An Early Trip to Mexico

Another Memory from Son Sean's Questions

Back in the early sixties, we bought an Aristocrat trailer for camping. One day, we got a flier in the mail advertising an escorted tour of Aristocrat trailers to Mexico. Being adventurous, Forry and I and our, at that time, two kids signed up to go. The trip would involve a month in Mexico during December. We were not the most popular people with either set of our parents as we -- and the grandchildren -- would not be home for Christmas!

We left home the last week of November and returned the first week in January. We had a International Travelall that we used to pull our Aristocrat. We put an old crib mattress and some quilts in the back and that's where the kids spent most of their time playing. (Definitely pre-car seats and seat belts!) We met up with the group of seventeen trailers in California and crossed the border at Tijuana.

We were escorted throughout the entire trip by the Mexican Green Fleet. Equipped with all kinds of tools and extra gasoline, we had a green jeep in front of and in back of our caravan. We traveled all the way down to the Mexican border with Guatemala, staying at campgrounds all along the way. We had a motorcycle police escort into Mexico City. We were surprised to see guards armed with machine guns in banks and stores (and were advised to quickly hit the floor if anything happened...). We traveled from Mexico City down to Acapulco where we had a chance to go diving in the bay (Forry ate his first ever -- and only -- raw oyster!)

If I remember correctly, there were seventeen trailers on the trip. There were a couple of other families with children, but I think Sean was the youngest. Mexicans used to follow us down the street and would reach out to touch Daughter Mary Mae's long white-blonde hair. The kids were actually great ice breakers and even with the language barrier, we had many interchanges with Mexican families.

It was a wonderful trip, full of new experiences and sights. We met some wonderful people and enjoyed the hospitality of the Aristocrat Corporation. The next summer, another Aristocrat Caravan, touring the Northwest, unexpectedly pulled into the ranch yard with a dozen trailers. They spent the night circled in our dooryard. Such fun to have a surprise visit.

I got a chuckle when I looked up Aristocrat Trailers on the Internet.  It turns out they were manufactured between 1956 and 1974, with the company folding then said to be due to the shortage of gasoline. Now they are considered heirloom trailers and people are restoring any of them that can be found!

Today

I had a very hard time getting going this morning. I just didn't seem to want to wake up. My usual first cup of coffee just wasn't doing its job! I had absolutely no energy and felt like I should have just gone back to bed and slept for another couple of hours.

By afternoon, I was finally with it. I got three loads of clothes washed and hung outside. But, that's about all I got done. Oh, I did do two more months of the ranch books. I guess my day wasn't a total loss after all...

It got a little bit breezy this afternoon, so I had to go sit outside to read so that I could keep an eye on my clothes. I didn't want them them to blow off the clothes rack after all. The hummingbirds continue to use the feeders. You can hear the whirring of their wings before you see them. They also make a funny high-pitched cry - especially when they fly up into the trees behind Auntie Violet. I think it's the warning they give to try to scare off the other males.

I had never watched The Big Bang Theory until we were at our friends Juni and Tom's in Albuquerque last spring. They had recorded several episodes and I got hooked on it. It's one of the few shows that actually makes me laugh. Something about it just tickles my funny bone. I suppose it wouldn't have been so funny tonight if it weren't for the commercials that James Earl Jones has been doing recently mocking texting... Anyway, it was great!

Just Another Day ....

There's not a lot that sets today apart. It was a semi-busy day. I added a couple more months to the ranch books to the ones I had done in January and February of last year. I did one load of laundry, a load of towels. that Forry hung outside. I played some Words With Friends and read a couple of books.

I pre-ordered a book I've been hearing about for some time, Jacob's Choice, Return to Northkill, Book 1, by Ervin B Stutzman. The book is due out on February 8th. Instead of ordering it as an e-book, I actually ordered it as a print book so that I can donate it to the church library after I have read it. Set in the mid-1700s, the book tells the story an early Amish settlement. I have heard Erv talking about the research he has done for this book and I'm looking forward to reading it.

I didn't feel so bad about talking about the glorious weather we've been having after my friend Kathy posted a picture on Facebook this morning of a blooming tree in the parking area of her brother's apartment in Phoenix. It was a beautiful day with just a few high clouds skittering across the sky. The clouds made for this lovely sunset --

I took this picture looking out towards the west from the doorstep of Auntie Violet. Can't complain much about a day that ends with so much beauty!

I'm Done!

