Grand kids, cantaloupe, watermelon,
tomatoes, okra, cataract eye drops, guests, eclipse, dirt dobbers,
national softball championship! Our house and lives did not stay
empty long after baby Caroline's departure—partly because of the
continued sweet photos of her on Facebook, which Gerald prints out
for us but also because of other summer events and endings.
Erin still has time for photos and
videos for Josh in South Korea even though her school year has
started in Texas. As much as she is going to miss full-time with
Caroline, she will not be worried about her because her mother Vickie
will be Caroline's week-day caregiver. I wish every working mother
had it so good!!
School starts early these times, so
like Erin, the other grand kids and great grandsons are already back
in school again after the end of their summer jobs and activities.Tara no longer teaches except softball there at the sports complex, but those three sons' school schedules are probably as difficult to keep up with as their summer ball games. Grandson Elijah is the only one whose school starts after Labor Day,
but he is already working in his Chicago classroom preparing for his
second year of teaching kids with vision impairment. He was down to
catch up with other cousins, and I was able to hear a bit about his
last eight weeks of teaching one mainstream class of writing to 8th
graders, which happened by accident and won't be part of this year's
duties to my disappointment.
Sam was also at Woodsong briefly since
he had finished his summer internship located at the University of
Texas, where he too taught language arts with a junior high age group
in a special program. He loved teaching and delighted his mother by
having some of his students call her. He was able to go with his
cousin Brianna and her brother Trent to the Saint Louis airport to
meet Rachel, Trent's lovely red-headed girl friend from New Jersey.
They managed to stick in a Cardinals baseball game before they came
back to the Taylors. Next, after Elijah came down, they were off to
visit Brianna in her apartment at Murray, where she has already
started her senior classes. From there they were off to Nashville,
where our granddaughter Leslie was featured as a soloist at a
festival there. Then they were back to the Taylors in time for the
eclipse mania here.
We did get a very brief visit from Geri Ann when she was here to be in a friend's wedding this summer, but she is already at work at her new job with autistic children out in Portland, Oregon. I have yet to have a summer-end visit
from our youngest grandchild Cecelie who spent a month in India
helping with children—so I still have something special to look
forward to. She has started college already at the community college
near Freeport. Rachel had to return home the day after the eclipse,
so I was very glad Trent brought her over while we were watching
Gerry's Scrap Yard Dogs in the finals of the National Professional
Fast Pitch (NPF) softball final tournament. This was not televised,
and we had to watch on Gerald's computer screen, so his office was
crowded with us, Trent and Rachel, and our eclipse guests Bob and
Sylvia Mountz from Arizona.
We had watched Thursday and Friday as
the Dawgs won the semi-finals against Akron Racers. Then rain delay
made the first game of the finals against Florida's Pride quite late,
and sadly we lost 5-0. After church on Sunday, we were soon again
glued to the computer watching Monica Abbot lead the Dawgs to a 2-0
victory in 125 degree heat. Although Monica Abbott is considered the
best softball pitcher in the world, no one could imagine being able
to pitch another complete game in that heat to win the final. Megan
Wiggins' lead off home run certainly was not a good beginning. Yet
the lead went back forth between these two great teams, and we won
5-2. There was much celebrating at Woodsong. Let me include a quote
a sports writer used from Gerry about Monica Abbott:
"You
can follow softball for the next 30, 40, 50 years, and I don't think
you'll see another performance equal to her performance here this
week," Scrap Yard coach Gerry Glasco said. "The heart and
the guts she showed, the tenacity on the mound in the heat, in the
humidity, weather delays. It's a phenomenal performance, and, I
think, one of the greatest performances in the history of softball."
The next day was the much anticipated
total eclipse, which our area experienced for the longest period of
totality. Naturally there has been great ado about it here with
Southern Illinois University Carbondale opening facilities to NASA.
Visiting public were welcomed to their stadium and even to a large
high-rise dorm that is due to be torn down. Other area towns and
campgrounds were packed. Locals were warned that some grocery
shelves might be empty and highways crowded. The first was true for
me when I shopped before the crowds were supposed to come. Area folk
had been stoking up. However, since people came to the area over a
period of days, the roads stayed clear—until everyone left at the
same time.
