The Numbers Game

  The family reunion in Tucson September 2009 (9-09) spawned the idea of  celebrating in accordance with triple dates.  Consequently, the next year we decided to meet on 10-10-10.  That date fortunately coincided with Meet Yourself Tucson, a weekend festival of ethnic arts, food, and all around good times.  I had hoped to insert a picture of various family members who celebrated Triple Ten in the hot tub of the vacation home we rented, but couldn't find the picture.

Plans were made to meet the following year on 11-11-11 and so we did.  Veterans Day is meaningful to us personally as two dads and an uncle are veterans. Some of the group attended a Veterans Day parade and you can see how some others marked the day. 

Those of the family interested in a quasi-lottery, put $11.11 in a pot.  The last evening we spent in Tucson, son #2 came up with a way of winning the Reunion Lottery.  Each person who contributed to the pot rolled 3 dice 3 times.  The one who rolled 33 total was awarded the pot.  Contingencies were in place if we had ties for closest total or more than one person rolling the magic number.

The contingencies did not have to come into play as my favorite nephew in Chicago was the only one to roll 33.  He went home $88.88 richer.

Despite the inconveniences that our rented vacation home provided, we accomplished many of the activities we had planned:  touring the Agua Caliente park, touring the Picacho Peak State Park commemorating the westernmost Civil War battle, attending a Gaslight Theater performance, perusing antique shops, consignment stores, gazing with longing at vintage hot rods, swimming almost every day, completing a jigsaw puzzle and eating lots of good food.

The consensus of the group was that we would not try for 12-12-12 next year as 9 out of 10 are from mountainous areas or the Midwest and traveling can be treacherous at that time of year.  Maybe we’ll try for 10-11-12.

Tucson Trauma

We just spent a great week with the folks on Dean’s side of the family, which of course, included our boys.  This is the third year we have rented a vacation home in Tucson so that we can all be together—cooking, eating, playing games and making music. 

Last year we were together on 10-10-10 so it seemed appropriate to gather around 11-11-11 this year.  On top of that we continue our search for the “perfect” house to rent for our reunion week.  This year’s house was not it!!!

We rented it (sight unseen since none of us live anywhere near Tucson) because it had 5 bedrooms and 4.5 baths, and according to the website pictures, the rooms were great and the scenery awesome.  We had an outdoor pool (heated) and a pool table—all definite drawing cards.

The house was situated in a gated community which kept our Tucson relatives from actually looking at our house-for-the-week.  When we drove up the driveway to the house—and I do mean UP as it was a 45% grade in places—we discovered the key code to the garage door was not working.  We had no inkling that this was to be a harbinger of things to come.

Once inside, we started looking around in order to assign bedrooms.  There were two bedrooms in the main house with a bathroom for each as well as a half bath on the ground floor—which was unusable.  The commode was European so a part had to be ordered. (In fact, that phrase, “the part’s on order” became almost a mantra!) Since one of our group had broken his foot and was still using a walker, not having a handy bathroom was a distinct inconvenience.

The guest house which was about10-15 feet from the mean house had three bathrooms and two baths.  Once we were settled in, we checked out the TVs—none of the three worked.  Oh well, we brought games and the caretakers could hopefully get the cable company contacted in the morning.  Whoops.  There were only 8 chairs and 9 of us.

The next morning after a good night’s sleep, the caretakers came and worked on the TVs and a sluggish drain as well as bringing more chairs.  At some point after they left, the cooks in the family decided to bake something, but the oven seemed to have some sort of glitch.  When the caretaker was called, she said—“Oh that part is on order.  Use the convection oven on the side counter.” Since it was the size of a microwave, it would not accommodate a cookie sheet.  So much for that recipe!

Despite the distance from the city and all of the inconveniences, we had a good time together and made memories (including the house we will never rent again).

As for me, I looked forward to the shower at Motel 6 as we said goodbye to Tucson for the house’s master suite shower was reminiscent of a garden soaker hose. Blessings emerge in the most unlikely places.

Tomato Memories

Home grown tomatoes sliced and diced to be included in green salad—how delicious!  The moment I bit into the first tomato tidbit, I was transported to many, many years ago when I walked through fields to the country schoolhouse I attended.  On Fall days I would purposely traverse my mother’s garden because bordering the path she planted tomato plants that bore little yellow tomatoes.  I would pick a handful and put them in my lunch box so that I could eat them for lunch (that was before schools had hot lunch programs).

After school I would travel that same garden path and pick two or three sun-warmed tomatoes.  One bite and the juice would explode in my mouth-yummy!  I’m sure my mother had cookies ready for a snack after a day at school but it’s those little, sun-warmed tomatoes that I remember.

The natural growing season in northeastern Nevada doesn’t lend itself to great gardens without a tremendous amount of work and I don’t yearn to spend the needed amount of time and expense necessary.  However,  our four tomato plants have done well by us, furnishing delicious bites of summer bounty to salads and accompanying cottage cheese.

