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It’s one of the few items from “just,” my first poetry collection, which I’ve published so far on this site. Though it touches many nerves for me, and hints at the place and station I’ve come from, somehow it feels good to expose it to the sunshine and fresh air which make up my life at present, with loved ones, friends and comrades many and strong. There was a time, not long ago, when things weren’t looking so good. Even then, the sense of better things to come was bright and clear.

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I’ve written here before about my “Ramble” creative writing project. On Dec. 30 of 2009, I sat down to write a Ramble entry for my late grandmother Beatrice Ridings, who was widely known to many as Granny Bea, Aunt Bea, or Ms. Ridings. I had two wonderful grandmothers who have now passed on, and luckily for me, Grandma Eileen Darnell, who we called Bam, was also tight with Granny Bea, so on more than one occasion, I was able to enjoy them both together simultaneously. I am in the gathering process for a future post about Grandma Bam, but I’m very proud to finally share something with you that I feel is a suitable tribute to Granny Bea.

When I was studying communications at the University of Central Florida, I had a professor named Tom Morgan. One of the sage bits of advice Mr. Morgan shared was a suggestion that we do video interviews with our grandparents, parents and others we love while they are still around. I took that advice and sat with Granny Bea in her kitchen one day back around 1989 or so, asking her questions about her life and recording her answers. Much to my dismay, I have not been able to locate that videotape since she passed away in 2001. Since going through that experience, I recorded an interview with Grandma Bam before she left us, and I look forward to sharing that with others who knew and loved her. In the meantime, for Granny Bea, we have pictures like the ones you can hopefully see above, some great video footage my cousin Bart Ridings shot during the time of my and Beth’s wedding in May of 1992, and lots of warm stories. In my Ramble project, I also wanted to dedicate one of the few remaining entries to this phenomenal human being, who is still in my thoughts so often. Jan. 8, 2010 would have been her 100th birthday, and I was hustling to prepare this entry at that time, but the photo research has taken this long for me to complete. And so, it’s my sincere pleasure to share these words in honor of Granny Bea on what for the next 10 minutes remains Mother’s Day, 2010, when the absence of her and Grandma Bam in our lives is once again especially felt.

Ramble #7
by Roger Darnell

Always stirring up food for those to come,
making each arrival feel right at-home…
otherwise busying herself knitting love into
treasures for so many she yearned to hold
there with her in her quiet place, forever…
these scenes of Granny Bea at home give
off such a glow, it still warms the heart.

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Aunt Honey, thank you for your gift of pure love throughout every day of my life. You will be missed!

Helen Ridings
COTTAGE HILLS – April 13, 2010 4:40 PM – Helen Marie Ridings, 84, died at 1:50 a.m. Tuesday, April 13, 2010, at Saint Anthony’s Hospital in Alton. Born May 10, 1925, in Carlinville, she was the daughter of William Howard and Marie B. (Loges) Casey. She was an operator for Olin Corporation for 43 years before retiring in 1987. She was a lifetime member of the Westerner Club.

Surviving are a daughter, Debra Barrett of Hartford; two grandchildren, Scott L. (Julie) Barrett and Stacey Barrett Adams; and three great-grandchildren, twins, Nicholas and David Barrett, and Ryan Adams. Preceding her in death were her parents, a great-grandchild, Megan Elizabeth Whitehead, and a sister, Bernice Henrichs. Burial will be at Rose Lawn Memory Gardens in Bethalto.

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In case you missed yesterday’s report, we did finally catch my dad (aka Big Jim, or BJ) at Cracker Barrel, along with Peggy, my step-mom. We all had a nice dinner together somewhere around 9pm, and then we all made it to the Ramada there in Crossville, Tennessee. But darned if BJ didn’t have another trick up his sleeve, and sure enough, he beat us to Boone… by about an hour!

First, though, I need to back up a little. In my exhaustion last night, I failed to give any indication of how lovely Tennessee appeared to us, especially once we’d passed Nashville. I tried snapping a few pictures, but the best one shows a pretty sunset scene through a thoroughly bug-smeared windshield (shrug). By the way, all the trip’s pictures should be up by Wednesday, and I’ll let you know where to look.

