Tag Archives: Memories

Why I Joined the Navy

28 Dec

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

It all started one day when my friend, Bud, and I were complaining, to each other, about how hard it was to get the attention of the girls in town. The problem, as we saw it, was that we had too much competition. You see, we lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in the mid-50s, there were two military bases located there. Sandia Base (AFSWP) was situated on the southeast edge of town, and Kirkland Air Force Base was located on the southwest part of town. Between the two bases, the number of guys seen in U.S. Air Force uniforms, on any given day, on the streets of Albuquerque was overwhelming.

 

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We were both approaching draft age, and were worried our number would come up soon. Bud’s idea was to kill two birds with one stone; 1, we would join the branch of service of our choice (and avoid the Army draft). This would allow us to legally wear a military uniform on the streets of Albuquerque, and greatly increase our chances of attracting the girls. And 2, as it turned out, since the Navy was our choice, they had a reserve unit right there in town (much different uniform). As we saw it, we would only have to go to reserve meetings once a month (how bad could that be?). Then after the meetings, and still in our uniforms, we could hit the streets on the prowl. Great idea, right? Well, as you might have guessed, the Navy welcomed us with open arms. Just sign on the dotted line “Dummy.” Right away they issued us these swell looking uniforms. Sexy, looking aren’t they!

 

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OK, so white uniforms looked a little sloppy. It’s hard to make a skinny kid look smart in a loose fitting uniform, without the leggings, belt, white gloves, and the pretty orange scarf. Now you do have to admit, the dress blue uniform looks a lot smarter, with all that extra gear. But hey, we were just kids playing around! What did we know?

 

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The things the Navy didn’t tell us, when we signed up, was what we would have to do at those monthly meetings; like all the marching we would have to do out on the “Grinder” in all kinds of weather; the many shots they gave us, for every kind of disease known to man (some made my arm sore for a week); having to learn how to tie all those crazy looking knots, and each one of those knots had a name we had to learn; then there was the Morse Code system we had to learn, and that crazy Signal Flag Semaphore system. It was worse than high school, with even more homework! And what was worse, when we stopped at the A&W Root Beer drive-in to check out the girls, many of our friends laughed their heads off. They couldn’t believe we thought we were going to impress the girls in those silly looking uniforms.

 

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It wasn’t long after I joined the Reserves, that I met DiVoran. And what do you know? She really liked my uniforms, and thought I looked great in them. That made the whole adventure worth it. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that this Reserve thing was not just a game that I could quit any time I wanted to. I was stuck with what I had signed up for and was going to have to see it through.

 

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Of course, I don’t think my friend, Bud, had ever intended to see it through. When he found out that the Navy uniforms didn’t get the kind of reaction from the girls he had expected, he stopped going to meetings. The next thing I knew, the Navy was looking for him. He disappeared from the area, and later I heard the FBI was looking for him. Some friend, huh? I eventually got tired of all those Reserve meetings, and went into the regular Navy, to fulfil my required active service and get it over with. And that is about the gist of this story. You’ll have to read the blog series, “You’re In The Navy Now”  for the rest of the story of where this foolish idea led me.

 

—–The End—–

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Out in the Cold

18 Dec

SUNDAY MEMORIES

Judy Wills

I was a stay-at-home mom for over 20 years while my husband, Fred, was active duty in the U.S. Air Force. I had worked in an office setting all the years before, but once our daughters started to arrive, we decided we could live on one salary – and we did.

 

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Credit Google search

 

However, once Fred retired from the Air Force, jobs were difficult for him to find, so I considered dusting off my typing skills and look for a job for myself.

I thought that I would try temp work first, just to get my hand back in the work environment. So I contacted Kelly Girls (now Kelly Services) – and they essentially told me that they didn’t want me. Big blow to my ego. So the next step was Manpower. And they welcomed me with open arms.

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Credit Google search

I took a typing test at their facility – and we were all amazed that I still was typing about 70+ correct words per minute!

The first office where they placed me was with the Colonial Williamsburg mail-order center. I was mainly there to file, but at least it was a job.

