by cheri block sabraw
When our kids were thirteen and ten we did something I swore I would never do: we drove literally around the United States in a motor home during the summer heat.
This trip spawned miles of video tape, thousands of photographs, and volumes of stories, none of which I have shared on paper.
We drove the entire perimeter of the United States from California to Florida, from Georgia to Boston, from Ohio to Washington, and from Oregon back to California in one month, with one week spent in Washington DC.
This trip was Judge Blah’s idea, one that he executed with his usual strong and resolute spirit, one which he commanded with optimism and panache, but one which stirred the evolutionary push-back known as mutiny.
I was his co-pilot and learned that month to keep my mouth shut, unless it was to open for a vodka tonic (which I drank at the end of every day that month).
A few ditties:
- He drove that American Clipper between 500 and 900 miles a day.
- The air conditioning went out in Carlsbad, New Mexico, shortly after millions of bats left the cave.
- We had five mechanical breakdowns, all in small towns.
- My parents were with us in this small space for one week.
- His parents were in their own motor home driving alongside us for one week. (That’s another story that will be told upon their deaths.)
- If there ever were a trip from Heaven and Hell, this was the one.
I started thinking about this motor marathon yesterday as I packed my clothes for Nova Scotia.
Why are you going to Nova Scotia? Asked my haircutter.
What are you guys going to do in Nova Scotia? Prodded my brother, Steve.
I said, We’re going to Nova Scotia because Judge Blah wants to see and be where E. Annie Proulx, author of the Pulitzer Prize Winning 1994 novel, The Shipping News, wrote it. The Shipping News is one of his favorite books.
(I thought it was cluttered with too much description, but what do I know??)
So I bought a little guide book yesterday at Borders and read about our destination.
Last night late, when Judge Blah came in from a day of major Blah, cranky and tired, I informed him that the setting of The Shipping News was Newfoundland.
Mutiny on Nova Scotia.
More to come from there…
My father lived for a while in Antigonish (An-ta-gah-NISH), Nova Scotia, after he retired. Besides the lovely way “Antigonish” rolls off one’s tongue, it was a beautiful place to visit.
Daddy was always proud to be a Scot, but one year he was particularly immersed in his heritage. That summer my two daughters and I flew into the airport in Halifax for a visit. He stood at attention on the tarmac clad in his kilt and tam, his Scottish Terrier Wee Bonnie Lass by his side.
My daughter looking out the airplane window turned to me and said, “Jeez, Mom, look at the guy in the skirt!”
“That, my dear, is your grandfather!”
This image is priceless. I have suggested to Judge Blah to wear a kilt and skip the underwear.
Underwear?
That is a very funny story, Cheri (LOL, funny). Where was “Anne of Green Gables”? Could you make it an Anne of Green Gables trip for yourself?
To get this humor validation from you, is the highest achievement in my blog life because you are a very funny man. Maybe we ought to co-author a book and try to sell the idea beforehand. Yeah. Let’s think about this idea. I’m sure Andreas has some connections and besides, he owes us.
I’ve decided to make it a Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865) week. According to the guidebook, he coined the phrases The early bird gets the worm and You can’t get blood out of a stone which appear in his book, The Clockmaker. Funny, I taught my students for 20 years that the first aphorism was coined by Ben Franklin. Well, they’ll never know.
We could draft Longfellow, read Evangeline and pretend he was an Acadian. Judge Blah is a French Canadian…does this help fill in the blanks?
It matters not that much, that you mistook Nova Scotia for Newfoundland. At least you got the country right.
I mean , you might have booked a flight to Mexico by mistake, perhaps confusing Annie Proulx with Carlos Fuentes. So don’t feel so bad.
Christopher, you are being kind and charitable here. I was campaigning for Labrador (since we own one of their dogs) but Judge Blah insisted on Nova Scotia.
Ah, don’t you just love those _smirk_ moments?
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