As usual, there were a few things to be fixed on Tuzigoot, so 10 days before our planned Sunday, 9/23, departure date I took her into Tom's for service. That's when I discovered the turn signals didn't work - again, so I added that to my list. We'd had the same problem last Feb and had the multi-purpose master switch replaced. After Tom took care of most of the problems I had identified I drove Tuzi down to the turn signal shop. Strangely, where the signals had not worked at all a few days earlier, now they flickered frantically. Turned out that the solution was just a matter of replacing the flashers (other old guys in overcoats), which was taken care of quickly, so I could drive out to Cedar Crest and we'd have a few days to pack and provision Tuzi.
Sunday morning I drove into town to see the Bornhoft family at an ALS awareness and fund-raising walk. As many of you know, a very dear friend of some 40 years, Carolyn Bornhoft, died just a month ago of this agonizing disease. So, I wanted to take part in this walk.
Here's the Bornhoft group - Budd front, center; two sons, Andy and Tim, spouses, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, in-laws.
They were part of a St. Stephen's United Methodist Church group honoring Suzy Q and Carolyn, too. The other lady in the poster and on our t-shirts, on the left, had just died of ALS two days before the walk.
After some visiting with the Bornhoft family I headed home, rather than do the 3-mile walk, and we departed soon after noon. Got to Amarillo for the night, then on to Guthrie, OK on Monday.
Here's a relic parked in the Amarillo RV park. The Joads stayed here.
Why Guthrie? Well, because Verla and family have just moved there - about 20 miles up I-35 from Edmond where they had lived and where sister Connie and family live. We had plans to park in Verla's driveway, but after we sized up the situation we decided the driveway was a little tight and road traffic was kind of busy and I didn't want to tie that up while I jockeyed Tuzi into place. We had seen an RV park about five miles west of Guthrie, so we went back there to spend the two nights we'd be in OK.
Guthrie is an historic town. On the day of one of the Oklahoma Land Runs, April 22, 1889, it went from a population of zero to 10,000 by nightfall. It became the capital of OK Territory in 1890 and capital of the new state of OK in 1907. However, in an election in 1913, Oklahoma City won/stole the capital, leaving Guthrie with a lot of turn-of-the-last-century elegant homes and commercial and government buildings, but not much else to maintain its status. Earlier, Guthrie had been given the choice of being the Territorial Capital or being the home of the first state university. They chose Territorial Capital, and so that university was located in Norman. Thus, to some, Guthrie was a two-time loser.(Oklahoma State U, then A&M, was founded in 1890 in Stillwater.)
I told you that to tell you this: because of its history,Verla has been especially enjoying early morning walks around town, so I joined her Tuesday morning. She's like our Dad, whose last job was as Executive Director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, in that she can tell you something about many of these historic buildings. I didn't take notes, but did get some pictures.
This is a train.
The trolley tracks end here.
More Guthrie buildings:
Later in the morning we all took a trolley tour of the town (not on the tracks, though).
In mid-afternoon we went to Connie's house in Edmond to visit before the birthday party that night, taking place that night in the church in Edmond that Verla attends. Verla and Susie went to the church to set up. Meanwhile, back at Connie's, as we were visiting, a car drove up and, BIG SURPRISE!, Mike, Jeff, and Malia strolled up to the door. I hadn't expected that at all. In fact, I think I'd been led to believe that they would have liked to come, but couldn't get away from their jobs, etc. When we'd been in CO a couple of weeks earlier, Malia had known of the plans, but hadn't revealed this big secret, to the great relief of Jeff, Valerie, and Susie.
Here's the scene.
Later, here are some party scenes.
Susie produced a huge scrapbook, filled with family pictures, poetry, cards, and more, all decorated Susie style. She worked for weeks on this, declaring upstairs in our house off-limits to me for the duration. She also wrote to many family members and friends, all of you on the Tuzigoot Journal distribution, I think, asking for write-ups of memories we shared. That basket is full of the responses. As I wrote earlier, it was a lot of fun reading your reminiscences and I could tell you enjoyed writing them up. I greatly appreciate hearing from you in this way. Thanks very much.
The birthday duo.
Connie, our family historian, had come across some of the correspondence between our parents during the time when Dad was in the Navy during WWII and Mom and I were in Oklahoma living with her parents. She read excerpts. Sorry I don't have a picture of Connie at the party.
Verla played the banjo.
And Malia was the chief party animal.
Next morning we had breakfast at Cracker Barrel, then we headed on to Nashville and points east.Verla played the banjo.
And Malia was the chief party animal.
Bottom line, it was a very special celebration of my 70th birthday. Thanks so much to all who had a part in it.
Rob and Susie
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