The bad weather that had been predicted rolled into central Arizona right on schedule, with cold, a gloomy sky, and rain. Monday was a gray day in more ways than one for me.
I got an e-mail first thing in the morning that one of my oldest and dearest childhood friends, Dan Connell, had passed away Friday in our old hometown of Toledo, Ohio. I’ve known Dan since I was thirteen, and could not begin to count all of the adventures and misadventures we had together. The news took me by surprise and really broke my heart. Dan went through a bout of colon cancer a few years ago, and seemed to come through it okay. But a few weeks ago his cancer came back, and he went fast.
Terry and I stopped to visit Dan and his special lady, Patty, while we were in Ohio for the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) rally in Bowling Green, in July At that time he said the doctors had told him he was completely cancer free, and he felt great. We had a good time sitting on his back porch swapping stories of all the silliness we got into as youngsters, and reliving those carefree days from so long ago, when we were ten feet tall and bulletproof.
I’ve lost a lot of friends in my life, and it always hurts, but Dan’s passing has really hit me hard. When you lose friends that you meet as adults, you miss them, but you don’t have that long history of growing up together that you do with childhood friends. And it reminds you that you, too, have to make that final last journey someday. It also reaffirmed for me that life holds no guarantees, and if you love somebody, you should not allow one day to go by without telling them so. Don’t let petty spats, words said in anger, or just the everyday pace of life keep you from doing that. Tomorrow may be too late.
About mid-day yesterday, longtime readers John and Karen Knoll stopped by to visit, and to pay for their registration to our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma. John and Karen are spending the winter at Meridian RV Resort, and they keep telling us how nice it is. We’ll have to stop in and check it out one of these days.
All afternoon the sky got darker, and the temperature continued to drop. It sprinkled off and on, and during the evening it started to rain steadily. It looks like we’re in store for the same all week long. Like I said, a gray start to a gray week.
Thought For The Day – Do it now, there might not be a later.
Friday our Gypsy Gathering rally ended, and after the morning coffee and donuts, I walked over to Dave and Jean Damon’s fifth wheel trailer, where Jean, a professional masseuse, gave me an wonderfully relaxing massage. Jean was trained in the Philippines, and by the time she got done kneading and prodding my sore, tired muscles, I was so relaxed that it was all I could do just to walk back to our motorhome.
Besides her massages, Dave and Jean were also selling 303 Products at the rally, and they did very well. We first met this nice couple when we were all vendors at the FMCA rally in Bowling Green, Ohio, and struck up an immediate friendship.
Back at the motorhome, Joe and Vicki Kieva stopped in for a chat, and as they were leaving a long series of visitors arrived at our door as rally attendees came to say goodbye before they hit the road. I tried to be good company, but I was so relaxed after my massage that I’m afraid at times it was all I could do to hold up my end of a conversation.
Friday night a bunch of us all went to the China Wok Buffet here in Celina, which I rate in the top percentile of Chinese buffets we have ever visited. It is so good that this was our third visit in the two weeks we’ve been in town!
Here is a photo Miss Terry took of some of our group. That is Nancy Hazelton on the left, and beside her is Mike Loscher, myself, Ron Speidel, and Ken Barker. On the right is Orv Hazelton, and in the background is Brenda Speidel. Elaine Loscher was camera shy, so you can just barely see her arms next to Orv. Billie Barker was off checking out the buffet line when this picture was taken. We all stuffed ourselves, and don’t be too surprised if Miss Terry and I don’t sneak back one more time before we leave Celina for good.
After a busy week of getting up at obscenely early hours, working hard to keep everything at the rally on track, and getting very little sleep, Miss Terry and I played lazy Saturday morning and slept in. Once we woke up, we lay in bed a while, just enjoying some much needed quiet time together, and talking about the week just past.
Once we were up, things got busy really fast. I had no sooner opened our front window curtain and the window shades before somebody was knocking at the door. We had a ton of paperwork to catch up on, as well as settling our account with the fairgrounds for the rally rental, but I’m afraid we didn’t get much done. But that’s okay, we wanted to be sure to spend some time with everybody we could.
Sometimes we feel pulled in a dozen different directions at one time, and we had to tell some people “I’m sorry, we just don’t have the time,” but there are just so many hours in a day. We love visiting with our friends and readers, and we really hate to be rude, but sometimes we have no other choice. We just hope that they will understand.
Today we will drive 215 miles south to Lexington, Kentucky, where I have my annual appointment at the V.A. hospital on Monday morning. As soon as that is over, we’ll turn right around and come back to Ohio and spend a week or so gathering stories for the next issue of the Gypsy Journal, which we need to get printed and mailed before we head south for the winter
Thought For The Day – Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.
We had another busy day yesterday. I had a lot of work to get done, but I decided to cheat and go play for a while first. There was a gun show in Shipshewana, the Amish center 20 miles east of Elkhart, and I have wanted to get out that way and drop some bundles of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal at the campgrounds in that area, so I decided to combine business with pleasure.
