The plan to move Momma from Pennsylvania to Arizona had been in the works for months when the health of Patti’s handsome cowboy husband started to fail. “I don’t know what to do,” Patti told me during one of our phone conversations. “Lee needs to have some tests done and I’m supposed to be on this trip with Lori.” Patti is a planner and a problem solver. “I could get Lee’s daughter to check on him every day and take him to have the tests done, but honestly, I would be so stressed worrying about him.”
I already had my trip planned out. I would leave Missouri two weeks before Patti and Lori were scheduled to arrive in Pennsylvania and I would spend time with Momma. I would help her sort out her things, drink wine with my neighbors in the evenings, visit with our mill cats, and rest in the peace and solitude of our mountain home. And I might even have stayed a week or two beyond Momma’s departure.
That was my plan.
Patti continued, “Lori has offered to make the trip by herself and even though she’s a really good friend, I hate to ask that of her.”
I didn’t want to take Patti’s place on this trip so no one was more surprised than me when my mouth opened and out came the words, “I’ll go with Lori. I think you should stay with Lee. If something were to happen to him while you’re gone, you’d never forgive yourself.” I didn’t want her to have that regret.
And so it was. I flew to Arizona to make the trip with Lori.
Our trip east was filled with Lori getting used to driving the RV and me learning Lori’s language, both spoken and unspoken. I enjoy being useful so I would watch and see what Lori was doing and how I could help her.
Besides navigating, I did the more mundane duties required of traveling in an RV. I took care of hooking up electric and water and I dumped the gray and black tanks when necessary.
After we were parked and set up for the night Lori and I would pour ourselves a drink and decompress from the day's travels. We would sit outside and have a gabfest until the rain started and chased us back in.
Our second night on the road found us in an RV park with a flat tire.
I was impressed with Lori’s leadership skills. “Peg, would you go back up to the office and see if he can help us with our tire?”
No sooner had she asked then I was off! I went back to the office and talked with the man, but he couldn’t help. I reported back to Lori who then got on the phone. It wasn’t long at all until she had a mobile tire repair service pulling up to the RV.
“I bet it’s just the valve extension,” Glover told us after he checked out the flat. “Whenever I see them on a tire it’s the first thing I check.”
He took off the extension, pumped up the tire, checked for leaks and we were good to go!
“What happened?” you may be wondering.
Well, someplace along the line we lost a hubcap. With all of the rough roads we had traveled, I’m not surprised. In fact, the roads were so rough that the windows would unlock and work their way open and we’d have to listen to the rushing air until I’d get up and shut them again. That was a losing battle, let me tell you! And the cabinet doors wouldn’t stay latched either. They would come open and start banging around. I was afraid the cups and bowls that were in one of those cabinets would walk out and crash to the floor! They were plastic so I wasn’t afraid of broken glass, but who needs the racket of things falling and the hassle of cleaning up the mess? Not me! I found some twist ties and tied the cabinet doors shut.
With the hubcap gone the valve extension was flopping around and a close call with a curb was all it took to pinch it.
“How do you say your name?” I asked once business was taken care of. “Glo-ver or Glov-er?”
“When I was younger, I used to say it was lover with a gee. Now that I’m older I say it’s glove with er,” Glover told us and we laughed.
Now, before we get on into Dushore, Pennsylvania I want to show you a few more road pictures from this leg of our trip.
This is a shot of a new windmill with two old ones in the background and the sky full of angry looking storm clouds.
In the old days, the windmills were used mostly to bring water up for the livestock. Now there are huge expanses of landscape covered with the new-fangled kind and they are called wind farms.
Near Amarillo, Texas we drive past the Cadillac Ranch which is considered a public art installation and sculpture.
I Google it and learned it was created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez, and Doug Michaels, who were a part of the art group Ant Farm. It consists of what were either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing a number of evolutions of the car line from 1949 to 1963, half-buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.
I didn’t know about that pyramid part before.
Less than an hour down the road, near Conway, Texas there is the Slug Bug Ranch, and other than its name, I couldn’t find out anything more about it. We didn’t stop at either place so these are road pictures.
