The Porsche

You really had to hand it to the flyboys, they had gotten it down to a science. First, they would present their wife with a gorgeous fur coat for her Birthday, their Anniversary, Valentine’s Day, or some other “special occasion”. Then would come the round of “date nights” to places where she would wear the coat. Then there would be that SIGH. You know sweetheart, it just doesn’t look right, as gorgeous as you look, taking you out in my old beat up (insert type of car the husband drove) rather than a chariot that matches your radiance. Sometimes they’d have to repeat the last line a few times, but typically it wouldn’t take long before they were out looking for that European Sports Car they were dreaming of. When the fever hit Mike, he was driving a Toyota mini-pickup truck with only 1 row of seats, so he added that his truck just wasn’t big enough for our family, since our second son had just been born. In his dreams, a Porsche 928 was just the ticket. After all that miniscule backseat that was too small for an adult, would be perfect for 2 little boys in their car seats, so it was a family car!! So he started looking. While I wasn’t actively looking, I actually came across one in Frankfort that I thought was perfect. Owned by a Porsche Dealers’ wife, it was not only US Specs, but California Emission Specs as well! Very well maintained (after all her husband was a dealer), low mileage (it wasn’t the only Porsche she owned). The only negative I could see was that someone had broken into the car once by breaking out the back window. While the window had been replaced, there was some staining on the leather interior from water damage that occurred before the window got replaced, but it was very minor damage. While I thought it was perfect, Mike decided it was too expensive, so instead one day he showed up with a “Gray” market Porsche that he had purchased off a GI in the area. With a Gray Market car, the car had been built to German specs, then over time had been “converted” to American specs. He justified the purchase by saying the one I had found was too expensive. Buying it without showing it to me first, he proudly drove up to the house and said he was going to take me for a ride! We didn’t even get a block away before he had to stop the car and let me out. The previous owner had been a heavy smoker and the residue in the car was making me sick. Painstakingly, Mike ended up taking the car’s interior apart and washing everything before I could ride in it. Not having had it checked out by a Porsche mechanic before he bought it, he decided that he ought to do that. (A lesson quickly learned was that only Porsche mechanics could work on a Porsche and those don’t come cheap). Picking up the car after it had been looked over (and finding out it had been in a couple accidents that the seller hadn’t mentioned to Mike and the VIN number indicated it was a year older then he was told the car was), Mike got in the Porsche to drive it home, with Brigham riding shotgun beside him. I was to follow in my car with Nathan. Backing out of the parking spot, Mike accidently put the Porsche in Drive and tapped the building. While neither the building or the car were damaged, with the whole family watching, Mike couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. At that point, I decided it was safe for me to drive it, since now, he’d had the first accident in it. Keeping up the “date nights”, one of the restaurants we loved to go to in Kaiserslautern, was a small Spanish restaurant. It not only had excellent food, but it had a very romantic atmosphere with private little candlelit alcove seating. One night, coming home very late from the restaurant in the Porsche, we stopped at a fairly deserted corner for a stoplight. As we sat there waiting for the light to change, a drunk started weaving her way across the street in front of us. She walked past the car, then right before the light changed, turned around and walked back, ending up right in front of us, when the light turned green. When Mike beeped the horn at her (a Porsche may look like a manly man’s car, but it’s horn is a tiny tinny little beep of a thing – more like the sound of a buzzing gnat than the honk of a goose). The woman looked around, and realized that something was beside her. She patted the hood. Then she laid down on the hood. Mike all the while beeping away at her. When the light changed to red, she finally got up and started to weave her way across the street again. Mike, breathing a sigh of relief, until she turned around and came back to lay back down on the hood right before the light changed again. Fit to be tied, Mike beeped the horn again, as it looked like she had passed out on the hood. Once more, she finally roused herself and started to move off as the light went red again, only to end up back on the hood when it went green. Finally, just as Mike was ready to get out of the car and try to talk to the drunk, (even though he wasn’t sure that she was coherent enough to understand him or what he should or even could do to get her to stay out of the street), a woman came out of a nearby apartment building, took the drunk by the arm and led her out of the street. As much as we wanted to get out of the car and thank our savior, we took the wiser course of getting out of there while we could. When we transferred back to the states, Mike brought the Porsche back with us to Miami, where we would sometimes drive the back roads in order to drive it as it wanted to be driven, since it really didn’t like American speed limits. The car really was lovely to drive. The only thing was, if you drove it, something seemed to go wrong. And if you let it sit in the garage, something seemed to go wrong. As a result, it spent a lot of time visiting its best friend, the Miami Porsche mechanic, who, because it was a “Gray Market” car, would have trouble getting parts for it. And of course, the parts would have to come from Germany which meant they took longer to get as well as costing more. Mike finally sold the Porsche before we transferred back to Germany. Before he told me how much the Porsche had cost us over the years we had owned it, he surprised me with a new Master Bedroom Suite of furniture.

