(NOTE: View a larger picture by clicking on the photo(s) above.)

I trust each of you had a Merry Christmas and Santa was good to you. We have moved around so much in the past several months we wondered if Santa was going to find us. Thanks to friends and family, who obviously told Santa where we were, I don‘t think he reads the blog, but who knows, we had a good Christmas. Anyway, we are grateful that his sleigh and reindeer didn’t topple our trailer over, but it sure sounded like a train arriving. Oh, that was a train! One passes by about every 15 minutes or so where we are. The track is about 1.5 miles away, but with the open desert we can see them pass and hear the rumble.

We enjoyed Christmas dinner with the many other campers here at Augie’s RV Park. You see a picture here of part of the group. You may even recognize the lady in the center with a red shirt. We had lots of food to eat and fellow-campers to talk to. There was so much food that we had to do the “dinner thing” again the next day to try and eat it all up. There was still food left over when we finished the second effort. You know there was a lot of food because we did second and third helpings the first time around. The second picture is of the moon rising over the campground. The house you see is the campground owner’s.

As I let you know last week, yesterday, December 28th was our 50th wedding anniversary, so we figured we’d do something a little different and went to Phoenix (135 miles roundtrip). We had a good Italian lunch, courtesy of some dear friends (you know who you are), shopped around for a while. We left home early and didn’t get back until after dark, which at this time of year is not all that late. We enjoyed the day and got our monthly grocery shopping done to-boot.

The year we got married, 1957, was not only famous for our marriage, but was an interesting year in history as well. The Russians launched “Suptnik,” the first man-made satellite; Dwight Eisenhower is inaugurated for a second term as President and Dr. Seuss published “The Cat in the Hat,” a classic in children’s literature. Ted Williams signs a $100,000 contract, becoming the highest paid baseball player and the Milwaukee Braves (later to become the Atlanta Braves) won the World Series Championship. It was the year of birth for some notable “show-biz” people like Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Reiser, Gloria Estefan, Vanna White and Donny Osmond. The favorite music of the year was “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley, “Diana” by Paul Anka and “Chances Are” by Johnny Mathis.

1957 seemed to be a less expense era with milk at $1.00 a gallon, eggs at 28 cents a dozen, bread at 19 cents a loaf and coffee at 90 cents per pound. Cheap you say! Well, I guess it is all relative since the average yearly income was only $4,594. But gasoline was 24 cents a gallon, a postage stamp was 3 cents, the average rent was $90.00 per month. A new car cost $2,157 and a new house was $12,225. You could buy a whole year’s tuition to Harvard University for $1,000; compare that to about $40,000 per semester today. I remember sitting around with others at lunch time where I worked in 1953 talking about the possibility of retiring in luxury with $10,000 per year. Wow! A minimum wage job earns more than that a year today. Some luxury!

Since we are stationary for a while, with the sight-seeing done, we had to figure out other avenues for entertainment. Of course, there is always TV, but that gets too much at times. To help pass the time we brought along a few jigsaw puzzles. We put the puzzle out on a felt cloth that can be rolled on a tube to keep the pieces in place until it is unrolled again. We put this “roll” beside a lounge chair under a window. The other day we got it out to work on it again. When it was unrolled we found some of the pieces wet and separating the front from the back. We wondered why this was so, until we looked under the window where it had been laying. Yep, a big wet spot. Not only had water been leaking in, it was still leaking in. What to do!

I knew that it would do no good to try and caulk the window with it still wet and water coming in. I needed a temporary fix until it dried enough to hold caulk. The light bulb came on over my head (you know how it is in the comic-strip) so I got a piece of gum from a pack and put it in my mouth. You have guessed already what I had in mind, haven’t you? Well I chewed for a while, removed the gum from my mouth, made a little rope shape from the gum and stuck it over the leak in the window. Don’t laugh! It worked! I did nothing more to the window for about a week, then fixed it properly with caulk. What is it about necessity being the mother of invention? I guess it is.

A new year will be upon us pretty soon. We have been on the road now for seven months, and still enjoy the adventure. Soon I will get our records together and see how we have faired in the expense department during this time. Is living in our “old house” or on-the-road more expensive? We’ll let you know how it breaks down. In the meantime, we wish you all a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Merry Christmas

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SEASONS GREETINGS! Can you believe it! It is that time of year again. I know that all of you out there have all your shopping and holiday preparations done by now. No? Well, hop to it! I want to remind you that you can add comments to these blogs. Thanks Austin for communicating with us on last week’s blog. We appreciate the thought. We hope all of you enjoy hearing from us, but we like to hear from you as well, so get to it!