Well, I'm done with our personal stuff anyway (I've still got the ranch stuff to do, but that's for another day.). It felt good to print out a "Tax Related Items - 2013" Report for our accountant. As usual when I reviewed what we had done with our dollars this year, I wondered if we were doing as well as we could. We have always been glad to donate dollars to those who are less fortunate (now, that's a cliche!), but is it enough? We've always figured a 10% tithe is a starting point, a floor, not a ceiling.

I have noticed that the older I get, the more cynical I am. I am not very quick to donate to unknown causes or those who spend huge amounts of donated dollars on salaries or TV campaigns. I tend to look at percentages of donated income that actually goes to the people or causes the agency purports to help. I have a great deal of difficulty looking at financial statements that show six plus figure salaries. I've also noticed that we tend to donate to causes where we know and trust the people involved. I just hope this kind of scrutiny doesn't translate into stinginess...

Perhaps I've spent too much time dealing with figures lately. In addition to the bookwork I've been doing, I had a conference call this afternoon with the Audit Committee for the Executive Board of Mennonite Church USA. We were reviewing the official audit of last year's financials. It was an interesting phone call. We had people calling in from Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania as well as Indiana. Everyone just had to make a comment about how cold it was where they were. I almost felt guilty saying it was 73 degrees here!

It is only the end of January, but I am beginning to notice more plants that budding or starting to bloom around here. And, my new baseball scorebook arrived in the mail today. (I enjoy keeping score at the games -- it helps me to stay focused and I like to be able to look back at previous innings to see what a player had done the last times they were at bat.) The schedule for the Spring Training Cactus League here in Arizona is out. I've been trying to plan our attendance at games so that we manage to get to all of the ballparks in the area. We're planning to follow the Mariners from park to park.

I am definitely starting to think SPRING!

Sticking to the Grindstone...

I've been plugging away at getting last year's bookwork done. I've made it through September which means I've only got three months to go. Then the ranch books are waiting their turn...

I almost feel guilty about working with all of the windows and doors open and the fans on when I listen to the news about weather in the rest of the country. I literally shiver when I watch the horrible scenes of blizzards and accidents. I'm just very glad we are not there.

We stayed up late last night watching the Grammy Award show. Forry commented that it was probably good for us to watch something like that every once and a while just so we would know what was what on the music scene. I do know that the only music I really recognized was that which was country. I've enjoyed the shows on TV today talking about last night, especially the discussions about the fashions. Even though we were watching it live, we missed a lot of the details.

I read something in Froggy Donna's blog today that I really like. She said that she and Stu get up in the morning "when they wake up." That is so true. We may be up by eight or we may be up after nine or even close to ten. After years of subjection to tyranny of the alarm clock, it is nice to know that there is no reason for us to get up early. I do enjoy getting up an hour or so before Forry, just to have some quiet time before the TV comes on.

We don't have much planned for the rest of the week. I'm just hoping that I can stick to what I've been doing and get the rest of the bookwork done!

Ode to Deacon

I grew up with dogs on the farm and after we were married, Forry and I had a succession of terriers that grew up with our kids. But I've never had a lap dog or one that was really a house pet. Our dogs were farm dogs and mostly they lived outside. They were just part of the farm landscape.

Then we went to Alaska for a National Rural Health Association convention in Anchorage. We made plans to spend a couple of weeks after the convention traveling with our friends, Gail and Danny as well as a third friend who had lived and worked in Alaska as a pediatric physician with the military. Danny was our tour guide planning most of our stops and stays. One of the places we visited was with a man who raced a dog team in the Iditarod. It was late May and the snow was gone, but we visited his facility. His dogs were housed outside, chained to little dog houses, spaced far enough apart so that they could not fight with each other. Gail felt sorry for them and I swear, she managed to pet and hug every one of them. It made us all a bit nervous and even the owner suggested she might want to be a bit more careful approaching strange dogs.

A few nights later, we stayed at some remote cabins. The owner and his wife had a beautiful husky that was chained outside of the office. We were all waiting outside the next morning, eating muffins and waiting for Danny to come back from getting the car gassed. Gail was petting the husky, getting down on her knees to hug him when he panicked and attacked her. She was badly bitten and clawed on the head and neck. We were over 200 miles from the nearest emergency room and were unable to arrange for a helicopter. We had a nightmare ride to the hospital in Fairbanks with my heavily bleeding friend. (Another long story about my nursing experience very quickly coming back to me; Forry's speeding trip over frost-heaved roads; a visiting on-call doctor from Anchorage who did an excellent job repairing Gail's injuries and her refusal to have the dog put down.)