Awaiting us on our arrival were Beth’s mom Ginny, sister Ann and brother-in-law Chuck (donning video gear), our nearly three-year-old niece Grace and her baby-sister Claire (7-8 months), plus BJ (donning an unmistakable ear-to-ear grin).

So now, you have some idea of how amazing the journey is to our new home, and if you accept our standing invitation to visit — for snow skiing, white-water rafting, golfing, camping, hiking or baby visiting (Amelia’s due on 8/31) — we promise a great time with many more laughs… and we vow also to listen attentively to the travel tales you bring to share. After hanging with us across these 2,400 miles, we owe you that much, at least….

Thanks again for all the well-wishes. You all helped us see our journey through.

Love — Roger, Beth, Maggie, Callie, Amelia-in-the-pod

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The wake-up call came at six Central time, and it actually succeeded in getting Beth to arise (it most certainly was wasted on me). Once awake, this hotel wasn’t a hard one to leave quickly, but we were a little worried to find Callie sitting in the front window, considering that pets weren’t allowed. Oh well — we figured that, if we receive a call from someone asking why they’d seen a one-eyed calico cat in our hotel room’s window, we’ll just say,

“You saw a what?!”

Whisked rapidly toward the ready Montero were both the calico and the gray cats, semiconscious in their carriers, along with all our gear. The road called out to us, and soon our racing engine and spinning tires joined the chorus. This day was to be all about making time, and it helped that we only grabbed a drive-thru breakfast from BK. Blasting east, we stopped long enough in Oklahoma City for us to make an Internet hook-up from the Visitors’ Center outside the Air Force Base, during which time I finally sent the Day One dispatch and downloaded 55 more awaiting work emails and a few digital ‘cheers’ from several of you across the country; thanks to those — plus all the good vibes we’re picking up from everyone else rooting for us — we know we’re living a dream, and this trip has been a blast.

In trying to follow-through with the style of my original travelogue from our move to LA, I’m picking my spots to fill you in on the most notable sights and experiences from our trip; however, there’s so much that happens during days like these, it gets sort of tricky guessing the most important aspects to relate. Beyond the mile markers, the geography and the places written about on all the signs one sees, such a trip lets you see how other people live their lives, or sometimes it just shows you places where people appear to have no place nor any noticeable impact whatsoever. Reflecting on the highlights of these days, that seemed worth mentioning. Each day on the road, we saw a lot that just made us shake our heads in disbelief that people can do such strange things, but we’ve traveled enough now to know we still have a lot to learn — and that we do better when we respect others’ differences.

After screaming across cowboy country in Oklahoma, plus the vast Indian country which occupies the eastern side of that state, we cracked Arkansas, which not only had great highways, it also had lots of water all around on both sides of the road. State parks seemed to cover the first fifty miles, so needless to say, the area made a positive impression on us. Soon, though, the land got a little swampy and flat for our tastes. Little Rock barely registered, and unfortunately the rest of the state similarly fell away as the hours flew. Somewhere near the border for Tennessee, at last, we heard from BJ: He was honing-in on Nashville and expecting to rendezvous at 5pm Central there with my step-mom Peggy. He stopped driving at 8pm and Peggy was hot on his tail, having driven down through the afternoon from Greenville, Illinois, to prove her own road-warrior prowess. At about 9pm we’d made it to their stop: Crossville, Tennessee. We found them at the Cracker Barrel and joined them for dinner, before synchronizing our watches to coordinate Sunday’s last 160-mile part of our journey, set to end next to Rocky Creek in Boone, North Carolina….

Tomorrow, the new beginning. Stay tuned.

Love — Roger, Beth, cats, Amelia-to-be

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Waking up, of course, there they were, under the bed; and there I was, lifting the bed so Beth could scramble under to grab them, give each of our cats their ‘medicine’ and stow them in their carriers. This stuff is getting easier….

