It was about time that the Grand Duchy of Barre do a get together, so the King (Ted) decided to do a roadtrip from Kingman, Arizona to Chicago to Wisconsin. Rather than try to get everyone to agree on an appropriate day, which has been known to take longer than writing up an United Nations resolution, the King edicted a day, Oct 17, 2004, at 1:00 PM, at which all available Grand Duchy citizens should meet at the infamous Healthy Foods restaurant on 32nd and Halsted in Chicago.
The King decided to make this a roadtrip, something he has done several times, and invited Ron (the Right Knight) along for the ride. So I flew to Vegas to meet Ted and from there we drove the trusty Copy Shop Ford Ranger thru Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and finally Wisconsin.
Utah was warm and pleasant and rocky. We drove near but not thru the Moab area which tourists from all over the world favor. Once in Colorado, we drove past Vail, which I had never seen before. Never stopped there, but there sure are a lot of condos there.
Once in Nebraska, we stopped at the world famous (not) Stuhr Museum. There were absolutely zero tourists there and most of the place was shut down. But the ducks were very hungry, so feeding them was a top priority. I did pick up an interesting book on Nebraska town building, which was primarily done by an association of German farmers and two bit land speculators.
Seeing that we would pass somewhat near Dixon, we decided to stop at the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan. Its actually only one of five homes that Reagan lived in as a boy in Dixon. Its small and well kept, as is the neighborhood. The tour guides did a spectacular job of explaining Ronnie's activities as a boy. Note that I was named by my mother after Ronald Reagan. At the time, Ronnie was a young actor, without much of a future ahead of him.
Once in the Chicago area, we decided to look up our old schools. So we started at Holden Elementary where I served time from 5th to 8th grade and first year high school. Ted went only to first year high school there, which is where we met in Mrs. Cummings Biology class, where she thought Tadas was his last name, so she sat him alphabetically next to me, Surma. From there we became the best of friends to this day. We then took a look at the old Ramova Theater, which is now abandoned. Then we took a look at Ted's old and new houses on Emerald St. Ted and I spent a lot of time in the basements of those places, while nerding out reading science fiction and monitoring our stamp and coin collections. We also stopped at Kelly High School, from which we both graduated. The school now has a second building, but the original building has stood up quite well to the ravages of the locals.
Ted and I got to Healthy Foods right on time, but the rest of the crew dribbed and drabbed in. Although I had been warned about the drabness of the kugelis, I just had to try it for myself. You can't get this stuff in California. And a good thing that is, because it can be deadly to your arteries. Violeta, the Prince and Savage all eventually met with us and we talked like there is no tomorrows. And at our age, there are not a whole lot of them left!
Ted and I spent a morning at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It was one of my favorite destinations as a youngun. They still had the echo chamber I used 40 years ago. We had planned to split up at this point, but since Ted's brother in Wisconsin was not available, Ted went to visit my relatives in Lake Geneva with me. My most favorite of all Aunt Marie was there in her home, where I had made frequent visits in my youth. My cousin Lil and cousin Barb and Barb's husband Chuck entertained us all at the Mars Restaurant in Lake Geneva. As this particular group shared a lot of Republicanisms, we were easily able to solve a host of world problems via accepting George W. Bush as our personal savior.
That was more roadtrip than I could handle, so I took an America West back to San Jose, while Ted ventured later to see his brother in Wisconsin, then took a southern route thru Alabama, on his way back to Kingman.