Saturday, Decker Alumni (April 11, 2015)

Well, I am glad last night is over, although I thought it went extremely well. I brought home the leftovers, since we have people at the house, and I was so tired when we got those put away (thankfully, Dixie was still up, and she helped me get everything in the refrigerator), I forgot Joe at the top of the back steps and was halfway to the RV when he yelled at me to come back and get him (he needs help getting his knee wheeler down the steps and out the door).  The bed felt really good that night.

I got some laundry done this morning, then Dana drove out for a visit.  It was good to catch up with her, and we made plans to get together again next week.  

Dixie went out to mess with her flower gardens in the afternoon, and when she turned on the outside faucet, she had a geyser.  The hydrant had frozen and busted during the winter, and water was shooting everywhere.  Fortunately for us, Mike was here, and he, with Paul and Clayton's help, dug out the faucet.  But Mike had to leave to take Clayton to baseball practice, so the repair had to be delayed until the next day.

Saturday's event was the Alumni, and we had a good class representation here too, 15 of our classmates joined us.   The 1964 class sat at our long table with us, but it was hard to get good pictures.  This room is always pretty crowded so it's hard to move around and get pictures of groups once people have sat down.  And again, we failed to take a group picture here too.

I had a short speech to give here, basically a report on our reunion of the evening before, and a few statistics from 1965.  However, I did have a podium, and a microphone here!   

 It was a good evening, and we got to visit with classmates from other years as well as 1965.  We were especially close to the class ahead of us, the 1964 graduates of which Joe is one, so it was nice to have them at our table too.

A surprise of the evening was the announcement that the Outstanding Alumni Award was being given to Joe's best friend from high school, Ed Williams.  Joe did not know this was going to happen, and as the speaker described childhood events of the recipient, Joe figured it out pretty quickly since he knew about Ed's childhood escapades, and they even joined the Army together on the Buddy System.  We were thrilled that Ed was chosen this year.   Ed did not know he was going to receive the award so he didn't have any remarks prepared.  And he was speechless. 

 Our class has some representation on the Alumni Board.  Toni Holmes will be moving into the position of 1st Vice President for the next year, and Barbara Holscher is assuming the position of 2nd Vice President.  It's obviously time for the "younger" ones to get active on this.

I'm now done with speeches, so I can enjoy the rest of our visit here.  But it was a good weekend!

Class Reunion, April 10, 2015

Finally, the big day is here.  My 50th high school class reunion is tonight, and since I was class president our senior year, I am working hard to try to get our classmates to join us for this event.  Thankfully, I had a lot of help from my committee, Barbara Seitzinger Holscher, Nancee Woodward Truelove, and Toni Schultz Holmes.  Brenda Lane Nowaski was on the committee initially but had to drop out for personal reasons, but she was also involved in the early planning stages. Barbara, Nancee and I did most of the set-up last night but we still had some more "stuff" to bring in this afternoon.  Toni was busy helping decorating for tomorrow night's Alumni,  so she missed out on all this fun.

Our event was held at Slicer's in Vincennes, the old Elks Lodge out 7th Street.  I finalized my 5-page speech in the morning and printed it out, but then I almost left it at the house.  I also made two desserts for tonight -- Vanilla Texas sheet cake, and Pecan Cheesecake Squares.  I took the time to spell out 1965 on the Vanilla Texas Cheesecake before I remembered that we were going to cut it and put it on plates before anyone arrived.  Oh well, it was pretty to start with.

We still had some work to do, but we were ready in plenty of time -- time enough to worry about whether or not people would come early enough to visit.

 I realized then that I probably needed some kind of podium to put the pages of my speech on, so I went searching for someone to help me with that.  Although they didn't have a podium, they did come up with something that worked.

Joe posted this picture on Facebook, and he got some interesting comments.  Niece Lori Gerig posted "Wow - you got Red Bull to sponsor the event." and her sister Cathy Croxton responded "No surprise.  They're known for sponsoring events for the young and hip!"  LOL.  Anyhow, they did give me a tablecloth to cover up the Red Bull stuff, so all was well.

