Unusual Thanksgiving (1983)

Thanksgiving 1983 was certainly one-of-a-kind for us.

PJ and I were living in Glenview, Illinois with Nicole, Chris, Kerry. Charlie & Beth were getting married in Pennsylvania on the Saturday after Thanksgiving; a crew from Iowa was heading east toward Pennsylvania in a motor home; we found a sitter for Kerry (Kerry Barnett, one of Carol's ND friends); and the four of us jumped in the motor home somewhere on the south side of Chicago. I'm guessing this was on Wednesday evening.

The trip - both directions of it - ended up being a wonderful experience (not to mention the fun at the wedding itself). One example of the good times: Thanksgiving dinner served while barreling eastbound on Interstate 80 (Clarence Bormann at the helm, EMG as co-pilot).

Top photo shows some feasters; below the photo is a scan of its reverse side, with Patricia's helpful recap of menu and subjects. Quite the clever planning by Caroline and my mom to have this organized for the road (along with all the other details involved in a trip like this).

Per usual, click photos to enlarge.

Second photo shows Caroline making coffee - in this vehicle and with our equipment, securing the coffeepot was a hands-on job.

Bottom photo - me and my brothers (with CPG) at breakfast the day of the wedding. I think Charlie was pretty excited about the whole thing.

Tailgate (1981)

Today we were receiving text updates from Nicole regarding what was billed as Charlie & Beth's last Notre Dame tailgate (this being Kristen's senior year, and her being scheduled to graduate on time).

Various notable attendees graced this last hurrah, including Steve & Liz, Steve & Cecilia, Nicole & POC, Sister Eugene, Romie & Joy, no doubt many others.

By the way, ND beat a lousy Pitt team to run its 2010 record to an uninspiring 2-3. But I still think the new coach (one Brian Kelly) inspires confidence. I'm hoping that feeling lasts longer than a similar feeling inspired by our old classmate, Charlie Weis, as delusionally discussed here.

We haven't had the good fortune to attend one of these C&B tailgate events, but I understand that they have grown increasingly sophisticated over the years.

Anyway, this recalls a fun tailgate experience with the House van back in October 1981, which we (with Nicole) did attend. The photos reveal a remarkably high degree of overlap among the attendees at the separated-by-29-years tailgates.

I recall beautiful weather and a fine time 29 years ago. The menu and cooking apparatuses (apparati?) do look a bit primitive in comparison to 2010, however.

Stanford/30 years

Hard to believe 30 years has passed since our brief stint (if it can even qualify for this) at Stanford.
I had decided to transfer for my last two years of law school. Stanford sounded like a fine place to be, though we also were reluctant to leave behind a good situation at Notre Dame (undergraduate years plus 1L).

Anyway my bride (of less than three months) and I hit the road in the '74 Olds 98 - an impressive gas hog even for those days, and we were definitively traveling in high style. Talk about a land yacht. (Though our style quotient took a big hit when the vinyl roof somehow literally blew off the top of the car while we were heading west across Nebraska. At that moment it sounded like the car was blowing up.) All in all, a very smooth outbound trip, and pretty leisurely. Overnights in Cheyenne and somewhere in NV (and maybe we stopped in Salt Lake City also for an overnight, I'm not remembering). Enjoyed listening to a "mystery theater" on the radio a couple times, enjoyed the western scenery (unusual to us in those days), etc.

Once at Stanford, we experienced some bumps. My normally high energy friend wasn't feeling like herself, at all. The housing situation was known to be a challenge, but looked quite a bit less promising than expected. At bottom, we probably were just not that committed to the enterprise - the main motivation, I think, had been my vague notion that it would be beneficial to experience a change of place from the school we had attended as undergrads. That didn't sustain us, and after just a few days we decided that I would finish up at ND law school after all.

That didn't seem like a problem; Fr. Mike McCafferty (NDLS professor) in particular had pretty recently told me that I was welcome to change my mind. But now it was a Friday on the Labor Day weekend and I couldn't reach anyone. Had already missed a week of class at ND. What to do? We just hit the road and hoped for (or assumed) the best.

Going cross-country twice in the space of a little over a week is a lot of driving, and Patricia wasn't much help. But she did sleep a lot in the car. The alternator failed late in the first day (somewhere in Nevada); we coped by pulling off I-80 and sleeping overnight in the desert. Then drove into Battle Mountain, NV where three good things happened: they found the part on a Labor Day weekend; we had a fabulous breakfast; and I reached McCafferty. He laughed about the slot machine noises zinging in the background in the pay phone area in the restaurant, and welcomed us back.