 

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Credit Google Search

I found it rather interesting, and became quite impressed with the quality of product they shipped. My Aunt Jessie was an antique nut, so one time I sent her a catalog of all the furniture that CW had – but without the price list! I just wanted her to enjoy looking at all that beautiful, re-created furniture.

At that point in time, we were existing with one car, so Fred usually drove me to work and picked me up after. I went to work one morning, with a weather report of an ice storm approaching. By about 10:00 a.m., the storm hit, and all the employees were told to head home. I tried time and again to reach Fred by phone (we had no cell phones at that time in our lives), but he never answered. I had determined to wait outside the main gate until he came to get me. However, when the maintenance guy found me about the head out into the storm (in high heeled shoes and a puny coat – no raincoat or gloves or hat), he insisted that we wait inside until Fred arrived.

 

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Credit Google Search

We waited for about 45 minutes before Fred finally called. He said he had been sitting on the “parking lot” of U.S. 17 for all that time, and was just finally able to pull off in Yorktown to call (that’s only about eight miles from our house!). So I told him to get on the Colonial Parkway and come up to Virginia Route-199.

 

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Credit Google Search

There was a hotel there, not far from where I was working, and I would wait there for him.   That allowed the maintenance guy to lock up and head to his own home, and Fred wouldn’t have to drive all the way into Williamsburg for me.

And so we did. He dropped me off and headed home, while I went inside and got a cup of coffee. I paid $2.50 for that cup of coffee – and I don’t really like coffee!!

The next work day (two days later), I picked up a cheese tray to take to the maintenance guy as a thank-you, and for his family for waiting for him.

It’s a memory that has stayed with me. God certainly had me in His hands during that situation, and I’m grateful.

 

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Christmas Dinner “Take Out”

15 Dec

On the Porch

Onisha Ellis

The Christmas dinner I wrote about last week, gave me an unexpected “take out.” I didn’t ask for it and would have gladly left it there, but alas, it was somehow sent home with me and for the next twelve days I found myself changed into a cough factory. To complicate matters, I decided to bring out my stubborn panties and refused to see a doctor. After nine days, I waved the tissue of surrender and visited a walk in clinic. And voila, three days later I am on the mend.

As I am writing this, the sweet Holy Spirit tapped me on my heart, reminding me that the nasty cough is a learning opportunity. The next time I get my panties in a wad, don’t wait until I am miserable before taking the problem to the ultimate physician.

Ok, moving on… At our home in the North Carolina mountains, I like to celebrate the seasons and my favorite way is with an entryway display. I am not a crafty sort of person. Well, I can be devious, but I am talking about being crafty in an artsy sort of way, so this is a stretch for me. Over Thanksgiving I asked Rebekah to help me do something special for Christmas. I have an old Windsor chair that is the central piece. ( I think my mother rescued it from a trash heap)

Usually, I add a woven basket and fill it with shiny Christmas ball and pinecones, but this year I wanted to change it up. Our town in Florida recently was blessed with a Hobby Lobby store and the abundance of Christmas stems had me itching to use them.

I wanted the items in the display to have a story and as my mind make a mental inventory of items I could repurpose, I remembered a butter churn that came from my grandparents farm. It was old and dull and the paddle was broken. It lived at my parents home. One year my mother and husband worked together to give it a fresh coat of paint and fashion a new paddle. They gave it to me as a Christmas gift, a labor of love and I have treasured it. I decided it would make a perfect “vase”.

Rebekah helped me choose white, glittery poinsettia to go with the rather dashing red and green spray-ish  stem I had chosen to give it height. In some leftover Christmas supplies I found  red mesh ribbon and we tied it around the churn and attached a glittery bow ornament. ( Can you tell I am in a glittery phase) Now the poor paddle looked naked and lonely, so I rummaged through discarded tree decorations and found some tightly wound tinsel. We wrapped it around the paddle handle and it looked good, but was missing something. Rebekah pulled out a tree topper that was too heavy for our current tree. It is made of beaten metal and the lights gleam through Mickey Mouse ear shaped holes. Perfect!

