On the Road Again, Again

   WARNING: This blog post has no religious significance, even though it is Easter, which is full of it.

   A couple of years back, my wife gave me a to-go cup with a recording of Willie Nelson's song imbedded in the base, so that when you picked it up, you got the song. It was very appropriate as we seemed to be going a lot. When your kids and their kids live all over, that is the story. They all have busy lives, and we are the ones without the schedule, so we make trips to keep in touch.

   But when we go, we try to get as many things as possible done on the same trip, so the main reason for this trip is sandwiched between other things that we can do while in this part of the country.

   So here we go: Leaving on Thursday, we drive west from home toward Oglethorpe, GA, to see some friends who live out in the country around this small town. They are very hospitable folks and don't mind that we will drop in for a night and then move on. On the way toward them, we stopped at 3 county courthouses that we had missed in our quest to see all the ones in Georgia. That is multitasking for sure.

 

   Our next resting place was Chattanooga, so we left our friends after a great breakfast casserole, and moved north, picking up more courthouse pictures as we traveled. Towns such as Butler, Thomaston, Greenville, Newnan, Carrollton, Cedartown, Buchanan, Rome, Summerville and Lafayette took on some small significance as I snapped pictures, read monument inscriptions, talked to various people, and just soaked up some local atmosphere. That is fun for me, just to be in those sometimes-out-of-the-way places, seeing how people live in a culture that is different from mine. It gets a little tedious for Mayre, but she troops on anyway.

   Now we are here, in the city where both of us grew up, met, married, raised our kids and lived life until retirement in the 90s, and we come to the real reason for the adventure. Mayre's long time friend and airplane mechanic, passed away, at age 93, a couple of weeks back, and the memorial service is this afternoon. John Linn was a good man and took every opportunity to help out my wife in her flying career. Not only did he do the maintenance on her various airplanes, but was an encourager, and a willing passenger when she wanted to see if everything worked correctly. He will be missed.

   Then we will get to see various friends from our previous life before we go on Monday, north to Knoxville to see an old friend who is confined to a nursing home because of her deteriorating mental facilities. After Knoxville, we will return to Chattanooga to spend the night before leaving on Tuesday to go visit our first-born and family for a couple of days. His birthday is today and, although we are not old enough to have a 51 year old son, we will claim him nonetheless.

   Then it will be home.

   Family, friends, food and courthouses, and then I can put the coffee mug back in its place, and try to remember where I took all those pictures