In the recent year I’ve visited my mother more times than in the previous ten. She’s been local and I got into the habit of stopping in on her if I was in the area. She’s still thinking like she’s got plenty of time, but she’s 80 and off warranty. The clock is ticking. She insisted on taking me out for lunch and I knew the Lotus would not do. We did it three times and it was always pleasant. Last time she got a once in a life time trip in an antique Land Rover. Antique means half her age.

I’d intended to sketch her, but time required hard choices. She wanted to get out, so we did that and I took photos with my phone instead of doing a sit down sketch. Good thing. She’d have drawn somber and she didn’t want to be seen that way. This was an approved photo.

This last time (she’s moved to another state) she asked me to take a box of photos and pick out what I wanted and pass the rest on to my brother who likes to scan such things as a family history buff. They were pretty picked over already. I found some and took a photo of them and passed them on to Marty, who promised to return them after he’s done.

This first one is my father about the time I was finishing up high school. I bought that car when I was 16 and it was parked outside always. We lived in the hills north of LaCenter on six or seven forested acres with a creek and a spring. Dad was a welder, working for a local steel mill. The siamese cat is unfamiliar. We never had one.

The summer after I joined the Air Force, I returned home with my second car, a 1971 Triumph. Somewhere there’s a photo of us working on the rear hub. I say ‘we’ but when dad and I worked on the cars he did the work and I hung around bewildered. The Nova had few problems, but twice the clutch arm had to be replaced. Dad finally modified it via welding and it never failed again. We had to go underneath the car for some  reason, maybe it was for that clutch arm. That began a tradition of the cars needing work during cold drizzle. I lay in the gravel and handed him tools and directed the light not having a clue what we were specifically accomplishing. This is me in that Triumph, next to my fathers dream car.

Left to right, Marla, me, Lori, “suzie”, and dad. Marla now drives a small truck. Lori has three boys and a husband in a nearby town less than an hour distant. Suzie disappeared a few years later, and dad was done in at 82 by a car accident. He’d finally been weaned off Chevy and GMC and owned a Ford and Subaru at the time of his demise. He retired as a millwright at the steel mill.

This picture was taken in Montana overlooking the great Missouri river. Those bald hills were smooth and we could drive all over them. On this day I was getting confident and was ready to go a little faster but suddenly felt I should stop the car. I did. Turns out the hill I was about to traverse would have taken me over a cliff to the river and my demise.

I found my way down there a more legitimate way and walked across the mighty waterway. There were a series of water falls. The river was wide. I was able to walk all the way across at the top of one of the short falls. I was barefoot and the bottom of the river was sludgy smelly. The skin on my ankles broke out in little bumps. I scheduled a doctor visit but by the time they saw me the bumps were gone. Most likely the purported fact that the city dumped sewage into the river had afforded me access to bacteria which in the interim had been vanquished by good hygiene. The doctor was not happy that I’d come in and made sure his complaints were heard when he loudly rehearsed to his nurse about how someone came in to be seen for a skin condition that had passed. Embarrassing. That was a routine that continued a long time: I get sick or have some strange thing happen and put it off until I’m sure there is really a problem. Then I call the doctor and by the time I get seen the problem has gone away. Often right in the waiting room. Then I feel like an idiot. So I associate doctor visits with feeling like a fake. It’s probably better than getting there a little too late. If I had to choose.

The Triumph was a very good car. I loved driving it. My sisters couldn’t have been sweeter. Lori used to sit for me. She was my first paid model if I recall. Once I paid her an entire quarter. That’s a full TWENTY FIVE cents! I should find that sketch. I have it somewhere. She was the quintessential perfect little girl with a freckled face that was all sunshine and joy. Marla was a quiet one. I don’t think I sketched her much but I don’t know any reason why. Probably Lori volunteered. That would make sense because I was not likely to ask the favor but would take it when offered.

Speaking of sisters, this is my sister Gail.  This is the only photo I have seen of her. Mom wanted a girl but didn’t seem to conjour up the right ingredients so they adopted. Gail was sent and we all were happy to have her. Six months later or so the government people showed up and took her away not long before the adoption would have been final after they learned that the mother had newly disclosed that Gail was mixed race and they wouldn’t let us keep her. Marla and Lori were both adopted later and the agency seems to have taken pains to make sure there wasn’t the possibility of a repeat. They’re as fair as it’s possible to be short of being albinos. So the government view of being fair is all physical because it wasn’t fair of them to take Gail from us. I expect I’ll never know what became of her. This situation was particularly hard on dad who had ulcers for years after.

