Just the second day of writing on this blog and already I'm conflicted on how to implement certain items into this writing. There is no way I can catch up on all that has happened since we started traveling. However; I think by adding at the end a little bit of history, I can reminisce about some of our adventures and potentially catch up on highlights from the past. Today, Rhonda and I are going up to Warsaw, Indiana to visit some good friends, Dave and Clair Ton. We are going up to have lunch with them and just shoot the bull. Our original plan was to stop to see them in Tennessee while they were working at Dolly-World. That couldn't happen because our motor home wasn’t ready for travel yet and they are back in Indiana now.
As I stated our motor home isn’t ready for travel yet, because it is being worked on by an Amish father and son duel, Samuel and Lester Schwartz. There’s a little history about us trying to remodel our motor home this year. The first thing we needed to take care of was our old mattress. So just before leaving the Des Moines, Iowa area after working all summer at Adventureland Amusement Park, we went out shopping for a mattress. We found one at Homemaker’s Furniture Store in Des Moines. So on our way out of town we stopped at my daughter’s, Kimmy Stuart to leave her and Mike (my son-in-law) our old mattress. Then just a ½ a mile or so down the road we stopped to pick-up the new mattress. After spending over an hour there, first putting in a Queen-size mattress which was the correct size in length, but wasn’t the correct size in width. They tried to give us one that was the right width, but was too long and we couldn’t put our slide all the way in. Queen-size mattresses in RV’s are only 75 inches in length, while a queen-size in stick homes are 80 inches. We needed what was known as a Queen-short. We finally gave up, told them to take it back and give us our money back. They did and we went our merrily way down the road. We used a blowup queen mattress for the next couple of weeks. And believe it or not, it was really comfortable.
We arrived at Jane’s house on October 1st. Jane is Rhonda’s mom and we parked in her driveway. Our plan was to be here a couple of weeks, attend my youngest daughter’s (Katie) wedding and head back to Texas for the winter. Okay, all good plans sometime come to an end and this one did too. Our stay was extended a little longer than planned. I had a gallbladder attack. I was admitted to the Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne. After a couple of days of tests, trials and the tribulation of being poked in places I’d rather not talk about. I was diagnosed by my doctor that it was necessary for the aforementioned appendix inside my body should be removed. It was, I’m fine and now we go on with the story.
We found an excellent mattress for our motor home. It was special order and delivered to us while I was still in the hospital. To this day, October 29th I still haven’t slept on it, nor has Rhonda. There are reasons for that, but I won’t get into the long story of it, let me just say the operation, recovery time and the remodeling have taken the opportunity away from us so far. We are both looking forward to sleeping in our own bed -- soon.
We traveled over to see one of Rhonda’s friends, Bonnie who she worked with at International Harvester many years ago. Bonnie was having her whole house remodeled thanks to the Chase Manhattan Bank. I started talking to the foreman who happened to be Amish, a Mr. John Miller. We kidnapped him and another gentleman Mr. Lester Schwartz bringing them down to our motor home. We explained what we wanted. They both looked at us in wonderment.
Lester looked at Rhonda and said,
“You want all of that done in this small of a space? You know we are accustom to having a lot of room to work in?”
After much head scratching and brainstorming over the next few weeks, we finally came up with solutions to each and every problem which popped up.
John and his brother-in-law, Melvin and Melvin’s dad, put in our hardwood floor. It looks great. (It was mostly Melvin and his dad doing the work). Then on one of our shopping sprees, we went up to Shipshewana, Indiana looking for a Loveseat with wall-hugging recliners. We found them, in of all places Weaver’s Furniture Store. Driving up to Shipshewana after picking up the motor home with our new, great looking hardwood floor, we had a new loveseat installed where the old couch used to be. A one hour drive back to Samuel and Lester’s shop, we dropped off the motor home for them to start work on it as soon as possible. Oh by the way, somewhere in this storyline I forgot to mention the fact a new 32” TV was bought and ready for installation into the scheme of things.
So we are still waiting with anticipated excitement on the return of our (new-remodeled) home. I took some before pictures, some in progress ones and will include some of the after ones too, upon completion. We were told the motor home should be ready by no later than the 3rd or 4th of November. We were hoping for tomorrow, because that was the first timeline given us, but it’s looking more like next week. That’s all we have for now, of course there’s a lot more to tell, just don’t have the time to get everything down like I want. I’m going to take it slowly and hopefully this will be interesting enough for our family and friends to read.
