Family Archives

August 8, 2012

Chairs

Funny how you look at things without seeing them. I was in the back yard when I asked Mother, “Aren’t those the same chairs we had in Advance?”

“Two of them were,” she confirmed.

Brother Mark in contemplation

I was pretty sure I have photos of those chairs in my grandparents’ yard when I was only a couple of years old. I couldn’t find them right away, but I did spot them in the Kingsway back yard in the summer of 1960.That means they’ve survived nearly three-quarters’ of a century of rain, snow, heat and cold with only the application of a little paint every decade or so.

We expect every season to be the last for the redbud tree in the right center of the photo, but it keeps coming back every spring.

Brother Mark, stretched out on a bench in contemplation, is trying to figure out what color he’s going to paint those chairs half a century later.

Maple is all grown up

That little maple tree sapling at the left side of the two photos is about 18 inches across now. I keep waiting for it to fall over and hit the house. That’s Brother David, Mother and my Grandmother Elsie Welch in the picture.

Funeral home chairs

I shifted my weight while typing this and was reminded that I’m sitting on what we call the “funeral home chairs.” It’s a set of wooden folding chairs that Mother said was used in a teen hangout in the basement of my grandfather’s liquor store in the Prather Building in Advance. There are five of them around the table I use as a work area in the basement when I’m in Cape. I have three or four in West Palm Beach.

If Mother is 90, that would make those chairs at least that old, because I can’t imagine my grandfather buying new chairs for a bunch of teenagers. I’d creak too, if I was that old.

In fact, now that I think of it, when I shifted my weight, I’m not sure if the sound was coming from the old chair or from me.

Travel update

Made it from Cape to Kentucky Lake to get Mother’s trailer set up for her to stay a few days. Tuesday night found me in Newport, TN. I got to see some beautiful mountain scenery going through the Smokies to the Winston-Salem area Wednesday to visit Don Gordon, a guy I worked with at The Missourian.

After a couple of hours of gabbing, I took off to see my old paper, The Gastonia Gazette. The first thing I discovered is that it’s been rebranded The Gaston Gazette. Then, I went to the corner where it should have been (and where the GPS said it was) and couldn’t find it. The shopping mall that used to be across the street was still there (but much larger), but no newspaper. The GPS gave me an alternative location. I pulled up to the building and thought it looked vaguely familiar, but the location felt wrong. It turns out there’s a Walgreens where my old paper was and this is a new joint. I’m not holding out much hope of finding much I can remember here.

August 1, 2012September 17, 2016

My Mother’s a Bag Lady

You never know what you’re going to find when you come back to Cape to visit Mother.

One year Brother Mark tipped me off early about the tragic accident involving her arm and her job on a riverboat.
I hated to do it, but last year I had to pull the plug on her.
Mother’s not exactly a hoarder. She keeps a neat house, but the attic and basement are a time capsule.

Click on any photo to maker it larger.

“She’s collecting shopping bags”

This year, shortly before Mother’s Day, Mark sent me an email saying, “Mother’s become a bag lady. She’s going all over town collecting shopping bags.”

Mark is prone to either subtracting relevant details or adding ones to make the story more interesting, so it helps to do some fact checking. I decided to wait until I got into town before becoming concerned.

Turns out that Mother’s Friend Katie was part of a crochet group that was cutting up plastic shopping bags to make sleeping mats for the homeless.

Cuts bags into 1-1/2″ loops

Mother decided she’d make a ground cover for Grandson Malcolm to use under his sleeping bag when he goes camping. It took her several weeks to score enough bags, cut them into 1-1/2-inch loops and crochet them into something large enough to use. It turned out to be soft, durable and colorful.

In the process of doing the project, she became an expert in the colors that different stores use for their bags. Like folks who can identify the name of a song after hearing two notes, she can look at a color in her mat and tell you exactly which store uses that bag.

Keeping her out of the heat

Mark bought her a box of unused blue and yellow bags (moving ahead of me in the will, drat), but I countered by making sure to grab any bags I see on top of the recycle bins when I walk out of a store. I warned Mother to be careful when she digs through them. One of these days she’s going to encounter a full diaper.

It’s been too hot and dry to mow, even for her, so she started a mat for Mark to use on a piece of lawn furniture in St. Louis. She was picking up speed. She got that one done in three weeks.

Like a sweater with 5-foot sleeves

As soon as she finished that, she started another one. It went so quickly that it got out of control and ended up too big for her intended purpose. That’s this one. She finished it Monday night after working on it a week.

