Yes, I’m still here. Fixed the computer systems on Saturday, but have not posted because, HEY!, it’s summer.
Given all of our travels this summer, there was really only one week when we weren’t going somewhere or planning a trip, and it was last week. Today marks the end of that with Dan-dan going to his new school. So, expect more posts soon.
Doing most posts on Facebook, since it is easier while traveling.
Calvin and Chris, 1978
Cars. Going to the lab and kicking the machines. Horse races. Cigars. Newspapers. Miga (his dog, 1967 – 1984). Playing tennis. House at Lake Santee. New Glarus. Watching football. Grilling steaks. Reading books; typically spy novels, history and biographies. Using multi-syllabic words when they were completely unnecessary (“Don’t be so lugubrious there, Nic-head,” Dad said during a tennis game Nic was losing.)
Calvin becomes a grandfather with baby Andy.
We didn’t normally think of Dad as a family man, but the smile on his face with first grandson Andy is certainly genuine.
Miga, Dad, Santee
My great stories of Dad? He saved me at age 25, diagnosing me with malaria after a trip to Thailand. I’d been suffering for weeks and none of the US-based doctors I had seen had been able to determine what I had. With that diagnosis and only a couple of quinine pills, I was cured from an otherwise possibly fatal disease.
When I was a child, he must have read me other books but the one I remember is sitting on his lap reading Yertle the Turtle. And, in elementary school, we played the States Game, where I would read off some statistics about a state and he would unerringly guess it within three to four datapoints.
Looking to the future, I asked him six years ago why his children were all shorter than he or Mom were. “They didn’t drink enough milk,” he told me. I mentioned this to Mom recently, who replied, “Oh, I so hated being forced to drink milk when I was a child.” Yet another Mom-Camilla link. My kids now enjoy a diet including four glasses of milk a day, with rigorous enforcement. This is information I can use!
Christmas, with poinsettias and literally hundreds of presents under the tree (we counted 160+ one year when I could count that high). Playing bridge with Mom and friends. Playing Jeopardy in the living room or on the back porch. Ping pong.
Chris and the 300
My travels with him.
Our trip to Baltimore to secure his first Mercedes, shipped from Europe. Going to New York in 1970, when he braved the surly taxi drivers, surlier waiters/waitresses and other busy people for us. The Alaskan cruise, July 1976. Switzerland, 1980. The Canadian rail adventure, 1982. His visit to me in Prague in 1992, to revisit the site of his army bivouac during the battle of Cheb 1945.
Transiberian Railway
There was another visit the following year to me in Moscow. Numerous visits to the West Coast, first to a condo in San Diego and later to our homes at Christmas time. The Steussy reunion of 2008, a vast success. The Freitag reunion of 2009, even more people for this one. Mom’s October crash, 2009, when my 86 year old father would make every conceivable, irrational, irritating and heroic effort to foster his own independence.
My first visit to Indiana with my completed family was April 3 to April 10 this year. It was the first time that Dad got to see his 15th grandchild, Veronica. It was three weeks before he passed away May 3.
Goodbye, Dad.
April 10, 2010. My very last picture of Dad. He's happy.
Trying to use the Droid to blog. Not my favorite physical keyboard.
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An 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Chile last night. Photos are just coming in. See the link here. There is some fear of a Hawaii-bound tsunami coming around 1pm PST.
After two days of being sick, I think I’m back on my feet. Veronica feels better too, but I’m not sure about Aaron. More later.
This is a test of the new data structure of the blog.
Southern California Edison finally managed to do their repairs, which meant that we actually had a power failure this morning for three hours. We lost our ‘N’ wireless router when the power started up again (I neglected to unplug it), but it was quickly replaced with last years ‘G’ wireless router. If you are reading this now, then you know it works, since it is also the router for our webserver.
We have another Christmas party to go to today, then we will be nesting at home until after Christmas. Additional posts will be coming in the next few days …
March Field, CA