Anyway, as an aftermath of all of this, I realized I had become very frightened of dogs, especially big dogs. When we were out walking or hiking and met up with someone with a dog, I would quickly move without conscious thought to the other side of Forry away from the dog. If I would see a dog, I would cross the street. Not a very good way to live...

Sister Sherry has always had companion dogs. I honestly cannot remember her without one or two or more. When her Anatolian Sheepdog was getting old, she looked for a large quiet dog as an eventual replacement. She ended up with a Mastiff puppy named Deacon.

Deacon was a big dog, even as a puppy. However, he thought he was a lap dog. And he seemed to love everyone -- and he just assumed everyone loved him. When we went to visit Sister Sherry, there was no ignoring him. Unlike Peekaboo, the sheepdog, who didn't pay any attention to me, Deacon wanted to be friends! He also loved water and taking a shower. What do you do when a dog, who already weighed close to a hundred pounds, wants to take a shower with you -- and just comes on in? What do you with a dog, who when he sees you reading on the couch, just climbs up and puts his head in your lap and reads with you? How can you be frightened of big dogs when they act like that?

Deacon was a trusting friendly dog. I sat with him on a blanket in the farmhouse when the vet came, put him under and neutered him. He didn't even hold a grudge, still acted like everyone was his friend. Deacon was a farm dog. I don't know that he ever left the farm. He was my sister's guard dog and befriended a succession of mastiffs that came to stay or to visit. I brought him a Margarita collar from Florida and made him a succession of scarves for him to wear on holidays. No doubt about it, Deacon removed the fear.

One day last year, Deacon jumped off of something and tore the dewclaw on his front foot. Like sometimes happens with big dogs, it never did heal and eventually developed into a malignancy of the bone.

It's taken me a while to write this tribute to Deacon. It's hard to imagine that the passing of a dog I only saw a couple of times a year could have such an impact on me. But I truly feel that I have lost a friend. I will always owe a debt of gratitude to this big dog with an even bigger heart -- and perhaps an even larger debt to my sis who shared him with me.

Art and Jewelry Show in Carefree

We should have gone yesterday, but the weather was so nasty (chilly, overcast and gusty winds), so we decided to wait until today. We went to the Native American Art and Jewelry Show in Carefree's City Square this afternoon. Because it was Saturday, it was very crowded. There was hardly room to walk through the booths. And there was not even a place to stand and watch the dancing, let alone sit down!

For some reason, Forry has taken a fancy to some of the heavy silver and gold bracelets that we've seen. He saw one he liked last week when we were in Cave Creek, but didn't quite take the plunge. Today he found this gorgeous one. It has feathers symbolizing life and longevity; circles of life for balance; and raindrops for abundance.

The creator of the bracelet is Justin Morris, a Navajo craftsman. He is very proud of his work and invited us to come see him at the fair in Fountain Hills in a few weeks so that he can check how it is adjusting to Forry's wrist.

This town square and park is an interesting area with several water features and a variety of plantings. I have to chuckle at the styrofoam cups protecting the tips of the cacti from frost. These are high-class -- they've been painted green to blend....

This huge lizard is a playground slide! I think it's supposed to represent a Gila Monster, but that didn't seem to faze the kids!

We stopped and bought a hot fry bread covered with powdered sugar to share. It was good, but still didn't compare to the ones my friend Tina makes!

Forty Years Ago...

I don't remember dates. Never have. I can tell you what year my kids were born and when our wedding anniversary is, but that's about it. I can sort of figure out sort of when something happened by approximately how old our children were, but that's all.

Then there's our Son Sean. Part of his autism spectrum is an uncanny memory for dates and how old he was when things happened. Today he commented on the phone that it had been forty years since the plane crash on our ranch airstrip when he was in the fourth grade. Then proceeded to ask all kinds of questions about what had happened.

Forry had a series of airplanes during our younger years. He started out with a Cherokee 180; had a workhorse Cherokee Six that we traveled back and forth to Baja with the kids; and later had a twin-engine Aztec.

We had returned from a trip to Mexico with the Aztec (we were going to Colombia with our Claassen friends, but that trip's another story)  and landed back at the FBO (Fixed Base Operator) in Spokane. Forry had been griping to the guys in Spokane that we had bought the plane from that he thought the brakes were not as good as they should be, but they kept telling him it was a much heavier airplane then he was used to...