We rolled into Dushore, Pennsylvania (where Momma lives) on Saturday afternoon. Our itinerary called for us to camp out at the mill while we spent the next few days packing Momma out of her apartment and Lori wanted to see what the drive was like. So the first thing we did, before even stopping at Momma’s, was to drive over to Mike’s and my mountain home.
Let me tell you something. Growing up in Pennsylvania and learning to drive you never think the roads are any different any place else in the world. You, or maybe it was just me, thought twisty, winding, uphill and downhill roads were normal. There isn’t a whole lot of flat, straight stretches in this part of the country unless you’re on a highway. Lori, being a resident of Arizona, was used to the more straight and flat variety of roads.
Eleven miles is how far the drive would be. Wind your way up the mountain, out of Dushore, wind your way down into New Albany with its narrow streets, old houses, cars parked on the roadside, turn right - don’t hit the phone pole on the corner! - cross a narrow bridge, wind your way up the next mountain, and as you start down there is a big dairy farm. I love their… their…hmm…I don’t know what it is!
Is it a work of art? It’s made with an old heating oil tank, a milk can for the head and some part of a milking machine for the utter, all painted up to look like a cow.
Maybe it’s a mailbox or maybe it’s just a package drop box. I do see a mailbox there beside it but that could belong to another family who pick up their mail there too.
So you go past the big dairy farm with the patchwork of black and white cows in the pasture (I have a photo of that someplace) and wind your way down and come into New Era, a little farm community, wind your way up another mountain, then wind your way down, down and more down to a stop sign at the bottom. “Don’t get your brakes hot on your way down to that stop sign,” Mike advised me. But I didn’t give Lori much advice on driving, she was doing a fabulous job all on her own. At the stop sign, it’s an easy turn cause it’s a left and nothing to hit with our tail swing. Climb part way up the next mountain and turn onto a dirt road, cross over a creek on a single-lane, open-grate bridge that has a crook on each end, “Don’t worry,” I tell Lori. “Mike did it in our big RV pulling a trailer, I know you can do it!” and she does. A quarter mile down the road, turn into the driveway and YAY! You are there.
Our mountain home.
It took us half an hour to make the eleven-mile drive back into Dushore that night.
“I don’t think I can make that trip twice a day,” Lori told me.
“We could dry-camp right across the road from where Momma is,” I told her. “Mike and I have stayed there before.”
That suited both of us just fine and it really worked out a lot better that way anyway. We were right there, close to Momma and stores and restaurants, such as exist there in Dushore, and it saved travel time, not to mention wear and tear on our nerves.
We spent the next few days packing twenty years worth of treasures, too tired at the end of the day to do little more than eat a bite and climb into bed.
I learned a few things though. I learned that Momma didn’t throw anything away if it had any value to it whatsoever and I learned you could pack an amazing amount of stuff in a small space given enough time.
I learned how to pack from Lori. She is like the Queen of Packing. The boxes were full and tight when she got done with them. “If stuff rattles around in there, it’ll get broken,” she told me.
Anytime I ever moved we just threw stuff in boxes and plastic garbage bags, tossed it in the back of our car and a pickup truck and moved it ourselves.
“When movers are involved, the tighter it is, the better it is,” Lori said.
And don’t even get me started on stretch wrap. That stuff is awesome! In fact, after I returned to Missouri and had to pack up Mike’s and my little studio apartment for our move, I used the Lori Method of packing. Everything in boxes, packed tight, boxing tape applied, three strips one way, and two strips the other way. I even learned how to make custom boxes! How cool is that!
Two and a half hard days of packing and we had only a very few things left to do Wednesday morning, our scheduled day of departure and the earliest day the movers would show up.
Thankfully Momma’s caregiver Marilyn would let the movers in -- whenever they showed up -- and we didn’t have to hang around and wait for them.
Apartment packed, keys turned in, move-out papers signed, Momma moved into the RV and settled in, we took off on our westward adventure.
Our first stop wasn’t that far away, only about 72 miles, but in an RV, on those twisty, windy roads it took us longer than it might have had we been in a car.
And then there is that bane of all travelers, road work.
We hit several areas that were being worked on. I think they were just patching. But we would sit and wait our turn then the pilot car would come back and our side would follow him through the work zone.
We arrived at Rosemary and Carmen’s in the early afternoon.
“Who are they?” you may be wondering.
