powered by SignMyGuestbook.com
powered by SignMyGuestbook.com
|
Chicago & the 0hio V@lley
2005-06-03 - 2:08 p.m. So we returned from our trip up north. We had car problems going up, and car problems coming back, but I refuse to dwell on the negative aspects of the trip. Seeing my family in Chicago, some for the 1st time in 20+ years, was great. Mi hija had only met her two great aunts, and none of her cousins on my side of the family, so she definitely had some catching up to do. She enjoyed it thoroughly, and everyone was very nice and friendly to her. The party was held at a suite at a racetrack, and my millionaire cousin (no shit) had bought a bunch of racing vouchers for the guests to pick from. I picked the only $20 voucher, then placed a $5 bet on the trifecta (where you have to pick the winners of 3 races). I won! I won $64 bucks on a $5 bet. I didn't win anything else all day, but that was enough for me. They had an open bar, and we had gotten there late due to car problems, so everybody was bringing me doubles and triples to catch up. My family has a big history of partying down. Mi hija was drinking some sweet, disgusting drink, and she's not used to hanging with the big dogs. Shortly after the party ended, she passed out back at the hotel and missed the after party in the suite at the hotel. I passed out mi hija's senior pictures to everybody. Flash took some outdoor shots of her on the campus at the uni, and she had some studio poses done by a local photography studio. In one shot, everybody kept calling her "the movie star," because it's a close-up, and she really does look beautiful in it. We went on to Ohio from Chicago, up near Akron to visit my best friend from childhood, who happens to be mi hija's godmother, or, as they say in N'Awlins, her "nanny." her daughter is 3 months older than mi hija, and is my god-daughter. She also has a son who is about 3 years older. He immediately got a crush on my girl and got all tongue-tied. It was funny as hell. We spent 3 days with them, mainly staying stoned and sitting around laughing. Those ppl smoke one HELL of a lot of pot! I thought of all of my friends, Flash was the biggest pothead, but it's not even close. To wit, I went up there with 2 full oz's and about an 1/8 of an oz of some other stuff. I sold them one of the oz's, and by the time we got to Mississippi on the way home, my oz and an 1/8 were gone, and I know that we smoked at least 1/2 of the oz I sold to them. No drug tests for me any time soon! Then we headed to the 0hio V@lley. We actually got a room in WV (because my hometown is too small to have a motel), but we drove all around both OH and WV. I had forgotten how gorgeous the area truly is. It's soooo pretty there! The hills, the river, the winding roads . . . my Looziana-born-and-bred daughter was amazed. She couldn't believe some of the streets / roads that we were driving, kept telling me to "slow down, Mom!" They were twisting and turning every which way, coming perilously close to 50' precipices with flimsy guardrails, but I assured her that these were the roads that I had learned to drive on, and I was perfectly at ease. We came in from Akron on Rt 250, past T@pp@n L@ke, and on one section of the road, you actually pass one house 3 times. That's how many times the road wraps around the hill. Mi hija kept calling it a mountain, but I assured her it was only a hill. We took some pictures by the lake, and I got a rock from the water to bring home. I do that. I get rocks from everywhere. Except Amsterdam. I was looking for a cool rock there, and instead found a sterling silver spoon, which was even cooler. We visited the Catholic cemetery where all my people are buried, and planted a lily at the grave and decorated it with flags for memorial Day, because my Grandpa was a WW I veteran, and my Uncle a WW II veteran. It's up on another hill, and the view of the Valley from there is really breathtaking. You can see the river winding through, and I pointed out that the land on the other side was WV. I hope our pictures come out. We got some other shots from different vantage points in my hometown, and I showed her the high school that both my mother and I had attended, which had hardly changed at all, at least on the exterior. They finally got some window AC units, but that was the only visible difference. I showed her the house I grew up in, which was kind of cool, because it's built into the side of a hill, so my bedroom window from one side was actually 3 stories off the ground, whereas the rest of the house is considered 1 1/2 stories. I know that sounds strange, but I guess you have to really see it to understand. There are 27 steps to the front door, and only 13 to the back. And I shoveled snow off of every one of the motherfuckers many, many times back in the day. I took her to see the old abandoned coal mine at the top of the hill that I mentioned once in an entry in here, but it's not a coal mine anymore. They tore it down, and somebody has put a mobile home up and landscaped it and everything. That was strange. I don't think I'd want to build on top of freaking mine shafts, but to each his own, I guess. Not to mention that when it rains and rains, all the water rushes down out of the hills and floods right through that area. Some roads there were still impassable from flooding last summer when one of the hurricanes that hit FL traveled up the east coast and stalled over the 0hio V@lley and did terrible damage to roads and hillsides. The next day I drove her up Rt 88 to 0gelb@y Park, a park donated to the City of Whee1ing by the 0gelb@y family. It's 1500 acres of rolling hills and winding roads, has a zoo, resort, golf course, ski slope, cabins, museum . . . you name it, 0gelb@y's got it. My kid was so impressed by its beauty. She wants to come back again when we have more money and longer to stay. I can't tell you how much it meant to me to show her these places that were a mainstay of my childhood, knowing that she really enjoyed and appreciated it just as I did growing up. We found the waterfall on GC&P Rd, and walked up the creek (which I insisted on pronouncing "crick" just like a hillbilly) so she could climb up on it for some pictures. I found more rocks, we saw some deer in the brush, it was very cool. There is no litter there, and precious little across the river in OH, either. Such a difference from trashy LA, where ppl throw fast food debris and beer bottles out of the car windows going down the road, and dump their household garbage at illegal dumping spots out in the country. I hardly saw any trash on the roads at all. All in all, it was a wonderful experience. There were the breakdowns, and there is one sad incident that I will detail in another entry another day, because I want to keep this one upbeat and positive. But I am glad to be back home, if for no other reason that I really, really missed my dogs. �
still here - 2009-12-18
|