The Box

The Box When we moved into our current home, it was a government move. On a government move, the movers have to unpack everything and damages have to be noted right away, or you can’t file a claim against the government. The movers unloaded our belongings, which had been in storage all summer long, then instead of unpacking, they got into their truck and sped away. We spent days on the phone called the Transportation Management Office (TMO) before they finally got the company back out – meanwhile unable to unpack so we could start organizing and putting things away. The day the movers finally showed back up, I had a contractor in the kitchen talking to Mike about necessary repairs to the home, the movers downstairs unpacking the boxes while I kept running up and down the stairs. I told the movers that the boxes filled with books and papers didn’t need to be unpacked, just stack them in the corner since there wouldn’t be any claimable damages from those items, but that the other boxes HAD to be unpacked and any damages immediately brought to my attention. Going back upstairs to check on what was happening in the kitchen, I saw the movers’ car zoom by the window. Going back downstairs, I discovered they had opened every box of papers and books and scattered them all over the basement floor – from one side to the other, the floor was covered. Calling TMO, we finally learned that that particular moving company had been on the base DO NOT USE list for the past 5 years and we were the lucky people to be the first to use them once they got put back on the Use List. By the time we finished our complaint they were on the Never Ever Ever Use List. Meanwhile, TMO finally gave us permission to unpack ourselves and record the damages. Since we moved in the day Mike officially retired, the boys started at their new school, we had a house full of boxes to unpack, organize and put away and we were both job hunting, the papers and books got shoved back in the boxes they had come out of and set on a storage shelf to be dealt with later. Over the years, the books gradually got put on shelves, but many of the papers – were just consigned to sit in boxes until we had time. It took about 20 years for that to happen. Pulling the boxes off the shelves to sort through, pitch and determine what should be kept, I found a box that must have come to me when my parents left Tennessee for California a few years after we moved in, but had, like the other boxes, not been dealt with right away. In my father’s handwriting, on the top of the box, were the words: ALTON MUSEUM. Nothing more. The box was filled with pictures and records about Alton, Illinois, that had been my honorary grandfather’s. When I was about 2nd grade, we had moved to St Louis when Dad got transferred to Scott AFB, but was assigned to McDonnell Aircraft Company as the Air Force’s Contracting Officer overseeing the planes that McDonnell was making for the Air Force. At the time, we rented a home on St Catherine Street in Florissant from Mr Wagenfeldt, an elderly (to me) gentleman. My mother talked for years about cringing on the couch, with the landlord sitting beside her, her young daughters showing Mr Wagenfeldt their new roller skates, as we skated across the living room floor and not knowing how to stop ran into one wall, then turned around and ran into the other wall! Mr Wagenfeldt just sat there and beamed at us. He took us to the Museum of Transportation, where he knew more about the trains then the people who worked there. He bought us foot tall solid chocolate Easter Bunnies. How could we not make him our Honorary Grandfather? I had probably been given instructions when I received the box with where it should go, but those were long forgotten. I knew though, that I had received a charge from my father and it was a task, I had to complete. I had to find the right Alton Museum and take this box to them. Googling Alton Museum, I found 2 possibilities. One the Alton Museum of History and Art, the other the Alton Historical Society’s museum. The Art and History Museum had a facebook page, but no website. The second had no contact info. It was late at night when I sent a facebook message to the first and tried to explain who I was and what I wanted: “When I was a little girl, living in St Louis, our landlord was an elderly gentleman who lived in Alton with his sister. Neither one ever married. After they died, my parents “inherited” some of their photographs and some other things. Herbert and Lucille Wagenfeldt grew up in Alton and always lived in the same home in Alton until the point they had to go into a nursing home. To give you an idea of the timeline of the items I have, They went to school with Robert Wadlow (the Alton giant) and attended the St Louis World’s Fair. Herbert died in the late 70’s I believe, while Lucile died in the mid 80’s. I have in turn inherited their box of memories from my parents. My father had labeled the box that it should be given to an Alton museum or historical society. While many of the pictures aren’t labeled, there are ones that were obviously taken in Alton. There is also a scrapbook of a trip Miss Wagenfeldt took with some other ladies from the Alton area to Colorado when she was a young adult. While I haven’t catalogued the pictures and other items to be able to send you any kind of a list, I am trying to find out if your organization might be interested in going through what I have, or if you know of an organization that might be interested in the pictures and other items. I live in West St Louis County, so I would be able to bring the box of items to Alton” Not expecting to hear anything back for several days, I was astounded when I got a message back that night. “Hello Mrs. Weir. Mr. Wagenfeldt's picture hangs in our foyer to this day. If you can believe that. Good people they were. Most certainly and please, of course we would be interested. You could consider this the only home for that kind of personal material. We would be honored to see it. “ A few weeks later, I took the box over to Alton and met the young man who managed the museum. He told me how Mr Wagenfeldt and his friends had founded the museum years earlier. How many of the dioramas still on display at the museum had been built by Mr Wagenfeldt. Going through a few of the things in the box with him, he was astounded by the pictures that Mr Wagenfeldt had taken of Alton years earlier when home cameras were first introduced. Since that time, I have shared other items I have come across that related to the Wagenfeldts with the museum, glad that I found the RIGHT home for the items and that I had been able to fulfill the charge my father had left me with so many years earlier.  