Our tables looked great, and I think our classmates did spend some time looking at our displays.  We had a few snacks as appetizers, but most of the social hour was spent milling around and visiting with each other, which was what we had hoped for.

The room looked really nice.  Barbara had put gold runners down the center of each table, then a floral arrangement with solar lanterns on each table.  She covered up the solar opening, and inserted battery-operated flickering candles.  Which was great, except none of us remembered to click them on.  Oh well, the lanterns looked great anyhow.  Barbara also had placemats made from our Senior Trip picture in front of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

 The other major thing we forgot -- we did not take a group picture.  That was a real mistake, we had such a great turnout, and I know everyone would have loved having a picture that included almost every one of their classmates.  But, nothing I could do about that when I remembered it as I went to bed that night.

 Barbara did an outstanding job with the decorations, the tables were lovely, as was the dessert array and the Memorial table.  We also had tables of memorabilia from the 60's, a table with our senior pictures, a table of pictures and mementos that some of our classmates had held on to for these 50 years, and a table with pictures of our boys who served in the military.

The dessert table was really beautiful.  Barbara set it up with lots of blue and gold, and her beautiful cupcakes. 

Finally, our classmates began to arrive.  We served 36 for dinner, only one couple  that we were expecting didn't make it (Dick and Susie Catt Johnson), so we had 17 (out of 24 graduates), and 5 classmates who did not actually graduate with us, join us for our evening of reminiscing.

After our delicious meal, I got up to give my remarks.  And it appeared that most of my esteemed classmates were actually paying attention (probably better than they did 50 years ago).  Well, maybe not Mike Baker, but that is no different than 50 years ago anyhow.

Finally, I concluded my remarks, and turned the podium over to Toni to talk about tomorrow night's alumni. 

After our official speaking was over, everyone resumed visiting.  We also had a little "goodie bag" for each graduate, which included a notebook with the contact information for each classmate, copies of pages from our 1965 yearbook as well as copies of the class picture for each of the 4 years of high school, the article "A Decker Chapel Student Recalls ..." from the History of Decker book that was published a few years ago (an interview of Barbara Seitzinger Holscher), and pictures of both Decker and Decker Chapel schools.   Also in the goodie bag was a wooden plaque that said "Decker Aces 1965 - 2015" that our Arizona friend Collins Brundige had made for me to give to each graduate.

As we began cleaning up the room, I took my class jacket down and modeled it -- obviously it shrank a lot in 50 years, it no longer came together in front!

I think everyone had a good time -- I know I did -- and the committee hopes to be able to stay in contact with our classmates in some manner in the future.  I am so grateful that so many came and joined us for this special occasion.

Since we didn't do a group picture, I will end this blog with the picture of our placemats of our Senior Class Trip.  Since we all look exactly the same as we did 50 years ago, this will have to suffice.

Thursday, April 9

Thursday morning, Joe and I drove over to Monroe City today to retrieve my high school class jacket from the Blue Jean museum, and I spotted a wild turkey in a field -- that's the only wildlife I've seen here.  But the thunderstorms are wild enough for me!  And we are anticipating another one during the night tonight.  Joe didn't sleep very well last night, so I guess it's my turn tonight.  It is fairly warm here, in the 60s and 70s, until the storm cools it down.  Gets very muggy too.  This is definitely not my favorite time of year here, even if the lilacs are due to bloom in another week or so.  I'm looking forward to heading to Florida, hopefully we will start heading that way on the 24th, as soon as we leave the doctor's office.

We got back in town, we stopped by an orthopedic surgeon's office and made a doctor's appointment for Joe, for the 24th.  Hopefully his foot will be healed enough to move on to a walking boot, but we will just have to wait and see. Then, we went to the Office Max store to make copies of our questionnaires for tomorrow night.  Rather than give a set to everyone, we decided just to make one set per table and hopefully they will pass them around during the course of the evening.  At 11 cents per page, we were looking at about $125, so we re-thought the idea of including the questionnaires in the notebooks Barbara had put together for each graduate.  After I got the copies made, we met Barbara for lunch at Dot's, then went over to the Lodge to start getting the room ready for tomorrow night.  Nancee met us there, and we got right to work.  Joe was our official picture taker, so he got to oversee the three of us as we made the room ready for our party.

