This month’s rambling was only to be a report on our Journey up north beginning on June 25th and ending on August 8th. I had written sometime in July of the beginnings of that trip but its ending with the death of my beloved sister Anne changed it all. She died on August 2nd with all of her children present. The last, Roey, arriving from Africa just in time. She had entered the hospital on July 27th for what was billed as a routine aneurysm removal. One was removed and another which was thought in advance not to be a problem became one. The operation of four hours was extended to eight and the conditions went down hill from there. We, June and I, were with my nieces, Beth and Winnie Allen, enjoying a beach front stay of two weeks in Townsend’s Inlet, New Jersey. All our communications were by phone. We did spend some time with Anne on July 15th at a cousin’s party hosted by her son Frank and his wife. We spoke to her the day before she entered the hospital. The loss was a shock in as much the whole matter was treated as something she had just put off until it was now the time to do it. Anne would have been 70 in December. She lost her husband to cancer several years ago after nursing him for months at home. She then went back to school and obtained a degree in children’s education and began a day school. Her youngest son, Joe, now a lawyer, who was about 8 or 9 years of age at the time, couldn’t understand why she had to go back to school to learn about kids, since she had so many, namely seven, to give her on the job training. She raised 6 boys and one girl all of whom have made a success of life by learning from her what life is all about, namely, love. She loved all, was loved by all, and her love was the energy of a life filled with giving. We will miss her laugh, her love, but we will as long as we remain here, remember her as one we have been blessed to have had as a sister, a friend, and as one who always made me feel important!
We were looking forward to our extended trip. We had planned to leave on June 28th, and arrive on June’s birthday June 29th. We were going to stay at her sister Mary and her husband John’s new home in Marlton, N.J. When Vacation Bible school was over and we were into the next week our thoughts changed to, “Why wait until Wednesday, why not head out on Tuesday?” So we revised our plans by changing our reservations in Fayetteville, N.C. to Tuesday night, not Wednesday. The “wish to get going bug” really bit us on Monday as I organized the car by adding a roof carrier, and June handled the ordeal of packing for six weeks or more. We began to think what is to stop us from taking off today, when everything is completed and save the cooking and cleaning up of another meal. So we left on Monday, June 26th around 4 PM!
Our plan was to head north to Ocala area have a bit of dinner, and then hopefully onto Georgia before night completely surrounded us. It began to rain. The trip through Tampa to reach I-75 dragged. We were hitting the top of the evening traffic and the hope of Georgia by nightfall quickly diminished. We got to Ocala around 6:30 PM. We picked our usual spot for chow on the road, “The Crackerbarrel: Restaurant and Country Store”. It has good food and low prices. We were seated and ordered, then waited, and waited, and waited. June decided to browse the store. It is one of her standard customs whenever we stop at a Crackerbarrel. It was now over 30 minutes since we had given our order to our waitress. We unfortunately learned that this was her first day on the job! Somehow we manage, it seems, to have this happen enough times to make us suspect that maybe it’s us. Do we look like the kind of people that it would be good to try out that new waiter or waitress on? I guess we’ll never know. The manager, “My name is Kym spelled K-Y-M!” came by. June was gone at the moment. She explained she knew we had been waiting sometime but that regrettably our waitress had dropped our dinner onto the kitchen floor. Our wait would earn us a free dessert (!) June returned. The manager returned. The time of our wait was now, June noted, (more like “explained”) at least 45 minutes despite the Manager trying to make it 35 or less.The manager agreed and stated our meal would be on the house. I had advised June when she had first return, that the manager had been by and said that because of the delay we would receive a free dessert. So now when it seemed the meal would be free, June inquired, “Does it include dessert?” It did. Finally we ate and it was as good as ever, but we passed on the dessert. We were beginning to feel the affects of our tasks of the day, the ride, the packing, and now this delay, so we decided to pack it in for the night. Thus our journey had begun.
We arrived at Marlton, N.J. around 3:30 PM on the 28th (June). We had covered 1089 miles most of it on the Interstate. John and Mary’s new home is a large single in a new development called “Village Greenes” It is restricted to over-55 couples. John and Mary reversed the ordinary trend of leaving the empty nest. Most people move to a smaller home but they did the opposite. They had raised three children in a row home in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia. They went from a two story (excluding the ground floor basement) one-bath house, to a large two bath mansion. It rests on a lot with the rear of house facing a forest. Besides the two bedrooms it has foyer, living room, family room with a large fireplace, breakfast nook, large kitchen, an office/den, and what we in Florida call “Florida room” but there is just a “Sunroom”. This room faces the forest and has a sliding door to a patio. While we were there they placed bird feeders on the slight hill going down to the trees and we watched the variety of birds come for a meals. Unfortunately the feeders also brought gymnastic squirrels who could leap the 3 or 4 feet up in the air to land on the feeders platform. It brought thoughts of squirrel killing to the new owners. The house is airy and bright with large almost floor to ceiling windows, air-conditioned and tastefully decorated by its new residents. A great place to hang out. It became “our hang out” or headquarters, if you will from June 28th until we went to the shore on July 22nd. Incidentally, we have learned that the use of the word “shore” is a Jersey exclusive, elsewhere, say in Florida, people go to the “beach”! We celebrated June’s birthday on the 29th with a dinner at Braddock’s Tavern in Medford, NJ. It had me thinking of a British general in the Revolutionary War. The Tavern was a house with decor that was colonial and dining was in one of its rooms. I found no evidence that it was meant to honor the General.
We spent the first weekend, the fourth of July one, at Tracy’s, June’s daughter’s home in Ardsley, Pa. Looking back it seemed to me June never left the kitchen for long on either of the days there. She is just too good of a cook for any of her children and others to not take advantage of her presence. We did get to walk a bit and the hills of Ardsley became a real challenge after the flats of Florida. As we headed back to Mary’s June began to act like ET. She already was wanting “to go hoome!” The whirl of activities the next three weeks softened the complaint but it remained with us from then on. We had a day in Frank Lukens home meeting with my family, including Anne, and all the cousins.We had another day at my daughter’s home visiting with all of my children and their children. We had an overnight stay at June’s son Michael’s new home. It was there that Mike son launched me into the Harry Potter craze. The fourth book in the Potter’s series had been issued over the weekend and Matthew with thousands of others around the country waited at midnight to buy his copy. He waited with Mom and Dad until 12:45 AM. In the weeks that followed I read all three and understood the reason behind the craze. They are supremely entertaining. The imagination of J.K.Rowling is worth ten TV shows. She brings the world of wizards, goblin, witches, and spells, right into the cyberspace of the 21st Century. Speaking of imagination and so-called children’s books, we had the pleasure of being given a book being written by our ten-year-old granddaughter, Kate Baker. It is entitled “Mrs.Nesbitt and Nobody”. Nobody is the main character. Her problems in school and home make up the plot. We received five chapters and look forward to the rest of it. It is right up there with JKRowling.
[I will continue this journey next time around but for now I’ll hopefully drop each of you a note.]