It's Flooding!

Not a water kind of flood.  I've been having a lot of memories flood my banks this past week.  I do wonder why, but not for long.  Instead I've just been enjoying them. 

Of course I've been thinking of Pop a lot.  Memories of him are never few but I do get days when I have floods of them.  If he knew I was putting a picture of his scrawny chest online for the world to see he's scold me but I've always loved this picture of him and Dana Dog.  She would talk to him much like my Hamlet talks to me. 

 

We also celebrated Jolene's 13th birthday on the 15th.  I really wish he was here to give her a bad time about becoming a teenage hellion.  I wish he were here to teach her how to drive or to tell her stories about milking cows and hunting pheasants.  

 

Of course the recent news about the SkyWest pilot that stole and crashed the plane in Utah gave me a few more memories.  Pop was working at the SkyWest hanger in Colorado Springs as the facility maintenance  supervisor when he died in 2007.  He was proud of his job and never missed on opportunity to show his grandchildren a plane.  

 I've also been thinking a lot about my Grandma Mac (McDaniel).  I've picked through many of the pictures I have on this computer and can't seem to find any of her.  I did find a bit of her here in this one.  She's on the left side, looking on at my younger brother Dustin's wedding.  The last year or so of her life she lived in a home in Canon City.  I was working for a treatment center there and was able to visit with her almost every day.  I had to run some errands near the nursing home where she lived this week and thought of her several times. 

When I was 16, Grandma Mac gave me her 1965 Chevy Corvair.  My friend Lisa P. and I had much fun in that car.  It was baby blue with an AM radio.  Grandma had dented the fender racing home from work at the courthouse in Saguache one day for lunch.  The dent stayed in the fender.  It didn't have seatbelts and the speedometer didn't work.  I was late for school one morning because I couldn't get the door to shut.  No lie!  I miss that car almost as much as I miss my grandmother.  Owning another Corvair is one of the items on my bucket list.

 

The horrible events at the theater in Aurora also gave me a flood of memories.  My grandparents owned the Ute Theatre in Saguache CO, when I was a kid.  It looked much different than the picture above.  I learned to count change selling popcorn in that movie house.  Each year Saguache holds a large community event on Memorial Day weekend.  The weekend marks the opening of the museum, and kicks off the summer.  Grandma Mac would decorate the Corvair and dress me and my siblings up like characters from whatever movie she was showing at the time and  enter the whole mess in the parade.  I haven't been back to Saguache in many years.  I have family there still and I should really take the time to visit.  I really want to go to the Ute just to see the old popcorn machine and to see if it still has the same smell.

Along with all the memories of past I've been making a few in the present.  

 

Jolene is wrapping up her softball season this coming weekend with a league tournament in Pueblo CO.  I can't believe that the days have zipped by so fast.  I'm not ready for the season to be over.  

 

When she was born I really thought I'd be spending my weekends at swim meets.  Then again I thought she's be wearing make-up and dresses too.