The family had two tables. Cathy and her family had one off to the side that included both of her sons and their children. I think there was nine of them at that table.
The other table was in the back of the room next to the speaker area. That table included Rita, me and Becky, Dan, Betsy, Sara and Erik, Chris, Marissa and her boyfriend, our cousin Christina and a couple of Rita's friends including Janet who came up from Atlanta.
The memorial service for my brother-in-law Scott was put together by his co-workers from the meat packing company Stoltzfus Meats where he worked that was located just down the road. There was a public park across the road from the meat plant and the organizers decided it would be a good convenient place to have his memorial service at the park pavilion. It was very convenient for them and their co-workers.
Rita and the family had little or no say in the matter of the organizing and scheduling of the event and certainly not the location. Scott had passed away in Florida on July 17th. They scheduled the memorial service at this community park near Lancaster PA for September 28th. They made the time of the service at 6 pm on a Thursday evening after work. This location and time was good for the workers at Stoltzfus but not convenient for Rita and the family many of whom had to travel some distance to attend the service. A weekend day would have been much better for most people other than the workers. I understand that they would have wanted to have some kind of memorial service for Scott for the people he worked with but this should not have been the service for everyone from anywhere. It would have been much better having it in the Harleysville area for both Scott's and Rita's families and the many people he worked with over the years in meat packing plants in the area. But it was not to be because the folks from Lancaster where in control of the service.
The service itself was very beautiful and there were plenty of people from Stoltzfus who spoke up about working with Scott. However, the park pavilion was not very nice and was somewhat crude in construction. Everyone had to sit at picnic benches except the back of the building where some portable tables were set up. There were some issues with this location because the only thing it had going for it was the closeness to the workers. Someone said that Scott liked to walk around this park during his work breaks to contemplate his faith in the lord... ok then.
Before the service the organizers served a dinner where each table of guests one by one went to the front of the pavilion for food. Stoltzfus food of course. Becky and I thought the food was terrible. Nothing was good. Now maybe I'm just not used to the style of packaged meats from Lancaster PA but there was no taste in the ham or whatever it was. The packaged cole slaw was tasteless as was the potato salad.
It got dark during the service and the community park did not have lights. There were no bathrooms in the pavilion and folks needed to walk some distance down a hill to the public bathrooms. There were no lights along the path and people needed a flashlight to see their way. I tried it with my phone flashlight but it didn't work. I ended up not going to the restroom. At the end of the night people struggled to find their way to the parking lot. No lights there either.
Fortunately for me and Becky we had parked close to the pavilion and we were able to navigate our way out of the park. We had a room at the motel just a minute down the road from the park so we had it easy. Most people other than the meat company folks had an hour and a half to two hour drive home. We would drive back to Katie's house in Philly the next morning.
We spent some time trying to figure out the best route from Mt Airy in Philly to the park just outside Lancaster and of course we started out looking at the Google maps recommended route which insisted we take the turnpike or the Schuylkill Expressway which I didn't want to take. Either way was about an hour and a half.
Check in at the motel was 3 pm and we were ready to leave Katie's after lunch. The kids were at school and we had plenty of time to travel. We wanted to get back as soon as possible the next day because Todd was flying to Toronto for a conference and would be gone for five days. Friday was going to be a hectic day for them so we were hoping to get back on the road early enough to get back to Katie's by around 10 am.
In the meantime we packed an overnight bag and drove off to Lancaster County. I had decided on an alternate route that would take a little longer but would be much more interesting. We took Lincoln Drive, which wasn't too bad because of the time of day, Down at the expressway we crossed the river and headed over to City Line Avenue and out to the Main Line. The only time in recent years I've driven out that way has been to visit Liz out in Havertown. Many years ago I traveled this way a lot and I was looking forward to this drive through the past.
Then we hit the Route 30 expressway going into Lancaster County and our traveling sped up considerably. Now we were out in the country and no longer going through Philly suburbs. We took this to route 772 which was a real country road driving though farmlands and Amish communities. We saw lots of horse and buggies going down the roads. Lot of other farm animals too. We were only on that road a short time until we entered the town of Intercourse and pulled into our motel. It was just shortly after 3 pm. We checked in and then settled into our room to relax for awhile. My brother Dan showed up at the motel around 5 and had the room next door.
The park where the memorial service was happening was located just a couple of minutes down the road. When the time came we pulled out of the motel parking lot and then drove into the park a few minutes later.