For the chair, I decided to use a precious quilt a friend had made for me out of pieces of my mother’s favorite clothes.  We spread it over the chair, then placed a white stuffed bear, a discard from a grandchild, on the seat. I thought he looked a bit bare, so I went through drawers and found a pair of Sponge Bob Square Pants Christmas boxers. They were used one Christmas when the whole family wore Christmas PJs.  I slid them on and although they are too big and droopy, I like them. Memories are better than making a fashion statement. We added a Christmas pillow and a couple of small stuffed friends and the display was complete. It certainly is not elegant but the glow I feel when I pass it, makes it beautiful to me.

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If you look closely you can see the star lights on the paddle top, peeping through the shiny stem.

Ten days until Christmas!

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God Has Been Watching Over Me~Part 5

7 Dec

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

 

After we were married, DiVoran and I moved to Inglewood, CA for me to go to college. I was still using the 1955 Harley Davidson Sportster for my main means of transportation (yes, she married me even after that night at the River Bottom). One weekend my lovely new wife and I went on a “Poker Run” with the local Motorcycle Club.* On the way home, after the event, I had let DiVoran drive the motorcycle for a while. I had unconsciously been guiding the motorcycle around slow turns with my weight from the back seat. When we came upon a sharper curve she kept going straight! I reached around her to grab the handlebars, but she wouldn’t let go!! Luckily, with my hands on hers and my extra weight, I was able to get us around that turn and avoid a 200 foot flying drop to the desert floor. We stopped to get our breaths back, and DiVoran never wanted to drive that motorcycle again. There is no question in my mind that God was watching over DiVoran and me with His wings of protection that day!

 

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We didn’t live far from the university or DiVoran’s beauty shop work place, so I rode the motorcycle to school and she drove our 1950 Mercury to work. If you have ever been to the Los Angeles, California area you know what the weather can be like. The fog rolls in every evening and by morning everything is wet, including the streets. Luckily, my route to school was on neighbor streets and not very busy, like U.S.-101 or Century Blvd. One morning on my way to school a lady pulled out of a side street right in front of me. She was looking to the right as she pulled out into traffic and by the time she looked left, in my direction, she was in the middle of my lane and she stopped! I had clamped on both front and rear brakes, but on the wet street, I slid right into the side of her car. Our meeting at that neighborhood intersection, a few seconds earlier or later, and that could have been a deadly accident for me. This had to be God’s timing, as nobody was hurt, only repairable fender damage to car and motorcycle.

 

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Some days at lunch time (if I didn’t have a class) I would ride my motorcycle over to the beauty shop in downtown Inglewood, where Divoran was working, to have lunch with her. There was a wide sweeping curve on Crenshaw Blvd, just before I got to the beauty shop, that was easy on the motorcycle. This one day as I was rounding that curve I hit an oil slick; one second I was enjoying the ride around that curve, and the next second I was on the pavement sliding across three lanes into the curb. This was another case were God had miraculously arranged the traffic on that busy street, in both directions, to be clear while I was sliding across that street burning the skin off my leg and hip. Thanks to Him I only ended up with a case of Road-Rash instead of becoming a case of Road-Kill.

 

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—–To Be Continued—–

 

*See Bill’s blog “Death Valley Run”- 6/06/2012.

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God Has Been Watching Over Me~Part 4

30 Nov

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

 

It was about this time in my life that I decided I needed a car to keep me warm in the winter, so I bought a very used 1940 Chevy Coupe. The plan was to restore the car as a “Street Rod” that would catch the attention of the “chicks” at the local A&W Root Beer Stand (teen hang-out) in the Nob Hill area of the Northeast Heights, on Central Avenue (US-66) there in Albuquerque.

 

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The first thing I needed to do was to rebuild the engine. Of course, that took a lot longer than I had planned. While I was doing that, in my spare time, my trusty 1955 Harley Davidson Sportster was my main mode of transportation.

 

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I had met DiVoran in, of all places, a Basic Typing Class during our senior year of high school (as I mentioned earlier my interest in school was waning by then). You might ask, “What motorcycle “Jock” would take a typing class?” And, I would tell you, “The kind that was just looking for an easy senior year last-choice course that didn’t require homework.” That was me. As it happened, DiVoran used the same typewriter I did in the next class.