New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve I didn’t know. I really didn’t. I suppose in retrospect, that I had never thought to ask the question, or even to think the question. The first few years, dating, we were either with family, or working. The first year we were married we were working waiting to be called to active duty with the military. Only the 2nd year, when we got to our first duty station, did it come up and I learned the truth. I had married a man who had NEVER celebrated New Year’s Eve and who now, saw no reason to start. I cajoled, I coaxed, I tried everything, before he gave in. BUT. We were in Montana, where there really wasn’t any place to go to celebrate the New Year’s arrival. Literally, the big “to-do” in Great Falls, was to go to the restaurant at the small regional airport on Fridays when Fresh Fish was flown in from the coast for a seafood buffet and New Year’s Eve wasn’t on a Friday. We finally agreed to dinner at a restaurant followed by a movie. Dinner went well. The movie went well. Then out we went into the cold cold snowy world that is Montana in December. To a car that didn’t start. We tried and tried, but nothing. We went back to the movie theater, which was locking up for the night, and tried calling for a tow truck. BUT, it seemed that tow trucks didn’t run on New Year’s Eve in Great Falls. The manager of the movie theater, wanting to close, suggested a taxi. So we called, then waited, then took a taxi home on that cold winter’s night. The next day, bright and early, we called for a tow truck from home (cell phones not being in existence back then). Now the tow trucks were running, but we weren’t the only ones who had need of their services, so we took the other car and went back to the theater- and to the car and waited. Bored, with a long wait ahead of us, we tried the car again. Still the car wouldn’t start. Finally, as he lifted the lid to check the engine and battery, I was directed, by my husband, to get in and try starting the car. “Sweetheart, doesn’t the car have to be in park or neutral to start it?” I asked. For many years after that, he was accused of doing it on purpose. So that I wouldn’t, ever again, ask to be taken out on New Year’s Eve. For many years his strategy failed. (He even volunteered to be on Nuclear Alert one year, only to have the Wing Commander make the Officer's Club an alternate duty station for the evening....). Now, 43 years after that cold New Year’s Eve, we both often agree to a nice early dinner out, then home to watch a movie and drink champagne at midnight. Content to watch the bustle of the crowd on TV rather than in person.

