A Lifetime of Wishing and Hoping

A Lifetime of Wishing And Hoping

I was born during World War II, during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. I was too young to remember him, but all my life I heard of the revolution he performed for the country.

Before Roosevelt, for workers to unite and form a union was dangerous, if not illegal. At Matewan, Ludlow, and many other places workers were machine gunned and bombed for uniting and asking for better working conditions and higher pay. There was no limit on hours worked, or child labor, or low wages.

There were no safe retirement options, since all were invested in private corporations, and many people lost all their years of savings when the Great Depression destroyed the economy in 1929. All across the country were “poor farms” and “old folks homes” for people who had lost all their money to financial swindles and crashes.

Young people of today have no concept of the depths of desperation and cynicism then. Workers who had lost their jobs, with hungry wives and children at home, began to look at Communism as the path out of the cycle of business crashes that came every few years. Some present day estimates put the percentage of the population looking favorably at Communism as 35% or more.

The unfavorable ratings of Republicans was even higher. Millions of starving people in the middle of the country, began calling jackrabbits “Hoover hogs”, since that was the only meat they could afford. My father-in-law, born and raised in Oklahoma, was fond of saying,”I may go to Hell, but it won’t be for voting Republican!” I know friends today who refuse to call that dam holding back Lake Mead anything but Boulder Dam. Roving bands of desperate people looking for work lived in settlements of squalor and destitution called “Hoovervilles.”

I read somewhere that FDR saved Capitalism from Communism and I believe that may be right. I also believe he did it by moderating Capitalism with Socialism—the belief that if we all work together and help each other, all will be better off.
Roosevelt didn’t just believe in a minimum wage—he believed in a living wage—that anyone who works a full time job should be able to support their family without needing supplemental assistance from government.

He also believed that if private business could not provide enough jobs for all those who needed them, it was up to the government to provide jobs to carry them through the hard times. Then as now, there are a million projects in this country that need worked on badly, and there is no reason unemployed men and women can’t be put to work making the country better.

FDR believed that if companies could get together and hire private armies to combat their employees, the workers should have the right to get together and hire lawyers and negotiators to stay even. He signed the Wagner act, which required companies to allow the workers to vote for a union, forbade them from firing any organizers, and required them to negotiate in good faith with the union. This was the beginning of a true Middle Class, which had never been seen before.

Even though Franklin Roosevelt came from the wealthy class, he worked hard to make life better for the working class. He was not well liked by the rich businessmen of the country, and he once said,”They are unanimous in their hatred for me—and I welcome their hatred.” That attitude is hard to imagine in the modern age, where politicians of both parties accept millions of dollars from bankers and financiers without a trace of shame.

He called his programs the New Deal, and he became so popular that he was elected to four terms, and the Democratic Party dominated the presidency for the next forty years. The only Republican between 1932 and 1978 was Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, a WWII hero, and he said it would be foolish to try to tear down the programs of the New Deal.

Once upon a time we believed in the power of government to lift the country out of poverty, to create an interstate highway system, to take us to the moon and back, and regulate the financial industry to create the largest Middle Class ever seen in the world.

Then Reagan came along to convince us that our government is the problem, not the solution. By lowering taxes on the most wealthy corporations he impoverished the whole country. By attacking the working people he started the demolition of the Middle Class.

We no longer can afford to send astronauts to the International Space Station—we have to rent space on Russian rockets. Our bridges and highways are falling into dangerous disrepair. We haven’t actually won a war against a real enemy since World War II under Roosevelt. All across the country beggars sit on street corners asking for money for food or shelter. Many are veterans of our failed wars, for which we had no money afterwards to care for those grievously wounded.

Every president since 1980 has catered to the wealthy corporations and Wall Street financiers. The only difference is the Republicans do it up front, and the Democrats claim to be for helping working people, and then they sell our jobs to China and Mexico and do nothing as companies destroy the unions and fire any worker who dares to complain.

The state of our economy depends on where you put the yard stick. If you measure at Wall Street—the Dow-Jones, the NASDAQ, Standard and Poor index, we are doing fantastically. If you put that yard stick on Main Street, we are approaching Third World status. We have more hungry children than any modern country, we have more homeless people than any civilized country, and even though we have mandated health insurance for all, we still have the most unaffordable health care system in the industrialized world.