 

 

 

 Barbara put together a really nice display for our Memorial table -- we lost two classmates during high school, and three more since we graduated, and we wanted to make sure they were not forgotten during our celebration tonight.  The individual flowers on that table will be taken to their grave sites next week -- Barbara, Nancee and I are going to make that journey next Wednesday.

 The table decorations included placemats of the class picture from our Senior Trip, standing in front of the Capitol Building. 

Finally, the room was ready to our satisfaction. The tables looked great, as did our displays.

So we called it a day, and we went back to the house in time for dinner (ham and beans) -- Fred and Judy joined us for dinner, Billie Bloebaum stopped by but didn't eat with us, and Rachelle brought the kids back up for a while, but they brought their dinner with them.

Getting Settled in Vincennes (Tuesday, Wednesday)

We have spent the last 2 days dodging thunderstorms.  It has rained sometime during each day, and Wednesday we had a pretty good thunderstorm, including strong wind and hail, come through about 5:00 p.m.

I spent most of Tuesday with Barbara, running around town and then working on our posters in her garage.  We drove out to Slicer's so I could see the room, and stopped by two cemeteries to get the dates for our Memorial display.  We grabbed lunch at Taco Bell, and then we finally got back to her house to get started on our work.  She had most of her assignments already completed, but we worked on our posters and made decisions about how we were going to set up the room.    I had brought most of the poster material with me from Arizona, but I didn't want to actually attach anything until I got here.

 This was a work-in-progress, and we developed more ideas as we went along, so we had to make another trip out to pick up a few more things.  But by the end of the day, we pretty well had worked out how we wanted our posters to look.

It had stormed off and on most of the afternoon, and Barbara turned on the television in her garage so we could keep up with the tornado warnings.  Lovely!!  Fortunately, the storm was moving through about 50 miles south of us, so we were not in any danger at that point.  Barbara enjoys the storms, while I HATE THEM.

Wednesday morning, I took Joe to town for his favorite breakfast -- McDonalds, but I took him back home and dropped him off, then I went back to Barbara's.  She had finished up most of the posters, so we only had a couple hours work to do today.  We went by the courthouse to drop off some money to Toni, but she was at lunch so I didn't get to see her.  We stopped at the Dutch Panty to check out their desserts, since we did not include desserts with our catering order.  Barbara is the "cupcake lady" around town so she was going to bring cupcakes and I told her I would either make something or pick something up.  We finished up for the day, and I drove back out to the house in between storms, but we had another big one on the way.  Jim, Dixie and Lucille arrived from Ft. Wayne about an hour ahead of the thunderstorm, so that was good.  We had hoped they were bringing White Castle hamburgers from Terre Haute, but Dixie said she was out of town before she remembered that she intended to stop.  Mom was keeping her entertained with her chatter.

Mom was thrilled to be back at her house, and we eventually, after the storm passed, we went to town to the Ponderosa for dinner, where Fred met us. Some of the roads were flooded but the roads we took were ok.  Rachelle sent a text that she had stopped by with the kids and wanted to know where everyone was.  They had lost their electricity, but by the time we got home and she came back by, her electricity had been restored.  Fortunately, it did not go out at Lucille's house, or in our RV. 

Caseyville IL to Decker Road - day 4 (April 6)

Started our day with breakfast at Cracker Barrel. And even though we camped on a parking lot, we still had some nice scenery - a dogwood tree right beside us in full bloom.

 

 Temperature in high 50s today but we've had sprinkles off and on.  We crossed the Wabash River into Indiana at 9:30, and fueled and dumped our tanks at the Flying J in Haubstadt, Indiana.  Gas was $2.259, better than expected since Indiana is one of the states that usually have highest gas prices.  Oklahoma and Missouri had greened up and had some blooming trees and flowers, but Indiana fields are still brown, just a few Easter daffodils blooming, and the rivers are all flooded, all typical spring events back here. 

