and politely declined dessert.

The highlight of our vacation occurred a day or two after our arrival in Texas. Mother, Judy, and I piled into the car with Yvonne and the boys, all of us in our bathing suits, and drove to the beach at High Island. I was impressed by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico that seemed to go on forever. The beach itself didn't live up to the expectations I'd built up based on beautiful pictures I'd seen. Hurricane Audrey had slammed into the Gulf Coast only a month earlier, and the shore was littered with driftwood and other debris washed up by the storm. Everything looked dirty. The exposed particles of broken shell in the sand made me uncomfortable about walking on it in my bare feet, but I managed to tiptoe into the water with the others and stay there long enough to be able to tell my friends I'd been swimming in the ocean. Not that I really knew how to swim.

Thinking we could at least go home with genuine southern suntans, we spread our blanket on the sand, ate our picnic lunch, then stretched out on the blanket. We'd been sunbathing longer than I considered fun when a car pulled up beside us, a convertible with three men in the front seat. They stopped to talk to Mother and my aunt, asking where we were from, how did we like Texas so far, all the usual questions one would ask of strangers meeting for the first time.

The men were headed to a seaside restaurant/bar that we could see from where we were standing. They invited us to join them for a cool drink, and Mother surprised the rest of us by accepting their invitation. The restaurant, which I believe was called Breeze Inn, was nearly empty inside. I was happy to be out of the sun. We sipped our cool drinks--soft drinks for the women and children, beer for the men--under breezes stirred by ceiling fans. While the adults talked and laughed at one big table, we kids sat at a separate one nearby, keeping a watchful eye on the restaurant owners' enormous, sleeping dog, the first Great Dane I'd ever seen.

Everything was different after that day at the beach, and I don't remember much about our activities after that. I'm sure we must have done some sightseeing, but I couldn't tell you what sights we saw. I mostly remember that Mother was spending every evening with Tommy, the man she'd liked most of the three we'd met at the beach. He'd pick her up when he got off work, and they'd be together until after the rest of us were asleep. Mother seemed to be having a great time, but Judy and I were left with our grandparents, aunt, and uncle, none of whom shared Mother's energy or zest for fun, and three cousins who had always driven us crazy merely by being boys.

Our trip back to Missouri was much like our trip to Texas a week earlier. We were headed in the opposite direction, of course, and some of us had sunburns that itched like crazy. There was also a new tension in the car. Mother was quieter. She'd cried when we left Texas, and I couldn't understand why. She'd known Tommy less than a week, so it couldn't have been about him.

Back home in Missouri, I was happy again. My boyfriend came over on our first day back. He sat with me on the front-porch swing and seemed glad to see me. We had the whole rest of the summer ahead of us. Except for the sunburned skin that was peeling off my body in sheets, everything seemed to be back to normal.

I didn't know then that Tommy would call Mother long-distance every single night or that he would come to Missouri and marry her on the 8th of August, three weeks from the day they met. I had no idea that the day after their wedding we would pack up everything we could fit into a small trailer, say goodbye to everyone and everything familiar to us, and move to a little Texas town near Beaumont. I didn't know that our summer vacation would turn out to be a life-changer.

This is the 1949 Chevy when it was new, parked in front of my

grandparents' house. Several years later 
Mammaw and Packy bought it from Mammaw's sister Cleda
 and her husband, Ernest. Cleda is pictured here at left with her
daughter, Nadine, and Nadine's daughter, Kathy.

Springfield, Missouri, about 1949.

Our cousins, (L-R) Kenny, Lew, and Gary.
Beaumont, Texas, July 1957.

My uncle, Neale, and his car, which was the one we rode in to the beach.

Beaumont, Texas, July 1957.

My aunt, Yvonne.
High Island, Texas, July 1957.

Linda (me) on the left, my sister Judy at right,

Kenny in front, Gary in rear.

High Island, Texas, July 1957.

My mother, Wanda, with her nephews, (L-R) Gary, Kenny, and Lew.
High Island, Texas, July 1957.

Mother and Yvonne.
High Island, Texas, July 1957.