 

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As a quick prelude to this next incident, I would like to explain that, over the decades, when the wind blew from the west toward Albuquerque, some of the desert sand the wind kicked up ended up forming a “V” shaped sand dune at the edge of the Rio Grande River. This “V” shaped dune was approximately ¼ mile long and extended from the edge of the river up a 30+ degree incline to the top of the mesa. When the river was low (which was most of the time) there would be a small area, along the river, of hard dirt where the water had washed away the sand. One of the motorcycle sports, some of my school friends indulged in, was what we called “Pulling the River Bottom.”   This involved riding our motorcycles from the mesa down to the bottom of that “V” shaped sand dune to the edge of the river. Then we would get up as much speed as we could, on that small area of hard dirt, and try to get back up to the mesa. It was always a challenge, and I had participated in this thrilling ride many times.

 

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One night I took DiVoran to the River Bottom to show off my riding skills and have some romantic time in the moonlight.* Since I didn’t have a buddy seat, I sat on the gas tank and she sat on the seat with her arms around me (Now wasn’t that cozy?) and her feet resting on the foot pegs. I told her, “Hold on to me tight and try to use your knees as shock absorbers.” With the engine at full throttle, we hit 2nd gear, and the acceleration was trying to pull both of us off the motorcycle. It was all I could do to hold onto the handlebars. We hit a couple of small bumps as we started up the incline and her feet came off the foot pegs. When we hit the next bump, the seat spring sent her flying. The first thing I noticed was her arms coming unwrapped from around my waist… then I caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye going over the side and she was gone! I slammed on the brakes, stopping the motorcycle, killed the engine and ran back down the incline as fast as I could looking for her.

 

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As I approached her, I noticed she wasn’t moving and I panicked. “Oh God, I hope she isn’t dead”.   When I fell down on my knees beside her, I could hear her moaning and she was moving some. “Thank goodness!” I asked her if she was OK? (which of course she wasn’t) and she said, “I think so.” She had landed on her backside and it knocked the wind out of her. It took a few minutes for her to recover before we could walk up to the top of the mesa. Boy, was God ever watching over DiVoran and me that night!

 

—–To Be Continued—–

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God Has Been Watching Over Me~Part 3

23 Nov

From the Heart

Bill Lites

 

Sometime during my last year in high school, my friend Leon invited me and two other guys to make a weekend trip to El Paso, Texas to visit another of his friends and check out Juarez, Mexico just across the border. Leon had a job, so we left late Friday after he got off work (poor planning on our part). We were having a great time on the road south until it got dark, and we discovered it had rained heavily somewhere north of our route and now we had to cross a water-filled arroyo.

 

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It didn’t look too deep and didn’t seem to be running too fast (bad assumption anytime, but especially at night). As you have probably guessed, we got about halfway across that arroyo, but Leon didn’t keep the engine revving and the water went up the tailpipe and stalled the engine. Of course, the water was deeper than it had looked. There we were, stalled, with water piling up to the bottom of the window on my side of the car, and water starting to leak into the car. Leon was trying to start the car but it wouldn’t re-start. Then this guy tried coming across the arroyo from the other direction. Just as he got to us, the water his car was pushing moved Leon’s car sideways just enough for him to side-swipe Leon’s car as he passed (not bad with the water cushion between the cars). The guy kept on going in order to keep from getting stalled like we were.

 

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Then a semi-truck started across from the other side toward us. His truck was high enough and heavy enough to get through, but his huge bumper was pushing a wall of water in front of him. That wave of water rolled right over Leon’s car as the truck passed us. If we hadn’t had the windows rolled up, the water would have filled the car. All this time Leon was trying to re-start the engine. He finally got it started (a real miracle) and I hollered at him to keep it in first gear until we were clear of the water. We made it! (I think God must have His hands full when it comes to teenagers). We had fun in El Paso and in Juarez and by the time we headed back to Albuquerque there was no water to be seen anywhere for that 265 mile stretch of New Mexico desert.

