Mary Welch Steinhoff Archives

September 11, 2012

Brother David’s Birthday

I promised to have more and better photos this year than I did last year on Brother David’s birthday, but I had forgotten how quickly the pages on the calendar turn. This is the best I could do. Maybe next year.

The first shot shows David and Diane with their rental trailer. I’m guessing this is when they moved to Tulsa.

This is why they have girls

This double exposure showing David and Diane with their trailer also exposes Son Matt. I’m not sure, but I think this experience may be why the couple had girl children and their daughter, Kim, has girls.

Lined up at the trailer

Here we all are lined up in front of the travel trailer my folks bought to keep over at Wil-Vera Village on Kentucky Lake. The quarters were a bit tight. Wife Lila (who took the picture) was happy when Dad traded it off for a full-blown mobile home not long after this photo was taken. David and Mark are both sporting full heads of hair. I’m in that awkward transitional comb-over stage before becoming good-looking like Dad.

Love the details

Let’s see, David’s shoe is untied. Mark is tired out from carrying his hammer around looking for something to hit. The tricycle has a load of animal crackers on the rear deck. Note the red reflector tape on the trike. Dad bought it by the mile in widths from one inch to four inches and in white and red. I still have some kicking around. As always, you can click on the photos to make them larger.

So, Happy Birthday, Brother. I hope it’s a good one.

Malcolm’s New Tree House

Grandson Malcolm’s eighth birthday is coming up this weekend. His party was held at a skating rink last year, which gave me an excuse to write about the rinks in Cape and Jackson. His parents, Matt and Sarah, teamed up with Neighbor Will Hill (he’s the guy without a shirt) to build a “tree house” in the backyard.

Will actually knew what he was doing. I built something for Sons Matt and Adam when they were a little younger than this. It started out as a simple platform with a sandbox under it. Before long, a fireman’s pole and a slide were added. The original structure used a rope ladder with PVC pipe rungs. It could be pulled up to keep Adam from climbing up to the level where he might be tempted by Matt to see if he could fly by flapping his arms.

Building a monkey bars gave me an excuse to add a swing to the mix. There was no overall plan – stuff just got added whenever the posthole digger cried out to make a new hole in the ground.

Time-lapse video

Matt set up his Nikon DSLR to take a photo every 60 seconds so he could condense a 12-hour project into a three-minute video. The structure could be more properly called a play house rather than a tree house since no trees were harmed in the making of the building, still, we CALLED it the tree house. Here’s what a REAL tree house looks like.

Mat made from shopping bags

I described how Mother had turned into a bag lady, making all kinds of stuff out of plastic shopping bags. One of her projects was to make a mat to go under Malcolm’s sleeping bag when he’s camping. He said that something like that would made a really nice rug for his new tree house (hint, hint).

Trapdoor leads to roof

Malcolm was already talking about how it would be nice to have a trapdoor in the floor, too, “just in case.” It’s a gender-neutral tree house. Neighbor Will’s two daughters and Malcolm are joined at the hip every waking moment, so there is no immediate prospect of a No Girls Allowed sign going up.

Photo gallery of tree house pictures

I was no fool: I showed up after all the heavy setup work had been done, and I left when it looked like a thunderboomer was going to roll in. The rain never materialized, but it was close enough that temps dropped to a comfortable level and Matt and Neighbor Will pushed to get the roof on before knocking off for the evening. So, you get to see the middle part of the project.You’ll have to click on Matt’s video to see the whole deal.

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

August 19, 2012

Bridges and Goodbyes

I really enjoyed my visit to Cape, but it was time to get back to Florida. Judge Bill Hopkins said he had gotten a call from Wife Lila asking how long I had to be gone before she could have me declared legally dead.

Since I was headed that way, Mother said she’d follow me in her car (for the record, she may be 90, but she’s still a good driver) over to her trailer on Kentucky Lake so I could help her turn on the water and check for any problems.

Not surprisingly, it took me longer than anticipated to get everything loaded in my van. Because of the late start, we didn’t waste any time sightseeing along the way. I did bang off a couple of frames as we headed over the Ohio River bridge leaving Cairo for Wickliffe. You can tell that it’s about as wide as the old Cape Mississippi River Bridge (plus it’s got that crazy 90-degree bend on the Kentucky end).