After that it was smooth sailing back to South Bend; we got settled (with an assist from my brother Charlie (ND undergrad), who initially seemed bewildered about our whereabouts when we called him one evening to let him know we were en route.

And a pregnancy test a couple weeks later explained why Patricia was feeling not-quite-herself. That would be Nicole.

Top photo: leaving the farm in Iowa on 8/25/80 (I guess we could have cycled when the car had trouble). Middle photo: PJ at the Great Salt Lake, 8/27/80. Bottom: checking out the roadside marker for the Emigrant Gap, CA, 8/28/80.

Family photo (1990)

Photo taken by Clarence Bormann 20 years ago today. Includes the seven of us (plus two of my cousins' kids in left foreground).

We have lots and lots of photos, but not all that many that include all seven of us.

Nicole is nine, Chris is eight, Kerry is seven, Patrick had just turned four, Paul Jr. a few days away from his third birthday.

We were just leaving Clarence & Caroline's home after a typically pleasant visit. I'm sure it involved card-playing plus food and beverage. The garden looks good.

Drinking Buddies (July 15, 1986)

This clip always makes me laugh. And is a window into how it so often felt in a house full of happy little kids.



This particular episode took place a couple weeks before Patrick was born. Evidence of that pending event is at 0:16, where PJ works on a Christmas stocking. Just about exactly 24 years ago.

We actually had developed a pretty good peach milk shake in those days, and it's evident that the customers were more than satisfied. Things were settling down until 0:24, when the bubbling noises intensify - sounds like an aquarium for awhile.

The three are sitting at the little-kid table in the kitchen-family room in our house on Cohansey Street in Roseville, Minnesota. Likely this was their last hurrah before being sent to bed. Nicole was 5, Chris 4, Kerry 3.

Happy stuff.

Ford pickup (St. Helena, California)

We spotted the pictured vehicle in St. Helena, California (northern end of Napa Valley) during our May trip. It sits outside a very interesting (plant) nursery - something of a complementary business to the Napa Valley wineries. The nursery came complete with live chickens, interesting plants, beautiful restaurant, wine tastings, etc.

The proprietor thought the vehicle was a 1948 model. It's an F-2.

This of course brought to mind the 1949 Ford pickup in which we traveled so often - one of the first vehicles I remember (along with a 1952 Dodge Meadowbrook, if I'm recalling the model of our then-family car correctly).

This was the vehicle EMG would come home in after a day of farming, so that was exciting. Sometimes we would meet him at the end of the lane, and ride in the back of the pickup down the lane. That might not fly under current "safety" notions (as CCG learned while sitting on the end-gate at start-up).

In our early forays into helping EMG with shelling or other farm work, this typically was the vehicle in which we traveled. SEG always by the window (seniority rules were quite strict; I was too young to realize who promulgated seniority rules, and why). This resulted in me experiencing a fair amount of knee-knocking as EMG operated the gear shift mechanism (just look at the position of the shift mechanism).


I'm always surprised at how simple and uncluttered these vehicles appear. I don't recall that our truck had an after-market turn signal (as this one does).

I don't recall when this pickup was phased out of regular use. I believe we started using station wagons (instead of a pickup) as the primary utility vehicle for the remainder of my ag service.

A Father's Day recollection

As I've posted various time on my basic website, I've always been highly pleased with my dad.

As kids, we never did know much about his cooking skills - did he know how? Two primary hypotheses: (1) he actually couldn't cook much of anything; or (2) he could, but wisely chose to let my mother handle the cooking.

On Father's Day 2010, I'm recalling his one specialty cooking item: popcorn. But not the low-rent microwave or hot-air-popper versions. Nor the popping method found in every dorm room in the 1970s (large plastic tub top (which served as the container) atop a nonstick heater/base). The far better memory is EMG preparing real popcorn in a skillet.



This involved a fair amount of theater, and we all found it highly entertaining. Waiting for the first kernel to blow up (at which point a chorus of "I got that one" ensued). Watching the skillet being banged on the burner. Munching on the popcorn (often, in the early days, in those white plastic bowls that I believe were a free item courtesy of Tang). Free advice that we could keep our hands clean if we just held the bowl up to our mouth (it works, depending on the shape of the bowl).

Anyway, included above is a 20-year-old clip that seeks to re-create the fun. Plenty of encouragement from the game-playing onlookers, decent cooperation from the subject of the short movie. Somewhat lacking in authenticity: no one yelled at the first pop (0:08).

Happy Father's Day.