 

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The summer after I graduated from high school, I was ready to go out and meet the world head-on and make my fortune in life. I had heard from friends that the pay was really good for “Roughnecks” at the oil fields in northern New Mexico (Can you just imagine a smooth faced 18-year old skinny kid, 120 lbs. soaking wet, trying to keep up with experienced workers on a job like this.

 

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After much begging, pleading and promising to be careful, I somehow I talked my parents into letting me go try my luck at that kind of work there for the summer.   I packed a suitcase full of clothes, strapped it to my trusty Harley Davidson and headed for Farmington, New Mexico, some 185 miles north of Albuquerque on US-580.* One day during my adventure there in Farmington (You’ll have to read the blog for the gory details of that summer adventure) I was riding down the road and came to a curve that wasn’t really sharp enough to slow down for, so I just leaned into the curve like any other. What I didn’t see was the light film of sand right across the middle of my lane.   Halfway through the turn, the rear wheel lost traction and I went down. My Harley and I went sliding down the road for several yards, and across the double line into the oncoming lane.   This was another case of no cars anywhere on the road at the time of the incident. Thank you Lord!

*See Bill’s blog “On My Own”- 8/15/2012.

 

—–To Be Continued—–

 

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God Has Been Watching Over Me~Part 1

9 Nov

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

It’s hard for me to remember just how God watched over me during my early years (1-5) but I know He did. I do remember playing with Patsy in the back yard of my home in Dallas, Texas sometime before I was five years old. (See Bill’s blog “The Little Girl Down The Street”). As part of our play time, we made and ate mud pies. Now I know that we both could have gotten really sick on that diet, but God had to be watching over us during that time.

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Our house in Dallas was on a corner lot, adjacent to a main thoroughfare, and I lost my toy Parachute Man when a gust of wind caught him and he drifted into the path of a car on that street (See Bill’s blog “Parachute Man”). I had been told not to go into that street for any reason, but as a six year old little boy, it took Someone bigger than I was to keep me from chasing after my Parachute Man, into the path of that car (He must have had His hand on my shoulder).

 

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During a summer retreat with my family at the Alta Frio Baptist Camp in Texas when I was six, I was bit by a Cotton Mouth Moccasin (See Bill’s blog “Snake Bit”). My dad and mother witnessed the incident as I ran ahead of them into the shallow water at the edge of the Frio River, where we were going to swim. God protected both my dad and me that day. My dad had been in the medical corps during WW I, and he immediately applied a tourniquet around my leg, scooped me up and quickly carried me back to our cabin. There he made small slice marks in my leg, with a razor blade at the fang marks, and sucked the blood and venom from the wound, before taking me to the doctor’s office (on gravel roads at least 10 miles away in a friends old Model A truck). With his teeth full of fillings, that harmful venom could have entered his system and, at the least, made him sick (was my dad’s medical training just an accident?).

 

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When I was around 15 several guys my age followed an older boy on adventure to explore an abandoned mine in the mountains near our home in Albuquerque, New Mexico (See Bill’s blog “Hole In The Ground”).   That old mine shaft had never been shored up with bracing of any kind. There was one short section of the tunnel that had caved in at some time in the past, and even though it had been partially cleared, we still had to actually crawl through that section that we skinny boys could barely squeeze through. If that section, or another section, had caved in while we were at the bottom of the shaft, the chances are we all could have died before anyone found us.

 

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One day the next year I was driving down the street on my motorcycle, in front of the local Junior High School, and happened to see my sister with her friends walking home. I hollered at them and waved as I passed them (See Bill’s blog “Keep Your Eyes On The Road”-). When I looked back at the road there was the bed of a dump-truck, stopped, in the middle of the road (no flagman, orange cones or warning signs of any kind) with men making repairs, just in front of me! Without thinking, I just reacted, throwing the motorcycle almost to the ground, cleared the edge of the truck bed, slapped my left foot on the ground, pushing the motorcycle upright again. All this happened in a split second at 25 miles per hour. There is no way I could have looked up in time and reacted that fast without His help!