Rosemary is the eldest daughter of my beloved Aunt Marie, my mother’s only sister and the firstborn of the Ralph and Mary Agnes Smith clan.
And Rosemary is her mother’s daughter. She is every bit as welcoming and gracious and delightful of a hostess as her mother had been. And just like her mother you could count on being fed when you visited her and I have to tell you, Rosemary is a fabulous cook! I have had everything from stuffed portabella caps to sandwiches. No matter what she is serving she somehow makes it special.
Rosemary does quilting and embroidery and I love, love, love this quilt. Its pattern is called Bella Verona and it’s so beautiful! This quilt took first place at the Harford Fair in -- where else? -- Harford, Pennsylvania.
“I wouldn’t have been able to make it without Carmen’s help,” Rosemary said. “He helped with the cutting and laying out of the pieces and I do all the sewing. With a quilt like this one, it was helpful to have an extra set of eyes and hands because there were so many little pieces.” The smallest pieces were an inch and a half square. I’d probably be sewing my fingers together if I had to sew pieces that small.
Being nosy, I asked, “How much did it cost to make?”
“With the cost of the classes and the material, about $1,000,” Rosemary told me. And we won’t even talk about the cost of one of those new-fangled machines! Holy cow! I thought my camera hobby was expensive!
And if the cost of the machine wasn’t bad enough, there’s software packages too. These machines are computers and when you take classes they want you to upgrade or buy a whole new package.
“I’m not upgrading every year,” Rosemary said. “It’s just too expensive especially when it’s just a hobby.”
“How long did it take to make that quilt?”
“Right around a year. It was a Block of the Month pattern and it took a month to complete a block.”
“How much would you sell it for?” I asked.
“Are you kidding! With all the blood, sweat and tears in this thing, it’s not for sale,” she said with a laugh. “But I’m so happy I had the opportunity to make it and so far it’s my favorite.”
At the fair, they auction quilts off and the bidding starts at $1,200, but Rosemary didn’t know what they ended up being sold for.
Rosemary and Carmen have been married for 52 years. “What does it take to stay married for 52 years?” I asked.
“We’ve always worked separate shifts,” they told me. At first, it was to make sure someone was always home with their son, Michael, then I guess it got to be a habit. It worked for them.
They still have things they do separately, Carmen golfs and Rosemary has lunch with the girls, but they do things together too. Carmen has an area in their craft room where he works on jigsaw puzzles while Rosemary is working on her sewing...
...and Carmen has done some really beautiful puzzles too! Once he has them put together he glues them and hangs them in his garage.
Did I take a picture of his garage?
No! Doggone it! I wished I would have.
Carmen was kind enough to make the 40-mile drive to pick up Momma’s cousin Bob and his wife Janine, so Momma could visit with them one last time, then, of course, he had to take them back home. Bless his heart.
“So who’s Bob?” I asked Momma.
“He is the son of my mother’s sister, Aunt Ester… Sullivan,” she added the last name after a pause.
Another of Momma’s cousins, who she expected to see this trip -- but didn’t -- was Beverly.
“And who’s Beverly?” I asked.
“She is the daughter of my father’s brother, Uncle Horace.” Now that I got Momma talking about genealogy, she supplied a few more details. “There was Betty, Billy, and Beverly.”
“All bee names.” Yeah. Don’t laugh. I really didn’t think that one through.
“No, no…” she started to correct me.
“Oh, of course not. Billy would have been William,” I realized my mistake as soon as I thought about it for a nanosecond.
“Yes. And Betty was Elizabeth,” she finished.
Now, that one I hadn’t expected.
After dinner, us girls sat down and played cards while Carmen worked on the computer. I showed them how to play Skip-Bo and Rosemary showed us how to play Quidditch.
“Quiddler Peg!” and I can hear Rosemary laughing.
Oh. Yeah. Quidditch was that Harry Potter game.
“Mom’s best friend Margaret Dickey introduced me to Quiddler,” Rosemary told us. “Then I taught Mom to play and we really enjoyed playing the game. We even played it after she had gone to the nursing home. Sometimes Mom’s roommate’s granddaughter, who was around thirteen at the time, played with us too. It’s just a fun game that can be played by all ages.”
