The Long Distant Grandparent

Here we are again, having survived another week on the planet and in the middle of “Back to School Sales” days, busily making plans for the last month’s worth of summertime and hoping it’ll act like summer for at least that much longer. We really need to get one more extended bike ride in before we remove the battery and put the cover over her for another long winter.

This past week started off Monday night with what will be, for awhile, the last visit from the oldest daughter and her clan. They were planning on being to their new place in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas by the end of the week. They were at the house when I got home and the plan was to go to dinner at the Stable Inn. All of us plus Ri and Adam and Tony and Gigi. A stop at Tony and Gigi’s to pick up a crib and some other stuff for Jennette after dinner was on the schedule also. When we came back to the house we spent some time going thru all Jen’s boxes of stuff to decide what stays and what goes. After that task was complete we spent the rest of the evening hanging out and playing with the oldest grandkid. All to soon it was time for bed and goodbyes. They’d be on their way back to Indiana and then off to Kansas by the time I got home from work Tuesday. I know there’s not much of anything anybody can do about it, but it kinda sucks having grandkids that live too far away to be a viable part of their life. It’s not like we can’t make the occasional trip out there, it’s a good excuse for a bike ride, but it’s not like I’ll ever be around enough to be factor in their lives. Maybe that’s a good thing, I dunno…the jury’s still out on my parenting skills.

Tuesday evening I decided to go up to Quick’s again. Figured I’d better go while the weather was still nice. This time I went by myself, no two legged, or 4 legged co-pilots. I parked in the grass, behind the bank where I usually park and when I came back after a walk around the grounds the other two guys with '56's had parked next to me so that we were all lined up side by side. It looked pretty cool. It was kid’s night and they had games set up for the little ones to play. They were having their cake walk deal too and I managed to win a cake to take home with my driver’s ticket number. The car of the night, one that I’d never seen there before, was a 1957 Olds Rocket 88. A really nice looker, black with a red interior. I spent some time looking it over and shooting some pics of it. I wanted to talk to the owner, even stayed past 8 after everyone had left, but nobody ever showed up to drive it home. Maybe it’s a relative of Christine’s :-)

The rest of the week was just pretty much frittered away. I didn’t do anything constructive around the house, didn’t even do much website stuff, but the time flew by nevertheless.

The plan for Saturday was to head for Hickory Corners and the Gilmore Auto Museum for the car show going on there. I got up about 6:00am to check out the weather and it was “iffy”. Pretty much clouded over, but according to Intellicast there wasn’t much rain in those clouds and it looked to be a nice afternoon, so I made the decision to go on ahead. We’d passed on doing the show last year on account of the weather and I knew if I stayed home I’d end up laying around, doing nothing, so I fired up the ’56 and headed down the road. It was a nice ride over, took my time, wasn’t in a hurry. It did spit rain a little bit once I got down by Otsego/Plainwell, but I didn’t even have to turn the wipers on.

I got to the museum right about 8:00am. It was obvious at that point that the weather was going to have an impact on the size of the show. I was able to pull right in, no waiting, no line of cars. I got a good parking spot right on the main grounds and registered in as car #26. By the time I finished signing in it’d begun to rain pretty steady, not heavy, just a drizzle, but enough to be annoying. So, to avoid getting too wet I killed some time by touring all the barns and checking out all the fantastic autos that the Gilmore Museum has on display. Most of them were from the 20’s thru the 40’s, when auto design was a work of art. I tried to get some photos, but the lighting in the barns sucked so the pics I did get are kind of unbalanced. One of the things that impressed me the most in the barns was the collection of hood ornaments, or "mascots" on display behind glass. The amount of time that went in to the design and manufacture of this one small piece of the vehicle was impressive. I don't think they spend that much time designing the whole damn car nowadays. You look at those cars, the attention to detail and quality of workmanship, the way they were built with the limited technology they had available back in those days and it's hard not to think that we've been on a downward slide for some time now.

By the time I had toured all the barns the rain had stopped and cars were starting to roll onto the grounds one after another. It looked like it was still going to be a decent sized turnout for the day. The rest of the morning I did my usual thing, hoofed around the grounds, shooting pics of the cars that caught my attention. One of the sidebars to the day was a guy there who made balloon characters for sale and we're not talking the normal simple stuff....this guy was a master of his craft. He was selling the balloon Elvis' for 4 bucks and I almost bought one. Finding out the balloons only lasted about a week though killed the deal so I took a pic of him instead using the old adage "take a picture, it'll last longer".