Scuba Diving MisAdventures

Scuba Diving MisAdventures Mike and I took scuba diving classes when we were in college at MIZZOU. But other than the university pool, the only “real” diving we got to do was in a muddy lake where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Years later, stationed at Homestead AFB, in Miami, Florida, we decided to take it up again. Mike did very well at it. I had some misadventures. Now, while I like scuba diving, I don’t like snorkeling and trying to keep water out of my snorkel. One day, when I was in the water, watching the fish with my snorkel on, Mike came over and IN THE WATER, tried to move my snorkel from one side of my face to the other, because in his mind, I had it on wrong. I was NOT a happy camper with his doing that. Then there was the dive where the Captain took the boat out in choppy waters and I was so seasick, I never got in the water. In fact, Mike found me huddled against the anchor rope at one point, unable to stand up. It wasn’t helped by the crew on the boat cooking fish right in front of me and making fun of all the people on the boat who were sick. One time, early on, we went out on a boat with a large number of people. When we got to the bottom, Mike started leading the way. Suddenly, I had no air. Mike was too far away for me to get his attention. Gasping and flailing, I surfaced. Luckily, others on the boat saw me and pulled me out of the water. Turned out my regulator was broken and while it had registered that I had air in the tank, the tank was empty. It was about 5-10 minutes later, when Mike finally realized I wasn’t following him and surfaced. The female boat captain read him the riot act. You NEVER leave your dive buddy! You ALWAYS constantly check on your dive buddy! You should have caught the problem while she was on the bottom and shared your air with her! Then there was the time where the base veterinarian, his wife, the flight surgeon, Mike and I went out diving. I couldn’t get my ears to clear. I was miserable and tried everything, but they just wouldn’t clear. The next day, still having problems with them, I got an appointment with the flight surgeon. He took one look at my ears and realized I had gotten a hematoma on both ear drums trying to clear them. He was beside himself, realizing that he had been there when it happened and hadn’t realized what was happening to me. The kicker though, was when we went night diving. Now Mike and the base veterinarian had gotten their night certification dive out of the way the week before, but for one reason or another, the veterinarian’s wife and I hadn’t gotten ours done, so the four of us were going out with another of the flyers who was a certified dive instructor so the women could get their night certification, after which the guys planned on spear fishing. At the last minute, another dive instructor had asked if we’d take one of his students along who needed to get his night certification dive done. Excited and happy, we headed out. Reaching our destination, we anchored and everyone geared up. Mike was assigned to stay on the boat (one person always remains onboard in case of trouble), but the rest of us were going down. I was the last to go down. Jumping off the boat at the back, I needed to make my way forward under the boat to the bowline, then follow it down to where the rest were waiting. I couldn’t get down. I tried everything, but couldn’t reach the bow line to follow it down in the strong current and I couldn’t get below the current. After I returned to the boat, Mike put on his gear to help me get to the bowline, then he was headed back to the boat as the safety person. I struggled to reach the bowline, going under the boat, between all the spear guns that were hanging over the side, with Mike following me. Just as I started to put my hand out to grab the bow line, I felt Mike tap me on my shoulder. Turning to face him rather than grabbing the bowline, I saw he was handing me his air tank? That can’t be right. Then I realized it was my tank. As I swam under the boat, one of the spear guns had popped open the buckle on the band that held my tank on my back. Realizing that I was now connected to my tank ONLY by the regulator in my mouth and it’s hose, I grabbed the tank with both arms. And started to float away in the current. Mike, said later that his thought was if he didn’t stay with me, and I didn’t make it, he’d never forgive himself, and if he didn’t follow me and I survived, I’d never forgive him, he chose to follow where I was drifting and try to stop me. At this point, we were behind the boat and desperately trying to find the anchor line. Knowing if we missed it, we'd end up dead. Floating in the current to Who knows Where. Knowing that with no one on the boat, the rest of the group, when they surfaced, would have absolutely no idea what happened or where to look for us. Finally we made it. Reaching the anchor line, I pulled myself, inch by inch up it, still holding tight to the tank with both arms. Exhausted, Mike got on the boat and pulled me up (still holding my tank) and we collapsed on the deck. What seemed the strangest to us, was that no one from the party who had gone down earlier had surfaced looking for me, when I didn’t show up on the bottom. We found out why a few minutes later, when the rest of the group surfaced, dragging the guy from the other dive instructor’s class between them. They had gotten to the bottom and the guy had freaked out. The rest of the group, had had to take turns holding him “down” and force sharing their oxygen with him. We hauled them up onto the boat and they joined us just sitting for a bit. Then the dive instructor said, “I’m really sorry about this, but if the gals want to get their night certification, I need to take them back to the bottom and go through the certification skills with them so they can show their proficiency at diving at night”. The husbands came unglued and pointed out that based on what each of us had just gone through, we shouldn’t have to go down again. We compromised. Mike and the base Vet stayed with the freaked out diver and the 2 women went back down with the dive instructor (this time we adjusted my weight belt and I got down). We showed that we knew how to clear our masks in the dark at the bottom. Then went back to the boat and collapsed again. As we headed back to shore, Mike asked me why I kept scuba diving since I seldom had a great dive. “Because you asked me to”