All my life I have waited and hoped for a worthy successor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I have held my nose, shed tears, and voted for the lesser of two evils. I have voted for third party candidates. I have been punting for a lot of elections since I first voted in 1964. I may not have many elections left in my life.

Bernie Sanders has my hopes up again. He not only says he is for working people, he has thirty years of record to validate his words. He is not being paid by Wall Street firms. He is not giving speeches to banking firms. He is for removing the insurance firms from our health care system and going for a national government run health care system that removes the profit motive from healing people.

This year I’m not bunting anymore. I’m swinging for the fence. I’m working hard to see Bernie Sanders become the next President of the United States. Join me! This may be our last chance!

Driving Across Nevada

Donald Rogers
Oct. 19, 2015

Driving Across Nevada

Driving across Nevada is good practice for life.

Three years ago I-5 was blocked at Wells, NV, and we were forced to turn back to Wendover on a rainy night, then turned south for about 100 miles,  turned back northwest through Secret Pass to intersect I-5 at Halleck. We got home about four hours late.

Two years ago we were stopped 25 miles north of Las Vegas by a flash flood across Hwy 95. We turned around, went forty miles back the way we came, turned west on Hwy 160 through Pahrump, NV, and came around Mt Charleston on the south side on Blue Diamond Rd. We got in about two hours late.

Today we were stopped at Beatty, NV, and told all roads through Lathrop Wells were blocked by deep water and there was no alternate route in Nevada for at least a day. I asked about Death Valley, but he couldn’t tell me what was happening there except all of southern California and Nevada have been deluged with major thunderstorms and flooding for two days.

So it looked like a good day to see Death Valley to me. I consulted with some of the other stranded drivers and we decided to go for it. I had a full tank of gas, enough food and drink for a week and we were looking for adventure anyway.

We had a beautiful trip through Death Valley. It was only 91º at 3:00 PM in the afternoon at Furnace Creek, and we only had to ford shallow water half a dozen times on State Line Road just south of Death Valley Junction. We got in to our room about three hours late this time.

Life seldom goes exactly the way we planned it, but the detours can be more fun than we expected.

Shoes

Donald Rogers
October 27, 2015

Shoes
How my life has been ruled by shoes.

My wife and I have decided to tear out the carpet in this house, and replace it with laminate flooring, which is not too expensive and looks great. I wish I had done it years ago when my wife was suffering with pulmonary problems and asthma, and spending a lot of time breathing inhalers and nebulizers trying to get back to breathing easily again. She first started having breathing difficulties after we bought new carpet for the front room years ago. I wish I had been more observant and noticed the connection then.

Since we replaced the carpet with laminate flooring a year ago in the front rooms, she has not had to use the inhaler or nebulizer at all, so we are going to do the back bedrooms now. This entails a lot of work moving furniture out and emptying the room so we can rip up the carpet, pull out the nails and tacks, and sand the floor down smooth.

The hardest part for me seems to be the shoes. Back in a corner of the bedroom was a pile of shoes gathering dust, most of which hadn’t been worn in years. I must have some kind of obsession, because it causes me anxiety to contemplate throwing out shoes that still have some wear left in them.

I suspect that Imelda Marcos and I have the same obsession. (When she and her husband were driven out of Manila by a revolution, thousands of pairs of Imelda's shoes were found in the presidential palace). I’m pretty sure we share very little genetic material. I’m not that familiar with Imelda’s childhood, but I’ll bet she was not raised rich enough to have new shoes for the asking, at least not until she got older and married into wealth. I was raised by my mother after my dad left the family, and for several years in my childhood shoes were a scarce and luxurious commodity.

I remember going to school with holes in the soles of my shoes, which I covered with cereal box cardboard insoles every day so my feet would not actually be walking on the ground. Luckily I lived in central California, and the weather was never cold enough to worry about frozen feet.

I also remember the soles would come loose from the tops out in front of my toes, and trying to lift my feet a little higher so that the sole wouldn’t catch and fold back under my foot. It wasn’t just the discomfort that I worried about, but the idea that some other person would see that and know how worn out my shoes were. I remember the embarrassment of being asked about the loose sole once, and trying to make light of it by explaining it worked well for scooping up coins from the sidewalk.

