I suspected my phone was the problem. So I tried troubleshooting and couldn’t find anything wrong. So the next step was to turn it off and back on to reset everything. I turned it off, and then back on. When it came up I tried calling again with the same results. So, I decided to call my next-door neighbor Jose. I dialed Jose and ended up with the same results.

All of a sudden, the answer came to me. The blue tooth connection to my hearing aid had turned itself off. TaDa! I restarted my hearing aid and called Jose again. He answered and I could talk to him. It turns out I could have yelled to him. He was at my front door. When I first called him and he didn’t hear a thing from me, he thought I was having trouble and came to my aid.

That is one of the advantages of living in the Willows. We look out for one another.

At a very young age I read a book about a boy playing hockey. I became fascinated with the sport. I read everything I could find in the local library on the sport. Then I discovered that I could listen to the Blackhaawks on radio at night, picking up the signal from the Chicago station. Johnny Gottsileg would announce the games, and I would eat it up. Oh, how I wanted to be a part of it. But that never happened.

My senior year in high school we had a very cold winter. The lakes in Garvin Park actually froze. I went down to the Salvation Armory store and found a pair of speed skates for a quarter. I bought them and headed for the park. It turned out to be a very frustrating experience. Let’s just sum it up to say it didn’t turn out like how I had imagined it in the playground of my mind.

I didn’t get to learn how to skate until I was thirty-one years old and living in Northern Illinois with an eight-year-old son who wanted to learn how to play hockey. If you have read other stories in my blog, you will realize that I ended up coaching hockey for 22 years. I guess my dream came true.

However, I guess the love of MOPARs was already ingrained in me. My first car was a 1948 Dodge which I purchased for $100. I didn’t take good care of it, and it hit the junk pile not to long after purchase. My second car was a 1949 Plymouth which I drove to Cherry Point NC where I was stationed. The car developed engine problems, and I thought I could do the repairs. I got it apart but never succeeded in getting it reassembled. My next car was a 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook which lasted through my military service, and a collision on the way home after discharge. I had learned enough to be able to do all the service and repair work on my own car by then.

Of all the cars O have bought since then, only a 1978 Pontiac Grand Prix wasn’t a Chrysler product. I then purchased a 2006 Chrysler 300 C. Oh my goodness, it had everything in it. The battery and a major part of the electricals were in the trunk. It had a bank of breakers that looked like they were for a large building. The Hemi engine performed as expected. However, the transmission failed five times. The fifth one was not under warranty, so I decided I needed a change of direction.

Martha and I went shopping, and I fell in love with a four-cylinder Jeep Cherokee. It gets 31 mpg and drives as fast as I care to go anymore. We are in our twelfth year together, and if it should fail me, I would probably buy another Jeep.

I am not just Hemi ready anymore.

But no, Julie came to the rescue. She and Tracey organized having Easter dinner here. They brought all the food here and prepared it. It included ham, crunchy top potatoes, baked beans, an incredible salad that Julie created, hot buns, and birthday cake and ice cream. Oh, my goodness it was delicious.

Also in attendance were Dan, Becky, PD, Maddie, Ronnie and Barb. They had the Cubs game on the front TV, and I had the Sox on the back TV.

After a very fun dinner, they cleaned my kitchen and put everything away and all went home. I wouldn’t have minded them staying a little longer, but eventually they have to leave. there is that period of loneliness, but you know they will come back again. On top of that I have a refrigerator chocked full of leftovers that I can consume this week.

The interesting thing is that I like salmon patties. I cannot explain that either. I have eaten them my entire life. My mother used to make them. I can never remember her making cooked salmon. It was probably unaffordable in our budget. I discovered that after many years of marriage, that Martha could not stand salmon patties. She loved salmon. Interesting! In all those years, we had never had them in our house.

I can’t remember how the conversation went, but I was telling her that I really like salmon patties, and she told me how much she disliked them. I got her to agree to let me make my version of salmon patties, and she would try them. So, the big experiment began.

I went to the store and bought a can of salmon and made them for supper. She tentatively bit into one of them. She loved it. After that I would make them about once a month, and they became a staple for us. She never got to where I am, I like them left over on a bun with dill pickles and mayonnaise.

It is Lent, time to make a batch of them.

However, she was always insistent that she would bake the birthday cakes. I gave up and let her have it. She would make any cake you wanted if it was yellow cake with chocolate icing. I was reminded of this at the last family gathering when the grandkids got to talking about past cakes. They were lopsided, or tilted, and sometime looked like they had pieces missing. But we all realized they were made with love by her. The candles were always added, lit and blown out.

I sometimes wonder if they had been perfect, would we remember them with such loving memories.

We arrived at the Student Union and spent some time enjoying the music and dancing. Then came the big twist contest. Remembering how we won a twist contest the night we met, we jumped into this one. We lasted enough rounds to where we were really getting tired. Finally, we were eliminated and looked for somewhere to sit and recover. It didn’t look that good in the ballroom, so we went downstairs where we found a smaller lounge and grabbed a couple of seats.

We were having a great conversation, when the entertainment in that lounge started. To our delight it was the Diamonds. Turned out to be a favorite of both of us. To top it all, the did the song Little Darling.

Walking her back to Duhmi Hall, I realized it had been a very good date.

We didn’t have a car, so we couldn’t go anywhere far from campus. Wandering around the campus would have put us in jeopardy of being caught by the campus police. Then we got a bright idea. Sitting in the middle of the campus was a diner called the Gold and Black grill. We went in there and found a back booth. We ordered a couple of cups of coffee and just stayed.

No one bothered us, and they kept refilling our cups. We stayed until 8:00 AM and then mixed in with the crowds going to class. Her roommate never spilled the beans, so she was never cought.

We talked about so much that night, that it probably was the basis for us eventually getting married. I am eternally grateful.

So I decided to enter under the name of a guy from Rockford. That way there could be no problem with me having the same last name as Martha.

I make a pretty good granny smith apple pie, so decided that to be my entry of choice. Now i knew that a plain apple pie had little chance of winning. Other desserts had the option of colors to go along with the July fourth date. I decided to add an interesting feature. After the pie was made, I cut the steam vents in the crust to display the Visit Beloit logo. It came out a thing of beauty.

My pie easily won. And since Martha wasn’t involved in the judging. I accepted the prize with no conscience qualms.

During my days racing boats, Sam would ride with me as I shook down set ups and selected props for competition. He drank beer, and loved peas as his vegetable of choice. Half the neighborhood knew him as Hairy, and kept him well fed.

We had him so many years, that when he was dying, I couldn’t take him to the vet to be put down. Martha did that for me. I have always been grateful. It is still why I can’t see getting another dog. I am still faithful to old
Sam.