Starting a new one

As soon as her needles cooled, she started a new one on Tuesday morning. Pretty good for a one-armed woman, I must say.

July 15, 2012June 8, 2014

Wyatt Perry Headed to Marines

I went over to John and Dee Perry’s house Saturday afternoon for a going-away party for their son, Wyatt. He’s leaving town Sunday morning to be shaped into a Marine. It’s been a dream of his for several years. John is Wife Lila’s brother.

Today was a sort of bookend day. December 29, 1993, I was itching to head back to West Palm Beach from Cape. It’s a long drive, particularly over a holiday, and I needed to get back to work. Dee, unfortunately for my schedule, was in labor with who was going to become Wyatt. Lila kept saying, “Let’s wait a little longer, let’s wait a little longer.” We stuck around long enough to welcome him into the world.

I was here to see him off to start a new life.

A family tradition of service

Left to right: Laurie Perry Everett, Drew Perry, Wyatt Perry, John F. Perry, Rocky Everett.

John Perry was Navy and served in Vietnam. Drew just finished up his enlistment in the Marines.

Laurie Perry Everett, joined the Army, where the diminutive blonde became a Military Police officer. She was stationed in Kitzingen, Germany, but she either visited or was deployed in France, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Romania, Israel, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece and Switzerland, among others.

One of her jobs was processing new troops, explaining the local customs and making them aware of what they needed to know. One soldier, Rocky Everett, commented to his buddy, “I’m going to date that girl one day.”

Rocky and Laurie were married in Cape on a cold October night in 2003. They have one son, Fletcher, AKA Flea. She’s the owner of the highly-regarded Annie Laurie’s Antiques on Broadway. (Follow the link to see her as an MP.)

Marines rebuilt Drew

I saw someone at the party who looked familiar, so I went over and said, “I’m Ken.” The good-lucking guy who took my hand said, “I know. I’m Drew.”

You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather. Gone was the skinny, goofy kid I saw head off to the Marines a few years back. In his place was a solid, self-assured, mature man who seems to have his head screwed on straight.

I wonder if there will be a similar transformation with Wyatt, pictured at this link fishing in Florida with his dad on Father’s Day 2009. John and Dee are the ones who are going to have the toughest transition. It’s going to be awfully quiet with Wyatt gone.

Photo gallery of the going-away party

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery. Thanks to the extended Perry family for its service. You’ve done more than your share.

June 24, 2012June 24, 2012

43 Years of Lila and Ken

Back in the late 60s, I worked with a photographer named Bob Rogers at The Athens Messenger. I guess I should say I worked FOR Bob, since he was the Chief Photographer and nominally my boss. Here he is in a lighting finger exercise I did for a lighting class. (I was supposed to use two lights. I did: a strobe at the camera, and Bob is touching two wires together to fire a flashbulb mounted in the ceiling of the phone booth).

But, that’s not the point of the story.

“When are you guys getting married?”

One day – maybe even on the day when this photo was taken – when Lila was hanging around our office, Bob asked, in his normal diplomatic way, “So, when are you guys getting married?” (That’s Bob’s foot, bottom center, next to the phone.)

Responding in my diplomatic way, I responded, “Bob, pick a date.”

“June 27,” was his answer.

For some reason, that date didn’t work out, so we got married June 23, 1969, 43 years ago. To this day, when anyone asks when we got married, I always say June 27, because that’s the date that stuck in my memory.

Where’s Bob?

I lost track of Bob in 1970 when he sent me a postcard photo of himself climbing a mountain somewhere. I had no idea if he was buried under tons of snow and ice or if he had just lost my address. A few Internet searches over the years turned up way too many people with that name to track down. Finally, out of the blue, he found my bike blog. That’s where I discovered that he and his wife, Claire, are an extraordinary couple who have had adventures most of us have only dreamed about (in some cases, you might classify them as nightmares.) You can read about their world-wide meanderings all over the world by bicycle on their blog, The New Bohemians.

Bob happened to mention that they were traveling in their RV from Arizona to his 50th high school reunion in West Virginia and would love to see if Cape was anything like he’d been reading about. We arranged to get together, coincidentally on our wedding anniversary.

Anniversary celebrated with musical tribute

Bob and Claire cooked a wonderful supper, then Mother joined them in a musical tribute to us. Wife Lila recorded the action on her iPhone.

Stunned silence

Me, I just sat there in stunned silence, much like I did 43 years ago.

Lila was much more articulate. She said, “Old friends, old song, old married couple. Good times.”