Birthday

The only way we could have made John’s birthday more low-key was to ignore it. I wished him a happy day within 15 minutes of waking up, so give me credit for that. There was no discussion of the birthday meal, since it has become our custom to go to the restaurant that grandson Nathaniel worked in for two summers. John called to make sure they would be serving prime rib, his once-a-year favorite. We went to church and took naps, waiting for the place to open. Evidently it was birthday Sunday, because a woman at the next table was celebrating her 95^th.

I took a photo of John and grandson David, because it wouldn’t be a proper celebration in our family without pictorial evidence.

For the foodies: David had Chicken Parmesan with pasta, and I chose Bourbon Pecan-Encrusted Chicken over mashed potatoes. I did not stab the potatoes with a knife; it came that way. John’s meal was exciting to the palette and visually boring.

At home we skipped having a candle on the cake, although we sang the birthday ditty as we put the dessert on the table. We had John’s standard angel cake with strawberries, his favorite since childhood.

David added blueberries to the top, and I was amused that it ended up looking like a silly face.

John is now officially 78 years old. However, at some point he began counting his age backward, so he is really 13 years old now. He teases that when he is two years old, the grandsons will have to wheel him about, like he pushed them in their strollers.

Identifying a Wildflower

I wondered aloud about some bright red berries above the road, knowing neighbor Marla might know the answer. She is a waste-no-time problem-solver. John held Albert’s leash while Marla tried to get a phone app identification. The app didn’t perform, so she took a photo of the plants and hoped one of her friends could give us the answer. I admired her steady hand as she zoomed in for a close-up.

Albert wasn’t interested in berries out of his reach.

Meanwhile, out West, son John $pencer and Rose saw snow beginning to blanket a mountain peak in Wyoming. The next day they were hiking in snow! Do you think dog Sadie was making snow angels?

Bargaining for a Recipe

Our outing this week was going to Pisgah Inn where the clouds can sometimes be below the dining room. The day was cloudy, which is often the best time to go there. We didn’t see rain, but we did watch the clouds as we enjoyed good food. Grandson David and I agreed to share a dinner, knowing there is always too much food to eat comfortably at one sitting. We were saving room for a fabulous dessert. John had a light meal by himself and was ready to share a sweet. We had French silk pie and Brownie a la mode. With three of us sharing two desserts, we didn’t have to feel guilty about the cost or the calories.

I should have taken a photo of the chocolate pie, but I was too busy cutting it up. It disappeared in no time, although we continued to talk about it. John wanted to know was it really fudge. No, candy would not have that consistency. Since it was quite firm, did I think it was frozen? No, it was not frozen because it didn’t melt. Finally I said to him, “Bring me here ten times, and I’ll order the pie each time. I’ll figure out what is in it and find a recipe for it.”

John laughed, but he had a quick retort. He said, “I’ll bring grandson Nathaniel here just once, and he’ll know how to make it for me.”

We were cold in the dining room, almost to the point of shivering. David said he was going outside as soon as we got up from the table. I took his picture as he grabbed the railing firmly and said how good it felt to have his hands instantly warmed.

We drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway, stopping a couple of times to look at rain in the distance. David was busy getting a panoramic picture with his phone when I aimed at him and the mist in the mountains.

A real photographer urged me to try a panoramic shot, and I looked in the manual to see if there were instructions for my camera. I couldn’t find anything specific. My attempt failed. The camera said it couldn’t save it. David offered to help me do it with my phone, since he had just done it with his. The phone said it wouldn’t save my shot and to shut it down before trying again. I think I have a terrible tech rebellion on my hands. My consolation prize was one photo of the Smokies that I liked.

Minnesota in the Mirror

Part of the pleasure in coming home is remembering a trip. I thought of the odd things I didn’t write about, mostly things that didn’t fit anywhere else. Toothpaste is one of them. Does toothpaste go bad? My dentist gives patients a tiny tube at every six-month visit. I had three of them in my bag. It was late, and I was tired, so I presumed the paste looked gray because I was looking at a bit of gray sealing film. A day or so later I saw the paste itself was not white or blue or striped. I shrugged and used it anyway, figuring if it was lethal, I’d already be dead.