We’d settled into a nice hotel on night one, but still the sounds of the highway and the endless passing trains got us going early — or so we thought. We indulged in the free breakfast at the hotel’s diner and, back in the room, I uploaded my “Countdown” message to you folks (and downloaded some 80+ work-related messages from that first day), and we moved out. Looking at the clock in the Montero, I realized we were still on Pacific time; I pushed the hour button twice to put us on Central time, and all of the sudden, it was 11am. “Ready for lunch?” we joked.

A picturesque mountain towers above Flagstaff; all our map tells us is that the peak is Pt. Humphrey, Arizona’s highest at 12,663 feet. We watched it fade away in the rear-views, and then saw the landscape become a kaleidoscope of more harsh, dry, desert scenes.

Still cruising along at 5,000 feet or so toward Albuquerque, the vistas included amazing canyons of all varieties, rolling hillsides of mint-green grasses and beige, orange and crimson-colored earth and boulders of all forms imaginable… including boulder mountains. Finally, the horizon flattened out and the hills rolled off in all directions, showing us treeless, wide-open prairies of grass, rimmed all around the outside perimeter by distinct mountains. Later came a bizarre stretch of road through a countryside ruined by the El Malpais lava beds. As far as we could see, the ground was made of crumbly black rocks that erupted from the earth’s undulating surface. Even more weird, the property owners still felt the need to maintain fences on this stuff, so across these awkward, uneven hills and dips, I traced a fairly new fence marking off one piece of spoiled land from another. Sorry, we didn’t get the number on the for-sale sign.

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Thursday, May 31, 2001: Simply Grand

It was time to get up and get moving, but by letting Maggie slip under the covers and curl up, we were able to grab a few more minutes’ rest. Lying there returning to our senses, all the great memories were just cobwebs; the focus was all about getting on the road. All the last junk was piled near the door soon enough, and we made it to Budget by seven, just after they’d opened, to get Dad registered to drive the truck. We were among the first customers in our favorite breakfast spot on the planet (thanks Alan and Fran!) and added BJ (Big Jim) to the long list of immediate family members who have traveled the country to eat there with us. Anyway, that was the last of LA. We got back to our place, loaded the car and pulled away. Ventura Boulevard to the 405 North entrance, merged onto the 101 South ramp, and left a very happy time in our lives behind us. 101 to 134, past Glendale where we’d first landed… and on toward San Bernardino. According to plan, BJ was driving the truck, towing Beth’s car, and we stuck pretty close in our Montero, navigating through the dense traffic and using our walkie-talkies sparingly. Once finally up to speed out past 210 East on Interstate 10, Beth admitted she was finally “excited.” Before that, there was too much work to be done to prepare, but at last, the trip was underway and we were up-to-speed.

As on our previous trip, the cats each received a vet-prescribed sedative on this morning about 30 minutes before departure time; and just as before, the improvement on their dispositions almost seemed to warrant full-time sedation (just kidding, of course). This is the way they “see the country” — doped-up inside their carriers, looking through their blankets out their wire-doors at each other via the thinnest of eye slits. And at the ends of days, we learned before that they’ll get a little exercise slinking around our hotel rooms all night before meeting in a close curl under the bed that’s almost impossible to reach once the ritual is set to begin again the next morning. Needless to say, they never admit to the “cuddling up together” thing….

We made our way to the 15, then followed it north into the mountains above San Bernardino. The smog plus “June gloom” was at its worst, and back in LA we’d already shared several laughs with BJ about the mountains “just over there” which couldn’t been seen. We were soon clear of the smog, but then it was the mountains themselves that became a little unappealing, as the Budget truck towing our car slowed to 35 mph trying to crest the worst of them. On we all steered to I-40 East, working through the mountains, at last, to the first fuel stop 160 miles out of Los Angeles, somewhere near the beginning of the Mojave Desert. Our Montero has a temp gauge for the outside; just before the first stop, we’d watched that gauge climb to 110. After filling-up, BJ figured the moving truck’s gas mileage at 7 miles per gallon, and the Mobil station we’d picked added insult to injury: $2.20 per gallon for diesel, and $2.40 per gallon for regular unleaded. We all had a good laugh over the receipt, proving perhaps that the smog had done is work….

