Memories of a recent multi-generational jaunt ... 300 miles round-trip. Twelve year old twins, one of them particularly into "I discovered boys." Two Grandparents ... the Wordy-Nerdy One and the One with a Gnu Knee. Daughter of the Older Ones and her Husband, the Philosopher of Ancient Greek, the Father of their Three Kids. Their Oldest one is in China ... Woulda been nice to have her on board.
My Son-in-Law is driving. Realistically? He drives better than I do but kinda drives up peoples' butts ... His reaction times, undoubtedly, are better than mine but driving in the Middle row of seats is less than fully relaxing. I say nothing; after all, his reaction times are, indeed, much better than mine and multi-generational drives -- any way you look at them -- are a bit of immortality. John Donne chastened Death to "be not proud" because a day would come when Death, itself, would die:
Death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die.
I'll take the immortality of driving through the rolling hills of Pennsylvania with M and one strand of our immortality present-and-accounted-for. Half way to our destination, we pass by a town visible through the left window of the van ... a town built mostly in a valley but slowly creeping up the hill ... a suburb, I suppose, of Wilkes-Barre ... a town named Moosic. This is -- what once was -- coal country until mining, itself, went the way of all Creations. We pass by the 6,000 or so Souls with their more than a thousand stories ... little frame houses. I think: Each one? A story. Each one? A family trying to figure it out ... whatever it is.
My son-in-law comments that when we return later in the afternoon, we'll have "to face the Moosic." I think to myself ... 'maybe it was named after that sickie, Bullwinkle!' My daughter chose a quick-of-tongue hubby. I think his take on artificial turkey-baster insemination was: "A sperm is a terrible thing to baste." Ouch!
We drive on past a dozen or more similarly sized and situated towns ... tucked in between the hills that undoubtedly hide many other such ... There was even a town named Jermyn ... again, I think to myself a bit of driving silliness ... the Germans maybe think correctly that the World is a bunch of Burgs and Bergs ... and the odd Burger. ... Ach! My humor gets no better, as I age.
We drive on past a dozen or more similarly sized and situated towns ... tucked in between the hills that undoubtedly hide many other such ... There was even a town named Jermyn ... again, I think to myself a bit of driving silliness ... the Germans maybe think correctly that the World is a bunch of Burgs and Bergs ... and the odd Burger. ... Ach! My humor gets no better, as I age.
We were traveling to see a little parcel of land on a large pond/small lake in Honesdale, Pa. During the Depression, my Paternal Grandfather would leave his wife and kids in Brooklyn or maybe they were living in Knickerbocker Village in the refugee ghetto of Manhattan each Sunday and drive with others in a truck to get work for the week in Honesdale. Coal was still necessary in the Depression. In the Sixties, a fellow Graduate Student, Jack, would fill me in on how the culture of Wilkes-Barre was connected to the silky stroke he had with a cue on a Green 4.5x9 foot table. I guess by the 50's, regular work in the mines -- however dangerous -- had been replaced by a bar and pool-hall on alternating corners of his childhood home.
Moosic ... Jermyn ... Honesdale ... Wilkes-Barre ... full of homes ... each with its own stories ... essentially, none of which I know. I pass them by with my own story ... part of my family's story ... another reincarnation of the unfolding fractals that maybe render Donne's poesy reductive.
Hey! I'm just drivin' along in the Last Quarter of Life. As it turned out, the parcel of land was next to a pond that was being scheduled for draining sometime pretty soon.
We opted for a late breakfast. Kinda nice.