Our favorite thing about the eclipse
was that we were going to have a visit from Bob and Sylvia. Sylvia
had spent her early childhood at the State Forest Preserve west of
Jonesboro where her father Ralph Fisher started the tree nursery
there. The Fisher children went to the same country school that
Gerald and siblings went to. Mrs. Fisher would volunteer in the
classroom to identify trees in a wonderful project where the children
brought in leaves and bark and nuts for a huge display. (That school
was treated to teaching by a young woman, who later taught at SIUC,
and was the object of much admiring email conversation by former
students from little Miller Pond School and some from Anna Junior
High.) The Fisher family lived in a big house on the hill by the
park, and I vaguely remember Mabel Norris taking some of us down to
play with the Fisher children one day. One of my few memories of the
Fishers in Southern Illinois was a huge bill board with the painting
of a beautiful stallion that Mr. Fisher owned. But Gerald's family
were next door to the Forest Preserve, and the two fathers coon
hunted together and worked together on many projects, often with kids
along.
Soon after my mother-in-law died, we
took Dad Glasco down to see Ralph and Catherine Fisher, who at that
time were living in retirement village at Belle Vista, Arkansas. The
first thing I saw when I walked into their living room was a very
large photograph over their fireplace of the nine Fisher children.
For a long time, we've enjoyed Christmas letters from Fenna Lee, the
oldest of the daughters, as well as from Sylvia and Bob, and Mr.
Fisher himself used to write long letters to Gerald telling of their
children's educational and other achievements. With the great
letters and two or so visits from Bob and Sylvia down through the
years, we have felt close to them, so nothing could have pleased us
more than to have them visit us to enjoy the eclipse together. And
we did.
In preparation, I had found the chairs
for the deck in the garage, and they were full of hardened dirt
dobber nests and debris, so I was glad I did this job a couple of
days earlier. My first plan was to have a picnic set up on the deck
since this two-hour eclipse experience would be during the noon hour.
Then as realism hit, I remembered why we have never eaten as many
meals on the deck as I thought we would. It is hot out there at noon
day! So we had our picnic on the air-conditioned side of the doors to
the deck. We were going in and out with our eclipse glasses and
watching the black area grow on the bright orb. It was fascinating
to watch. We experimented with punching a pin hole in a piece of
paper to watch the image on the paper below. And with a colander. I
was amazed at how much bright light the sun gave even when almost
covered. Then the temperature began to noticeably go down, and then
things begin to be slightly less bright. Although at night the deer
are often around our lake and even in the garden, usually during the
day they stay far away from us. Gerald and Bob saw a buck cross the
dam at tne end of the lake, and later a baby deer appeared going
into our nearby woods where its mother must have been.
As the two minutes, forty-two seconds
of totality was soon to arrive, it was now quite comfortable to sit
on the deck. And then the predicted total eclipse came. Because of
the word “totality,” I really expected it to be pitch dark. It
was not. It was beautifully and eerily dusk. The lake and the
clouds above the lake became a lovely soft gray and the frogs were
singing to us. It was a couple of magical moments until the moon
began to move on.
Bob and Sylvia went on to visit other
friends in Union County, and Gerald went back to harvesting garden
produce for us and others he gifted with it. He is celebrating that
finally he now only has to put drops in his eyes twice a day. On
Tuesday, students went back to their college classes that had been
canceled for the eclipse. As the crowds left the area, life returned
to normal except for the multitude of photographs appearing
everywhere of the moon's trip past the sun. People in our area are
excited, however, because in 2024, when the path is from the
northeast to the south, our exact area will again be given a total
eclipse.
Gerald is continuing to fight the dirt
dobbers in our garage as Sylvia saw him doing. She was delighted
when he gave her a ball cap with one of their dirt nests firmly
attached on it. This was her souvenir to take back and wear to show
off to her retirement coffee gang. “We need the laugh,” she
proudly explained.
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