The Slow Lane

Last weekend, L and I had a great time hosting a visit from our granddaughters.  They enjoyed  playing and cooling off in the sprinkler.

What can be more fun than helping Grandma make bisquits?  The bisquits were part of the lunch for both girls’ families and it’s clear the girls like eating bisquits also.  One of our family favorites is bisquits with butter and a slice of tomato.  The girls like bisquits better in other ways, including “plain”.

Grandpa and granddaughters take a break while all three of us are holding our “lovies”.

I invited Ulncle Bo to ride with me to the mountains this week.  I picked him up Wednesday morning in Burlington about 9:00.  We stopped in Wilkesboro for lunch and made it to our place about 12:30.  After the trailer and Blazer were unloaded, we looked at the garden and around the house to see what we had done since Bo and Calvin were there in October a couple of years ago.  Then we settled in to enjoy the cool air and nice breeze.  We were sitting on the deck about 4:30 when L called.  It was 75 degrees at that point on the deck with a good breeze.  L reported that in Raleigh it was 98 to 102 degrees.  What a nice difference!  Wednesday night we ate good seafood at Mountainaire.  Thursday morning we ate Ashe county cheese toast and at lunch, we ate family style at Shatley Springs.  It was a nice relaxing couple of days for both of us.

Bo is using his cane as he walks and still recovers from falling and breaking his leg in November.  He’s slowly regaining strength and stamina to get back to two of the things he loves to do, ball room dancing and playing golf.

One of his life-long activities is crocheting.  After he broke his leg, Bo hasn’t been able to dance or play golf, but he has continued to crochet.  He recently was interviewed about his crocheting for a news feature on High Point TV called “Roy’s Folks”.  He says it was 1 minute and 51 seconds long.  He also said the TV interview did not show 2 of his prized crocheted  pieces: “The Last Supper” and “The Lord’s Prayer”.  He now has them framed and I took these pictures. 

Bo’s crocheting is a special gift and his crocheted artwork has been generously given to many special people and donated for fundraising projects to many agencies, such as Hospice, who have provided help to many more people.  Occasionally, he has taken orders and sold some pieces, but primarily it has brought much pleasure to him and served as a way for him to give to others.

We had a good visit.

The annual “Christmas in July” festival was held on July 3 this year as July 4 was on Sunday. On Friday, we went with neighbors Sue and Jim, Sybil and Billy to the Ashe Outreach Fish Fry and stopped back in West Jefferson for the opening of the festival and listened to the music for a while.

Then L and I went back on Saturday and walked up and down the 2 streets with vendor booths including some local agencies and service agencies. There were a lot of craft booths. We were hungry by 11:30 and I got my big Polish sausage for lunch. The music stage was busy with one group/band after another and so was the dance stage. There were lots of people at the festival.

We like going to Como and we like going to reunions. We did both three times in June.  In addition, we visited with aunts, cousins, friends, and former college roommates for each of us who were not at either reunion.  I made a fourth trip to Como to get corn and we got that in the freezer the next day.  We enjoyed it all, but we agree that it was a busier schedule than we want to maintain on a two-week  basis.

The first reunion was Homecoming at Buckhorn Baptist Church.  This is L’s home church and the church where we got married.  L saw many people she had not seen for years, and we saw many family and friends.  The event was well planned and executed with about 400 in attendance. 

The second reunion was the “Howell Get-Together” at the Como community building.  This is an annual event in June on the Saturday nearest Jake Howell’s birthday.  It was begun when his children were the next generation.  This year his grandchildren, L and her cousins, were the oldest of those attending.  The first picture is of the cousins who were present this year, including R. who lives in Austin, Texas. 

The second picture is of the cousins and spouses who were present.

The third picture is of  the children of the cousins and  their families.

It is always good to see everybody and to eat the good food brought by all the good cooks in the family.  For my part, I have especially enjoyed John’s black walnut cake.

The third reunion was L’s 50th high school class reunion.  This is an event that puts your age in perspective.  It’s hard not to feel old.  This event was held at Whitley’s restaurant in Murfreesboro.  Members of the classes of ’59 and ’61 were invited.  Many memories were revisited.