John plays a license plate game when driving. He has done this as long as I can remember. He glances at a vehicle he is passing and notes the state it comes from. When the children were little, he said the name out loud and occasionally had a map for them to color in each state he found. I should ask if it helped them with geography. The game begins when we pull out of the driveway and ends when we come home. He found all but four of the lower 48 states on this trip. We have seen Alaska plates occasionally and one from Hawaii only once. Would it be classified as distracted driving? Maybe not, because John is far-sighted, and he has memorized the distinctive colors. He also knows which states have tags on the back only and those with tags on front and back. When he sees gold and dark blue in the rear mirror, he says, “Here comes a New Yorker.”

The most amazing thing about this game is that he keeps it all in his head! If I were playing, I’d write the list in alphabetical order and wouldn’t know which states were missing. After driving for several hours, I’ll ask what he has found. He’ll say he has all the northern states from Maine to California or all those from New England. On this trip he had everything east of the Mississippi River except three in the northeast. By that, you can tell he has a permanent map in his head. The states he spotted probably glowed in living color. How can one head hold all that information as he drives for thousands of miles?

John sees more while driving than I do while concentrating on looking out of the window. He saw a hearse pulling a boat! Tennesseans take fishing and boating seriously, so I’m wondering if yesterday there was a casket in a boat for one last ride around the lake.

There is always one motel room that was the worst. This trip, it was the last one. The outside looked fine, and the desk clerk seemed normal. We had our suspicions when we got out of the elevator and smelled air freshener. Surely the room would be okay. We opened the door and were hit by the overpowering smell of odd flowers. You know how suspicious people in the movies search for a bug that records their voices? We looked for the air freshener with the same intensity. We think it was in the air conditioner, so we turned it off. Luckily we didn’t bake through the night.

During the last trip, I complained about toilets designed for short six-year-olds. This time we had a bathroom designed for a basketball player, one with six-foot arms. The toilet paper holder was on the opposite wall from the toilet! What was the designer thinking? Walking across the bathroom to get toilet paper is not normal.

The bathroom high point was a newly installed sink. I wash hose every night, and I can tell you that 90% of the time the stopper won’t work in a motel room. I’ve seen a stopper so crooked that it couldn’t fit in the hole. Most lead you to believe you can trust them for five minutes, and they suck the water out in ten seconds. I’m surprised they don’t slurp and burp. Well, this good one was like newer tub stoppers, the kind you step on to close. No, I didn’t use my foot in the sink. I pressed it with my hand, and it would have held water for 24 hours! Stoppers in heaven are going to work like that.

Speaking of heaven, coming home was heavenly. It was way past lunchtime, so John took David and me out to lunch at Bogart’s. David and I flopped in chairs in front of the TV, while John packed for his early-morning departure to the train club. We chatted while watching some show about rehabbing mansions. I walked through our non-mansion house, and I was pleased with the neatness of it (!!!), the height of the ceilings, and the spaciousness and lightness of the rooms. Dark colors are “in” for motel décor, and my reaction was appreciation for light and space to move about. How blessed we are to live here!

Heading Home from Minnesota

The last of the celebrations was a breakfast given by Sid’s parents. The teachers and graduate students were traveling later in the day, and the locals were going to take down the tent and decorations at the farm, so it was not a lengthy meal. We sat at the dining table with Eddie’s mother and sister, Eric, Eric’s daughter, and his father-in-law. The FIL asked about Eric’s dad, so John told the story about Haakon’s boarding the Queen Mary during World War II. It’s an amusing story, which everyone enjoyed.

If you don’t know these people, it won’t help to have their names listed.

We were among the first to leave. Thom and Barbara headed to Maryland, and we were going to see cousin Peter and Debi in Illinois. We drove together for a few hours before they pressed on and we stopped for lunch.

The next day John told Debi and Peter about our going to church on Sunday. John and Peter share the grandfather who was the pastor there 100 years ago. There was only one cousin who was not aware of our going to that church, because he lives in Norway. I’m sure Kirsten and Eric will share with their brother.