One time my great uncle Roy took me downtown to a “surplus” store where people took used clothing for poorer people to rummage through. It was similar to a Goodwill or Salvation Army store, but I don’t remember any prices—I think you just took it away if you liked it. It was on 16th Street in Merced, CA, which was “Skid Row” then, before the freeway went through. All those bars and flophouses are parking lots now.

Anyway, under one of the rude wooden tables where the clothing was laid, was a pile of shoes of all sizes and styles, most of which were for adults and were much too large for me. But as I crawled around under the table, I found a pair of shoes, “tennis” shoes, sort of, with laces from the toe to the top, ankle high, that not only fit, they were barely worn. Most wondrous of all, instead of being made from canvas, which would wear out quickly, they were completely leather! I’ve never seen any like them, before or since.

I stayed under the table putting on those shoes because I wanted to make sure that they would be mine and nobody could take them away. I emerged with the old, decrepit shoes in my hand, looking for a trash can. Uncle Roy looked just as surprised as I did when he saw those shoes. We both left very happy and satisfied.

For many months thereafter I wore those shoes everywhere. Not only to school, but to church, too! They outlasted any other shoe I had ever worn—especially the ones we bought at Karl’s Shoe Store, which my mother swore were made of cardboard instead of leather.

So when I look at that pile of old shoes in the corner of my bedroom, still with intact soles and no holes in the bottom, I just have a terrible time throwing them away, even though they may  be scuffed and misshapen. I think to myself, out here on the farm nobody will notice if I use them again, even though I never do.

Not many people will understand my obsession. Just me and Imelda.

The Toughest Woman I Know

Donald Rogers
October 17, 2015


The Toughest Woman I Know

“What are you keeping from me?” she asked, an accusing look in her eye.
“Nothing” I replied. “What do you mean?”
“Well, where did the boy come from?”
“Which boy?”
“The little baby boy I carried home in my arms over the mountain” she said.
“Let’s lay down on the bed, and we’ll talk about it” I suggested. “This may take awhile.”
“Are you talking about Wes?” I continued after we got comfortable face to face on the bed.
My heart fell when she said, “Yes.”
The holes in her memory are getting into major stuff. Last spring it was a granddaughter she lost. Now it’s our son.
“I remember holding the baby in my arms as you drove back home,” she said. “But you didn’t say where he came from. Is he ours? Who gave him to us?”
“You did,” I said. “We drove ninety miles in a snowstorm across Dallas Divide, between Nucla and Montrose, Colorado, to get to the hospital where you gave birth to Wes.”
There was a long silence as Carolyn tried to retrieve the memory—without success.
Finally she asked, “Are you sure?”
“You are going to have to trust me.” I told her. “This damn disease you have is breaking down connections in your brain. You don’t have to try to remember if the memory isn’t there “
Tears appeared in her eyes.
Mine, too.
After a minute she said,”But I don’t want to forget everything. I want to get better again!”
“I want you to get better, too,” I said. But I don’t know how to help you. I’d give anything to make this go away!”
There was a long pause as we both contemplated the future.
“Were you with me in the hospital?”
“Yes, I held your hand and we practiced deep breathing and relaxation as the contractions came, just like we had read in that Lamaze book.”
“Was there a mean old nurse?” she asked.
It seemed to me she remembered the event, or at least some of it. She just couldn’t place it in context.
“Yes, there was," I answered. “But you made a believer out of her before it was over. There was a young girl in the next bed, also in labor, and she was screaming and making a lot of noise, so the nurses were spending most of their time with her. When she finally came over to see how you were doing, she nearly panicked, because you were ready to deliver. That old nurse really admired your quiet courage. I think it was her last day on the job before she retired.”
“Yeah" Carolyn said. “She kept saying ‘don’t push, don’t push’ as they wheeled me in the gurney down to the delivery room.”
“So that was Wes, huh?”  She paused, and then said, “Where is he now?”
“He lives in Oregon with his wife Theresa and our granddaughter Paige.”
“That is the same one?” she asked.
“I have an idea, “ I told her. “Even though your memory has holes in it, if you let me retell the story, we can enjoy the recollection together, and maybe some of those memories can go back to some other part of your brain for a while. I would love to tell those stories again if you would like.”
“I’d like that, “ she said. “I love you!”
“I love you, too!” I said.
   

Universal Gun Access

Don Rogers
October 13, 2015


Universal Gun Access
Liberals are going about it all wrong.