It will soon be Winter. It happens this year on December 22nd. You know how this seasonal dating works don’t you? Astronomical Winter (as opposed to Meteorological Winter), in the Northern Hemisphere, begins on different days at times because it is determined by when the sun is at it’s highest point in the sky over the Tropic of Capricorn (12 ½ degrees south latitude). For meteorologists, Winter begins on December 1. They seem to need a constant time in order to keep accurate weather data. So they use constant dates for the seasons, like March 1, June 1 and September 1 for the other seasons. As the newscaster Paul Harvey used to say, “And now you know the rest of the story.”

Let me share a little Christmas Trivia with you:

The traditional Christmas season begins at sundown on 24th December and lasts through sundown on the 5th of January. For this reason, it is also known as the Twelve Days of Christmas. You know, “Lords a leaping,” and all that stuff in the song.

An average household in America will mail out 28 Christmas cards each year and get 28 cards in return. Carolyn is way above average. That number barely gets her started. Try 80 to 100 cards!

In 1836 Alabama was the first state to declare Christmas a legal holiday, and in 1907 Oklahoma was the last state to do so.

Did you know that according to a 1995 survey, 7 out of 10 dogs get Christmas gifts from their doting owners. Our dogs did! Our last pooch, Rusty, a toy poodle, looked forward to opening his gifts. We would wrap his gifts only in white tissue paper. On Christmas day he would search under the tree for his gifts and only retrieve what was wrapped in white paper, then proceed to tear them open.

Christmas this season will be quite different for us. It will be the first time away from at least some members of the family. This year it is only Carolyn and I. The campground where we are spending the Winter is having Christmas dinner for everyone who wants to attend. The owners, John and Donna, are providing two large hams and a turkey. Everyone else is bringing a dish to add to the table. You see a picture above of the setting in the recreation hall where we will be eating. The pot of flowers is blooming outside the rec hall. The meal is scheduled for 3:00 PM on Christmas day. We will surely meet some new friends on that day.

This year is another big year in our life. On December 28th we will celebrate our 50th Wedding Anniversary. It sounds like a long time, but it seems short on the one hand, and forever of the other. All in a good way, you understand. If we can live in a home some 39 feet long by 14 feet at its widest, and not kill each other, I think we can make it for years to come.

Let me leave you with some profound philosophy from that little, bald character, Ziggy. In Art, and in Life: “Putting Problems into Perspective is the First Step in finding their Vanishing Point.”

HAVE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Arizona Home

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Update from last week: we fixed the Dish tripod situation by buying some tent pegs and tying it down with rope. As far as the water heater not working, the heater runs on both electric and gas, it was the electric not working, so we turned on the gas. To try and locate the problem with the electric, we checked the breakers and fuses, everything was fine. You know how it is, “if all else fails,” consult the manual. So we did and found the solution as simple as turning the switch off in the control panel and back on again. Duh! So, hot water again and saving on the gas. Speaking of gas, we have two 30 gallon propane tanks. We have been on the road now for almost seven months, we have cooked on the stove and baked in the oven, and we still have not run out of gas in the first tank. Good thing, because propane cost up to $2.90 per gallon. We save by using mostly electric, especially for heat. We have two very small heaters, one downstairs and one upstairs. Works fine for us and no extra cost.

The other problem with getting the Dish to work with the second TV in the bedroom has not yet been solved. To have “different” programming on the second TV will require another receiver, about $100. Getting it connected to the Dish is the hang-up. I have a video splitter that is suppose to do the transferring of the signal, but everyone I talk to says you must run a separate line from the Dish to the second TV. I say, that is what the video splitter is for. So, I call the Service Manager at the dealer where we purchased the RV and he sends me a diagram of how it is supposed to be hooked up with the video splitter. I think I know what is required, but I still need to get another receiver. We’ll see how that works later.

There is an affect with the weather that we call “the Parsons affect.” That is, if one wants the weather to be really different, just wait until the Parsons arrive. We went to Hawaii for the first time together (I had been many time by myself on business) back in 1982. We rented a ninth-floor condo for a ten day stay. Our first night there is when the hurricane (typhoon in the Pacific) struck. Trees down everywhere, roads closed, electricity gone, stores closed, no restaurants open and other assorted problems like no elevator to the ninth floor. To make a long story short, the electricity came back on the tenth day of our ten day visit. We tried again three years later. Yep, flood that time. I think we are on the “not allowed” list to Hawaii.

It seems that everywhere we go, the weather is “unusual” according to the locals and newscast. It is either warmer, colder, wetter, dryer, stormier, etc.. We have “never” (or so it seems) been anywhere that weather has been normal. Well folks, we are now in Arizona. Southern Arizona is suppose to be warm and sunny in the Winter. Guess what? It is warmer in Tennessee than it is here now. Normal here is in the upper 70’s with lows in the 60’s. Now it barely reaches 60 with lows in the upper 30’s to lower 40’s. The weather newscast speaks of 35 inches of snow in elevations above 5,000 feet. Luckily we are at only 735 feet. We came to the Southwest to get warmth and sunshine. We will wait for Winter to officially begin until we make a judgment. Today, however, the sun is shining brightly, but the temperature at Noon is only 53 degrees. I really hate that southern Arizona has to put up with “the Parsons affect.”

