Troubling Times

Since my last post we’ve had some great visits from family. The first weekend in August, Linda’s oldest son and his family came for the weekend. The kids had a great time with Grammy Linda, riding on the carousel, riding the zip-line and just plain having fun.

Today Linda is with the kids again at Chad’s company picnic, at Knoebel’s Amusement Park. Should be a great day to make more memories with the grandkids.
On Thursday of the next week, my daughter arrived from Boston to spend the weekend. Jay, my son, arrived at 5 a.m. Saturday morning after working till 11 Friday night. Jay and his girlfriend Kelly didn’t get much sleep because we had to be in Elmira, NY at 10:30 for Joel’s burial. It was the first time that I’ve seen Joel’s daughters in a lot of years. Sad that it was under such sad circumstances but great to see them. From the left: Lisa, Liz, Laura, my son Jay and daughter Becky and Anne.
Joel was buried next to his infant son and is in good company. He’s in Woodlawn cemetery where Mark Twain, Ernie Davis (first Black Heisman trophy winner), and Hal Roach (producer of Laurel & Hardy and The Little Rascals) are buried. The cemetery has been full  for quite some time so it didn’t come as a surprise when Liz called that there were no vacancies. The family thought they would have to resort to having Joel buried in Erie, where he grew up and where his mom and dad are buried. Liz called again at a later date and lo and behold there was an opening and it was right next to Joel’s son. We were all beyond shock. We continually get little reminders from Joel that he is with us. On Friday Becky, Linda and I went to a couple yard sales outside of Mansfield. We had been talking about Joel, and the fact that he’d be happy knowing that he’s in the same cemetery as Mark Twain, right before we pulled up to two particular yard sales. As I was looking around, at the first one, there was a small drinking glass that told about Mark Twain and that he was buried in Elmira where he wrote many of his books. Of course Becky had to buy that little glass. She and I walked across the lawn to another yard sale and there staring us in the face at the first table was the book, Huck Finn. We laughed and knew that Joel was clearly with us in spirit that weekend. We couldn’t leave the cemetery that day without paying a visit to Mark Twain’s gravesite.







Many of the Langdon family members are buried in the area around Mark Twain. Someone had placed a cigar and lots of coins on top of Twain’s grave. For many years, when you’d visit the study that is located on Elmira College’s campus (the little building that was moved from Twain’s house on the hill and where he spent  time writing his books), Joel’s voice was the narration that came out of the machine that told of Twain’s life in Elmira.
Although it was a sad day, there were many things that made us smile.
Monday morning Becky left to drive back to Boston; then around 1:30 I got a call from my sister-in-law that mom had fallen. Mom went out to get her mail, out of the mailbox attached to her porch railing. She fell back and hit her head and had a palm sized lump on the back of her head. Edie drove her to the ER and Linda and I met them down there. For the past two weeks, I’ve been taking her twice a week to physical therapy. The doctor wants to try and strengthen her legs and improve her balance. Luckily she only had a small hematoma but lots of bruises all over her body. They sent her home and I spent the night with her to make sure she was ok through the night. Linda and I have decided to set up an RV site behind mom’s house so we can be close to her to keep an eye on her. We made her a promise when we went on the road, eight years ago, that we’d take care of her when the time came for that so she wouldn’t have to go in a nursing home. We can only stay, here at Bucktail campground, till the end of October so we need to have someone hook up water, electric and sewer and put in a driveway so we can get onto the site. I used to live behind my mom, back in the late 80’s, so the connections are capped off under the ground, from when I had a mobile home there. There’s no pad anymore or driveway because my mom put a one car garage on the gravel bed that I had for a driveway so you can’t get back to the old site without putting in a new driveway. We’ve gotten some prices and hope to have work start soon. The sooner we can move to my mom’s, the easier to check on her and be close to take her to appointments. Last week she had an MRI to try and figure out what is causing the pain in her back. She’ll learn the results of that on Monday. It’s hard to see your parents get to this stage in their life and harder, I know, for my mom to accept these changes. She told me the other day that the hardest thing is not being able to drive. She always liked being able to get in the car and go wherever she wanted to go. Now she has to count on others to take her and I know that is tough for her and a loss of her independence. Tough times ahead for sure…