For years, Liberals (mostly Democrats) have tried to get gun control legislation passed to ban certain weapon types, accessories, or ammunition. They have been largely unsuccessful, and in the process lost a lot of one issue, NRA voters. As long as they continue to hammer away at restricting gun ownership, or banning certain types of weapons they will continue to beat their head against the wall so to speak. It is too easy to paint this as another attempt to take away “freedom.”
And yet even most NRA members would like to find some way to stop the increasingly horrendous mass school shootings. They blame mental issues, violent movie and video games, and other causes for the spate of killers in our midst. I see a way to speak to both sides, with a chance of compromise at the end.

Did you know that you can own your own fully auto machine gun? Would you like to have your own M-60 tank to drive around the boonies? All you have to do is show your smart enough and sane enough to get certified. Every year hundreds of people shoot themselves or their family while “cleaning” their weapon of choice, whether it’s a pistol or rifle or shotgun. We know you aren’t that clueless, so if you can show you can do that safely, we will authorize you to own one of these weapons also. We will offer free training for those who might not have had a chance to learn about the safe handling of weapons. We have created a program that funds either the National Guard or local NRA to provide instructors and training on your favorite weapon. We want everyone who likes to shoot skeet, target practice, or go hunting to have that opportunity, and we want you to be able to do it safely, both for yourself and for those around you. Don’t you know you would feel really bad if you went bird hunting and accidentally shot your friend in the face? Sign up today, and get your certification on any weapon you choose. Don’t wait—this may be a limited time offer!

Yep, I’m sure most of you can see what I did there. By offering training we get to screen out the incompetent and insane, and either get them trained and competent or get them mental help. We fund the NRA to provide training, which they are already good at, and maybe get them on the side of responsible, legal gun ownership. Don’t even think about going out to confiscate weapons. Don’t even think about banning or restricting anything. But if someone is seen packing a weapon in public, he may be stopped and asked to show his license proving he is safe and competent to be armed, just as you may be stopped in your car and asked to show your driver’s license.
You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one, for sure!

Love and Marriage

I received the bad news about my brother Gene and his wife Carolyn splitting up a couple of days ago. I've been mulling over what it is about the Rogers' boys through a couple of generations that seems to make it difficult to stay with just one wife. I'm the outlier here, and sometimes it worries me, and makes me take stock of the condition of my marriage. I think that's a good thing for every marriage now and then, kind of like rebooting the computer to get a fresh start.

Speaking of computers, as I was perusing my Document folder I ran across this love letter I wrote to my Carolyn about seven years ago. Sometimes as we get older we forget that the younger generation needs to know from us what makes for a happy life and what makes for a happy marriage. We can't just keep silent and hope they can figure it out for themselves.

Since I'm writing to adults here, hopefully, I'm not going to edit this old letter, and I'll follow up with some clarification, since I was writing to someone who remembered all the places and events I mentioned. 
 **********************************
A Letter to my Lover,

Without any legal guarantee, you chose to be with me for life, as I offered the same promise to you.

You went with me to Woodland, taking on two young boys who needed a home, and although we had tough times, we also had memorable days exploring mountains and forests together.

You followed me to Silver Springs, to live in a drafty block house, with a shocking electrical system, a balky water pump, and winds that could tear doors off of the pump house and car. Food was scarce, but remember how good that Mexican pizza was, and hot dogs roasted in a cave?

For a short while, we went back to California, to Santa Ana. I don't remember any good times there. Fear, depression, and betrayal by my best friend come to mind. The bright spot was when you chose to follow me away, anywhere, no matter where, as long as we were together.

For nearly a month, we camped in a tent by the river in Snelling, where the mosquitoes tried to carry us away. We camped at the top of Sonora Pass, and nearly lost our food and sleeping bags when they fell out of the back of the car on a huge bump. We camped on top of Grand Mesa, and we camped on Dallas Divide, where you got sick on Vienna sausages. We camped on top of Uncompagre Ridge, and spent a night near Slumgullion Pass. We were poor, but we were together.

Wes was born nine months later in Nucla, where we made a home for our family for nine years. You followed me into quicksand in Bull Canyon and rode with me down Black Bear Road, not to mention threading our way through avalanches on Red Mountain Pass.