We went out Wednesday to stock-up on some needs and get more medicine refills. This time we headed to a new location, Casa Grande, about 55 miles east of Gila Bend. I have put a map of Arizona up so you can know where the places are in relation to where we are living. I’m sure you can locate Gila Bend on the map (you may have to "click" to enlarge the map), just southwest of Phoenix and west of Casa Grande. Casa Grande seems to be a nice town with most things one would need, but the road in. Wow! We have never seen so many cattle in one place, thousands, and the smell! These cattle are not on the open range, but in large, grassless pens for miles. I am sure you can figure out the smell, even if we don’t have a “scratch-and-sniff” panel for you. Fortunately the smell doesn’t reach all the way into the city itself.

I am going to close this “ramble” for now. Since we will not be doing a lot of traveling during the Winter, we will have to share other experiences with you. We will have discussions with you, but you can rest assured that it will not be about religion or politics. Everything else is fair game!

Settled for the Winter

(NOTE: View a larger picture by clicking on the photos above.)

We left Lake Skinner as planned and headed back to Quartzsite, AZ on December 3rd. The drive was just over 200 miles, about our limit for a day on the road. We found the cheap campground ( $15 per night) that we had “scoped” out on the previous trip. Chosen just for an overnighter on the way to Gila Bend (Just in case you don’t know, Gila is pronounced as HE- la.) The main reason for stopping in Quartzsite again was to have our Dish Network equipment checked out to see if we may have equipment failure.

As soon as we got the RV all set up, which was no easy task, even in a “pull-through,” that was so narrow it took some doing, we headed off to the Satellite dealer where we purchased the service. The Tech checked out the Receiver box and found it working fine. Next our antenna and satellite finder was attached to it for a check of that equipment. The first Tech could not find a signal. The second Tech tried for several minutes and finally found a signal that was good. All equipment checked out fine. The problem….me, I guess, and a very sensitive dish. We carried the equipment back to our campsite and tried again to find the right satellite. Again, no luck. We decided to call it a day and head on to Gila Bend the next morning.

We took our time getting out of the campsite by not getting up early and hitting the road immediately. We had a leisurely breakfast, broke down (the campsite, that is, not us) and pulled out about 10:30 AM. The trip was only about 133 miles, so we arrived around Noon. As we were setting up our campsite, (a picture of which is above, along with the recreation hall and a typical Arizona sunset), we met our new neighbor, Jack. We noticed that he also had Dish Network. We told him of our problems with the system, and he offered to help if we needed it. We needed it! It took a while, but with Jack’s help we finally got hooked to the satellite and had service. Yeh! We learned from Jack to keep switching the transponders (the switches that indicate the different frequencies on the satellite) to zero in on a strong signal. There are some 30 transponders we are told. Anyway, we now have 100 TV channels. Maybe we can find something to watch. The next challenge is to be able to receive different programming on the second TV. Not as easy as it sounds. We’ll let you know how that turns out.

As we indicated in an earlier blog, Gila Bend is just southwest of Phoenix by about 65 miles. As it turns out, I needed to have a monthly blood check at a Quest laboratory, and I needed a medicine refill at Walgreens. To do this, we needed to head toward Phoenix. The nearest Walgreens is 35 miles away in Buckeye (on the way to Phoenix), and the nearest Quest lab is in Goodyear (farther on the way to Phoenix). Since we were to be no more than 10 miles short of Phoenix anyway, we decided to have lunch there. We had lunch, found the lab, went shopping in a couple of new areas before returning home. And of course, we needed a diesel fill up. We shopped for groceries at Fries (in Arizona the same as a Kroger store ), and since they also sell diesel we decided to fill up there. We got fuel before shopping for groceries. Diesel was $3.31 a gallon. So be it! We then parked in the lot and shopped. When we got back to the truck, we noticed the fuel price had dropped by 7 cents per gallon while we were in the store. What is a body to do? Eight hours later we arrived back at the trailer.

On Friday the winds arrived with a cold front before predicted rain. The wind kept pushing over our dish antenna even though it was “nailed” to the ground on three tripod legs. I tried several attempts to keep it upright, and finally laid our heavy bike carrier on the weaker tripod leg to keep it standing. That did the trick. Now, however, it needs a more permanent fix. Then, this morning, Saturday, the water heater quit working. We are still working on that one. Such is life.

Since we are going to be here in Gila Bend for some four months, we decided to rent a P.O. Box in case we need to get “slow mail” (as apposed to e-mail). If you need to contact us by this method, our new address is as follows: P.O. Box 2284, Gila Bend, AZ 85337.

Since it is now the week-end, I need to get this blog posted so you can have all the news, such as it is. Next week will be a different story.