Sunday, June 19, 2011

Sentimental Sunday, Brother's surprise Visit

 Wow, it is exciting to see the genes have been retained that created our spontaneous behavior.

 I get an e-mail on Friday asking if I am going to be home Saturday from my brother.  No further word,
 later I call and say you headed this way.  He was evasive at first but finally admitted he was thinking of it.

 So being my Father's child I knew he(brother) was going to be on the road soon.  It reminds me of all the great trips we would take on a moments notice or so it seemed and yes some times were.

 Dad would come into the house from work when he still worked days and say, Mom, you have anything happening? Generally, MOM would say," no, what is up? " The next thing we knew we had to haul extra feed and make sure water was topped off for animals. Dad would call a neighbor friend and say "could you" and within an hour we would be packed on the road and singing songs.

 We would have had the milking done, the pigs, chickens, calves, rabbits and other chores about done when he got home from the Feed Mill around 6 P M.

 We would go up the road to Dallas, Oregon to see our Aunt Ruth and Uncle Fred.  Or we would go south to Palo Alto to spend a night and day with cousins Ralph and Nadine.  Generally these trips south were just a long day but once in awhile an activity would mean a over night. What fun, we had Dean, Daryl, Ivan, Jeannie and Tommy to play with. We learned many cool card games and ball games were played.

 Oregon meant a long trip and generally we got there about breakfast.  There we played with our cousins: Jerry, Linda and Ken Feil.  Ken was very small then, so long ago. Years later I spent summer and baby sat them and worked the bean fields for school clothes money. Learned to dance skate then and loved skating.
Today I am not sure I can stand on the skates.  More stories about skating down line to tell.

 So because we even would head out to Wyoming at the last minute if Dad felt or Mom felt there was a need. It took more planning but we did leave generally within a week or a day of notification depending on situation.  Once we just took off and surprised family from California, Nevada, Utah and lots of places in Colorado and Wyoming. We ended up in Wheatland, Wyoming last.  Mom's parents home.

I remember how much fun it was to surprise people and how excited they would be to see us.

I used to go from Lemoore Naval Air Station to Valley Ford or Sunnyvale doing the same thing, after marriage and Aunt and Uncle moving to California.

Dad was great for saying Gerald do you have duty this weekend, good we are on our way and we would come down to San Diego for 2 days.

We were a family of surprise travel.  I hope we some how retain a portion of that, there is nothing so great as to have family show up and a share time.  I think nothing is so important as family sharing.
So the children got to see their Uncle and Aunt today for Father's Day visit to their Dad. SO COOL

Don yes we missed you and thought of you.

2 comments:

  1. This must be Fred's brother.. Sound's like you had a great Day.. Nice memories...we did have fun on those trips..

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  2. How fun! You reminded me of my own family and all the last minute trips we took. For us it was often to no where in particular just to see what we could find. Good times!

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