You followed me to a job interview at Tempiute tungsten mine, and breathed a sigh of relief when I turned it down. But I knew you would have gone if I had taken the job. You are tougher than anyone I know.

When I took the job at Winnemucca, you moved out on thirty acres of sand, sagebrush, and rattlesnakes. We've fought floods, gnats, mosquitoes, Mormon crickets, and cat catching coyotes. We've overcome forty below zero winters, clueless and deceptive school administrators, and long lonely power plant outages every spring.

As we look forward to a spring together, planting trees and flowers, hoping to go on walks and rides together, I know how lucky I am to live and love with you. No one could ask for a better wife and partner. I'll love you always.

Don                                                                                      Jan 25, 2008
*************************

My sentiments haven't changed at all--only grown deeper.

In the paragraph on the places we camped, that was one month in June when I quit work in California and bought a double sleeping bag and pup tent, bought some food and camped out in national forest campgrounds and parks as I looked for work anywhere but California. It was the poorest we ever were, and the happiest we had ever been. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose!"

When we ran out of money, I  had a good line on a job in Colorado, but the start was several weeks away, so we drove to Oklahoma and stayed with Carolyn's brother Larry and his family for a couple of weeks. I will never forget the Oklahoma hospitality we received there.

The job at Tempiute mine was a first attempt to leave Colorado when it was becoming obvious that the obsolete electric station there was going to be closed. Tempiute was a lonely mine near Rachel, NV, now located on the Extraterrestrial Highway. It was fifty miles away from the nearest post office and school, and although the wages were great, we just couldn't quite make the leap to that much isolation.

We do love isolation, though. I don't know how a couple can keep the spark going in an apartment building in the city. The whole object of hiking into the woods and four wheeling into the desert wilderness is to find solitude to be exploited for love. You have not known real honest sex unless you have felt the sun and breeze on your butt. You don't know what a thrill is unless you have looked up while standing in an isolated creek enjoying sex and realizing there is a bobcat peering down from the bank above you, curious what all the commotion is about.

Sex is an integral part of any happy marriage, and too many people see it as a way to make babies, and not as a way of connecting two people together intimately and completely. As Carolyn and I get older, we have slowed down some, but we haven't given up yet.

I remember at a retirement party for one of my fellow employees in Colorado, somebody (who probably had a couple of beers too many) asked him how sex was at his age. He grinned and said, "When I was younger I could go all night. Now that I'm older it takes all night, but it's just as much fun!"

This Easter, after our own version of fertility rites, I asked her how she felt. She said, "I'm happy. Even my hair's happy!" I told her I knew just how she felt, because my toenails were still grinning. "And my moustache smells so good I'm not washing my face tomorrow!"

Boredom has never been a part of this marriage!

An evening in Hell.