The men from the beach. That's Tommy in the middle.

High Island, Texas, July 1957.

With Packy and Mammaw (Lewis and Lola) in front of

the home we'd be leaving a day or two later.

(L-R) Linda, Packy, Mammaw, Judy.

Springfield, Missouri, August 1957.

Surprise! Everything turned out okay!

Standing (L-R): Linda, Wanda.

Seated (L-R): Donna (Tommy's daughter), Tommy, Judy.

Orange, Texas, November 1957.

Whipping through my to-do list

My upcoming VACation has turned out to be a source not only of ANTICIPation, but also of INSPIRation and MOTIVation. Usually I'm mired in PROCRASTINation, but lately I've been moving as if my hind end were on fire. Maybe it's just that the excitement won't let me sit still.

Whatever the source of this unexpected burst of energy, I've been getting so many things done that I'm feeling rather pleased about it. I started out by cleaning out closets, drawers, and bookcases, and last week I hauled ten bags of clothes, 21 boxes of books, including the ones below, and a whole bunch of other stuff to Goodwill. It took two trips, my car packed tightly on both of them.

Among other stuff there was a three-piece set of luggage, two briefcases, sheets, dishes, a large framed picture, a set of canisters, some vases, a small, porcelain-headed clown, and a dozen cute little jars I bought sometime before 1997 and never did use.

**********

Once all that stuff was out of my way, I was able to clean corners I hadn't seen for a while. In the midst of the cleaning my old, trusty vacuum cleaner broke. It still worked fine for bare floors, but a little piece of plastic broke off the box where the carpet attachment plugs in, and the plug kept falling out. I considered the aggravation of continuing to use it as it was, the cost of buying replacement parts, and the cost of a new vacuum cleaner. After a little online research helped me pick out a new vacuum, one that happened to be on sale at the time, I called my daughter Kelli and asked her if she wanted to go shopping with me.

We went to the mall, where the department store had one vacuum cleaner left in the model I wanted, and we had to wait for about 45 minutes until the lone salesclerk was available to help us. I might not have been so willing to wait except that the sale price was $80 off the regular price and I had good company while I waited. When the clerk finally rang up the sale, we were surprised when the cash register displayed a message: "This purchase qualifies for a free gift card." I whispered to Kelli that I didn't want to wait another half hour for five or ten dollars, and right after that the clerk finished entering the sale information on her gift-card screen and another message popped up stating that the value of the gift card was $75. The clerk was as shocked as we were and had to check with her manager to verify that this sweet deal wasn't too good to be true. 

I now think of my new cleaning appliance as my "lucky vacuum."

 **********

My spare bedroom is generally neglected because it's so seldom used, but having had boxes of Goodwill stuff piled in there, it was time to give it a good cleaning. I washed all the bedding from the mattress pad out. Sadly, that was one too many washings for the quilt I use as a bedspread, and many of the little quilt pieces came partially unstitched. The easiest thing to do would have been to get a new bedspread, but I like this quilt and wanted to keep it because a couple of years ago I found two framed pictures that match the quilt beautifully. So, I've spent the last two evenings on the sofa, needle and thread in  hand and the quilt spread across my lap, mending and stitching each loose piece I found. Never mind that I never actually got around to hanging those pictures on the wall; I'll do it now for sure.

 **********

Speaking of sewing, I used to do a lot of it. When my girls were little I made nearly all of their clothes and quite a few of my own. In recent years I got away from sewing, but when I redecorated my living room, it was my intention to make the window treatments myself. I had no deadline for doing that, but I bought the fabric, and sometime later, when  a sewing machine I liked went on sale, I decided to upgrade. Kim happened to be going into Baton Rouge that day, so I asked her to pick it up for me. She did. She brought it to me, I took it out of the box and looked it over, then put it back on a closet shelf to wait until I was ready to get out the manual and learn to use it. I mentioned to someone the other day that I had a "brand-new" sewing machine that was "about three years old" and had never been used.

