After graduating from Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino, California, I decided I needed a break from anything that even remotely looked like algebra. So, with a quick swipe of the pen, I landed myself in the U.S. Air Force. I had passed my senior year of math by writing an English composition paper about five famous mathematicians. Really, Seriously, I did. They realized I just didn't get the math thing.
A short time after leaving the air force I met my "Iowa Girl" wife, Karen. Loving my native California landscape and weather, I told her I would never live where it snows all the time. As I write this it's seven degrees outside with a minus two windchill. That's actually twenty degrees warmer than last week, yippee, so much for "nevers"!
Needless to say, I left my deserts, mountains and beaches for the lush green Iowa countryside. At least it was green the first time I saw it in August of that year. At the time nobody bothered telling me what Iowa looked like in February! Love is a powerful thing, so is a recession. We had packed up our vintage 1973 BMW Bavaria, with no working heater, and moved to Iowa in the summer 1991 with our two California babies; my oldest son, now the outdoorsman and culinary master, and oldest daughter, the most masterful writer in our household. Tagging along was our Peek-a-poo puppy Pennie, aptly named by our children after my wife's sister.
I dug footings that summer for a Wal Mart that no longer exists, long replaced by one five times its size. It was on that construction site that I experienced my first taste of an Iowa thunderstorm. The skies opened up and all the water in the heavens fell at once, seemingly concentrating themselves on my little BMW. I couldn't see past my windshield. Heavy winds buffetted the car, thunder rolled, lightning flashed. I was terrified and thought I was going to die. I gripped the steering wheel and let out a little whimper of sorts. Now if I could just talk myself into leaving that dirt parking lot.
I would make my way home every day to a little one-horse town called Melbourne. The days I wasn't working I would get excited when one car had driven down the street we lived on. The Fall of that year brought my first taste of a Midwest icestorm. Fresh from California with no heater or defrost in the car, there I drove down the back country roads with the driver's side window open, my arm reaching around to the driver's side window with frozen hands. I was desperately trying to scrape enough ice off to see the road and keep from crashing.
A tire finally seized on the BMW and I just couldn't seem to get it to break free. We retired it where it sat on a nearby acreage of a family member. I had taken it there to try to get it fixed. It sat there for several years, rusting, and was finally sent to the crusher. Of, course, we finally got some small car with heat. This was great because on Thanksgiving Day of that year we tried to make the thirty mile drive into Des Moines, in yet another ice storm. I still remember sitting in the car at the top of this long rolling hill in the countryside about seven miles into our trip. Two other cars were stuck. There was a half inch sheet of ice on the road. We had almost crested the hill when the cars wheels started spinning and it just wouldn't go any furthur. Every time I pressed on the gas, the wheels spun and we slid to the right, closer to a deep embankment into a farm field below. Stuck. We finally decided there was no hope of making the top of the hill, only feet away. We prayed, the deer and the cattle watched, and backwards we went, spinning in three-sixties to the bottom of the hill, never leaving the road. We decided, yes, to try again. This time, with the two right wheels on the shoulder gravel, we made it and continued our now two hour drive into Des Moines. We were stuck in Des Moines for five days. I hate icestorms. The ice almost got my wife last year in a slippery accident, which took about six months for her to recover. Did I say I hate icestorms?
I love the snow . . . The snow is pretty . . . enough said.
1992 brought our first corn fed baby, our Spanish Major. The Floods of 93 brought our little actress. In 1995 along came my gamer and weight lifter, and we almost lost Karen on the table. I decided we were done! Now, Karen, still pale from blood loss, reminded me she was pretty well bent on having a half dozen children, so like a good husband I shut up. I figured the argument could wait for a day when she didn't have all those tubes attached to her body. I couldn't even begin to wonder what life would be like if she hadn't won that argument. Our curly haired, volleyball slamming little caboose is graduating high school this spring. The day she graduates she leaves for training camp for her second six week missions trip, this one to Nepal.
In my spare time . . . Art, Photography, Gardening . . .