I woke up under a bridge, and, for a moment, wasn’t sure where I was. Cars whizzed by me on the interstate just a few feet away. Oh, yeah, I thought. Starting at rush hour I’d hitchhiked east on I-10, gotten five different rides, each spanning an exit or two. At that rate, the trip was going to take a month.
I woke up under a bridge, and, for a moment, wasn’t sure where I was. Cars whizzed by me on the interstate just a few feet away. Oh, yeah, I thought. Starting at rush hour I’d hitchhiked east on I-10, gotten five different rides, each spanning an exit or two. At that rate, the trip was going to take a month.
The Diary of Elinor Martin for the year 1974
Tues 1/1
My sister gave me this diary for Christmas. She’s kept a diary probly since junior high, but I never have. When I first got home for Christmas we were talking about how neat it was that Grandma Martin has kept a diary since she was 16. Maybe Annie thought I would be inspired by that.
Ok. I’ll try to write something every single day, at least a few words about the weather like Grandma M did. And who knows, maybe I’ll get into the habit.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” asked Kristina, with a hint of a German accent.
“No, probably not,” said Jaime.
“You should go back to school and learn a skill. You could get a teaching certificate.”
“The smart thing to do, I’m sure.”
“Am I sounding like a broken record?” Kristina, the wife of his cousin Erik, was a doctoral student at the University of Arizona. Erik had told him that she had been born and grown up in Germany during the Second World War, had won a scholarship at the University of Florida, had arrived in Gainesville with only a rudimentary knowledge of English, and had graduated in three years with a 4.0 average.
Jamie drove his battered Ford Maverick into the parking lot at Steins Furniture Rental. He turned the car off and just sat. It took a force of will to shove the blanket off his lap and get out of the car. As he walked in the front door he glanced to the right, glass and chrome glittering in the showroom lights. He turned left into the sales office.
One muggy summer morning in 1988, Ellie was dressing Max, her three-and-a-half-year-old son. As she tied his right shoe, he asked, “Where goin’, Mommy?”
She looked up and smiled at him. Ordinarily she let him dress himself, but, when she dressed him, he knew it meant they were going out. So smart, she thought proudly...
She put the plates on the small kitchen table, one at his place and one at hers. He looked at the plate and suppressed a sigh. Pork chop, baked potato, canned peas. The pale, mushy, green globs spoiled a perfectly good dinner for him. As a former nurse, nutrition was important to her; he just wasn't sure there was any nutrition in canned peas.
She sat and looked at her meal, feeling slightly queasy. While she usually enjoyed pork chops, lately any greasy food put her off. She watched him prepare his potato; she had to look away as he slathered on a generous glob of butter...
In 1991 your mother and I decided to make a trip to Dallas to attend a Thompson family reunion. Our cars were too small for long distance driving, so your Grampa Martin offered to lend us his 1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88.
He drove the car from his home in West Virginia to ours in Dayton on the Wednesday prior to Memorial Day weekend. That evening he gave your mother and me a tour of the car. He showed us how to operate the windshield wipers, cruise control, shifter, radar detector, and CB radio. We sat with him while he had a brief test conversation with a trucker on I-75. He supervised me while I strapped in your car seat...
