Days of Summer ~ 1

Wow. It has been an eventful summer to say the least (and I souldn't talk - summer's still got another month). Three pretty major things happened and many minor things got sprinkled in between.

Numero Uno. Our family reunion. We have a big small family. Or a small big family - I’m not exactly sure how to say it. Basically, if you have our last name, you’re blood-related to us. So we have hundreds of us running around the country, and when we see our last name it’s like an instant bonding thing. We have had family reunions on this beautiful family farm about once every 15 years (they used to have them every year way back when). About one to two hundred of us come. My parents, older sisters and I drove in one car, and my sister, brother-in-law and nieces drove in their car for the two day trip to Wisconsin (my brothers were working at a camp and flew in later).

I can’t decide if I’m a city girl or country girl. I love, absolutely love the city: the diversity, the food - it’s all good. But the farmland of Wisconsin is so gorgeous and the air smells so deliciously fresh. So on our first night of the road trip, we spent an hour looking for Old Country Buffet, but it eluded even the GPS so we settled for fast food. When we drove back to the highway, I was shocked to see that it was almost 9 o'clock; the sun was still burning and there were gorgeous purple and red clouds swirled around it. We stopped somewhere off of some route in the middle of nowhere and stayed in “Rainbow Motel.” I’d never heard of that motel before, but the price was half that of the palatial Holiday Inn (which looked like a White House knockoff bathed in blue ambiance lights) across the road.

My sisters and I decided we had to have tea time, so around 9:30 or 10 at night we tramped to the gas station up the road. The sun was finally setting. The first gas station didn’t have tea but the cop chatting with the cashier told us that the station across the road (the highway, the route - whatever) probably had something. We walked to the other gas station and a weathered old man was the cashier. He had a limp and talked with a twang. My sisters tried to get hot water out of the machine but he said, “oh I just unplugged that and put everything away. But don’t worry - there’s more’n one way ta get hot water ‘round here.” He shuffled to the cappuccino machine and got my sisters hot water. He talked to us about his life - he had far more near-death experiences than anybody should have.

Afterwards, Leesh was dying laughing because of how he got the hot water. He had pressed the rinse function. My dad told us, “Yep, he’s an old farmer - that’s how we think - there’s more than one way to do this.” We went to sleep kind of late that night, but we were all up before six and ready to hit the road.

More to come. :)