The Wayback

I know this is very late, but I wanted to remember Teresa’s Birthday on March 20th with this entry.

In the event that all eleven of us were going to the same place at the same time, we had to squeeze into the VW Microbus. Dad drove, Howard was in the front middle and Mom had the passenger seat, which was specially equipped with a mirror to allow her to keep tabs on the back seats. Douglas Paul, Marilyn Ruth and Ronald David got the middle bench seat; Joseph Stephen, Dennis Waldo and I got the rear bench seat. This meant the girls, AKA Teresa Mary and Anna Marie had to ride in “The Wayback.”

This was in the days before the country went "safety" crazy. We played on metal monkey bars stretched over concrete. If you fell and broke your leg, you pushed the bone back in, rubbed dirt on it and went right back to playing. That’s the way it was AND WE LIKED IT!

So what’s the big deal if two small children had to sit on a hard, thinly carpeted platform, with no restraints, perched right over the gas tank? They were HAPPY to sit there in the wintertime with the engine heat and the exhaust fumes to keep them warm. And they got to pretend that the Wayback had magical powers, like the Way-Back Machine in the "Peabody & Sherman" cartoons.

Does it get any better than this?

Happy Birthday Teresa!

Ambassador Witmer

I almost forgot Dad's Birthday (March 3rd.) This one's for you Pop.



I’m not sure why we decided to stop in Mooresville. We had been on the road for quite some time, headed home from Beaver Island so it was odd that we would stop in Mooresville, just a few miles from the finish line. We stopped to see the Conley’s and the visit became even more peculiar when Aunt Rae told Dad, “You’d better sit down.”

My father drove totally forgettable cars. The dreadfully underpowered VW Micro Bus, nicked named “The Blue Goose” had just transported us to Beaver Island and back. The Blue Goose was preceded by a red-and-white VW, which was eventually sold to Grandpa Waldo. Before that, a mint green Plymouth station wagon served as the family’s transportation. Mom had charge of the family car during the week and Dad usually drove a boxy little rambler back and forth to the office.

In his entire life, Dad made only one exception to his I-have-to-drive-a-really-boring-car rule: The 1965 Ambassador convertible. This baby had a 351 cubic inch V-8 engine and an Auto-Glide transmission that you could push through the gears. With the top down it looked fast, even when it was parked. I can only remember riding in the Ambassador a couple of times and then I was told, “Don’t touch anything!”

After Dad sat down, with worry and anticipation written all over his face, Aunt Rae explained that the neighbor-boy, Kenny Krause, had stolen the convertible. Aunt Rae went on to say that Lenny drove the car in to the ditch, tearing up the whole side of the vehicle. Kenny succeed in getting the convertible back on the road only to run it into another ditch, this time damaging the other side. Aunt Rae said that, "Kenny Krause was blind in one eye and couldn’t see out the other" and had no business behind the wheel of any car, let alone one he had stolen. Dad got on the phone and talked to the police and I don’t remember how the rest of the day played out.

A few weeks later, Dad got the Ambassador back from the body shop, but only after he had taken the opportunity to upgrade the tail lights to the, snazzier, 1966 style. Dad eventually sold the car when the timing chain broke and, for some reason, went back to driving boring cars, replacing the Ambassador with, of all things, a Hornet. This may have been due to the damage the ambassador had done to Dad's driving record. Dad racked up a few speeding tickets behind the wheel of the convertible, and as a result, the insurance premiums were sky high.

So Dad, if you were with us today, my birthday wish for you would be that you could drive a Stingray or a Mustang. Who knows, maybe your driving one right now.

But I know, for a fact, that Gremlins and Hornets aren’t allowed in heaven.

Happy Birthday Mom - (A little late.)

I had the best of intentions: To post a story about each of my siblings on their birthday. As Mom's birthday approached, I realized that I need to write a story about her, too. But Mom's Birthday is the same day as Michelle and Charity's Birthday and to be honest, I got a little depressed thinking about it and I put off writing anything for several weeks. But now it's April and the sun is out and I've made it through both Michelle's Birthday and the anniversary of her passing and I must get back in the saddle, so here goes...

I can’t iron a shirt without thinking about her.

First the collar, then the yoke, then the sleeves, then the front left. Rotate the shirt on the ironing board until you finish on the front right.

“You’re going to learn to iron a shirt! You’re going to learn to take care of yourself! Don’t you EVER make your wife iron your shirts!” She gave me this lecture, one morning, when she had become particularly frustrated with the fact that she had married a man who could barely dress himself, let alone do laundry. You never knew what would trigger these episodes of activism, but Dad’s morning refrain of “Gail!Where are my socks!” never helped matters.

Mom was a closet feminist. She never marched for equal rights, but she quietly worked, to instill in her boys, a respect for Women. It was not the first time Mom gave me the don’t-you-ever-treat-a-woman-like-that speech and it would not be the last.

By my calculations, Mom was just seventeen when Douglas Paul entered the world, and she was thirty-three by the time Howard Everett was born sixteen years later. She had ten Pregnancies in sixteen years.

You do a lot of living between Seventeen and Thirty-three. Mom told me later in life that by the time she had me, at the age of twenty-six, she had learned to relax. That’s why I turned out so good. She did all her practicing on you older kids.

I have many stories to share about our remarkable mother, but you have only limited time to read so I will save, for later, the descriptions of how she kept order in the VW micro bus and why the Blue Goose had a round dent on the front bumper.