Since we were in Illinois, we decided to drive through the town where our pastor grew up. He refers to Mulberry Grove in his sermons from time to time, so we knew it was a very small community. It was a little town that time passed by. I thought it was something like Mayberry, NC, a fictional town we knew from television. John pointed out that Mayberry had a barber shop and a police station, which we did not see in Mulberry Grove.

I texted Pastor M before we got to his town, and he replied after we left. I sent a photo of the post office as we rode down the highway. He wrote back, “I grew up one block from the post office right next to the old elementary school.”

I asked, “This one?”

That was the one. His home was across the street from the school. He went on to say, “On the corner of the street was an old stop sign for 30 or 40 years, and in the back of it was a dime that I lost when I dropped it down the slot as I waited for the ice cream cone truck to stop.”

We felt sorry for the little boy who lost his ice cream money, but we laughed, because it’s the kind of story he tells so well.

We made it to Tennessee and will be home tomorrow.

A Sunday Surprise

We went to worship in the church where John’s grandfather was the pastor from 1913 to 1924 in Hayward, Minnesota. The original building was replaced, but we are sure the bell behind John, Barbara, and Chris was heard by their mother.

We chatted in the sanctuary with a parishioner and Pastor Enderson. That pastor was a one-man band! , He played the prelude on the piano, doing an improvisation based on the first hymn. Making the announcements, he said the organist was away and he’d be playing and conducting the service. He sang the chants with a beautiful voice. Switching to the pulpit, he read the gospel for the day and preached the sermon. Back at the piano, he played the offertory, and so it went.

After the service, we went to see the wall of photographs of former pastors. In my picture, pastor Enderson is putting the photo of our relative, Pastor Ellertsen, back on the wall. We found out this young pastor is the grandson of the pastor who followed our relative! That was our Sunday surprise.

Our three posed before the former parsonage. It is next to the church but no longer belongs to it. This was the house where our relatives lived. It did not have running water in the early days, but it must have had a fence. The children were told they could speak Norwegian inside the fence, but outside the fence it had to be English.

In the afternoon we went to the party for Sid and Jacob, and what a party it was! We began with a tour of the farm by cousin Kirsten. Her daughter Erin and Ben own it, having expanded it over the years. (Erin and Jacob are first cousins.) There were appetizers in the barn, pizza from a food truck, and salads in the barn.

We sat in the climate-controlled root cellar for the toasts and roasts. Sid and Jacob knew each other from grade school on, so the people who spoke were classmates from 20 years ago. I love these teasing speeches that make you feel you know the couple better. The ending was a grand finale – all kinds of cakes to choose from. I had eyes only for the chocolate, but there were others for non-chocoholics.

Here is the happy couple we were celebrating, Sid and Jacob. God’s blessings on your life together!

Family Focus on Past and Future

The day after we joined sister Barbara and Thom in Illinois, we drove through Wisconsin to Northfield, Minnesota. There we met sister Chris and daughter Barbara who had flown in. We were together for a wedding in Colorado just a few weeks before.

Anne, Barbara E, John, Barbara A, Thom, and Chris

After lunch, we walked around the town while waiting to check in the motel. I loved the address on a pink door – 105 ½.

We were in town to celebrate the wedding of the son of cousin Eric and Caroline. They starred as parents of the bride in the Colorado wedding, and this time they were the parents of the groom.

Kirsten, John’s first cousin, and Jay invited us for a light meal. We chatted on the porch, catching up on family news.

Anna and Eddie (bride and groom from the Colorado wedding) joined us for the meal. If you are good at facial recognition, you won’t need a list of those in the photo. For those keeping score of family relationships, Kirsten and Jay are aunt and uncle to the Colorado bride and the groom being celebrated now.

During the meal we began to talk about the common grandparents of all these first cousins (John, Barbara, Chris, Kirsten, and Eric). Johan Ellertsen moved from Norway to teach in Minnesota. He later became a Lutheran pastor, founded a church in Brooklyn, married a daughter of the congregation, and moved to Minnesota where he served four small churches. That’s where the mothers of the five cousins listed above were born. On Sunday we plan to go to the one surviving congregation in a nearby town. Our gathering is both a look backwards at our roots and a confirmation of the future of the family with the most recent marriages.

