It’s hard to believe the midpoint of 2019 is just a couple
of weeks away. I’ve read that time seems to move more rapidly as we age and it
seems like this year is just flying by. Pam and I have taken two major trips
this spring since early May and that doesn’t include my nearly three- month
sojourn in Texas and arthroscopic knee surgery for her.
Being home is about familiarity and comfort in surroundings
one knows. the comfort of your own bed, knowing where things are in the kitchen
and the channels available on the satellite. It’s about relaxing on the deck behind
our house when the rain stops and sitting on the front porch watching the world
go on our street when rain is falling.
I arrived home from El Paso on April 5, and needed a week or
so to rest and recover from the nearly 2,000-mile trip. Another major trip
loomed on the horizon in mid-May. My nephew Daniel, my younger brother Tim’s
son, was graduating from Boston University in mid-May. Pam, Brian and I planned
to drive the 500 miles to Boston on Thursday, May, 16, but Pam’s doctor wanted
to do a pre-operation checkup and the only available appointment was that day.
So, we packed up the Honda CRV and left on Friday morning.
We would be taking the New York Thruway and the Massachusetts Turnpike to
Boston, so I signed up for an E-Z Pass transponder and stuck it on my
windshield behind the rearview mirror. That proved to be a wise decision,
because I think we saved probably 15-20 minutes in each direction by not having
to wait in line in addition to the discount on the tolls.
We arrived in Boston about 12 hours later and found our
AirBnb in the suburb of Framingham. It was a decent-sized apartment above a
garage and the nightly rate was about half what the hotels and motels in the Boston
area were charging.
Saturday morning, we drove 25 minutes to Brookline where
Daniel had an apartment. Parking is extremely tight throughout the campus area,
but his apartment had several visitor spaces behind the building. We had lunch
with Daniel, his parents, his girlfriend Nichol and three of her relatives at a
nice neighborhood restaurant about a 10-minute walk from his apartment.
After lunch, we walked to the boyhood home of President John
F. Kennedy nearby on a tree-lined street. Some of us went on the tour after
watching a short video about JFK’s life. He lived there for the first ten years
of his life, before his family moved to a larger house a few blocks away.
After the tour, we went back to Daniel’s place to hang out
for a while. He had left to go on campus for his commencement ceremonies.
Daniel is extremely bright and decided to pursue a double major in both music
composition and physics, and he finished both degrees in four years—very impressive.
The two ceremonies were only an hour-and-a-half apart and on
opposite sides of campus. So, we watched him receive his music composition
degree at the BU Tennis Center and he literally sprinted off the stage and out
the door with the rest of us in tow.
He and his mom decided to try to walk to the other ceremony
while the rest of us waited for the campus shuttle bus. Fortunately, the bus
appeared quickly and all of us made it to his second ceremony in the science
center just as it was beginning.
After that ceremony and a reception, we had 45 minutes to
get to Symphony Hall in Boston to hear the Boston Pops play a program saluting
the year 1969. Daniel bought the tickets to thank us for coming and the concert
was a delight. Because the Red Sox had a home game at nearby Fenway Park, the
traffic was atrocious, but we made the concert with time to spare.
After the concert, we took an Uber back to Daniel’s
apartment. When the Uber driver picked us up he asked, “Where to?” My reply
was: “About 500 miles west.” I had had enough of the traffic and congestion of
Boston.
It was after 11pm and we hadn’t eaten anything since lunch
except for the finger food available at a reception after Daniel’s physics
degree ceremony. We headed back to the apartment in Framingham and, thank
goodness for Google Maps, we found an open Wendy’s drive through and took the
food back to our apartment.
Sunday, was about as hectic. We planned to attend the
general university commencement at the BU soccer stadium. Boston University
doesn’t have a football team, but the stadium was big enough to accommodate probably
15,000 people who filled the stands along with several thousand more seated on
folding chairs on the artificial turf field.
When we awoke Sunday morning, it was raining and we found a
Panera for lunch before heading back into Boston. We left the restaurant about
an hour before the ceremony for the 25-minute drive. However, the rain slowed
the traffic on the expressway, and it was a struggle to find parking anywhere
near the stadium, so we arrived about 45 minutes after the beginning of the ceremony.
Fortunately, the rain stopped by then and we did get to hear
the featured speaker and see the students throw their caps in the air after the
degrees were conferred. By the end of the program, the rain was gone and the
sun came out. We walked back to Daniel’s apartment and eventually went to dinner
in nearby Brookline.