This next picture was another pleasant find. Clarice was married to Bob, our excellent neighbors out in the country. They had an original Jeep in their little farm that was waiting for their boys to be old enough to drive. Bob was a happy guy with a great attitude and a happy disposition. Clarice was a worker, always doing something in the yard or some project on the house. She was Bob’s match in attitude. They lived at the end of our long muddy driveway and also at the end of the street that led to that driveway. The school bus stopped at their house. I wish I could grow those purple fuzzy plants that she was so good at growing. She had one in the back entry hanging in the mud room and it was so beautiful that I could feel it’s gloriousness emanating from it. I’ve tried having them twice and both times they withered away and died.

Clarice found out that for my high school graduation there was a plan to celebrate by going to the required ceremony then getting on with the day and doing nothing else to recognize the big event. So she quickly cobbled together a dinner. Bob fired up the barbie and she invited us to come. Even the neighbor we called “the hippie” showed up. Free food does that when you’re “living off the land” as he was. He had built a shelter of scrap materials and lived in it with his dog, home made music instruments, and pot pipe. At the dinner, he had his dog lick the plate so he’d have a clean plate for seconds. Clarice still lives in the same house. Bob had a rough wind down with bad health and died. Her sons are in Seattle and Texas, each married. They’re the sort of guys you want for friend or nieghbor. Good people. I should go see her.  The dog is our sheltie, “Shadow”. She greeted you by dabbing her ice cold nose on the back of your leg. I called her tamp nose because she also buried things then pushed the earth down with the same snout.

Here, you see my brothers and sisters. Marty was the youngest and looks remarkably like Al Yankovic in his White and Nerdy music video (highly recommended) and I’m center. Dale was a freshly minted Airman first class. Lori and Marla had interesting futures to anticipate. Shortly after this, I decided that a beard was stock equipment for a male face but was forbidden to grow one. Instead I grew side burns and trimmed them so they almost came together. Had they met, then technically I would be out of compliance.

Dated July 1971, this would have been just before we moved up to LaCenter. There had been silver thaws the previous two winters but summer was nice. I was still on a bicycle and that’s how I got to the job that paid for my first car. Schwinn Astra, a skinny tired ten speed. Must have been a family outing. I’m with dad.

Same day, different part of the trail. This brings back those days. I’d just finished the sophmore year of high school in which my shy temperament had reached it’s apex. Worst year of high school. I was tense most of the school days. This must have been around the time when I met Nobel Witt, a gem and mineral collector of merit. His collection was top flight. He introduced himself at a gem and mineral show where one of his fellow attendees had stolen 15 freshly chipped five point starts of obsidian from me by giving me a quarter apiece and running off. May he be rewarded according his works! Nobel was quite a different person to deal with. I’m in front. Then Dale and Marla. Then Dad and Lori. I have no idea where this was.

Here I was home on leave from the Air Force where I’d begun my six year tour. It ended that winter though after we pulled out of Vietnam. There were too many airmen without the conflict and some got to leave early. I’d done something that favored the base commander that generated a front page story in the civilian news paper and I was rewarded by a much appreciated early discharge with full benefits. The Air force was too much standing around waiting for me. I sure am grateful for the experience and the benefits though. It’s maybe why I drive a Lotus. I’ve only seen two of them in my town except at car shows in all the time I’ve lived here. One was a black and gold striped JPS Twin cam parked just outside the unemployment office that I saw when I got home after being discharged. Didn’t see another until 2012.  When this photo was taken I was at the very start of my British car appreciation, having owned the triumph for weeks or months at most. Before that the only foriegn car I’d driven was a Beetle.

So here is my racy middle of summer shirt off photo. No tan. That was a school years thing. One year I decided to see how dark I could get so I didn’t wear a shirt all summer. I wasn’t as rediculously dark as Cary Grant was in his hey day. I still think he chem tanned. He was the color of naugahyde.