Forry had not landed the Aztec at the ranch airstrip since he had bought it. The plan was for Joe, the FBO operator and flight instructor, to bring the plane down to the ranch. Then Forry and Joe would make some short field touch-and-goes on the ranch strip, then he would take Joe back to Spokane and then bring the plane back home. Joe hadn't been an FBO operator for long and was in the midst of the biggest airplane sale he'd yet had. His wife said later that he also hadn't been feeling real well that morning.

Forry drove the pickup to the middle of the strip by the trees when we heard Joe fly over while I watched from across the creek by the house. Joe came in a bit hot; realized the plane wasn't braking as quickly as he thought it should; trying steering it up the hillside a bit to slow it; then put power to the engines and attempted to go around. Unfortunately, he didn't have enough runway left and smacked into the ditch at the end of the runway.

Forry came tearing back down the runway in the pickup and I came across the creek at the same time. We tried to open the cockpit door, but it was locked from the inside. We could hear Joe mumbling inside and knew he was alive. Forry managed to get his finger-tips into the crack at the top of the door and literally yanked the door off (you've heard of adrenaline rushes!).  We managed to get his seatbelt unfastened and drug him out of the airplane onto the wing and then onto the ground. As we hit the ground, the aircraft exploded.

Joe broke his arm; he had burns on his legs where his acrylic pants had melted from the burning gas and several wounds on his face where he had smashed into the instrument panel (Aztecs did not have shoulder harnesses, just seat belts). He recovered well and actually gave Forry the flight test for his instrument rating a year or so later.

I credit -- or blame -- that plane crash for my involvement in politics. I made such a stink about the delay in getting an ambulance out to the ranch (we actually hauled Joe into the hospital in Ritzville in the back of the Deputy Sheriff's station wagon) that I ended up running for a hospital district board commissioner's seat at the next election...

I Think It's Thursday...

It continues to amaze me how easily I lose track of days. When you are either going to school, sending children to school, or going to work, you tend to be very aware of what day of the week it is. You looked forward to weekends; to the day you got to go to the library; what day a report was due; what day was payday; what day your vacation started; which nights that nasty doctor was the on-call doctor; what day your flight left; etc. etc.

When you are retired, especially when you are living in an RV and are usually parked in an RV park where there are not children who attend school; the days all blend together. If it wasn't for Sunday worship services, there would be no demarcation of days whatsoever.

I've been working on my annual task of entering all of our financial data into Quicken and QuickBooks so that it can be sent to our accountant. Ever year I swear I'm going to keep it up on a monthly basis and every year I don't manage to do it. I did do January of 2013 at the end of that month and all it did was mess me up because I didn't remember that I had done it and started re-entering it all. It took me a while to figure out why I had duplicates...

The grounds crew has been busy spraying the gravel areas of the RV park the last few days. We were asked to move everything (chairs, tables, etc) off of the gravel and onto the paved pads so that they could spray the weeds. From the drab brown of the grounds when we first arrived, it's interesting to see how green things have gotten. Some of the weeds are actually tall enough to be starting to bloom. Alas, they will all soon be gone.

A Trip to Town

Since we got side-tracked last night with the delightful dinner we had at Sofrita, we ended up going back into town for groceries today. I also needed to go back to Office Max to return the defective ink cartridge I bought last week. I was not looking forward to that! But I had the receipt and the young woman at the front checkout station was very nice about. She told me to go ahead and get another cartridge and then come back.

I decided while I was there I would pick up a multi-color cartridge as well. So I got it and another black one and went back to the check-out. Not only did I get credit for the defective cartridge, but credit for the entire original double pack. Besides which, she apologized for the inconvenience it caused me...! Now, that's good customer service!

From there we went on to Safeway for our groceries. I was looking for pink grapefruit, but couldn't find any. One of their ever-present stockers asked what I was looking for and immediately went to the back and brought out a box. Later I was looking for some Minute Maid Light Lemonade, but the spot on the shelf was empty. When I asked a clerk, he went to the back and looked, but came back and apologized, saying they didn't have any more, but he had checked and Coca Cola would be making a delivery tomorrow morning.

There were a lot of people in the store today. When I got to the check-out, the stands had people lined up two and three deep. I was waiting in line when a young man came and opened up another stand. His hands moved almost faster than I could see -- even the bagger commented she couldn't keep up with him.

Quick, efficient, pleasant helpful staff -- that's all I saw today. A good experience all around.