I think part of what made the game fun was that even though the game is played for points, Rosemary’s group played a friendlier, more relaxed version of the game than the one outlined in the directions. They actually helped each other score points rather than compete against each other.
Oh my gosh! Quiddler was so much fun. “Where do I get a deck?”
“The only place I’ve ever found it is on Amazon,” Rosemary said.
That night Momma slept in the house rather than put her through the ordeal of going out to the RV for the night and then turning around and coming back into the house for breakfast the next morning.
Breakfast was eggs, sausage…
Carmen cooked the breakfast sausage links in an iron skillet on a woodstove! Isn’t that cool! I love it!
…and pancakes with real maple syrup. OMG! Real maple syrup is sooo good! They make that stuff right in that part of the country, you know, and you can go to where they make it and buy it. It’s not cheap but boy-oh-boy! Is it ever worth it! It doesn’t even compare to the stuff they sell on the supermarket shelves, that’s for sure.
Rosemary has something that I never expected to love, but did, and that was her Keurig. Most times these kinds of coffee’s are way too strong -- and expensive -- for me but Rosemary had a refill cartridge with tiny little filters and you could make it with your coffee and in any strength you wanted to. And talk about fast! In less time than it took me to heat a cup of water in the microwave for my instant coffee, I had a hot fresh cup out of the Keurig. Once they showed me how to use it you couldn’t keep me out of the coffee!
Now, before you all run out and buy me a Keurig and I end up with three of them, let me tell you that even though I really loved it, I don’t want one.
“Why?” you wonder.
I have enough stuff plus space is a consideration when you live in an RV, like Mike and I are doing now. I used to have an expensive coffee pot, a hundred dollar Bunn, but it walked off the counter and crashed to the floor one day four years ago as we were traveling down the road and it broke. That was the day I switched to instant coffee.
“Instant coffee! Yuck!” I hear you say.
Yeah, it does take some getting used to.
After breakfast, travel mugs of coffee made for the road, we started getting things around to leave.
“Take this pie with you,” Rosemary said packing food for our trip. “I made two,” she said and I watched as she made it ready for travel.
“Are you sure?” I didn’t want to seem too eager, you know what I mean?
“Absolutely. I made it for you guys and we don’t need it.”
Rosemary makes the best lemon meringue pie in the whole wide world and there was no way I was going to say no to that! Have I told you what a fabulous cook Rosemary is?
I’m running back and forth, between the RV and the house, packing Momma’s things (and the pie) and on one of my trips out to the RV Lori asks, “Peg, do you have the keys?”
I stop in my tracks. “No.”
“I can’t find them.”
We start looking everywhere! Under seat cushions, on the floor under the table, in the cup pockets, around the driver’s seat, in the bathroom and back bedroom, yesterday clothes and even going so far as to pull all of Lori’s bedding apart. She had the bunk over the cab and her clothes lived up there with her. The keys could have fallen from her pocket when she stowed her clothes.
“I checked once but I’ll check again,” she said and she climbed up and started pulling out pillows and blankets and shaking them before tossing them to the floor.
“Maybe I lost them when I unlocked the bay doors. I’ll check around outside.” I’m walking all around the RV, getting my feet wet in the early morning dew, and Rosemary comes out. I never got back into the house to collect Momma and she knew something was going on.
“We can’t find the keys,” I told her.
Rosemary suggested several places where they might be, all of which were searched at least three times by two different people but it didn’t stop me from looking again. I have found things before, using this method. How or why they turn up the third or fourth time I look, I’ll never know. I was just hoping that this would be one of those times -- but it wasn’t.
“Carmen,” Rosemary calls toward the house. Carmen, not wanting to leave Momma by herself, was lurking in the doorway. He heard her and came out. “Check around in the house for the keys, would you?” she asked and he turned and went back in the house, closing the door behind him. It was chilly there in the mountains of Pennsylvania in early May.
A few minutes later Rosemary heads to the house, Carmen, just coming out, met her in the garage. I’m standing in the middle of the RV getting ready to pull my bed apart again, Lori is sitting in the driver’s seat, rechecking all the nooks and crannies, Carmen is walking around in the grass and Rosemary comes back, opens the passenger door, leans in and says, “Carmen said to check your jacket pockets.”