Beth titled this photo, “the last time we saw BJ.”

By the time we paid our $20 and actually gazed down into the canyon for the first time, we felt it had pretty much lived up to its reputation. We took some snaps that, like these words, don’t do justice, but together with our memories they represent the Grand Canyon to us. One photo not to miss is the one of Beth’s belly with the GC in the background; this of course is our photo of Amelia with the Grand Canyon. We SO entertain ourselves.

Then we left, heading south out of the park the way we’d gone in, and eventually we turned off to highway 180, a red line on our map proceeding straight to the southeast to Flagstaff. Perhaps twenty miles into that route, the countryside had become green and lush; the elevation was around 7,000 feet.

It bears mention that by this time, after having seen probably twenty signs warning for “elk,” I had already worn elk-spotting humor far too thin. In the waning light, I strained my eyes, and saw one! Then Beth saw a huge one standing just off in the distance, through the trees. We looped the Montie around — there were no other vehicles in sight, and none came until after we’d messed around scaring a whole herd of elk off, trying to photograph them and finally moved on toward Flagstaff about five minutes later.

Love — Roger, Beth, cats, Amelia-to-be

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Wednesday, May 30, 2001: The Countdown Begins

As I sat at my desk at the end of the business day (night) on Tuesday, I knew I really needed to get some sleep to be ready to start loading the truck bright and early the next morning; surveying my office, though — still largely intact — it finally also sunk-in to me that I needed to get it packed, once and for all. Fast forward to 7:30 a.m. Wednesday morning: I’d worked all the way through the night, the office was 98% done, the house was a scattered array of semi-packed boxes, furniture and closed boxes, all ready for the truck, and we were off to pick up the truck from Budget in Van Nuys on Sepulveda Blvd., the same place where we’d returned our truck from the 1998 move West. This truck was a little bigger — a sign that the move was a success? — and the car carrier, destined to transport our Honda Accord back across the country, may have been the same one we picked up from New Orleans on the previous trip. Beth had slept very little as well, so the recollection of truck-packing day is a little blurry. We were smart enough to request a couple of movers to come to our house at 9 to load the truck, and by 11, they were done. By 5 p.m., much of the “little stuff” was handled, I’d napped for a couple of hours, and we were starting to visualize the arrival of my “volunteer truck-driver” father at the Burbank airport the next morning at 10:30 and our subsequent departure, which we’d been planning for over six months….

A little side-note here for those of you who haven’t heard from us in a while. There’s a much longer, more detailed and drawn-out story here that will await you upon your first visit to our new home in the mountains of Boone, North Carolina… but essentially, we decided to buy a home Beth’s mom and step-father were planning to build in Boone (anticipating getting pregnant in the not-too-distant future), then we got pregnant (not to worry — the above-mentioned ‘drawn-out story’ focuses very little on this part), and now we’re moving to Boone to stay in another of Ginny and Bill’s Boone “castles” beside Rocky Creek until our new home is ready. To answer the obvious question, we had a fantastic time in Los Angeles and accomplished so much more than we could have hoped for… but this opportunity to own a wonderful home in an amazingly beautiful place — and, more importantly, to have our little one growing up with cousins (including our God-children Grace and Claire), aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. — was too fanastic to miss.

What at first seemed like a glimmer of a neat idea became our goal and now, it would appear, our ‘next adventure,’ and we are suitably thrilled.

With that said, though, we leave behind many very dear true friends that made our California Dream something we’ll always treasure… and the only way we can cope with the sadness of saying goodbye to them is to hope and trust we’ll all find ourselves together again as part of our new adventures.

), we were happy to receive the call from my dad that he’d caught the flight out a day early, and he was just a couple of hours from Burbank. Beth did some final clean-up on the house as I grabbed Dad from the airport. Though it was a little late his time, I decided to tour him through Coldwater Canyon up to Mulholland so he could see the view of the valley; unfortunately, the only thing to be viewed there on this evening was the inside of a fog cloud. We found our way back down Woodcliff, through Sherman Oaks and to our now virtually spotless little house, which the landlord had already been showing and offering at a rate ($2800 p/mo!) that was almost twice as much as we’d been renting it for over the past two years. As much as he seemed impressed with the place, the price-tag really got dad’s head shaking in disbelief.