 

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—–To Be Continued—–

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My First Motorcycle

2 Nov

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

 

When I was 12, I started delivering newspapers, on my bicycle, on an evening route near my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was saving my money to buy a motorcycle. At the time my allowance of .50 cents a week hardly even covered the cost of my model airplane supplies. And, that paper route really didn’t bring in much of an income either.

 

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So I started thinking of other ways to make money. That was the summer I started mowing lawns in our neighborhood with the family push-mower. That helped a lot in the money department, but was really hard work.

 

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As my name got around, by work of mouth, that I was cutting lawns my business grew and I talked my parents into loaning me the money to buy a new power mower (Ref. Bill’s blogs “I Was A 12 Year Old Business Man“– Jan. 23 & 30, 2013). It took me a while to pay off that loan, but once that was done, the bank account began to grow rapidly.

 

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By the time I was fourteen, I had learned to drive, had my driver’s license, and I was scouring the newspaper “For Sale” ads for used motorcycles. I finally found a fairly nice Harley-Davidson 125cc that I could afford. Boy, did that motorcycle take a lot of the work out of my paper route! I could pick up my papers, deliver all the papers on my route and get home in half the time, and I wasn’t pooped out either.

 

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I gave up the paper route and most of my lawn business when a friend’s father helped me get a part-time job at the local Furr’s Super Market. By that time I had really lost most of what little interest I had in school (my main interest now was motorcycles), and was looking for something to occupy my time (and making money of course). The super market job was just what I was looking for. The work was hard, but the pay was great as I advanced from bag boy to checker, and my bank account kept growing.

 

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As it turned out, once the initial thrill of my “New-Used” motorcycle worn off, I discovered the machine really was a little long in the tooth, and I was anxious to see how I could get more performance out of it. Since I had learned how to rebuild my internal-combustion lawnmower engine, I started tearing down that motorcycle engine.

 

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I cleaned and polished the combustion chamber, re-surfaced the valves & seats, replaced the piston rings and spark plug, tightened the chain and polished all the aluminum cases. By the time I was finished, I had expended a lot of my hard-earned dollars for new parts and many hours of labor on that engine. And guess what? Of course it ran better, but it was still a behind the times 125cc size motorcycle and just didn’t give me the excitement I was looking for.

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By this time I had turned into a teenage motorcycle “Jock” and couldn’t look the part (Marlon Brando & James Dean) on that un-interesting looking Harley 125cc motorcycle. So, my next teenage adventure was to purchase a “New” bright RED 1954 Harley Davidson 165cc “Golden Edition” motorcycle with raised handlebars. That motorcycle fit right in with my new image, which included a traditional black leather motorcycle jacket (lots of pockets and zippers), motorcycle boots and a “Ducktail” hairdo.

 

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I enjoyed calling that 1954 Harley 165cc motorcycle my first, but the older ugly black 125cc machine was really my first motorcycle, and helped send me on my way to the big-time 1955 Harley Davidson (888 cc) flat-head KH Sportster that I really loved and drove for the next ten years.

—–The End—–

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Treasures From Germany~Part 2

30 Oct

SUNDAY MEMORIES

Judy Wills

 

 

Another musing about our time in Germany. We had such a great time, and enjoyed just everything there. The food was one of the best things! We never had a bad meal, even if we stopped at a Gasthaus in a small town we were traveling through. I remember we went to sight-see in one town, but when it came time to eat, we left the town and went to a Gasthaus in a smaller town down the road.

 

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The Schwartzer Adler Gasthaus – Courtesy Google search

 

Our girls didn’t understand our reasoning, until I explained to them:   If the food in the larger, tourist town isn’t too good, well, the patrons are just tourists and won’t be back. However, if the food in the Gasthaus, which is patronized by the locals, isn’t good, then the local people won’t be back, and the Gasthaus will close down. So the food has to be good. And it was VERY good!

We had several favorite restaurants within both Wiesbaden and Heidelberg that we frequented. I’m told that our very favorite in Heidelberg is no longer an eatery – it is now a bank! Noooooo! Unfortunately, we haven’t been back to see it ourselves, but our Karen and her husband, Brian, have, and gave us the bad news. Shucks!

