Nov 10 to 17: Pennsylvania Visit and 40th Reunion

With my letter sweater in hand, Alison and I went off to Palmyra, PA to visit my parents and attend my 40th high school class reunion.

We like joining Mom and Dad in their daily routines. We had dinner with Mom’s sister and husband, Mary Ann and Roger in Elizabethtown, the town where I grew up. After dinner we had a private viewing of the Master’s Mineral Gallery at Elizabethtown College. What a great mineral and fossil collection donated to the college by a local collector. My brother Dave visited from Wilmington for an afternoon, and we gathered with some of Mom and Dad’s friends for several regularly scheduled weekly restaurant meals. At least one friend goes back to elementary school time!

Dad is the director for the Harmonizer’s, a singing group of 30+ men who live in the same community as my parents.  Their oldest member is 97 year’s old but was not present the week we visited because he was in Florida fishing.  The group performs for various church, civic, and nursing homes in the area.  They are busy during the holiday season so Alison and I were able to attend a program while we were visiting.



Dean, Chris and Cindy



Alison FORCED me to wear my Track & Field letter sweater the first evening of the reunion events.  Her reasoning, ‘Why are we keeping the sweater if you aren’t even going to wear it to the reunion?’  Well, I wore it.  We stayed with Chris and Cindy two nights and were joined by Teresa and Harold for one night.  Chris and Harold were in my high school class and all three of us and Teresa were in the same church youth group. Both Alison and I enjoyed the chance to get reacquainted, and for her, to meet, my friends after all these years.  I hadn’t been to a reunion for 30 years.  How time flies.

 

We are still good looking after 40 more years!

 One afternoon we toured Indian Echo Caverns near Middletown.  I had visited the Caverns several times when I was growing up, but probably not for 20 or 25 years or more.  (Twyla and Ryan, have you been there?)  It was worth the trip.  We were lucky to be in a small group of 6 so had a very good tour.

Because the fall has been mild in PA this year we were surprised by seeing many colorful trees still with their leaves.  It looked more like October than the middle of November.  But, when we returned to Vancouver, we woke up two days later to the first snow of the season, several inches at Barbara’s house close to the Frazer River.  Since the grass and trees still have greenish leaves, it looked unusual.  Even the local hummingbirds are still coming to the feeder.