Finally, Dad slipped to his room and his awaiting air mattress, and we found our way to our own air mattress in our room for our last night’s sleep. So many great things had happened for us in the past three and a half years, and we’d enjoyed so many great visits with our friends over the previous weeks, we were reeling with emotions and something of a numb, over-tired, excited anticipation. And what of the cats? It’d been an exciting, un-nerving couple of days for them, too, what with all the boxes and handtrucks, etc. Callie had spent the day in the closet buried under a couple of towels, seemingly certain that the end of the world was at hand. Maggie’s eyes couldn’t have been any more wide open, and even as we fell asleep, she continued her survey of the empty house… as well as her noisy, troubled, in-our-faces reports of her findings throughout the night. As we awoke at around 5:15 and considered slipping out from the warm covers into the chilly morning, Beth found a way to trick Maggie into being quiet for just a little while longer… but that’s tomorrow’s story.

More to come soon. Our best to all of you!

Love — Roger, Beth, cats, Amelia-to-be

PS: Digital pictures coming at journey’s end — so long as the box containing that one special cable can actually be located! — R

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The mountains that arose as we neared our destination got bigger and bigger. Finally, our maps had names for them. We stopped to call the power company to get our power turned on and the phone company to get our phones fired-up that day, since we were a little ahead of schedule. Green lights were given and acted on. Before driving further, I insisted on taking a picture of us in the California desert with the snow-peaked mountains in the background and the Golden State’s purple desert flowers clustering from the sand (didn’t turn out). When we got within 40 miles of our destination, we started calling the mountains in the distance our own, and looking hard at them as we passed from the 2,460-mile blur of “Scenery” that changes into “Home”.

That very change began to occur quickly. We soon ran out of turns from our interstate, I-10, onto 210 West toward Pasadena, past Arcadia where Beth will be picking up some shifts at the Outback Steakhouse, past Pasadena where we caught 134 West, got off on 2 (Glendale Freeway) South, then dove off the freeway to find a street we could place on our Rand McNally LA Street Guide. It wasn’t long before we found Verdugo, the pathway to our home, then came Barrington Way, and the little building we recognized from the pictures.

It was about two o’clock in the afternoon. We got stuck at the gate but heard voice of property manager Ondine call, “Roger?” She came out and we had a time checking out the gates, the property, and the townhome we’d eventually come to accept as ours. When we compared what a great and clean home we’d left in Orlando to what we could see of the condition of the exterior and interior of the building, much was left to be desired. Anyway, since we weren’t in much of a position to go anywhere else, we signed the lease and came to terms with our disappointment in the course of laboring to pull apart “The Load” and move the pieces into unit three. With the arrival of our things, the place grew more acceptable. We knew it had a lot going for it. The neighbors started appearing and introducing themselves; that was nice. It seemed to be a charming area. When we took a break, we rode our bikes around the corner to get a bottle of Evian (that tell you something about the tapwater?) and saw that our neighborhood was indeed looking cool.

Later, after unloading at least 10-feet worth of our 15-foot truck into the place, we closed everything up, let the cats out of the bathroom, and went to find some food. One of our neighbors, an old codger-looking whiskered guy named Pete Weismuller (said Johnny was his uncle) told us there was a new Chinese restaurant right around the corner. The one we found wasn’t new, but it did the trick. Soon, we were back into our new home with our cats and most of our stuff. We looked forward to being done unloading the truck, but both wished it would unload itself. I called my mom and she breathed a big sigh of relief. After that, Beth and I did the same thing. While I was getting the computer set up, she built the bed. I found a couple of friends in Orlando online and shocked them with the news. “You’re where?” Then I went in, took the issue of Glimmer Train short stories we’d saved for the trip but misplaced until only an hour before from Beth’s sleeping hands, and climbed into my own bed, in my own bedroom in Glendale. The trip was finished, and now it can rest.

Thank you for tuning in!

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