Our 62nd Anniversary

Today  is the anniversary of the day Buster and I ran off to Yuma Arizona to begin our long adventure in love and war.  (Family life, you know.)   I was lucky enough to have him 60 years and 21 days.   I try to remember that.  

Today I took home grown sunflower blossoms out to decorate his grave;  and to reminisce about some of the really fun times we had.  There were a lot of them.  

 One I remember well, was on one of our vacations.  We were in Montana headed for Yellowstone park.  We had driven two lane twisty mountain logging roads most of the day, and were parked in a very steep and tree covered campground up in the mountains outside Bozeman Montana.  It was beautiful.  Cold and beautiful.

We had just spent the day -and night before - in Bozeman getting our old motorhome repaired.  Again.  

(Just the day before we had ended a week parked in Grizzly Motors side yard in Missoula Montana getting the  steering box replaced.  But that is a whole different story.)

This night, after driving all day, we were both tired, and retired early, secure in the knowledge we would be in ** Yellowstone!!!**  the next day.  Visions of Old Faithful and sulphur springs danced in our heads. We were heady with anticipation.

Then it began to rain.  Hard, cold rain.  We both looked up and noticed that the vent in the motor home bedroom was leaking quite readily down onto our carpet.  Oops!  Can't live with that. So into rain slickers we got, and our oldest pairs of tennis shoes.  Buster dug through the storage area in the outside compartment for the black goop he always loaded for such emergencies.  He was very good at loading emergency stuff.  That was our main ballast.  You name it, we had it.   Almost.  

Soon he located the black sealer goop for leaks, and a fat screwdriver.   Since Buster had bad knees  and could not climb up on the roof, I got that privilege.  He hated that he could not do what he considered "man's"  work.  I was delighted- clumsy but delighted.   At last, I was useful.

The back of the motor home was high, but thankfully, we were carrying a small motorcycle on the back in its own lift.  All strapped down and safe.  Since the motorcycle tire rail was the lowest horizontal piece in reach of my foot, I stepped on the back of the carrier and up onto the back ladder, crawling carefully up and over the top rail and onto the roof itself.  Woo Hoo!

The offending vent was right there.  Right in the middle of the motor home bedroom.  Feeling totally competent and capable of handling this emergency, I opened the can and plastered way more goop than was needed on the rim of the vent; then announced my success so Buster could go in and see if the problem was solved.  Buster was unusually silent, but called up from inside the motor home that yes, the leak was no more.  Yesss!

Since I was/am really such a wuss, I waited for him to come hold the ladder and talk me off the roof.  (My poppa  bear). After all, he was the one that usually did these "manly" jobs.   With much squealing and encouraging advice, I finally made it back to solid ground and planet earth.  

But Buster seemed unusually quiet.  I looked at him questioningly, and he, in a disheartened tone, told me that when I put my foot on the motorcycle carrier, it bent way down.  It was broken.  We were not headed for **Yellowstone**!!  We were headed back to Bozeman.   I would have to drive the motor home on that twisty God-forsaken excuse for a road all the way back to town.  He would follow on the motorcycle.  Otherwise, the motorcycle was going to fly off on the road.  That option was totally out of the question.  

OK.  So we slogged our soaked, cold selves back inside  the motorhome, took off the wet stuff, and went to bed.  No talk. He laid staring darkly strait up at the ceiling. 

But after a few minutes, his voice rang out loud and clear.  He hated the motorhome. He needed a gun to kill it with.  If he could he would burn it up right then and there.  He would take a saw-zall to it.  He would slash it with swords.  He would beat it with baseball bats.. and on and on, as his temper picked up steam; steam backed up from our break down adventures in the last week.  

He was on a roll.  Somehow, after the first few minutes I decided his rantings were absolutely hilarious.  I laughed.  I giggled.  I put my hands over my mouth and curled up in hilarity.  The more he raved, the funnier it seemed.  Eventually, I was egging him on.  

Before long, we were both contemplating all the hilarious ways we could decimate the motor home without leaving a terrible scar  upon the forest where we were  parked.  (He was much more serious about it than I was, but eventually, we both ended up laughing ourselves to sleep.  

Now, just how much more fun can you have than that!