Shipshewana, best known for its flea market, is an interesting place. In the past I have called it sort of an Amish theme town, in that you will see lots of Amish people in their horse drawn buggies and plain clothes, but also shops packed with tourists buying everything from overpriced quilts and crafts, to delicious cheeses. You can even (for a fee) take a ride in an authentic Amish buggy!
And Shipshewana is always a busy place! The main street through the business district is only a mile or so long, but it can take you a long time to cover that distance with all of the traffic. Cars, tour buses, RVs, buggies, Amish riding bicycles, and people on foot create an obstacle course that you have to be very careful to maneuver safely through.
After an hour or so of wandering through the gun show, and wishing I had kept all of the shooting irons I have sold over the years, I dropped Miss Terry off at E&S Sales, an Amish bulk food store, and then backtracked to drop off a couple of bundles of newspapers at the Shipshewana South Campground. There is also a Shipshewana North Campground a couple of miles north of town, which we had hit on the way in. The northern campground is never as full as the southern, which is within walking distance to everything in town, and both places are always clean and have friendly people in the office.
E&S was packed with shoppers, and when I caught up with Terry we spent a while browsing everything from a huge assortment of flour and other baking goods, to bulk candy and a dozen or more varieties of cheeses.
We had spent more time in Shipshewana than we had planned to, and when we left we stopped at a roadside produce stand, and when we left there, I told Terry I had to get right to work as soon as we got home. Yeah, right!
Dennis and Carol Hill from the RV Driving School had arrived at Elkhart Campground while we were gone, and as we pulled up we saw them and they came over to say hello and tell us all about their summer adventures RVing in Alaska. We just have to make that trip one of these days! Sometime during their visit, somebody mentioned dinner, and Terry and I realized that it was 5 p.m. and we had not had anything to eat all day long. So we piled into their car and went to Ryan’s Buffet for dinner and more good conversation.
When we returned to the campground, Ruth Fleck and Linda Jensen were waiting at the bus. We had met them in Albuquerque at the Affinity Rally, and ran into them again at the FMCA rally in Bowling Green, Ohio a couple of weeks ago. We visited with them for a while, and Bill Joyce and Diane Melde wandered over to join in the party.
Finally, about 8 p.m., I excused myself and went inside to get some work done. Sometimes you just have to throw your plans out the window and go with the flow.
Thought For The Day – Dream as if you will live forever, live as if you will die tomorrow.
We left Bowling Green State University Friday morning, and though I had been worried that we might get stuck in the field where we were parked, we got out just fine. We stopped for fuel, then drove north about ten miles on Interstate 75, skirted the west edge of Toledo on Interstate 475, then picked up U.S. Highway 23 and followed it north into Michigan.
The line at the dump station in Bowling Green was really long, so we decided to stop at the Cabela’s Outfitters in Dundee, Michigan, about 45 miles north of Bowling Green, to use their dump station. Apparently quite a few other folks from the FMCA rally had the same idea, because there were several motorhomes waiting to dump. We also needed to make a bank deposit, so we unhooked the van and Miss Terry ran off to do that errand while I waited in line to dump. She needn’t have hurried, because I was still in line when she got back.
Several rigs ahead of me pulled up, dumped, and quickly went on their way, but you know there always has to be one jerk in every crowd. A guy in a big diesel pusher pulled up to the dump station, got out, didn’t like his position, got back inside his coach and maneuvered around a bit, got back out, still didn’t like where he was, and repeated the process again. Then he puttered around, opened his sewer bay, closed it, went back inside his coach, came back out, opened the sewer bay again, then opened several other bays until he found his rubber gloves and put them on.
Then he took out his sewer hose, hooked it to his tank outlet, realized that it was too short, and went to two other coaches until he could find somebody to loan him an extra length of hose and a connector, which he attached to his hose and finally dumped. That chore done, he rinsed out the hoses, unhooked the loaner hose, unhooked his sewer hose, replaced it in the bay, returned the loaner hose, went back to his rig and opened two bay doors before he decided where he wanted to put his gloves, changed his mind and got them back out and put them in a different bay, and finally got inside his coach. And sat there. And then he sat there some more. People started blowing their horns and the fellow ahead of me was ready to do him bodily harm before the fool finally drove off and the line moved forward, and eventually I was next in line to dump.
That was when an idiot in an SUV pulling an Airstream trailer came the other way through the parking lot and tried to shoehorn himself in behind the rig that was finishing dumping. No way was that going to happen, and Bad Nick went flying out of the bus to explain the facts of life to the guy behind the wheel. Meanwhile, the air was split with blaring horns as people who had waited patiently in line let the offender know that he wasn’t going to get away with that!
He decided to play dumb and said “Oh, are all of you waiting to dump? I’m sorry,” before beating a hasty retreat.
We wasted an hour at the dump station, but eventually got back onto the highway and followed it north until it joined Interstate 75. Traffic was heavy all the way from Toledo to Bay City, with some particularly bad stretches in Ann Arbor and Flint, where nobody seemed to know what a yield sign, a turn signal, or a rearview mirror was for.