I watched as Lori started to pat the little tiny pockets of her jean jacket, then she fishes in with two fingers and pulls out the keys.
“Lori!” I admonished. “Why wasn’t that the first place you checked?”
“Because I never put my keys in my jacket pocket,” she answered and by golly, that’s a good reason.
Them little gremlins, I’m tellin’ ya!
Kisses, hugs, thanks, and safe travel wishes were all shared and once settled into our seats with the seatbelts securely fastened, we were once again back on the road. This day would not be too long of a driving day as we were only going about a hundred and thirty miles.
I didn’t take a lot of photos in those miles. I don’t really know why, I only know that I didn’t. I got the cows going back out to pasture after being milked.
And an old roadside cemetery are the only two photos worth showing and even that is questionable.
We arrived at Aunt Brenda’s with no problems at all.
“Who is she?” you may be wondering.
Aunt Brenda -- Aunt B to me -- is my father’s baby sister.
When we got there we didn’t make it any further than her beautiful patio, or maybe you would call it an arbor. It’s completely covered in wisteria and kiwi. Such a beautiful and restful place.
Momma visited with Aunt B, catching up on all the family news since they last talked.
Lori and I, not much involved in the conversation of people and places we didn’t know, let them visit and went to explore all the beautiful flowers planted around Aunt B’s house. She has so many flower beds I don’t know how she keeps up with them all! And we are not the only ones who appreciate the flowers either. There were bees and butterflies and birds all over the place!
This is a tiger swallowtail, but I bet you knew that. Don’t ask me what flower he’s sitting on, cause I don’t know that.
After coming back from seeing all the flowers, Lori and I found a seat a little ways away from Momma and Aunt B so we wouldn’t interrupt them and we talked quietly. However, this robin had no such compunctions. It didn’t bother her a bit to land on the rail close by us and really raise a ruckus interrupting our conversation!
After she flew off and came back two or three times, I pointed her out and said to Lori. “I bet she has a nest close by,” and I got up to see if I could find it.
Not only did I find her nest, I found her babies. I see two little beaks sticking up out of the nest but there could have been more. I didn’t want to be too intrusive so I kept a respectful distance, plus I didn’t need an angry mother bird dive bombing me.
Aunt B has a doggy water bowl that sits in the middle of the patio. Oh, wait. Maybe it’s called a fish pond but it has steps up to it so Aunt B’s little dogs, Yankee and Sissy, can drink out of it.
“They like that water,” Aunt B said.
The water sparkled in the dappled sunlight as it shot out of the frog’s mouth and I thought it was pretty. The light, filtered through a sea of leaves, cast a green tint on everything.
And then it was time for my favorite part of the day.
Lunch.
Yeah. Really any part of the day that involves food is my favorite part of the day. Oh, and bedtime. I really like sleeping too. I should have been a Yorkie! That’s all my girls do.
Aunt B set out a huge spread of lunch meats, cheeses, salads, and chips. Lori helped by carrying things to the table for Aunt B and making sure everyone had a drink.
I helped too. I took pictures so we could all remember this day. That’s important too, isn’t it?
Once everyone got their tummies full, we relocated back to the arbor patio and Aunt B’s son Richard cleaned up.
“He likes to do the cleaning up,” Aunt B said.
Then he brought us all a piece of chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting.
“He made it special for your visit,” Aunt B informed us.
I’m trying to watch my weight but after that, how could I say no! Besides, is there anything better than chocolate and peanut butter? Not in my world!
It was starting to get late in the afternoon when I reminded Momma that she had her meds to do plus we still had to find our campground and get set up for the night. I don’t want to do it in the dark.
“All right,” she said to my whispers in her ear. “Brenda, it’s getting late and we need to get going,” Momma told Aunt B and I immediately felt bad for not letting her spend more time, but there was no help for it.
“All right Dottie,” Aunt B said. I think she’s the only one I’ve ever heard call my mother by that particular nickname for Dorothy. “Let’s take a picture first.”
We enlisted the aid of Lori who was all too happy to take photos with Aunt B’s iPad and patient with me when I had her take pictures with both of my cameras. I love this shot of Aunt B holding her iPad showing one of the photos that Lori took.
Let's call this one done.
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