Dollywood

We got an assignment ! Our company has picked up a new park in Mocksville, NC and the other team in that  area can’t squeeze it into their schedule so we will add it to our schedule. Sure beats sitting around and we like North Carolina….this way we’ll be able to see our friends in North Carolina each year if we keep this job in our schedule. Since we’re leaving in the morning and don’t know if we’ll ever get back this way again, we figured we might as well bite the bullet and go to Dollywood. Our friends, Hugh and Dianne have never been to Dollywood to see the holiday lights so we knew that we wanted to do that. Dollywood is running a special till the end of the year that if you get a day ticket, after 6 p.m., you can get in free the next day. The four of us went Friday night and then Linda and I went back today to take in more of the park that we couldn’t cover in just three hours Friday night. Dollywood boasts having four million lights up for the holidays….wow, is it gorgeous at night !
The blue tree above had what looked like white shooting stars throughout the tree…really neat. A beautiful array of lights AND a full moon made for some nice pictures. We were able to get in three of the shows while we were there Friday evening. They have a “Christmas on ice” show, which combined singing with ice skating, and lots of other shows….everything from the southern Gospel group, “Kingdom Heir” to An Appalachian Christmas. Seems odd to hear Christmas music and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet but it sure starts to get you in the mood for the holidays.
Today, we went back and everything sure looks different in the daylight. Linda and I rode the carousel, the scrambler (after the ride got cranked up and my head was spinning, I remembered why I don’t do those twirly rides anymore :(   We enjoy the carousel at a Pennsylvania amusement park, called Knoebels, cause you can reach out and try to get the brass ring. It’s alot of fun but we have since to find another carousel that has it. The “southern” tradition must be yelling “Yahoo” at the top of your lungs when you go by the ride operator’s booth cause everyone was doing it. Twice the operator would return the southern holler…not sure if it was truly him or a recording. Note to self: rebel yell when riding carousel in the south next time
Speaking of surprises, I have to tell you about one we had Friday when we were out and about. We were approaching an intersection, in our  car, and we hear this scraping noise. In unison with the lady in the car next to us, I turn and look at her and she at me. The look on her face was priceless….as if to say: “It ain’t us so it’s got to be you”. I wasn’t sure where the sound was coming from but once they pulled away and it isolated the noise to us,… yep it was us. I pulled off into a gas station parking lot and get under the car. A big chunk of metal was hanging, by a thread, from under the car and dragging on the ground. After kicking it for a bit, I got it off and threw it in the back of the car. I think it’s the heat shield that covers the muffler….I kept thinking about the look on that lady’s face and it made me chuckle all afternoon.
We got to tour Dolly’s old tour bus. It cost her $750,000 back in 1994 and is a Prevost bus.It’s 45 feet  long, 9’ wide and 13.5 feet high. They got 7 m.p.g with it and had enough fuel on board to be able to go non-stop from Nashville, TN to Las Angeles, CA…2050 miles in 32 hours. They made more than 100 of these non-stop trips. The bus was retired with over 600,000 miles on it. She bought a new bus in the last year or so at a cost of 2.2 million. There were three bunks on board, in addition to her bedroom and two bathrooms. Good darn thing there’s two bathrooms on board with all those non-stop trips. There’s bound to be a potty stop needed over all those miles !





Had lunch at Red’s Drive In….not really a drive in, more like a diner. This restaurant is in an area of the park that’s set up like an old town. Remember these old metal type Christmas trees. One of my favorite childhood memories is of the red cellophane wreaths, with a light in the middle of them, that my mom used to put in the windows. I always thought they were so pretty and I’ve never seen them again. Nothing like smothering your burger with sautéed mushrooms and onions, pickle and the works. Wow !

Had a great day….so glad we took advantage of the opportunity to hang out with our friends until we got a new job assigned to us. Had a great time visiting Dollywood and other area attractions. Got to meet up with Froggi Donna and Stu and get to know them better. One the things that we heard said today, in the museum on Dolly Parton’s career, is that “life is about the experiences we have in our life”. That is so true and we’ve been really blessed to be able to travel and gather lots of these experiences.
Dolly seems like such a neat lady, very insightful and generous. Some of the information we put in our campground guides, for filler space, is on the Imagination Library (set up by her foundation). Dolly feels that all young children learn so much from reading and being read to and that they deserve to have books,  in their developmental years. Her foundation gives one book a month, from the day the child is born up until their fifth birthday. The child will receive 50 books ! She started this here in Sevier county for the children and it has caught in various communities across the country. What a great cause and one that our company helps to promote by putting information in vacant spots in the guides. Click the link above for more information.
That’s all from Pigeon Forge…heading out in the morning for Mocksville, NC. Back to work we go….