By the time we turned west on U.S. Highway 10 at Bay City, I was more than ready to get on a slower paced road. An hour later we joined State Highway 115 and took it to U.S. Highway 131 near Cadillac, and with a couple more zigs and zags down two lane highways we arrived at my cousin Terry Cook’s place just south of Traverse City about 6:30 p.m., having logged just over 300 miles.
We backed into our usual spot in Terry’s driveway, received warm greetings from the entire family, and hooked up to water and electric. We’ll be here for a few days as Miss Terry has her annual visit to her oncologist, and we enjoy some time relaxing with family. After being up early every morning at the FMCA rally, the first order of business will be to turn the telephones off and sleep late every morning!
Thought For The Day – Over prepare, and then go with the flow.
Sometimes the RV lifestyle allows us to not only go to new places, but to return to where we came from. We’re in Bowling Green, Ohio for the FMCA rally, and yesterday afternoon we drove 20 miles up to Toledo, a place with a lot of memories for me.
My father’s work kept us on the move for much of my earliest years, but when I was 13 we returned to our hometown of Toledo, and I lived there until I graduated from high school and went into the Army. I’ve only been back a couple of times since then, the last time almost ten years ago. So it was interesting to wander through the old neighborhood reliving memories from my youth.
South Toledo was a poor part of town, blue collar at best, but I never felt like we did without or were deprived. I had a loving family, good friends, and lots of good times. I would not have traded my teenage years for anything.
Yet, I knew I was not going to live there forever. When I was a teenager, everybody wanted to land a job on the Jeep assembly line or with Libby Owens Glass, or else get on the police force or fire department. A job that would “take care of you.” I didn’t want to be taken care of, thank you very much. I knew I could take care of myself, but it had to be someplace else. The first chance I got to leave, I never looked back. So why now, a lifetime later, do I feel drawn back to those narrow city streets of my youth?
The area certainly hasn’t improved. There are plenty of boarded up storefronts, yet many of the same little corner grocery stores and neighborhood taverns I remember are still open and doing business.
Here is a picture of me at the duplex house I lived in during high school. When we moved in, we had the upstairs and my buddy Ray Pitzen’s family lived below us. His sister Rachel was my first love and my friends were all jealous because she was the prettiest girl in the neighborhood. Today the old house is vacant and there was an eviction notice taped to the door for the last tenants.
After Ray’s family moved away, a series of neighbors rented the bottom half of the house. One New Year’s Eve my parents and I were standing on our upstairs porch when the neighbor below, who had had a lot too much to drink, came out onto his porch and decided to celebrate by popping off a few rounds with his .38 revolver. The bullets tore through the wood at our feet, narrowly missing us, but a chunk of wood embedded itself in my mother’s leg.
My Dad was a cop at the time, and when he grabbed his gun and handcuffs and ran downstairs, I wasn’t sure if he was going to shoot the man, or arrest him. Dad administered some street justice and then a black and white came and hauled the fool away.
My first job was working at Mr. Tsakos’ corner gas station. I begged my Dad to intercede on my behalf when the old Greek businessman didn’t want to hire a kid, because kids were unreliable. Then a week or two later all of my friends were having fun on summer vacation and I decided I wanted to play too, so I told my Dad I was quitting the job. He told me that I could either go to work every day, as I had promised Mr. Tsakos, or I could spend those eight hours a day in my room (way before a kid’s room had computers and TVs), but I wasn’t going to goof off after he had given his word I’d be on the job. I earned quite a bit of money that summer, and came away with a little bit of work ethic too.
And here’s my old school, Libbey High School. Boy, I couldn’t wait to leave that place! A few years ago there was talk of tearing the old school down, and I was sure glad to see that so far, it has survived budget cuts and consolidation. Now, please don’t tell my daughter this, because I have always told her that I walked eleven miles to school in knee deep snow, barefoot, and that it was uphill both coming and going. But we checked it on our van’s odometer, and it turns out it was just 1.2 miles from my front door to the front door of the school. (And I think I remember a pair of shoes or two, to be honest.)
One of our favorite hangouts was Walbridge Park, on the banks of the wide Maumee River, and across the street from the excellent Toledo Zoo. This was where we came to smoke cigarettes, away from parent’s prying eyes, where we came to “duke it out” to settle teenaged arguments, and where we brought our girlfriends when we had our first cars, to watch the submarine races. (Yes, some of them really did fall for that!) It was also here that my family had a going away picnic for me the day before I boarded an airplane for a ride that eventually ended in a jungle halfway around the world.
Terry and I sat on a bench overlooking the old river and I told her about some of my good times at the park, and the goofy things my pals and I did there. I sure am glad I have her with me to share those memories with, instead of some of the young ladies I steamed up the windows of my old Ford with!
I know I could never live in Toledo again, and I know I made the right decision to leave so long ago to pursue my own path in life. But it was interesting to go back to see the old neighborhood once again.
It was nice to take this trip down memory lane. Thanks for indulging me and coming along for the ride.
Thought For The Day – It was all so different before everything changed.
