Trip To Bountiful

This afternoon, I watched "Trip To Bountiful", a 1985 movie starring Geraldine Page as an elderly woman named Carrie Watts stuck in a 2-room apartment in Houston who wants nothing more than to go "home" to the small town she grew up in before she dies. This wasn't the first time I've watched this movie. I saw it a couple of times after it first came out on t.v. and I must admit I mainly watched it because some of it was filmed in this area. For instance, the scene in the clip below where the car pulls into a town and stops was shot in Venus, TX where son, Tony, went to school for 12 years. This afternoon's viewing was far different than any of the others, tho. I'm 20 years older than I was when I first watched it and the full meaning of the movie never registered until today. Funny how age affects your view of just about everything. I've written about my "hometown" in Kansas on this blog and I feel the same about it as Carrie Watts did about Bountiful. It's always going to be home.
A year before my Mom passed away, she decided she would like to go back home and just drive around to all the places she lived and went to school, etc. She actually wanted as many of her 10 children as possibly could to go, too. Her idea was to show us her roots and tell us what it was like while she was growing up. So, on Memorial Day weekend that year, 4 of us kids took her "home". We started out in the first area she lived in and, of course, since the old house was no longer there we didn't get to see that. We visited the cemetery where some of our relatives were buried and she gave us some history on some of them.
We then drove through town to about a mile or two east of town near the river where she lived through her school years. They really lived near the river; probably the equivalent of 2 blocks or maybe less. We turned into a lane that took us to an old ramshackle house that she said was their old house. However, the more she thought about it later, she wasn't exactly sure that was the exact house, but the windmill was still standing and she recognized that. They had an awesome view of the Kansas countryside looking out towards that windmill. I wonder if they appreciated it back then. I hope they did. She told us some of her memories of growing up there, playing on the sandbars and in the river.
The town is not the busy little town it once was. Only one or two businesses remain; the rest are all torn down or boarded up. They do, however, have a restaurant that had opened up just a few months before that and it was open that day so we stopped and had lunch. She got to see so many people that she knew and it couldn't have worked out any better. A lot of people come home over Memorial Day weekend because the annual Alumni Banquet is held the Saturday evening before Memorial Day and most of them stay over and go to the cemetery for memorial services on Monday. She had attended the banquet just a couple of years before that for her 60th Class Reunion.
She enjoyed the day so much and I am so glad I was there to experience it with her. She passed away on Memorial Day of the next year. Like Carrie Watts, she took her trip to her "Bountiful".

Home To Bountiful

Addendum to Retirement blog...

Facebook is also well-traveled by my daughter-in-law, granddaughter and grandson in Iowa. I am usually dizzy by the time I read theirs, just trying to keep up with all they do and where they are going every day. They also have Lives!!!

I'm Retired......Now What!

Well, it's here. Retirement. R-E-T-I-R-E-M-E-N-T. Funny how that word always seemed to describe something that was far off in the future. Way far off!! Well, now it's not far off....It's here! And I'm not sure what to do with it. It arrived at 5:00 pm on May 1st. 46 years, give or take a year or two, of working full-time for several companies along the way, some small, some large. The last one was the longest tenure.....nearly 24 years. And when I walked out of there that last day, it seemed like yesterday when I walked in for the first time. There were approximately 16 people working there on my first day; on the last day, there were
6.
Hubby has been retired for a couple of years, but doing some part time work for a friend of ours anywhere from 2 to 6 days a week. First adjustment: he's not working at all right now. He's here, with me, all day, every day for the most part. Enough said! I'm sure you get the picture.
I know I have to get into a set routine as much as I can as far as housework, laundry, etc. are concerned. It was always a little haphazard while I was working; okay, sometimes pretty much nonexistent. But..I digress. It's now July 19th; still no regular routine. I tried setting a "laundry day" and then ended up having to do something else (more fun, of course). It's getting better, but probably won't last. At least I know if it doesn't get done today, I'll be here tomorrow to do it.....or the next day, etc.
And, to make matters worse - I have discovered FB! Facebook! Internet site where you can catch up with all your friends from birth til' now. Your whole life right out there just waiting to be remembered, talked about, laughed about...and oh my!!.....it's addicting! I've begun eating my meals in front of the computer just so I don't miss a post by someone. I don't want to miss anything on there..Ever!! My high school girlfriends are all out there, the girlfriends I spoke about in a prior post on this blog. Now I get to see what they are doing every day...or hour sometimes. Cool!!! My son-in-law is on there, but he doesn't blog much. My daughter is too busy with the grandboys and she has a lot more willpower than I do so she's not sitting here wasting time on the computer. She actually has a Life!!
And to make things even more fun....there's Skype. If you have a webcam, you can go out on Skype and actually video-call someone else who has one. My friend, Suzi, and I Skype several times a week. We actually see each other as we're talking.....she looks a little scary, but I love her so I will accept her as she is. I must tell you she looks scary because she is sitting in front of the window and there is no light on her face. All I see are her glasses with the lenses reflecting the computer screen back at me and this ghostly body. A tad distracting, but I try not to look for long periods of time. Well, I suppose my Skypeing days are now over with her. Suzi, I love ya....you know I do.
Well, I must go get dinner on the table....be back in a few to check out FB while dripping my food on the keyboard. Cheers!