The population of Hayward in 1915, according to John’s mother, was 52 if you counted all the dogs and chickens. Jay said the current census was 250. Niece Barbara said when we go to church, there will be 256 people in the town. That cracked us up. Everything that was said for the next half hour brought another round of laughter.

When we were leaving, we wanted to know about the artwork on the walls. We knew Kirsten was an artist and Jay a retired architect and now a photographer. Kirsten told about the painting in the dining room. She based it on a plat map of the area where they lived, even pointing out where their house was.

Kirsten told Barbara about a painting in the living room. I wish I could have taken pictures of everything, because I thought all of the paintings and photographs were marvelous.

I asked Jay about his photos, and he pointed to a wall where there were two. My photo does not do them justice at all, but we had to leave to go to the informal gathering at a cidery. I’d love to spend a whole day looking at their work.

I took one photo at the party before darkness fell. Jay and Kirsten are flanking their granddaughter Allegra with the cidery in the background.

Thom, Barbara, Jay, Allegra, Kirsten, John

Illinois Trains

We went to the Illinois Train Museum in a small town west of Chicago. John almost drooled. It had more trains than any other museum he has been to. We started with a ride on an interurban car from the North Shore Line.

When the motorman invited people to ride in front, John was right there. Doesn’t he have a satisfied look on his face as he came back toward me?

When the ride was over, John was the only one who accepted the invitation to sit in the motorman’s seat.

John said it was a good thing his sister Barbara and Thom were meeting us on the way to Minnesota, otherwise we might still be at the train museum. We looked at many engines and interurban cars, and John had a comment on almost every one. If I could remember half the things he says, I’d be an expert.

When Barbara and Thom met us in that town, we had lunch at a German pub. We managed to eat and begin catching up with news at the same time.

Tunes at a Touch

We were on our way to Minnesota and stopped for lunch at a little town in Indiana, the kind with the court house in the center square of town, surrounded by stores. There was only one eatery, so we went in. The town, the cafe, and the food were nondescript. When the waitress came to take our order, she couldn’t hear us because the music was so loud. She called over to the manager behind the bar, asking him to turn the music down. Thankfully, he responded, and that’s when I saw a flashy contraption on the back wall. It was about four feet tall and three feet wide. One of the customers kept going over to it, choosing music. Between songs, words flashed on the screen announcing that you could download the app and choose music from your table. Wow! It was an electronic jukebox! Before we left, I asked if they minded if I took a picture of it. The manager was pleased to show me all the menus on the flat screen and explained that you could put a dollar bill in the slot for three songs or pay with your phone.

When a song was playing, its video showed on the screen. Volume bars danced across the top, and the title scrolled across. The menu said you could hear 80 songs for $20. We could have tasted everything on the menu in that amount of time.

I feel sure the e-jukebox has been around for a while, but it was the first time I saw one. As a hearing-challenged oldster, I wondered if I could pay through the app to lower the volume. I could have had a bidding war with the customer who chose the music. I’d lower it; he’d raise it. Competition would be the name of the game.

The Ultimate Dish Garden

Our first visit to the Asheville Arboretum was delightful. Grandson David and I took an inordinate amount of time looking at the bonsai trees. I have seen miniature trees inside, but these were all outdoors. My favorite photo, with David included, was one that looked like a dish garden. I wanted to shrink myself and sit on the garden bench.

I snagged David and John to pose with my favorite single tree-on-a-shelf.

One of the first gardens we came to was the quilt garden. I believe they change the design of the squares every other year, copying a standard quilt design. We climbed the steps of the viewing platform to see it from above.

I can’t resist running water, so the stream garden was another favorite. Plants normally found near streams were in that area. The smooth water course didn’t produce much more than a gurgle, but it was visually engaging.

As you might imagine, we spent a bit of time near the train layout. John and David peeked in the shed to see the cars stored there. As they inspected the tracks and scenery, I watched two women with their five children in the amphitheater on the hill below. The children were cavorting on the stage and slipping through the wall of evergreen trees. It was the perfect place for them to shriek and chase each other while their mothers chatted.

Most of the visitors were parents with young children or retirees, a nice mix! There were probably serious walkers on the miles of trails that surround the gardens. We had a delightful time on a cloudy day when the temperature was on the cool side of warm.