We had planned to spend Monday sightseeing in Boston, but
more rain was forecast and the three of us decided to head back home. After two
days chasing Daniel around campus and the hectic schedule, we were pretty
tired. The parking problems and Boston traffic made me more than ready to get
back to Ohio.
About a week after we got home, Pam had arthroscopic surgery
on her left knee. It had been bothering her since last fall and, after a couple
of rounds of physical therapy, she went to a sports medicine physician. He
found a tear in her meniscus and repaired it. We were only at the surgery
center for about three hours before I took her home. She went though the
recovery process fairly well and was up and walking without crutches the third
day after the surgery.
Our next trip was about three weeks after the Boston
journey. Pam’s first cousin once removed Henry (the son of her cousin) was to
be married in Nashville on June 8th. Originally, Pam, her brother and
her niece planned to leave the Monday before the wedding to explore old historic
houses in Kentucky. I planed to drive separately to meet them in Nashville on
Thursday night.
However, because of Pam’s surgery we decided she needed an
extra day of rest, so we left on Tuesday and met her brother in Lexington, KY,
that night. While they explored a couple of houses on Wednesday, I drove down
to Richmond, KY to have lunch with my first boss after college.
Way back in 1970, Fred Kolloff hired me to be on the staff of
the Division of TV and Radio at Eastern Kentucky University. We have kept in
touch over the years and had a delightful time reminiscing and discussing the
current state of television. Fred is a TV history junkie who has travelled to
Hollywood a few times to witness production of numerous TV shows. He told me he
and his wife also have been on ocean cruises sponsored by the Turner Classic
Movies network.
After lunch, I drove around the EKU campus and out to the
first apartment Pam and I had a couple of miles outside Richmond. The drive
triggered a lot of memories and our four years in Kentucky were a good start
for my career and our marriage.
Thursday, Pam and I went to Nashville and on Friday, we met
another of Pam’s cousins and toured the Belmont Mansion at Belmont University
and had lunch at the Magic Mushroom, a pub in downtown Franklin, TN.
That weekend we stayed at the Drury Inn in Franklin, an
impressive 12-story hotel right off I-65 about 15 miles south of Nashville. Each
Drury hotel has a happy hour from 5:30 to 7 pm each evening where guests can partake
of an extensive complimentary selection of appetizers and get two free drinks.
Both nights, I had a couple of Jack Daniels whiskeys on the rocks, so it was a
good way to end a day of sightseeing.
While Pam and I were on this journey, Brian was in Cannes,
France, attending the annual Midem Conference, an international meeting of
music producers. He was in France for about a week and flew back to the U.S. on
Friday. He then flew from New York City to Nashville on Saturday morning. I
picked him up at the Nashville airport and we arrived back at the hotel in time
to have the breakfast buffet with Pam.
After we ate, Brian went to the room for a couple of hours
sleep while Pam and I hung out reading in the lobby. Later that afternoon we
headed to the church for the wedding of “Team Jenry” the name Henry and his
spouse Jennifer have given themselves.
As with our visit to Boston, rain was an important factor.
Immediately after the ceremony, as folks lined up for photos with the wedding
party outside the church, it started to pour. Everyone hustled back into the
church to take the photos inside.
The rain continued as we arrived at the reception site, a
historic house and park in nearby Brentwood. There was a large tent erected
near the house with food serving lines at the edges of the tent. Unfortunately,
the bar area was on the other side of the house, so you had to go out in the
rain to go through the house to get to get a beverage.
Because no one wanted to go outside the tent into the rain,
it was very crowded and noisy inside. Also, the lack of any wind made the humidity
even worse. I had to walk a couple of hundred yards in a pouring rain after
parking the car to get to the tent. I never really got dry the whole evening.
The next morning, we went to the house of the Henry’s father
for a casual brunch before we headed back to Ohio. I had some good
conversations with Pam’s cousins and friends of the bride and groom because the
setting was more relaxed.
The drive home was uneventful except for a heavy downpour as
we rode through Louisville. Because of Pam’s knee, she rode in the front seat
the whole time. When Brian was driving, I rode in cramped quarters in the back
seat. I also had indigestion from the weekend, so I was even more
uncomfortable. What a relief it was to arrive home at 11:30 on Sunday night.
Our weather here still continues to be iffy with the pattern
of a good day usually followed by a couple of rainy ones. Yesterday, the
temperature was close to 80 and I sat on the deck relaxing as a couple of deer
and then a baby groundhog grazed in our back yard.
They were enjoying themselves and so was I. It felt great to
be home and I don’t want to leave anytime soon.
