Monday, April 30, 2012

08_DAY EIGHT_FRII - Cooperstown, NY

"Rain, Rain, go away, please come back another day!"  The front is hanging in the Northeast and is not scheduled to move out for several days.  Wow, I've never watched so many thunderstorms role in in all my life.

Last night finished perfectly at a meeting in a meeting house established in 1945 in Jamestown.  After the meeting I was talking to the locals when I found out about Bill's childhood home in Vermont.  And you can stay there it's a hotel!

Because this is the unofficial birthplace of Lucille Ball, going to get a shave and then eat at the "Babalu Diner" with Ricky Ricardo!  I pull up to the store front and walk up to the barber, oh no, he's deaf and mute!  How do I communicate, well with sign language.  I make the shave motion along my cheeks and he responds with the knife accross the throat.  Meaning, "cut it all off".  I shake my head yes and he gets going.  About 2 minutes in I start to wonder about my communication, did he mean he will cut everything off including my goat tee?  Yes!  He starts to cut, but I catch him in time to save the beard.  The rest of the shave is excellent!

...hours later I pull into the Red Roof Motel, soaking wet and a little chilled!

Wandering...

07_FRII_DAY SEVEN - Jamestown, NY

This morning I woke up in Toledo, OH, looked out my window, rain!  Damn, I can't out run this weather and it won't dissipate.  Oh well gear up and go.

Today I go in search of my old house in Toledo.  In this house our only Yankee was born, Randy, poor baby born above the Mason / Dixon line!  When I was 3 years old we lived in Toledo and I had one memory that I had to verify.  The porch and driveway.  I remember sledding down the driveway and that's the extent of my memory.

Dad nor Mom could remember the address, so I sent pictures home.  To my dismay I couldn't recognize the porch or driveway.  The neighborhood was beautiful, I think it was called Beverly Hills.  Anyway I checked that off of the list probably never to return.

Yep it still raining, but not to hard when I head off to upstate New York.  On this day I would ride into the sunshine for the first time since leaving Texas!  As happens so often I come around the corner to a beautiful, lush, green landscape.  Jamestown, NY.  I'm stopping right her for the night.

Wandering...