35 years

The pipes at the trailer froze winter before last, so she had to have them replaced. When I went to turn on the water, nothing happened. After much head scratching and mosquito swatting, I discovered that they had moved the main shutoff valve. I decided to stay there overnight instead of pressing on to Nashville as I had planned.

By coincidence, we were there on August 7, 35 years to the day when Dad had a heart attack at the lake and died. When folks posted stories this week about it being the week that Elvis died, I tell ’em that my dad died that week too; the difference is that I don’t miss Elvis.

We were going to eat breakfast, but the place we planned on stopping at was closed, so we said our goodbyes at a gas station. I’m getting a little better at the teenage girl self-portrait thing. My arm must be getting longer.

More narrow bridges

I’m glad I’m not pulling a travel trailer or driving an 18-wheeler. These bridges linking sections of the Land Between the Lakes are narrow and showing their age. At one time, I could have told you what body of water these cross, but I have long ago jettisoned that knowledge.

I covered the aftermath of the Silver Bridge collapse on Dec. 15, 1967. The eyebar-chain suspension bridge linking Point Pleasant, W Va., and Gallipolis, Oh., failed while it was filled with rush-hour holiday shoppers. Forty-six people died in the icy waters of the Ohio River.

When I cross a bridge with a lot of rust on it, I wonder whether it’s cosmetic or whether it’s another Silver Bridge waiting to happen.

Photo gallery of Kentucky bridges

I think the shadows of the bridge structure are interesting. I have to admit I wasn’t doing any careful composing. I was just holding the camera with one hand and trying to keep from scraping the bridge railing with the other. I didn’t see the shadows until I saw them on the computer screen. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

August 8, 2012

Chairs

Funny how you look at things without seeing them. I was in the back yard when I asked Mother, “Aren’t those the same chairs we had in Advance?”

“Two of them were,” she confirmed.

Brother Mark in contemplation

I was pretty sure I have photos of those chairs in my grandparents’ yard when I was only a couple of years old. I couldn’t find them right away, but I did spot them in the Kingsway back yard in the summer of 1960.That means they’ve survived nearly three-quarters’ of a century of rain, snow, heat and cold with only the application of a little paint every decade or so.

We expect every season to be the last for the redbud tree in the right center of the photo, but it keeps coming back every spring.

Brother Mark, stretched out on a bench in contemplation, is trying to figure out what color he’s going to paint those chairs half a century later.

Maple is all grown up

That little maple tree sapling at the left side of the two photos is about 18 inches across now. I keep waiting for it to fall over and hit the house. That’s Brother David, Mother and my Grandmother Elsie Welch in the picture.

Funeral home chairs

I shifted my weight while typing this and was reminded that I’m sitting on what we call the “funeral home chairs.” It’s a set of wooden folding chairs that Mother said was used in a teen hangout in the basement of my grandfather’s liquor store in the Prather Building in Advance. There are five of them around the table I use as a work area in the basement when I’m in Cape. I have three or four in West Palm Beach.

If Mother is 90, that would make those chairs at least that old, because I can’t imagine my grandfather buying new chairs for a bunch of teenagers. I’d creak too, if I was that old.

In fact, now that I think of it, when I shifted my weight, I’m not sure if the sound was coming from the old chair or from me.

Travel update

Made it from Cape to Kentucky Lake to get Mother’s trailer set up for her to stay a few days. Tuesday night found me in Newport, TN. I got to see some beautiful mountain scenery going through the Smokies to the Winston-Salem area Wednesday to visit Don Gordon, a guy I worked with at The Missourian.

After a couple of hours of gabbing, I took off to see my old paper, The Gastonia Gazette. The first thing I discovered is that it’s been rebranded The Gaston Gazette. Then, I went to the corner where it should have been (and where the GPS said it was) and couldn’t find it. The shopping mall that used to be across the street was still there (but much larger), but no newspaper. The GPS gave me an alternative location. I pulled up to the building and thought it looked vaguely familiar, but the location felt wrong. It turns out there’s a Walgreens where my old paper was and this is a new joint. I’m not holding out much hope of finding much I can remember here.

Tag: Mary Welch Steinhoff