Woke early (shortly after five) so I could make it to Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Bill's before their appointment at one. Was off from the campground by a quarter till eight. Stopped in McClure at the gas station for something to drink. Headed over US6 and rejoined Ohio 109 through Malinta to Hamler and then Carolyn and Bill's, maybe a mile past Zion Church, which was a great deal smaller than I remembered it. (The road was closed about a mile north of Hamler. This proved easy to walk my cycle past. Couldn't figure out what they were doing, but Robin (my cousin) said it's for a major pipeline that's going in.) Robin had brought lunch for her parents (beef and egg noodles, like my mom used to make), and I was invited to join. I was trying to remember if I'd met Robin's husband Jim before. He thought I must have (they're coming up on their fortieth anniversary), but I wasn't so sure. (It turns out did meet once at least, at Grandma's funeral.)
Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Bill left for their appointment and Robin and Jim for home. I cycled a few hundred meters down to the road to my maternal grandparents' house. I knocked on the door and Jim Creager answered the door. He ended up giving a tour of the house which, needless to say, looks a lot different than I remembered though there was much, of course, that I did remember. (I was last in the house I think when I was seventeen.) The small entryway with room for coats on either side is gone, replaced by a new door and a wraparound porch. Grandma and Grandpa's bedroom is now the dining room, with a large serving window into the kitchen. On the other hand, the bedroom where I used to sleep didn't look so different, and the black walnut tree I used to climb was still there, though the crook I used to sit in was nowhere to be seen. (So were the barn, chicken coop, corn crib, and well house, all looking from the outside just as they did.) A lot of the changes inside the house weren't ones I'd have made, though I did appreciate all the exposed hard wood.
Jim asked me whether I carried a gun while I cycled; I told him I did not. "I don't cycle as far as you, not more than twenty miles at a time, but I use my concealed carry and always have my gun with me." He also asked whether it was true what he kept hearing on the news, that Europe was overrun with refugees and a basket case of problems. I said the number of refugees was never a flood and had dropped year on year for a number of years. Meanwhile, Europe's view of the US is that it's basically a basketcase of problems.
Leaving the Creagers, I rode out Ohio 18 past my Aunt Florence and Uncle Ray's house, where the stucco appears to be falling off. The old turkey barns have been replaced by big new warehouse-type buildings. The one thing that hadn't changed at all was the swimming pond with its diving platform.
A mile past the farm I heard someone calling my name. It was my cousin Jim, whom I'd last seen at John's funeral. He refilled my water bottle and would have given me trail mix and snack bars, and a lift to Findlay, but I said I was really fine.
As the afternoon went on I developed a severe headache that would come and go, though it increasingly did more of the former than the latter. At first I thought it was the heat, but as the evening grew cooler, the headache got worse. Made it to Uncle Dick and Sharon's in East Findlay much later than I was planning on, around seven thirty. Uncle Dick was outside on the sidewalk waiting. Wondering now if I got food poisoning from that cold (chicken) pizza.
No comments:
Post a Comment