After the service we made our way back to the motel around 9 pm. I was glad we weren't driving back to Katie's house that night. We were on the road after a quick breakfast and checkout and left a little after 8 am. We got back to Katie's just before 10 am and we able to stay and watch Violet while Katie took Clara to her OPT and Todd got his Lyft ride to the airport.
The first photo here is of a print on the wall of our motel room depicting Lancaster County and it says "the valley of no wires". Well, we saw plenty of wires driving around there.
Becky and I went there for a nice dinner a couple of years ago and I wrote about it here. It was a Wednesday and they had there special pre-fix dinner and we sat outside on the patio. It was very nice.
We decided to travel down to Philadelphia on Friday and drive halfway to Binghamton where we got a motel for the night. We have been splitting up our trip to Philly lately because of fatigue and my sore back but also since we've been going to Katie's house in Mt Airy it has added significant travel time of about an hour during rush hour into the city if we did it at one time. For many years we stayed at my sister Betsy's house after taking the Quakertown exit from the turnpike. That always saved us a lot of time and hassle.
The weather was going to be bad the following day because of a tropical storm coming up the east coast. We went to bed early so we figured we'd get up early and get a good start before the rains came. It worked. We drove down from Binghamton and we made it down into the Scranton area before we ran into any rain. It really wasn't too bad but we did have some areas of heavy rain but it was isolated. Then we got down into the Delaware Valley and it wasn't too bad. The worse part of the trip was the construction zones of limited lanes that were especially bad on the PA turnpike. Instead of taking the turnpike and expressway all the way into the city we got off at Lansdale and took the old familiar route of Sumneytown Pike and Bethlehem Pike to the city. We made it down to Katie's house for lunch. We were expecting it to be raining hard in Philly but we got in during a lull in the storm. It wasn't raining when we arrived and as were were approaching Katie's house we saw Todd taking Stella for a walk during the break in the rain. I was able to bring in our bags to the house without getting rained on.
Dreadlock Holiday - Reggae Night FV
This was more recently part of my Folk Fest series but now I've incorporated it into my Back Porch collection of folk and country music. This mix sounds great sitting on the back porch and from the car stereo on the road.
This mix runs an hour and a half as usual and can be found on Spotify too.
Hard Travelin' - Back Porch FV
They are back. Flying overhead. I heard three of them around 6:30 am this morning fly directly over our house. They woke me up. This is just like what they were doing throughout the summer months of June, July and August. They had stopped the first couple of weeks of September and according to the newspaper and the TV stations the Buffalo Airport runway construction project was completed on Sept. 1 for the season. We thought they were done but apparently not. I had been hearing a few planes going overhead the past few days but this was the first time they were repeating the flight path pattern that had been happening all summer. The project was supposedly completed for the season and the planes were back to their regular flight paths and runway usage. Something must have happened.
I went online to see if there was a problem. I couldn't find anything official but there were certainly lots of people complaining about the return of the flight paths over their homes throughout the region.
I first wrote about this situation in July here.
In my Final Version collections I added this mix to the Happy Hour group.
House Party 1968
Katie, Todd and the kids didn't come this summer because they all got Covid in August when they were planning to be in town and staying with us. They would have spent a lot of time in the backyard and we would have had folks over to hang out with them. Ashley, Sean and Andrew didn't make it to our house this summer either although we did get to spend time with them at their home and also in Long Lake.
We didn't have any neighbors over this summer either. Nobody. Just Beck and me hanging out together and enjoying our backyard. Now it's Fall.
Choosing To Fly - Back Porch FV
We didn't stay long and hang out for a second beer because we had more things to do. We did, however, take a little walk around the block to kill a little time and looked at some of the great houses in the neighborhood.
Our next stop was an art opening reception at Hallwalls. There was an artist talk at 7 pm so we wanted to time our arrival there for when the talk was completed which is why we took the little walk. The show was from a friend of ours and we were excited to see her work. We got down there and the artist talk was still going on so we went downstairs and caught the end of it. Then we had a long night of socializing with friends from the art community. We exhausted ourselves and left at 9 pm.
I have a long history of these sci-fi mixes that go back many years with the early ones on cassette tapes. I have a couple of 8 hour mega mixes in the series too but now I'm back to my original concept mixes. Lots more to come.
A Moonage Daydream - Sy Fy FV
I read this fascinating history of that decade from late September into mid October when I finished it on the 15th.
The book actually covers the late 1950's to the early 1970's which is basically my childhood into young adulthood and focused on the conflicts concerning race, sex and war. It definitely stirred some memories for me. It also illustrates the issues that are running through the current politics and social unrest of our time today and tearing our nation apart.