Well, in the meantime, the bedskirt on my own bed died because of too many dog toenails latching onto the crocheted lace, so I've been keeping my eye out for a new bedskirt. I needed an ecru color, and you'd be surprised how many shades of ecru exist. Finally, I found one that was just the right color, but it had pleats on the corners and I needed the corners to be split. I thought about it and decided I could do that myself on my new sewing machine. So, a couple of days ago I did. The bedskirt turned out great, and the sewing machine couldn't have been any easier to use.

The sewing machine is still out on the table in my den. Yesterday I altered a too-large pair of pants, and they turned out well enough that I plan to do two more pairs (making them fit and turning them into capris) in the next couple of days.

Coincidentally, the receipt for the sewing machine was in the packet with the manual, and the date on the receipt was 12/15/04. Time really does fly.

**********

I've had to cut out daytime television in order to accomplish all this busyness, but I've still managed to get a little reading done. And I'm still on the Appalachian kick, working my way through Vicki Lane's Tales of Appalachia. I'm trying to pace myself so I'll have the last book to read while I'm traveling, but they're entertaining enough that I may not be able to wait.

**********

On May 31, 2007, I wrote about misplacing (or losing) a handful of my favorite photos:

"LOST: A handful of old photos I've been trying to find for almost two years. They're some of my favorites, ones that I've pulled out and scanned to make copies for others. Unfortunately, those scans were on my last computer, the one that died, so I don't have backup copies. I usually keep my photos filed by decade, and I'd pulled some of the best ones from each file and put them all together in a folder so I could keep track of which ones I'd copied. I'm still hoping they'll turn up, but after searching for them for so long, I've run out of places to look. So far I've insisted on thinking of them as "misplaced." Now I'm beginning to move out of denial and consider the possibility that they might be lost for good. It breaks my heart."

Well, last week I found them. They were in a plastic bag in a box that I thought contained nothing but old printouts of genealogy information entered into my database long ago. I was about to throw out the whole box, then decided to flip through the pages one last time. I'm so glad I did. One of those lost pictures was this one of my little sister:

You can tell she was a fun person even then.

I was also missing some (less important) pictures I knew I'd taken on our trip to Eureka Springs 15 years ago. Those turned up, too, neatly organized in an album. Who would ever have thought to look there?

**********

For ten days of this recent cleaning spree, I was puppy-sitting for Lucy and Oliver, Kim's dogs, while she was on vacation in Sturgis, South Dakota. Butch pretty much found himself a quiet corner and stayed out of the way, but Lucy, Oliver and Levi stayed right with me and supervised every task. The work might have been less challenging without them, but it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun.

Thelma and Louise on the road again

Several weeks ago I read two novels in a row that were set in Appalachia. I enjoyed the characters and customs of the region so much that I promptly ordered and read two more books set in the same part of the country. In fact, I sort of went on an Appalachian binge for a couple of weeks. I Googled Appalachian images and checked out Appalachian videos and music on YouTube.

On the heels of that, my sister, who lives in Texas, called me one day on her lunch break. She said she has vacation time she needs to use, her husband can't get away from work anytime soon, and she'd really enjoy a change of scenery. She asked if I'd be interested in going somewhere with her. "My mind isn't made up about any particular place," she said, "but I've been thinking about Tennessee."

My head started spinning. Was her invitation a timely coincidence, or was there really something to this whole law-of-attraction thing?

It took me less than two minutes to say an enthusiastic, if conditional, yes. Of course, I'd have to check with Kim to see if she'd be available to stay here with Butch and Kadi. And I didn't want to cramp my sister's style by not being able to keep up with her, but I am walking much better these days and should be able to maintain a decent pace for a couple of hours at a time. I have budgetary issues, too, but if we travel as economically as we comfortably can, I'll be much happier about dipping into my savings for a vacation than I was about spending money on that last dental crown.

After several more phone calls and a handful of e-mails, it's all working out. We're totally together in our thoughts about what we want and what we don't want on this trip. Our route is planned, hotel reservations have been made, and I don't know about my sister, but I've already started hanging vacation clothes together in one section of my closet so I can see at a glance if there's anything else I need.

At the end of this month we're going to the Smoky Mountains, and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!