Traveling with Spot and Gimp

Traveling with Spot and Gimp We had planned this wonderful vacation – an African Safari. The boys were old enough to enjoy it and since we were living in Europe it was less travel then if we started from the States. But – life happened Suddenly, Mike’s youngest sister announced she was getting married. Not only did we not have enough leave built up for 2 big trips, we didn’t have the money for 2 big trips. So the plans for the Safari were put on hold, luckily we didn’t have any money down on anything yet. A few days before we were scheduled to leave, I got a call from the Youth Center where the boys went before and after school. I wasn’t break dancing. Honest Mom, it just that 3rd flip I landed wrong. We adjusted our plans to include one child on crutches. The night before we left, I gave Nathan a bath. That looks like. It can’t be. BUT… No, it’s not possible. He’s not complaining. He’s not scratching. It can’t be. BUT…. It looks so much like it. But I KNOW he’s already had it. I made sure of that when Brigham and all the neighborhood children came down with it a few years ago. But it so looks like it…. The next morning, bright and early, we headed to Luxembourg to board an Icelandic Air flight to Iceland then onto DC. Brigham, ever thinking ahead, decided that it was “OK” to be on crutches, because the stewardess and others would be super nice to him. Somehow though, it didn’t occur to him that the stewardess would be watching him run across the tarmack to reach the rolling staircase to board the plane, his crutches under his arm, only using them when he reached the staircase to get on the plane. And while the stewardess was charmed by him, he didn’t get lots of extra snacks and other goodies like he thought he’s be able to get from her. Little Nathan, cheerful and happy, didn’t seem ill, but where he’d had a few spots the night before, he kept breaking out all the way across the Atlantic and definitely had a lot of spots now. Arriving in DC, my parents (who we weren’t expecting) and my sister, Lida, and her 3 kids (who we were expecting), picked us up from the airport. The next day, I took Nathan to Walter Reed, where they confirmed that a person can get chickenpox twice, especially if the first case is a mild one. At least this case seemed to be mild as well and he remained chipper and happy. Arriving back at Lida’s, I found the house in an uproar. Her husband, Ron’s father had just died and they needed to get to Arkansas quickly. While I was out, they had been calling airlines and the price of last minute tickets for a family of 5 was astronomical, not to mention difficult to get 5 tickets on the same flight. Mike and I looked at each other, than quickly offered up our tickets to St Louis. From there, Lida and her family could easily pick up a rental car and drive the rest of the distance arriving in time for the funeral. They only had to purchase one child’s ticket, which while the airlines have special fares for funerals, cost as much as the other 4 tickets put together. We had time built into our schedule for visiting with family before the wedding, which could now be used for the drive to St Louis. My parents quickly volunteered to drive us in their large full size van, altering their plans for the few days, while keeping us from needing to get a rental car. It gave us lots of time sitting in the van to talk to my parents and catch up on things that had been going on in the states while we were overseas. On the plus side, it also gave us several more days for Nathan’s spots to start fading and his contagion level to go down before we met up with the rest of the family and old friends. We got to St Louis, in time to meet up with Mike’s folks for the long drive to Iowa for the wedding. It was not Mary’s dream wedding – Mary’s fiance’s mother wasn’t able to come to St Louis for a wedding, so the wedding went to her. The reception was at the local VFW post, with the mother’s trying our best to keep our kids away from the regular inebriated customers at the bar. Back “home” to St Louis, where Mike’s folks dropped us at my paren’ts home. The next day, we headed out with my parents to Lida’s. Barely able to catch our breaths, we caught our flight out to Luxembourg the next day. It wasn’t the dream vacation we had planned, but it was family. And that’s what family does. We adjust, we alter our plans, we support each other, and we make it work for everyone. Mike still talks about someday going on an African Safari. We’ll see. I’m not holding my breath.

