Skip to main content

Summer Road Trip_2012_Day 1&2

I know, the blog indicates 'Bessie and Me: My Travels on Two Wheels,' and I just don't have the heart to change the name. The accident may have taken Bessie's life, but it didn't take mine, and my wonderlust wasn't affected at all!I changed my travel plans and with the same amount of anticipation, but a longing for my two wheels, I embarked on my Summer Road Trip of 2012 with an itenerary that includes trains, planes,rental cars, a car trip with my Daisy and the Little Sprout, and there's even talk of a boat trip up the Alaskan Coast....I gave myself over to the journey.Waiting in the Orlando airport is always a treat; thousands of tourists (was someone selling stupid hats on the 13th??), joyful children sporting Mickey ears or'Thing One/Thing Two' T-shirts skitter about, yelping and jumping around their exhausted parents' who stuggle to schlep luggage through the terminal. I sat patiently for my flight to Indianapolis; thinking how many times in the last 30 years have I done this?? I watch the harried parents and although I wax nostalgic for my own daughters when they were little girls,I'm grateful it's not ME this time. The flight is uneventful - the best kind in my opinion - and my sister-in-law plucks me from the arriving flights deck in Indy with none the hustle and bustle of the Orlando airport....I like that too.My sister in law comments on how 'hot' it is ....I chuckle and grab my sweater because anything below 70 degrees is NOT hot. I wile away a perfectly wonderful afternoon with her on their patio, overlooking the cornfield and an emerging Indiana summer while we catch up on family gossip and children...perfect. Some things never change, some people never change, and that's the part of 'going home' that I have learned to count on over the years.Day two: I make arrangements to visit my Aunt Sib and Uncle Gene in Gas City...borrow Dad's Buick (damn, I miss Bessie) and instinctively, as if the route is genetically grooved into my sense of direction, I guide the Buick through Muncie traffic and hit old Wheeling Pike. The asphalt undulates through the corn and soybean fields that stretch right up to within two feet of the road....and I miss Bessie even more as I have to slow down for the deep curves carved into the old road. Small white, wooden crosses with plastic flowers are stuck into the ground inside one 'dangerous' curve, a testament to the life cut short of the driver who failed to heed the warning to slow down, curves ahead. I'm remembering how smoothly Bessie grabbed those curves last summer as the fecund smell of rich Indiana farmland rose up around us and the wildflower scented air rushed over us. Memories always flood back and fill my conscience with this ride; memories of other cars, Indiana boys on an Indiana night....coming home again always freshens those stale memories and I wonder how in the hell did the last 40 years just slip by? 'Like smoke through a keyhole.'As I check in with my Aunt Sib, I am reminded once again, that somethings and some people never change....thank you God. The warm, welcome embrace of a favorite relative is one of the best parts of coming home. The sound of a toddlers laughter fills the house as Aunt Sib explains....'we are taking care of.....' a great-granddaughter. I have two aunts who feel it's 'their ministry' to raise babies...and they do a great job of it....biological kids, foster kids, neighbor kids, grand kids....they all get the love in my aunt's house. I walk out to the garage with my uncle to gaze lovingly at his '66 Mustang which he has painstakingly restored....something about Indiana and cars, my family loves cars (and motorcycles). After a few hours of catching up on everyone's lives, I bid farewell and count my blessings for my family (well, most of them) and head the Buick back across Grant and Delaware county....Dad promised me a breaded tenderloin for dinner this eve:-)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Waning Light

  There are times I dread the waning light of day, That golden hour which precedes the night. The night brings sad memories. The night brings old terrors. The night brings lonely hours, Sleepless hours, Blackness filled with sorrow. The darkness carries the quiet, the quiet commands the truth. The night accentuates my aloneness; it echoes my fears. The darkness makes me yearn for my children and for my loved ones long gone. The night plays a melancholy tune in my head. The night makes me yearn for the light of day when everything is new once again.                                                                                                     ~ Author: Debi Tolbert Duggar   As a...
Post a Comment
Read more

#Scattered_TheBox

     Bree sat silent in the passenger seat of Della’s Range Rover as they drove away from the city towards Bree’s farmhouse. Della respected her friends silence, glancing furtively towards Bree, checking for what? Della didn’t know; was there a protocol for ‘how to act when your friend is told she has a few months to live?’ Della wasn’t sure and at this moment her heart hurt as if it were being squeezed by a giant hand intent on crushing the organ in her chest.       Della met Bree Maxwell at the registrar’s office in 1974 at the University of Chicago. Just two long-haired hippie chicks in bell bottom denims and crop tops among thousands, struggling to look cool while simultaneously overwhelmed by the process of registering for classes. The two became fast friends and shortly thereafter they met Tish and Ann, also freshman. The foursome became inseparable and forged a bond that has endured four decades.         Bree is the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Summer Road Trip_The Warehousians

June 16, 2012 In the summer of 1969, when everyone old enough and hip enough was flocking to Yasgar's Farm in upstate New York for a music festival called Woodstock, I and most of my friends were looking forward to starting high school. The tidal wave of rock n roll, free love, tye-dye, psychedelics, and peace was just beginning to roll across the country from the west coast; it would find willing participants in the sleepy little mid-western town I grew up in. It was music that brought us together in the early '70's at a seemingly abandoned building in downtown Marion Indiana (righteously name The 7th Street Warehouse), and it was music that brought us together Saturday night in a building once occupied by Freel and Mason drugstore in downtown Marion some 40 years later for a first attempt at a 'reunion' of sorts. Our 'Prophet,' Duke, started a Facebook Page about a year ago, called the '7th Street Warehouse People,' which mushroomed (no pun intend...
Post a Comment
Read more