This morning there was ice on the towel that I had thrown over one tomato plant.  As long as our daytime temperatures stay in the high 60’s and into the 70’s I will continue covering the tomato plants so that the remaining fruit can have as much chance as possible to begin ripening.  As the temperatures lower, however, I will pick the green fruit and put them in newspaper to ripen in the house.

Funny about that memory—I hadn’t thought of Mom’s little tomatoes for years.

Memories

We are back from a mostly delightful 5,000 mile road trip seeing family and friends at various locations.  One portion of the trip had to do with a large bit of nostalgia.  My high school graduating class (of 20 members) were gathering for our two-year (is that bi-annual?) reunion in Branson, MO.  We have always been a close-knit group that had generally gotten together every five years.

After our 40^th reunion, it became apparent that we needed to get together every two years because our small group of classmates was dwindling.  Branson was chosen because it was a fun get-away spot although at least  a day’s trip for the majority of the group since we grew up in Northeastern MO close to the Mississippi River.

This picture is a singing waitress nuzzling Dean’s ear at the Hardrock Café.  Since we were there as a group, all of the guys got the same attention from the various vocalizing maidens.  I thought I had a picture of the world’s largest rocking chair with Dean sitting in it, but this one will have to do.

                              

Our schoolhouse is gone now along with some dearly beloved friends, but the memories remain and I am grateful for that.

Fence Mending

“No man is an island.”  “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Have you ever thought of yourself as a wall-builder?  Recently I was privileged to watch a DVD by Ray Van der Laan produced by Focus on the Family.  It was the final segment of a series focused on how God was training His people, Israel, to be His people.  The setting was a gan (garden) on a hillside in Israel. 

Visualize a respectable-sized hill (see below) terraced with garden areas lined with rock walls.  The outside wall of your garden plot is no more than a foot high but the wall hugging the hillside is possibly 10 feet high.  The rocks used to build the wall are close fitting and obviously took some thought and effort to build.  The stones in these walls very likely go back to the time of Joshua in the Old Testament which is pretty awesome to think about in itself.  

You want to make the soil in your gan as rich as possible because you only have a very small area in which to raise your olive trees or grapevines.  The vital thing about these terrace walls is the importance of keeping them strong.  For instance, what if you come to tend your grapes one morning and discover that 2-3 rocks have come loose from the wall on your section of hill side and come to rest at the base of an olive tree?

You would be wise to fit the rocks back into their original spots, pounding them in firmly.  If the rocks are left dislodged, when the rains come, the water will pour down that break in the wall and eventually the precious topsoil of your neighbor’s gan will come flooding down the hillside as further rocks dislodge.  Not only that, the eroding process could well cause a breach in your outer wall, washing away your precious topsoil.  This could continue and eventually wipe out a community’s way of earning a living.

That long explanation is a description of how God was teaching “community” to His people, Israel. A community should work together so that not only your household  is safeguarded, but also that of your neighbor and your neighbor’s neighbor.  There is more analogy to be had concerning the rich topsoil needed to grow healthy plants, but I won’t I won’t pontificate on that.  The main point is that every responsible member of any sort of community needs to be a wall builder-mender.  Otherwise, the consequences of sticking our heads in the sound could well be fatal. 

Family Chronicling

The role of Family Chronicler seems to be a genetic thing.  I really had not thought much about that until this past week when I was taking pictures of pictures (don’t have a working scanner) for another family member.

The following statement will only make sense to those of you out there who are also Family Chroniclers, but I have at least 25 scrapbooks/picture album spanning 40 years of family life.  Those collections have to do with only the Dean Diehl family.  There are also collections of memorabilia relating to my mother’s family with information going back in time to her great-grandfather who fought in the Civil War as a teenager and as an adult, was an itinerant Free Methodist circuit riding preacher.

The collection of pictures and information on my Dad’s side of the family don’t go back as far but do include an account of his mother’s maternal uncle and cousin being gunned down over a dispute regarding the yield of a corn field.  An especially sad outcome to that story was that the fight left behind a single mother with several children still to raise.

Back to the Family Chronicling—my mother filled that role because she had a camera with her everywhere she went.  I think she had some sort of box camera by the time she was 10 years old.  Growing up, I thought of Mon’s picture taking as a great nuisance.  Every family get-together, she insisted that everyone line up for her pictures.  She didn’t have much of a concept of natural action shots but now, many years later, I am grateful for at least some of those many pictures.

In the present century the gene pool seems to have selected our son, Brian.  He is definitely into taking action shots plus taking the funniest faces he can get people to make.  If I can find one, plus figure out how to insert it, I will do so.  That, of course, will mean that my Learning Curve will once again climb, so wish me luck!

 Woo-hoo, I did it!  However, these are obviously not funny faces.  I guess you could call them funny feet.  And with that, I think I should sign off.