Here are some of the treasures we picked up while in Germany. I’m not sure I remember where I purchased this candle, but I have enjoyed it for many years. While it is a candle, and “decorated with grapes and vines,” it is also painted with silver. Most unique.

 

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When we lived in Wiesbaden, our first apartment was on Albrecht Dürerstrasse (Albrecht Dürer Street). When we found this etching of the “Praying Hands” – and since we knew the story behind the hands, we purchased it. It hangs on a short wall in our entryway, along with a scripture verse, and reminds us of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

 

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Here’s an abbreviated version of the “Praying Hands:”

Albrecht Dürer was one of 18 children. He and his brother both wanted to be artists, but knew their father couldn’t pay for their studies. They flipped a coin – the winner would go to art school, the loser would work in the mines to support the winner. Albrecht won. His work at the academy was an immediate sensation. Albert worked the mines for four years to support Albrecht.

 Following his return to Nürnberg, and a festive dinner, Albrecht raised a toast to his brother and said that, now it was Albert’s turn to study. With tears in his eyes, Albert showed his hands that had been so damaged working in the mines, that he was unable to even hold a paint brush, and so unable to study art. It was “too late” for him.

 Tradition has it that Albrecht’s drawing of the “Praying Hands” are those of his beloved brother in prayer.

There are other versions of this story, but this one touches my heart.

~~~~~~~~~~To Be Continued~~~~~~~~~~

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Surprise!!~Part 2

9 Oct

SUNDAY MEMORIES

 Judy  Wills

 

I recently wrote about a surprise that my family played on me – a delightful surprise, I might add (please see my post of September 18, 2016 – Surprise!!).

 

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There are some in my family that LOVE to do that kind of surprise on other family members. Our son-in-law, Brian, is one of the best.

I remember once, when we were living in Virginia, and Karen and Brian were living in Harrisonburg, VA (and attending James Madison University) (before children), and they surprised us by showing up in our morning church service. As was my custom, after we (the choir) entered the choir loft, I would peruse the congregation, to see who all was there. I’m sure my jaw dropped to the floor, when I looked at that section of pews and there they sat! They both ducked their heads, grinning.

And then there was the time that Karen and Brian with their two children, were going on a cruise with Brian’s parents, leaving from Seattle, Washington. When I informed them that Fred and I would be up there at that time, visiting with Fred’s parents and sister, Brian asked if we would like to surprise Fred’s family with their visit. That one didn’t work out as we had hoped, unfortunately. They had hoped to just show up in the church service that morning. However, with the time frame they had to get to the cruise terminal, we just didn’t have the time for a surprise visit and unplanned lunch. They all did come to church, but we had planned with the restaurant for the meal, and it was ready for us to sit down and eat when we arrived. And then they were off. It would have been a lovely surprise, if it had worked out. Fred’s parents were delighted.

 

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I think the best surprise that I ever managed to pull off, was Fred’s 70th birthday party. Several months before his birthday, I had asked both of our daughters if they and their families would be able to come – as a surprise for their dad. So the plans were made. As it turned out, our oldest grandson, and Tom, our Janet’s husband, were unable to make the trip. Everyone else made it. Our grandtwins were only three years old, and Janet managed with them on the airplane by herself. My brother and his family live just one hour away, and we had invited them all to come – with Fred’s knowledge.

The day arrived, and we all had arranged to meet at a shopping center, where I would pick up the food we were having. It was February, and the weather was beautiful. Brian and his family picked up the salad from Olive Garden, while I picked up the main dishes from Romano’s Macaroni Grill. When we all arrived home, I went in the front door and hollered for Fred to come and help. And then his girls and their families walked in! Again, it was a lovely surprise!

Most of the group
My brother, Bill, and his son-in-law, Ron
Connor and Hannah with ALL the toys!
Cousins

A good time was had by all. Janet had the twins make this “picture” for Fred, and we display it in our family room. The color has faded through the years – the left side was blue paper and right side was pink paper, representing Connor and Hannah. But it’s still a fun thing to look at, and remember.

 

I love Family

I love family!

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