RUSS AGAIN

   I simply can't believe that Trisha bitched in her last post that I have the audacity to use her blog. Jealousy is a terrible, terrible thing.

   We're crossing Illinois, going from Springfield IL to St. Charles Mo. The mobile broadband works perfectly. We get internet service on our laptop everywhere. 

  Having been in Detroit, I have another reminiscence, so those not interested can tune out now. When I was about 11, my grandfather, who lived in Detroit, took me, my brother Marc and Jeff, aged 14 and 9, and our great uncle Willy to Denver by car to visit my mother, who was in the National Jewish Hospital for an extended stay. The hospital was known as a leading lung care facility. I don't remember the car trip, but I have vivid memories of Denver;where we stayed, what we did,etc. We ate in a restaurant several times that had a neon chicken symbol on a pole high above the restaurant. I found the place 10 years later when i went cross country in college, but not when Trisha and I were in Denver a few years after that.

  My grandfather wasn't a warm person, and never ever got along well with my father, but I will always be grateful for taking us on the trip. My mother died a year or two later, and that week with her was very important to us. Unfortunately, as my cousin Steve reminded me yesterday, those years were tough ones. My grandmother, who had been bedridden for most of my life, died a few years after my mother, and my grandfather, who I only saw once or twice again after the Denver trip(at my mother's funeral in 1959), died when he was shot in his liquor store in 1962. 

   But I remember all of this fondly, as perverse as that might sound. I thought I had a great childhood, despite the objective evidence to the contrary. Perhaps that's because the people around me(my father, mother, uncles and aunts on both sides of the family, and grandparents), semed to look on the bright side of things, as depressing as those things were. We obviously couldn't be shielded from the deaths of immediate family, but it was clear that we were expected to move on with our lives, and enjoy what good there was every day.

  Sappy as always as I reread this, but so what. You're not forced to read. And many of us can use this advice. Things are hard for all of us from time to time(more so for some than others); so put everything in perspective, and get maximum pleasure from every activity.

   On another note, we had to cancel our China trip in October because of my eye.  Just gives us more time to travel here. And we finally rented a great place in Ft. Myers. Better than the first two places we had considered. So book now for December and January at our Florida temporary home. Our plan is to try to find a place to buy when we're there in December, but we're in no rush. Renting isn't much more costly than owning if we travel in the spring and summer, as we intend to. All in all things are great.

 One final note. Camaron asked that I explain what happened at the Saturn dealer on Monday. I'll do that later today or tomorrow. Perhaps not my finest hour, BUT I WAS RIGHT. More later(and maybe i'll tell the story of my father and my bar mitzvah suit and the police.

   Russ