I took a lunch break about noon and had a brat and some chips. Shot the breeze for awhile with my neighbor who had a real nice 40’s era Plymouth coupe and then headed over to the game area and tried my hand at the hubcap toss. The hubcap toss consisted of seeing how many out of 5 hubcaps you could get thru a car door window. I was sure with all my years of Frisbee tossing it’d be a snap, but like a lot of things, it was harder than it looked. It's not like the hubcaps were all the same size or balanced either…..so, although I bounced 4 of the 5 of ‘em off the door, I wasn’t able to get a single one thru the window opening. Demoralized and dejected I wandered off to take more pics. To see all the pics from Hickory Corners click HERE.

At 3:00pm the Elvis impersonator was scheduled to be on stage so I went over to see what I could see and not being a big Elvis fan I could only take about 10 minutes worth of this guy, who I thought sucked as an impersonator, before I had to go take a walk. I came back at 4:00pm when they started handing out awards. I hung out there until they gave away the grand prize, a 350 Chevy motor. Once that had been done, everyone started heading for their vehicle. After a short wait in line to get out on the road, I headed for home, but not before making a stop at Dean’s Ice Cream in Plainwell. When I was a kid, living in Plainwell, we used to stop at Dean’s every Sunday after church and after all these years they still make a pretty good double chocolate malt.

After getting back on the road I called home to let the wife know I was on the way and was informed at that point that we were heading for the movies with Gigi and Josh when I got home. I got there just a bit before 7:00pm and we headed off to the theatre soon after. We went to see Talladega Nights, a spoof on NASCAR, and although it had it’s moments, for the most part it was a bust. By the time we left the theatre it was already dark and because we had not had supper yet we decided to go to Clover and order a pizza. Ri and Adam had already left for the night, but Chris and Shayna were still there washing dishes and putting toppings on pizzas. By the time we got out of there it was after 11:00pm. I tried to work on website stuff when we got home, but my eyes just wouldn’t stay open.

After last Sunday’s wasted day I decided I was going up to the campsite no matter what this Sunday so I got up early, tossed everything I was going to need in the back of the pickup and headed North. I stopped at Menards to buy fence, fence poles and stakes because one of my projects for the day was going to be putting up the dog pen. I took Bailey and Mercury along to test it out. On the way up Ri and Adam went zooming by me on their way to work on the area where the wedding will take place. Once we got up there I decided to have breakfast at the lodge first before getting to work. I was hoping to run into MarkE and find out what the hell the holdup is with getting the electricity hooked up, but he’d left about 10 minutes before I got there.

The first thing I did when I got back to the campsite was fire up the lawnmower and reclaim the “yard” area from them infernal ferns. Only takes a couple weeks and them damn things are back up and thick. I mowed the whole yard area and then decided to work on the driveway area too. About the time I was finishing up with the mowing, Rick,
Adam’s dad, stopped by to check out the electric box and see what there was left that needed to be done. I talked with him for a bit and then he took off. I was putzing around, getting ready to start on the dog pen when Rick stopped back, grabbed his sledge hammer and said “I’m here to help”. So over the next couple hours we put up the whole pen. It was nice having some help. I’m sure it’d taken me most of the rest of the day to get it done by myself.

After the dog pen project was completed Rick took off and I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up brush and hauling firewood from the pile I’d made a couple weeks ago down to a spot by the fire pit where I stacked it up neatly for future use. It was 6:00pm when I realized I’d pretty much run out of energy and decided to call it a day. I was pretty satisfied with the progress made for the day. I zipped up the camper, put all the tools back in the truck and headed out. It was a bit after 8:00pm by the time I got back home again. I had just enough energy left to make some supper and clean up the kitchen.

In the next couple weeks before the wedding there’s a lot to get done and not much money to do it with. Everyone seems to think we can pull money out of a hat, but the fact of the matter is that between buying the land and all the renovations to the house last winter we're pretty well tapped out for the time being. I'm not real sure how we're going to cover it all. The weekend of the wedding will be the first official “family” camping weekend there. Assuming we have electricity soon I have plans to have an outhouse built with a real working, flushable toilet installed. Nothing too fancy, but something that’ll do the trick until we can afford to buy the camper to put up there. In the meantime I can sleep in the popup just fine and keep making little improvements to the site as time allows. I’m hoping that we all can spend some quality time up there this fall before the snow starts to blow. We’ll see how that plan works out.

TC