Skeddie Sauce and other Delights: 11 - Happy 80th Birthday, Pop !!

04 September 2022

11 - Happy 80th Birthday, Pop !! - Good-Bye

Now we are coming to the end of my 3-week USA visit. This isn't the exact timeline, but it fits into my story telling and if I don't end it now, we'll be here forever. The following day after the garden birthday party, I am back at my parents' house. I stayed with my folks a few days at the beginning of my visit and a few days towards the end of my visit.

Because of all the party supplies flying 'round in a Kansas twister and all the commotion, Jay totally forgot that she was to hand over a gift from my cousin Bonnie to my dad. Bonnie is my dad's nice from Illinois. Cousins Bonnie, Mike, Karen and Cheryl had been visiting my folks just this past April. So, Jay drops me off at the train station and I ride Amtrack again to Oceanside. My mom picked me up from the station and we drive off to Fallbrook. I walked into the living room and there was my pop reclining on his new garden "Lazy-boy". Eventually when Pop departs from dreamland and gets up off of the garden recliner, I handed him the b-day present from Bonie.

They got a kick out of it, Bonnie.

Both Mom and Pop are the best chiefs. You never leave from their place hungry. Pop is excellent on the grill and Mom invented Mexican food.

I was with my folks for the next 3 nights after the party. We ate well, played cards and watched lots of Everybody Loves Raymond. I loved it when Pop served me ice-cream. One night, he even popped corn like we were at the movies. Pop cracked me up when I said: This is delicious ice-cream. He said: I know. It's so good I want to lick the bowel, but I can't get my face in there. It was such a funny statement. The shape of the bowl was deep and narrow so you really couldn't lick the bowl clean. Otherwise, we would have.

Then it was the sad moment of snapping the last photo of my folks.

My last morning, I had to get myself ready for the last train ride back to Jay's place. My dad was telling me that sometimes there are really crazy drivers in the neighborhood. They live in a gated community so I guess some drivers feel they are safe away from the police and they can go ahead and drive like idiots. My dad could easily provide proof to this story. As I go out to the garage to set my carry-on in the trunk of the car, my dad says: I went out to the street this morning to bring in the trashcans, but they were gone. What the heck! as my pop always says. He said he looked down the street and then up the street and there they were. The trashcans were lying haphazardly in the middle of the road. Then he noticed one of his plants was smashed, a loose cement-step chip and tire marks in his driveway. Apparently, someone took the swing too fast and drove right up over his garden and smashed into his trashcans.

The arrows and line show where the tire marks are, the chipped step, the smashed plant and the car must have drove smack-centered towards the trashcans, like a cheaply produced car chase in a B-movie.

I toss my carry-on in the trunk of my mom's car and off we go to the transport station in Oceanside. I was in good time before Amtrak would pull into the station, so I was able to take a quick walk down to the coastline to snap a few good-bye pix over the beautiful California Pacific coast.

The following day, Jay drives me to the orange county airport. I snapped thousands of pix out of the airplane window. Here are just a few with a google-maps attached.

As I have mentioned before, I can play for hours on google maps and google earth. The following pix wont mean anything for you. I just enjoy mapping out where the heck I was flying. The following are pix I snapped out of the window as we were taking off from Orange County. I pointed out a few things in case you don't see it. The photo on the left is from my camera and the photo on the right is from google maps. The flight pattern is along part of the coastline of southern California.