I liked how the author personalized the issues of the time with stories of real people and how the events impacted their lives or how everyday people made decisions that had impacts on the social events of that time. He covers all the major events of that era.
I recently noticed the several podcast apps on my phone and then on my tablet. The main ones were Stitcher and Podbean but also on Spotify. Stitcher is no longer available for use which I didn't know about until I tried to use it today. I put these apps on my devices several years ago. Well, probably closer to six years ago.
I thought that I would like to listen to podcast during my retirement years and then I did it some more early in the pandemic. But I stopped. I found out that I would much rather read a book with music on than sit there listening to someone talking about something.
Early on I did listen to a few podcasts and had a couple of favorites but they didn't last very long. Now maybe I would have spent more time with podcasts if I was at work and needed something to listen to while working but not music. That might have worked but I never listened to them during my work years. Come to think of it I didn't listen to any talk radio either. Ever. There was a time many years ago when I would listen to a little talk radio from PBS but that was about it and I didn't do it for very long. Sometimes I would have it on around the house for a while but overall I'd much rather have music on.
The same could be said about traveling in the car. I always wanted music on when we were traveling long distances. Especially when we were going between Buffalo and Philly all these years. I didn't like listening to music on the radio either. It was always tapes and CDs for me. I wanted control of what I was listening to during those times. I also never had very much of a work commute over the past 40 years. Maybe a podcast would work for a long work commute. Also maybe even an audio book for those situations. Fortunately I was never in that kind of long drive work commute. Come to think of it I have never listened to an audio book. Never.
So when it came down to listening to someone talk about something on a podcast or someone reading a book to me versus listening to music. Well, the music always won.
By The Rivers of Babylon - Reggae Night FV
Am I really coming to that... am I gonna have a waddle in my walk? Over the past few months I've had some problems with my hip which we think is arthritis flaring up. It seemed like it was becoming a problem back in July and I went to see my doctor. I wanted to do something about it early on before it got to be a problem. The PA gave me a prescription for steroids to hold me over while we were on vacation in Long Lake. When we came home I had X-rays of my hip taken and I started physical therapy which I wrote about in a post in August.
So it didn't go so well and the hip pain has increased dramatically. I started having trouble walking which Becky and I have been doing regularly for years. Walking around the neighborhood for about two miles to keep moving. I also try to ride my stationary bike in the basement regularly especially if the weather keeps us from going on our walk.
It's getting harder to sleep at night. I need to keep stretching my leg and moving around in the bed. It bothers Becky when I do that especially in the middle of the night. I have been going into the other bedroom a lot so that I can do my moving and stretching and letting Becky get a good night sleep without me waking her up with my leg activities. I wake up in pain a lot.
Something has to happen. We are going to Philly next week and I know my leg is going to give me trouble on the road. Fortunately we will be breaking up the trip halfway by stopping for the night in Binghamton.
Right now I am trying to get better enough to get back to physical therapy but at a different center.
This mix is a snapshot of some of my favorite folk music of the mid to late 1960's into the early 1970's. Reminds me of the Philly Folk Festival shows.
To me this is actually a perfect mix for sitting on the back porch or in the backyard with some friends enjoying a nice evening.
I recently tweaked this mix just a little as part of my Final Version series of mixes.
Early Morning Rain - Back Porch FV
This was an interesting anthology of science fiction time travel stories. There were eighteen stories written by a group of sf authors including some of my favorites... Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Joe Haldeman, Ursula Le Guinn, Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, Larry Niven, Connie Willis and many more.
As with many anthologies the stories went from amazing to so-so. There was a very wide variety of time travel situations in these stories. Most of them I liked very much but there were a couple that were not as well done as the collection as a whole. I did read them all and I did enjoy the book. Overall it was a fine collection.
I got interested in reading this anthology after reading another book on time travel titled Time Travel: A History by James Gleick.
9/7
The Last High - Late Night FV
This mix runs for about an hour and a half and is part of my Final Version series.
Enjoy The Silence - Covers FV
We had a bottle of Tuscan red wine that I had brought from home which only Fuzz and I drank. We also had some nice bread that Becky picked up at the greenmarket. It was a very nice family meal that we all enjoyed.
The view was great. We could see the river and boats going by alongside the restaurant. The place was very crowded too and was obviously a very popular destination for lunch on a Sunday afternoon.
There was easy parking nearby and after we got back to the car Ashely drove us around to see some of the historic neighborhoods in the area. We drove by some really amazing houses as we wandered through the downtown.