The little melamine bowl

It was just a cheap little melamine bowl. In college, in order to have enough credit hours to be a full time student yet enough time to focus on my internships, I took a flower arranging course. One of the assignments was to arrange flowers in a shallow bowl. I didn’t have one, so I bought a cheap little oval melamine bowl. I don’t remember where I bought it, or what I paid for it, but on a college student’s budget I know it wasn’t much. It worked well for the class and that was what mattered at the time. I used it for other things through the years, though it was seldom the really right size or shape for anything other than a bunch of grapes. Still I hung on to it. After the boys were gone and the bread basket seemed too large for just Mike and I, I started using it for bread on the table. Perfectly sized for a few rolls or pieces of garlic bread and much easier to clean as I could just “pop” it in the dishwasher, it worked perfectly. Occasionally used for something else, it made its way onto the table every evening. One day, pulling it out of the dishwasher, it slipped out of my hands. Hitting the floor, it cracked. A silver dollar size chunk splitting off from the rest of the bowl. Somehow it seemed almost sacrilegious to put it in the garbage can. 46 years, that little bowl had been there for me, being used in a yeoman fashion for whatever was needed. But a melamine bowl can’t be glued back together. Mike seldom notices the dishes on the table, but a few days later, helping to put dinner on the table, he asked where the bowl was, said he couldn’t find it. He too felt the loss of that little bowl. While we will always have memories of sharing great meals while that little bowl held the bread or grapes, we mourn the loss of the little melamine bowl. For 46 years, it served us, helped to feed us, was there for us. For 46 years.

The Raceway

I took my car to the raceway. Keeping even with the majority of the drivers, while other cars, obviously driven by drivers more unforgiving than I, wove in and around us, showing their contempt for our speed, as they outdistanced us, and moved out of sight. Construction on all sides, plus overhead bridges gave the track a semblance of long distance races over difficult terrain. The blending and weaving of the traffic – from semis to Geo’s – resembles the stereotypical drivers in Italy and Korea. Not for the fainthearted, this course. Returning at dusk, I pull into a deserted mall to take a call. Once full of life, the desolation of the area overwhelms as I avoid weed filled pothole, noting only one tiny building has any sign of still being in use. A guard shack perhaps, my mind wonders? In the 20 minutes I sit there on the call, only 2 cars pass by on an outer road, hurrying to get to the raceway or to escape the desolation? The call has delayed me long enough for darkness to descend. Now I drive the course in reverse, not only wary of other drivers and construction, but unable to see all the potential dangers as the oncoming lights blind me. Weaving myself now, I try to find a path through the other cars that will allow me to see the signs, to know I’m on the right path. I have driven this way before. Every time I venture to it, I’m filled with hope that this time it will be different: better, less congested, slower, less construction. All hope dashed quickly once I’m in the midst and seeing it for what it is. Reaching a more familiar section of the raceway, not as worried about obstacles, knowing the path, even with blinding lights, I feel my confidence building. For how many of us, does the pull of the raceway fill our days? Something to conquer as we careen around “obstacles”, filling us with both dread and excitement as we tackle it. Yet at the end of the course, finding only desolation before we turn back to our normal path.