How important is TV to us? That is a question behind many of our daily decisions and future preparations. On the one hand, it seems simple to just decide not to watch TV period. We’ve never been comfortable going that far. We have tried to minimize spending on TV technology. I don’t remember that we’ve ever had more than one TV at a time before we had two houses. Now we feel we need a TV at each house. In Raleigh, we had basic cable for many years which gave us the local network channels and a clear picture from our local PBS channel, WUNC.  When TV broadcasts switched to digital, we bought a converter box and small flat digital antenna for each house and gave up cable in Raleigh.  Over the air TV reception has been satisfactory in Raleigh even though we sometimes need to move or turn the antenna to avoid temporary reception problems.

Our question became more focused on  the mountain house as we spend more time there and reception has become more of a problem.  We were dependably getting only two stations, CBS and NBC both from Charlotte.  WUNC signal has been much more “iffy” and had become a good picture or no signal (blank screen) with one minute of signal and five minutes of no signal alternating.  We wanted a dependable signal from WUNC and decided it would be nice to get a station from the triad.  So, we bought and installed an outside antenna.  Now we get about the same number of channels as we get in Raleigh.  Now we only have to decide when to turn on the TV and whether there is anything interesting or important enough to watch. 

I confess that I’m more of a TV watcher than L.  Mostly, I tend to watch news, weather, or a program that looks intersting on WUNC-TV or WUNC-Explorer Channel.  Two programs I like to watch are on WUNC, the News Hour on week nights and Washington Week on Friday night.  However, we turn off the TV during dinner which often happens during the News Hour, and on Friday it’s not unusual to be away from home or to be doing something else that takes priority.  I feel comforted by the fact that I can watch News Hour and Washington week on the computer the next day, but I’ve rarely done that.  I do read a couple of news sources on the computer frequently.  I usually can stay up late enough to watch the 10 o’clock news and weather now that we have that option, but 11 o’clock is too late.

I should mention that I do sometimes watch sports on TV, but mostly basketball and football and mostly Wake Forest or ACC games.

So, after all that rambling, the bottom line is that we invested in the antenna and now we have the option to watch TV or not.

Let me say up front that we had a wonderful trip to Reno. Kim and
Bill are great hosts and planned what seemed an ideal agenda of activities designed just for us.

On Saturday, we went to Lake Tahoe, stopping first by Donner Pass. There was a big lake, a clear creek, a nice short trail, and a museum where we learned about the Donner Family’s struggle in 1846 when they got snowed in with 22 feet of snow and spent the winter there. The picture is of a snowshoe for horses.

We went from there around Lake Tahoe (about 75 miles).  One place we stopped and spent more time was at Emerald Bay.  The next picture is looking out over Emerald Bay and to Lake Tahoe beyond. 

There is a picture of the Castle we hiked about a mile down to see.

Then we hiked up about .3 mile to Eagle Falls.  The picture is Lucinda, Bill, and Kim at the Falls.

The snow plow cuts through deep snow and sends it way up and to the side away from the road.  In some places there are snow poles about 12 feet tall along the road to mark the edge of the road for the snow plows.

On Sunday, we went to The Bridge Church where Bill is Pastor.  We enjoyed the service and met a lot of folks. 

Sunday afternoon we rode to Virginia City and briefly on to Carson City.  We went through the mining museum at Virginia City and saw lots of mining tools, maps, and information about the mines and their tunnels.  The picture is one of the signs that explained why mules were used in the mines instead of horses. 

On Monday Kim took us to the National Auto Museum in Reno.  I really enjoyed this museum and saw many cars with names I did not know.  One of the volunteers said that the museum has 60 or more examples of car brands that are no longer manufactured.  One that impressed me was the 1931 Rolls Royce with an entire body made of copper.  Not only that, Bill and Kim know the owner who has loaned it to the museum.

On Tuesday, Kim took us to Pyramid Lake.  It is a little smaller than Lake
Tahoe and much less developed.  One interesting thing is that the Truckee river which comes out of Lake Tahoe, runs through Reno and empties into Pyramid Lake, is the only inlet into Pyramid Lake and there are no outlets from Pyramid Lake.  Yet we saw pictures (one taken only a day or two before) of people who caught large cutthroat trout.  The pictures lined a wall of the store we stopped at.

As special as the things we saw and did were, what made them all so enjoyable was the quality and quantity of time we spent with Erin and Josh and with Bill, Kim, and Curly.  We were treated and fed royally.