I am still exhausted this morning. Yesterday was the evening from hell. I haven’t been this frustrated and frankly, scared, in years.
It started with my volunteering to go to a conference in Carson City, NV, to listen to speakers from the AFL-CIO on the series of bills in the legislature that are directly attacking the rights of working people. For the first time in many years, the Republicans have majorities in both houses of the state legislature and the governorship, and they are rushing to get all their pet legislation passed while they can. They know that when the anti labor laws start affecting the people in Nevada, they will lose the next election badly, but they are determined to do their worst anyway.
They just passed a bill to do away with prevailing wages on school construction. That will drive wages down in the construction industry, making workers poorer.
They have bills lined up to abolish overtime and eliminate the eight hour day. They want to reduce or eliminate the minimum wage. They want to eliminate worker’s compensation. Strangest of all, they want to eliminate medical benefits covering policemen, firefighters, and other public workers as soon as they retire from active duty.
Economic depression is defined as too many products and not enough customers rich enough to buy those products. Of course, Republicans don’t like to hear the word depression any more, at least since Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush, so now they just call it austerity. It’s the same thing.
Why would a rational businessman try to make his customers poorer? Are they insane? Deluded? Or have they conveniently forgotten that their employees are also their customers?
Sorry, that is not the subject I meant to write about. The scary event had to do with my wife Carolyn. While I was attending the AFL-CIO conference, Carolyn took the car and drove north about 35 miles to Reno (actually Sparks) for a dental appointment to replace a crown that had fallen off. Her appointment was at 4:00 PM and my conference was to be over at 5:30 PM, so we figured there wouldn’t be much of a problem driving back to Carson City to pick me up and go home.
I got out of my meeting a little early, about 5:00 PM, so I sat down on a bench outside to wait. It was a little chilly, but I expected her there shortly. At 5:30 she wasn’t there, so I tried to call her. She did not answer, so either her cell phone was off, or buried inside her coat or purse so she couldn’t hear it. I froze out about 6:00 and went back into the Carson City Nugget Casino and Convention Center and called again. No luck again. I left a message each time so if she checked her phone she would know I was trying to call. At 6:30 I called again, with no response. I hate being helpless. This is where frustration starts, and a little fear begins. Just before 7:00 she calls me! I am overjoyed, and ask if she is back in town. She says she doesn’t know, and she is lost. She doesn’t know what town she is in. I ask her to look around and find a street name nearby. She came back with Keystone. My heart sank. This street is way west of Reno--not south--and I know how badly lost she is. She mentions that she is getting low on gas, and I made a huge blunder. I asked her to look on the dashboard and tell me what the range says. Our new car has a number telling how many miles are left. She said 67 miles. I should have told her to find the nearest gas station and fill it up, but I didn’t.
Instead, I calculated the she was less than forty miles north, and told her to come back south to Carson City. I also talked her through the process of selecting the address of the Carson City Nugget into the Garmin GPS. I had programmed it in earlier, before we left the house.
After several missteps, we got it in and she saw the purple road showing on the map, so I told her to just follow that purple road, and I’d see her in a little bit.
Well, an hour went by with no sign of her, and no word on the phone. It’s been three and a half hours since she left the dentist’s office, and that is about a 45 minute drive.
Finally, the phone rings. I ask if she is in Carson City yet. She says no. I ask if she has left Reno yet, and she doesn’t know--she thinks she missed Carson City somehow. I ask if she is following the purple road, and she says no, she forgot. Now I tell her to find a gas station immediately, because I know she is about to run out. She tells me she is on South Virginia Street, so I know she is on the right track, but without enough gas to get all the way to Carson City. So she says she is going back to find a station. I tell her I love her, and good luck.
In about a half an hour, my phone rings again. A strange voice asks if I’m Don Rogers, and I say yes. The voice on the phone says he is with the Nevada Highway Patrol, and not to worry, that they are getting a gallon of gas for my wife, and will point her in the right direction when they get her some gas in a few minutes. I am about to cry. I suggest to the officer that she is totally confused, has been driving for over three hours until she ran out of gas, and I am worried she will get lost again. A gallon of gas from her location is just enough to make it to Carson City if she doesn’t get lost again. He says not to worry, they will make sure she gets here safely. Carolyn calls me a few minutes later to reassure me she has a gallon of gas now, and will see me shortly. The officer asks to speak to me, and says he will have her follow him to Carson City and asks again for my exact location. I tell him the Nugget Casino, and he says good, that is what Carolyn told him, also. He asks if I’m in shape to drive when they get there and I tell him I’ve only been drinking coffee by the quart, and I’m alert as hell. He laughed and said they would be there in about 30 to forty minutes.
Right on the money at at 10:00 PM I see the Highway Patrol car pull into the parking lot with Carolyn following closely. When she finds a parking spot, I go over to the car, and the patrolman is already there to make sure I’m OK. He asks how I feel, and I tell him I’m about to cry with relief, and a little sick but alright. He tells me what I already knew--that the gallon of gas is probably almost gone, so fill up immediately. I thank him, shake his hand, and point out the Shell station just a block north where I will fill up before heading out to Winnemucca. He tries to reassure me that because of the new freeway construction between Reno and Carson City, an lot of people get lost out there, and there are no gas stations for about a twenty mile stretch.
This morning I realize I forgot to get his name or offer to pay for the gallon of gas. Sometimes I think I’m losing it, too!
So after filling up, we headed out through Dayton, Silver Springs, and Fernley, Nevada, on our way home. We stopped at the brand new Denny’s at the Flying J truck stop in Fernley and ate a very late dinner, and then we drove on to Winnemucca, arriving here after 2:00 this morning.
We both slept very soundly and late, and are still recovering from the ordeal. Carolyn agrees that she won’t be driving alone on unfamiliar roads again.
Life is what happens after you plan how you think it should be. A corollary to that is old age ain’t for sissies!