We arrived at Lucille's house at 12:10 Indiana time (we lost another hour, now on Eastern Daylight time).  Mike Froeschke met us here, and helped us get the RV set up.  He had already turned things on in the house, so we are in good shape.  Dixie and Jim are bringing Lucille down on Wednesday, so we have a couple days on our own.  Maybe we will try to rest us from our marathon trip.

We traveled 1629 miles, basically in 3 days (2 half days and 2 full days), averaging 5.489.  We fought wind for the first 3 days, and we pushed harder than usual so our gas mileage suffered.  Fortunately, the average price was 2.213.  Hopefully, when we head to Florida in 3-4 weeks, our mpg will go up and the average price will go down.  We'll see.  Last year's round trip to Indiana, we paid an average of $3.29 for gas, so we are paying quite a bit less this hope.  Hope that lasts throughout the summer because we have many miles to go.

Rachelle stopped by with Clayton and Mallory for a visit.  We had a nice visit with them, until they had to go to a Cub Scout meeting.  So Joe and I headed in to Bobe's Pizza, a sure sign that we are back home.  I had talked to Barbara in the afternoon, and she mentioned that she had a meeting tonight so we would get together tomorrow to work on reunion details.  Funnily, her meeting (Home Ec, of all things) was at Bobe's Pizza, so I did get to see her today after all.   We loved the pizza, brought back memories, then stopped by Walmart for a light bulb for the RV.  Got back to the RV and Joe tuned in the TV so he got to watch part of the NCAA final game.  I went to bed, and FINALLY got a good night's sleep.  Woke up to thunderstorm and train sounds, another sure sign we are home. But it's not cold, temperature in the low 60s.

We were very fortunate to make this trip without incident, a lot of things could have gone wrong.  It was pretty stressful for me, so I'm very glad to be here, off the road for a few weeks, and Joe healing.   Now for reunion and family time!

Clinton, OK to Caseyville, IL - Day 3 (April 5)

Today is Easter Sunday.  We woke up early and were on the road at 7:15.  It was misty rainy, and still windy.  We stopped to fuel and grab Subway breakfast sandwiches in Oklahoma City --  GasBuddy was showing gas in Oklahoma City at $1.95, but the cheapest we saw was at a Circle K for $2.01.  We missed that one, but did fuel for $2.059 at the eastern edge of Oklahoma City.  It rained most of the day, and we just kept driving.  I took my shift from 11:30 to 1:00 -- 90 miles/90 minutes (through rain, town of Joplin, and 2 construction zones).  I seem to usually be driving across most of the state lines, while Joe rests his foot.  We crossed into Missouri at 12:10 so when he came up front he was pleasantly surprised to know that we had left Oklahoma behind.  We fueled for the second time today in Mt. Vernon, MO, but the price had gone up to $2.159 (still not too bad).  We had made pretty good time until we got caught in a 9-mile backup due to a semi truck burning up.  It took us 40 minutes to go those 9 miles, but we didn't hear that anyone had been injured.  A dump truck was alongside the highway cleaning up the mess.









It did finally quit raining during this delay, and the sun came out.  I kept looking for more lilacs but I guess we are too far north now.  But the redbud trees were really pretty in Oklahoma.  In Missouri, they are just beginning to bud out.

We buzzed around the bottom of St. Louis on I-270, which becomes I-255, and got on I-64 in Illinois.  We had not been through this way since this new bridge was completed, and it certainly simplified getting around St. Louis.  We crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois at 5:45 (Joe was driving for this state line).  We found a Cracker Barrel in Caseyville, IL (still in sight of the St. Louis Arch) for dinner at 6:00, and asked if we could park there overnight (we had read in Motorhome Magazine that they allow this), which they did allow, so we were off the road for the night.  And I finally had a chance to start my 2015 blog.

We drove 585 miles today, another marathon day.  We have driven 1,447 miles in 2 1/2 days, which is way beyond our comfort zone.  But this is an unusual trip -- Joe can't get around to do any touristy things, and I need to get to Vincennes for my 50th class reunion, which is this coming Friday.  So speed is of the essence, I guess, as well as perseverance.   And another day, DAY 3 WITH NO DISASTERS.