Scritch, Scratch, Scritch

Kids!

Memorial Day at The Lodge was a lovely affair, I have to say. As is the case with establishing a family tradition, my guests weren’t sure what exactly to do with themselves. My folks came up from the desert and were overly concerned about frostbite considering the sub-90 degree weather. My sister did a lot of the heavy lifting in the kitchen (for which she will surely find a special place in heaven, the dinners were that good) and my nephew found new ways to endear us to his, well, cuteness.

Up here in Idyllwild Memorial Day means garage sales and the folks were prepped and ready on Friday. They, and the rest of us, found the sales wanting though. “I guess they couldn’t lug all of that stuff to the dump so they put price tags on it instead,” was the lament. My sister found a nice spherical aluminum ice bucket, but I found the records. Esquvel! Frank! Space Age Dating Electronica! (oof. dating music? you? please spare us all. – ed But the cover photo sells it. The young couple in cocktail attire flying through the city in their bubble top Bell helicopter? That’s class. – Bob) I’m gonna need a new cartridge for the turntable just to enjoy all of the 25-cents a piece goodness.

My Mom found a yellow Bauer pottery plate that wasn’t already represented in her collection of Fiestaware. That’s a fairly rare occurrence. What doesn’t she have? It’s down to colors of things now, but she didn’t have an example of this shape. Weird.

My nephew found all manner of things to do while here. Even though we didn’t go out much, he raided the crafts basket and found crayons, clay, paper, pens, toys and all kinds of kid’s stuff that occupied his time. He bashed his Big Wheel around the deck until I finally tired of the crashing. Based on discussion of my crashing a bike up here thirty years ago and going to hospital, I came upon the idea that he might like to barrel down my driveway. And how.

The previous owners left me some utility company wheel chocks tied together with a rope. That became the arrestor line at the bottom of the driveway. My sister and I stood beyond the line to arrest the arrestor should our flyboy overshoot his landing and blast into the street. Ready! Go!

Controlled terror ensued. The little plastic trike wobbled furiously. His sneakers lost a good bit of sole. There was a minor crash involving the wobbliness and not steering with both hands, but no bloodletting (and we didn’t have to bring out the portable defibrillator for his mom).

At the end, we ate and laughed and talked about my aunt and tried to figure out what we can do better next year. I scoffed at that final idea though. We’ve got an entire summer to work out the kinks. Don’t we?

Your pal,

bob