October Part I - Our October Odyssey

I started thinking about this post in the wee morning hours

while laying in bed listening to the cadence of early November rain

on the old walnut tree's wide, yellowing leaves.
(that was yesterday)

My head is swimming with all the things I could go on about

in just this one post.

I'm considering breaking it all up into a few posts,

but I'm also thinking that if I just come back to this one post, 

here and there throughout the day while I'm working on other things,

 perhaps it'll just be all right here.
(that didn't happen)

So, I'll get started and we'll see...

"Our October Odyssey" 

was just what the doctor ordered after nearly three years

of ceaseless work here at 

1920 Fruitland Drive.

Honestly, it's been hard.

I've worried a lot about my husband.

He's healthy and tough and strong as an ox 

-more so than many men ten years younger-

but even the most rugged guys need a break once in a while.

I did everything I was capable of doing to help 

and even learned to do some things I never thought I would;

things like pulling electrical lines and plumbing lines 

and nailing up siding and bolting down sill plates

and laying hardwood flooring and tiling a shower 

and several other construction-type particulars.

Like a lot o' folks, I have a personal 'bucket list',

but my list hasn't ever had 'paint the whole outside of a house' written on it.

Every time I'd toss an empty paint bucket into the garbage, I'd think to myself, 

"I'm gonna add 'paint the whole outside of a house' to my bucket list when I'm done 

and then turn right around and check it off."

Getting in our new truck

(which was a dream to travel in)

and hittin' the road with no particular route in mind

was a wonderful respite.

We had an ultimate destination, but planned our route a day at a time.

We saw a whole lot of beautiful country.

And I must say that October is thee most beautiful month for a road trip,

especially under a low-lying blanket of clouds,

which always seems to make

the autumn reds, golds, yellows and oranges glow.

We traveled from Utah and through Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,
Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky again, Indiana,
Missouri again,Iowa,Nebraska, Wyoming and back to Utah.

So as not to go into a long, tedious travelogue,

here are only a few highlights...

 We paid a visit to Granny at the cemetery in Madisonville, Tennessee.

Aunt Sharon passed away the year before Granny and is buried next to her.

My Granny buried three of her five children, all taken by cancer,
before her own passing due to old age.

My mother and Aunt Joyce are lonely for their younger sibling's company.

A person expects to lose their age-ed parents,

but two sisters and a brother before their time...

well, that's just down-right sorrowful.

We stayed in the neighboring town of Sweetwater at my Aunt Joyce's place
and left with a few things from my great-grandparent's old farmhouse in Arkansas... 

Great-Granny Burke's rocking chair 

and the little six-legged table she kept in the front room.

And this sweet little "straight-back" chair".

I made the pillow from an old quilt Granny had made.

We wore it out with good, honest use, but I couldn't bear to part with the whole of it, 

so I saved the best square and fashioned a pillow cover out of it. 

That was quite a while ago, though.

This is a 1964 photo of me sitting in Granny Burke's lap, out back 

between the house and chicken coop, in that very chair. 

I've long been a fan of Mark Twain, so a stay-over in Hannibal, Missouri was especially fun.

I'd downloaded "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" to my iTunes account and

Dean and I listened to it on our way out of Tennessee and on our way to

Mark Twain's sleepy little boyhood town on the Mississippi River.

"Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts, Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts."

I think I enjoyed listening to it this time as much as I loved listening

to Mrs Love read it to me and my 6th grad classmates

after lunch recess way back when.

Do you happen to know why Sam Clemens chose the pen name 'Mark Twain'?

The leadsmen on a riverboat was responsible for measuring the depth of the river

for safe passage. If the depth happened to be two fathoms, he would call out

"by the mark twain" to the riverboat pilot,

meaning the depth had been marked at two fathoms and instead of saying

"two", he said "twain", which is a more traditional way of sayin' "two".

Samuel Clemens was a riverboat pilot for a couple of years before

the Civil War.

There ya go and now ya know.

Last, but not least, was our trip to Nauvoo, which was just over the river from Hannibal.

The last time we were in Nauvoo the temple was under construction.

It was a treat to participate in an endowment session.

Since it was the beginning of the "off season",

we went through that session with only 4 other sisters and 5 other brethren,

most of those sisters and brethren were serving missions in Nauvoo.

I couldn't help but reflect on all that the saints went through in the early

years of the church in there.

I am thankful for those rock-solid saints

who went through trials I can scarcely imagine

and whose souls were woven tightly with 

an indestructible tread of faith.

After leaving the sublime beauty of the Celestial room

on the fourth floor, I was directed back to the squared spiral staircase

and reminded that the sister's dressing room was one flight down.

I descended two steps, stopped and leaned sightly over the stair rail 

to look upward toward the fifth floor - the top of the temple.
The downward view was a sight to behold as well!

I stood there marveling and debating for at least a couple of minutes

and then turned right back around and quietly ascended every last stair to the top.

A sister temple worker spotted me, smiled, and asked if I was lost.

"No. I just couldn't help myself. I wanted to see as much as I can before we leave."

That resulted in a thorough tour of sealing rooms, the bride's room, 
 views from many of the fifth floor windows and finally my descent down the 
stunning true-spiral staircase on the other end of that magnificent temple.
What a memorable gift!
Dean was patiently waiting for me in the lobby downstairs,
but was also wondering what on Earth was taking me so long.
"Oh, nothing but a little tour of Heaven, is all."