Kristi Sees Dead People!
I had originally intended to put only stories about retirement life or about my work experiences on this blog but, what the heck, I am going to put some family stories on here now and again for your enjoyment.My wife (Mrs. Ex-Fed) and I have a lovely daughter named Kristi and she is an absolute joy to us. She is a college student at a university that will remain anonymous.
Mrs. Ex-Fed's family lives in Iowa and we visited them a couple of years ago with Kristi so she could connect to her family roots. The family is in a tiny town in Northeast Iowa and there is absolutely nothing to do there except to visit with family - and that gets old after the first 24 hours. The in-laws are wonderful people and are always so gracious to us when we visit and we do things in the evening like play card games and board games. Sounds like Middle America, doesn't it?
I was looking in the area newspaper (the town is so small that they have a single newspaper for the surrounding communities) and noticed an auction was to take place on that morning at 11 a.m. I asked Mrs. Ex-Fed if she would like to get out of the house (escape was more of the proper term) and go with me to the auction. Kristi was in the den with her Nana. We told Grandpa that we were going to be gone for a couple of hours and we escaped the house without telling Kristi we were leaving. Hey, she was 17 and could suck it up for a while on her own.
The auction was typical of something small-town and household goods were being auctioned off at high prices for what you got. There were truly no bargains to be had - but it was fun to see and mingle with other bargain hunters. After a couple of hours at the auction, we stopped at a cafe for a Maid-rite and a bottle of "pop". For those of you that are not from Iowa, a Maid-rite is the local version of a Sloppy Joe and the "pop" is, of course, the Midwest term for soda. We then took a leisurely drive back to the in-law's house.
Kristi came up to us when we came in the door and whispered, "You owe me big time for deserting me!" It seems that her Nana entertained Kristi with all of her photo albums of funerals of her relatives. Now, to make this even better, Nana is Mrs. Ex-Fed's step-mother and the relatives were all hers and none of our families relatives. Kristi had spent around 2 hours looking at scrapbooks of funeral flower arrangements, wakes, and even of the dearly departed in their caskets. To me and to Mrs. Ex-Fed, this made our auction jaunt even more enjoyable. I am sure all parents of teenagers would agree that it is great fun to "zing" it to the kids once in a while.
I also enjoyed seeing the miles and miles of corn fields out in Iowa. Literally, you can see corn fields to the horizon. It was a lot of fun, while driving the roads in Iowa with Kristi, to exclaim every now and then, "Look, Kristi, it's corn!" She seemed to get annoyed at my saying that after about the 12th time - I don't know why.
As I said earlier, Kristi is a lot of fun to have around and she is a great daughter.
posted by Ex-Fed @ 11:41 AM
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