Our travels so far

We are now in Zanesville, Ohio.  We are at an Econolodge…and it is just that.

Across the street from the motel, is a building that looks like it was a church at one time but now it is used to worship the God of Bawdiness because they have turned it into a theatre for entertainment and the playbill advertised on the front of the “church” is “FORBIDDEN BROADWAY”.  I have no idea what that is all about, but it does not look like some place a lady missionary should enter.  There is no parking lot for this church that I can see and parking on the street is not allowed so that leaves the motel parking lot – but the play is not being held tonight so we have a place to park our car.

This is an older motel – you can tell that by the architecture even before you enter the room,  but at least this one has a hairdryer – which means I do not have to put the room heater on full blast with cyclone force blowing action to get my hair dry (this is what I had to do this morning and my hair looked like a mop in a fit as a result).  Yep, they even let me into the church with my hair in such a mess.

When David was little, I had taken him up to the Mall to pick Bill up one night and we stopped out front of the mall and beeped the horn of the car to catch his attention.  We were unsuccessful so at David’s request I beeped the horn again and then David announced – Well of course you know that these are ‘Beep Free Walls’ so it is no wonder that Daddy cannot hear us.  My hope is that these walls and windows of this aging motel are ‘beep free’ and that we can get some sleep tonight.

Yesterday we drove from Allentown in Eastern Pennsylvania to Chambersburg to meet our friends Chiz and Marsha and their daughter and granddaughter.  It is hard to see Chiz so incapacitated but he was glad that we stopped by to see him.  We had lunch with them and we talked and talked about the old times when we all lived in Johnstown.  We left his house in mid afternoon for the ‘short’ drive to Hollidaysburg.  We trusted the Google Maps printout but really should have gone by the highway (and paid the toll and everything) and we would not have had such a ‘round the mulberry bush’ ride that took hours and hours.  On the other hand, the trees here in Pa are further ahead than those we left in Augusta and the leaf peeping was spectacular.  Eventually we found Gary and Sherry at their apartment and we had a grand time catching up on all the news of children and grand children.  Of course there were the “million children and grand children” pictures exchanged with appropriate “Wow! I can remember when…………………..(you fill in the answer).  They told us of another friend Debbie who used to live in Johnstown the same time we did and that she has had two strokes and is in the County Home.  They do not call it the county home anymore because a company has purchased it and turned it into a pretty nice facility.  It is so secure that we had to find someone who knew the combination so that we could operate the elevator when it was time to leave.

We found our way to the “William Motel” in Ebensburg.  It did not have a hair dryer – and a lot of other amenities that one would expect.  However, we were too tired to argue or ask so we climbed into bed and had to struggle to get up this morning.  This motel boasted a cooked breakfast – but it was only being served from 9am on we needed to be 20 miles away in Johnstown for church and we decided to go to the Valley Dairy for breakfast.  They have remodeled the place but the service is still slow.  I did not think we would make it to church on time let alone be there early.  However, we got there about 5 minutes before the meeting started and were surprised at the number of familiar faces we found in the congregation.  It was a good reunion to be sure.

After church we went to see Marian and she had lunch ready for us.  We talked about all kinds of things and had a wonderful time.  We then went over to see Christine who lives next door to our home that we had on Lenore Street.  She was telling us that the people who own the house now put in a full bathroom down in the basement but the people who installed it made a real mess of the pipes and waste pipes etc. so much so that she had 4 inches of water accumulate in her basement during a couple of heavy downpours recently.  The indoor French drains that we had put in were adequate, it is just that the people who installed her full bathroom messed up the pipes etc. ; really sad to hear.

We left Johnstown and were about to follow the Google map thingy again but realized that it would be way quicker for us to go down Rte. 219 to Somerset and get on the Pa turnpike there rather than trundle through town and out Menoher boulevard to Ligonier then onto Rte 30 to New Stanton and thence to Ohio.  So we circumvented the Google stuff , went down 219 to the Pike and then out to New Stanton and thence to Zanesvile, Ohio.  Whew!  I am tired of driving.

This is what I mean when I say that it’s like life in a blender – we are trying to cram too many miles into too few days as we trek back to Arizona.

In spite of all that happened, I am glad that we went to Johnstown Ward – Gary said we would know more people in Altoona Ward if we went there than to Johnstown…………..but we had a good time in Johnstown. We spent the first 20 years  of our married life in this town and church congregation.