Family News

Well this was the first day here the trip went well and we got here in Main at about 5:15 we would have been here sooner but the Garmin decided it would be quicker to take the back roads. One of which I wouldn't have taken David's black Jeep up so we ended up seeing lots of back country roads some of which were dirt or more accurately mud.

We got here and went out to a local restaurant that had scallops that were great. Then we came home and talked and went to bed at 10;15 pm after we talked a bunch.

Today we wondered around one of the Bridgeton. We saw lots of shops Rick and Teresa bought wine bottle openers and some other stuff for their new wine / liquor celler. Tammy bought a new bathroom bag like the one we bough last time we wee here in 2008 and lost in 2013.

Once we got back to the house we went walking to a big willow that survived the fire that swept the area in 1947. It was a wonderful walk and Cannon  (Rick and Teresa's water spaniel) Loved the romp through the woods.

We went to the Maritime museum it was fun but the weather had turned cold and most of the stuff was outside or in unheated building so we got cold.

Afterworlds we went to a restaurant in town and had a lobster chowder that was quite good.  

I think it was the next day that we went shopping and I had perhaps the best corned beef sandwich. the two things that stand out ok three. Is the bar that they built in the basement It is a beautiful piece of work by Rick and Teresa. T

I am here in the tri cities staying at Chuck and Barbs It has been good trip, but you shouldn't tell Tammy but I see things that make me wish that we had stayed here the roads are more bicycle friendly the roads are in much better shape. The weather is dryer and nicer this time of year. Right now  I wish that there was a way to travel back and forth with out the plane ride or the three day car ride. Oh well maybe I should create exportation?

Well here we are at the escanaba sunset in it is well retro in that it is a clasic road side motell just off the highway. It is clean and well organized the room is recently painted panneling with a comfortable qyeen size bed a nice bistro table with two chairs a rifregerator and microwave though we had to search we found plugs for two cell phone and a laptop.

The bathroom has recently been redone with new fixttures and a nice walk in shower.

Aunt Olive and Uncle Hue were lived across the road from Grand mother Cox. Their house had been built using what was available the wood on the out side hadn't seen paint as far as I could tell and they hadn't built a crawl space it had wood floors about six inches above the ground. The house was snug and warm in the winter and cool as any house was before air conditioning. It was nestled in among a bunch of cottonwood trees that hovered above the house.

The front door opened into a wide open kitchen dining room laundry room. It had a agitating upright washer ringer machine by a bunch of large windows out of which you could seethe peddle grinding wheel. The main room was walled in paneling and other wood product painted a buttermilk or just stained wood. The bedrooms walls on the other hand were covered with cardboard. Once Aunt Olive let you in she would take you past granddads desk and through a door into a sun room. It had windows that went from about knee high to just below the ceiling. It was a very nice room with a wonderfull view of the trees and warm in the winter and cool in the sumer.

The summer room was about twenty by ten and warm in the winter becuase the bigest peice of furniture. was the funace for the house. It was about 4 foot sqare and 6 foot tall. Uncle Hue had a lounger on the far side and Aunt Olives was on the near  side.

I have talked about the house a lot. I guess that it is because the house and them are combined in my memories. I can't remember what we talked about, but I remember spending hours there some times with my mother sometimes not. Uncle Hue and Aunt Olive were brother and sister and had never had children. I remember that they would liisten when you talked and when they asked what you were upto they would wait for and listen to your answer. I will talk about them in the next sections.

Aunt Olive was the gossip coumnest for the Weiser Star, She wrote this column until she died. She would write us a birthday letter with  a dollar every year.  Tword the end her hand writing wich was always spidery had so many extra squigles that it was hard to read. My earliest memories are of a sender woman with brown hair that had mostly gon to grey. Later she was plumper and all grey or maybe silver is a better description. She wore one peice dresses that hung strait from here sholders to just past her nees. They allways had a pattern of some sort like small flowers dots or a subltle check patters. She was always neet and clean and her hair was always up in a bun. Aunt Olive didn't always smile but she never seemed to frown. I don't remember anything she said to me it has been eroded away by the thirty years that has passed, but I remember here voice some how firm and sweet and gental at the same time. I know se loved me and all of her other neices and nefews as well.

Uncle Hue had been a farmer all of his life. He had developed the long view that men who work the land get. He smoked roll your own Philip Morris cigarette. It was amazing to watch him roll up a cigarette. He would be talking or holding a cup of coffee and with his right hand he would roll it and light it with out even setting down the coffee.

He had hands that had worked hard. Besides being a farmer he was a black smith though he hadn't been one for a long time when I met him. His smithy was a shed in the back that had bits of metal, horse shoes, and bar stock in it. He had probably stopped when the farm had gone from horses to tractors. He like my  grandfather  had lived through the mechanization of the farms. When horse teams were replaced by tractors and wagons were replaced by trucks and cars.

I only remember him with brown hair.He died before it went grey but he was sixty or seventy when he died