 |
| Click to enlarge |
February 2, Tuesday - Cold today - the same old thing at Kroger. Zone meeting at the store Mom says she will take us to see Mary Poppins Sunday.
February 3, Wednesday - Went to Dr. Williams and had my back cracked. Getting ready for the weekend. Looks as though we'll be busy. Every man looked like Dad today.
A typical day off, another couple of days at work, and a trip to the chiropractor. A zone meeting is the Zone Manager, in this case, I think it was Charlie Gamper, plus all the store managers from his zone, converging for a butt-chewing day of motivation. Grandma Patton is taking us to see Mary Poppins next weekend.
Mom still misses her dad terribly. He died suddenly about four months earlier. It was one of the few somber funerals I can remember in our family. Most of our funerals were light-hearted, even fun to attend. When Grandma Patton died in August of 1971, the services at the Fulton-Nickel funeral home in Kansas City, Kansas were serious, but not somber or tearful. She had been in declining health for quite some time, and her last days at the nursing home on Benton Boulevard were painful to watch.
As we formed the half-mile-long funeral procession that would take her body to our family cemetery near Leavenworth, Kansas, I assured my date - yes, I took a date to grandma's funeral - that the lighthearted party she had just witnessed really was our family's way of remembering Grandma Patton.
My mom and her family were in the limousine following the casket-bearing hearse and a heavily-laden flower car. My dad gave the driver directions through Leavenworth, and out onto Highway 92 west of town. Somewhere after the Highway 92 turn, things went horribly wrong. Dad got a little confused, and got us a little lost.
The hearse, and subsequently, every other car, made a series of wrong turns and eventually onto a three-block-long dead end street near the edge of town. As the hearse driver realized that there had been a horrible mistake and began to turn around, the centipede of cars scrambled for a way to get back in line behind all the black Cadillacs. The limo that I was riding in came to a stop directly next a woman in a flowered duster who was weeding her yard.
She waved at our car, and we rolled down the window. As the hearse pulled even with us on the other side of the street, she informed us, "You can't stop here, this is a dead end!"
This brought the parade to a complete stop, as everyone, included the staid and double-starched funeral director broke into fits of uncontrollable laughter. Eventually we negotiated our way out of Leavenworth on Highway 92 and pulled into the little oak-shaded cemetery on the northwest side of the road - there was only enough room for six or seven cars on the cemetery grounds, so the rest were parked down the highway toward Easton. When everyone had assembled graveside, the minister began the service: "Pansy Elizabeth Patton . . . and everyone just came unglued. There wasn't a dry eye in the house, and no one was crying. Pansy loved to travel, and had zero sense of direction or the time involved to actually get anywhere. She would have loved the meander to her final resting place.
The girl I was with talked about my grandma's funeral for years afterward, although I'm fairly sure she thought we were all batshit crazy. This funeral was the most fun I've ever had in a cemetery. Check that - it was the second most fun I've ever had in a cemetery. Ask me about that story some other time.
Mom still misses her dad terribly. He died suddenly about four months earlier. It was one of the few somber funerals I can remember in our family. Most of our funerals were light-hearted, even fun to attend. When Grandma Patton died in August of 1971, the services at the Fulton-Nickel funeral home in Kansas City, Kansas were serious, but not somber or tearful. She had been in declining health for quite some time, and her last days at the nursing home on Benton Boulevard were painful to watch.
As we formed the half-mile-long funeral procession that would take her body to our family cemetery near Leavenworth, Kansas, I assured my date - yes, I took a date to grandma's funeral - that the lighthearted party she had just witnessed really was our family's way of remembering Grandma Patton.
My mom and her family were in the limousine following the casket-bearing hearse and a heavily-laden flower car. My dad gave the driver directions through Leavenworth, and out onto Highway 92 west of town. Somewhere after the Highway 92 turn, things went horribly wrong. Dad got a little confused, and got us a little lost.
The hearse, and subsequently, every other car, made a series of wrong turns and eventually onto a three-block-long dead end street near the edge of town. As the hearse driver realized that there had been a horrible mistake and began to turn around, the centipede of cars scrambled for a way to get back in line behind all the black Cadillacs. The limo that I was riding in came to a stop directly next a woman in a flowered duster who was weeding her yard.
She waved at our car, and we rolled down the window. As the hearse pulled even with us on the other side of the street, she informed us, "You can't stop here, this is a dead end!"
This brought the parade to a complete stop, as everyone, included the staid and double-starched funeral director broke into fits of uncontrollable laughter. Eventually we negotiated our way out of Leavenworth on Highway 92 and pulled into the little oak-shaded cemetery on the northwest side of the road - there was only enough room for six or seven cars on the cemetery grounds, so the rest were parked down the highway toward Easton. When everyone had assembled graveside, the minister began the service: "Pansy Elizabeth Patton . . . and everyone just came unglued. There wasn't a dry eye in the house, and no one was crying. Pansy loved to travel, and had zero sense of direction or the time involved to actually get anywhere. She would have loved the meander to her final resting place.
The girl I was with talked about my grandma's funeral for years afterward, although I'm fairly sure she thought we were all batshit crazy. This funeral was the most fun I've ever had in a cemetery. Check that - it was the second most fun I've ever had in a cemetery. Ask me about that story some other time.
No comments:
Post a Comment