Stories

St. Augustine

04/18/2022

Holy moly, what a town. I am still learning the intricacies of its history. Having called New Orleans home for so long, I have an infinite dislike for those who visit a couple of times and then claim to have some in-depth knowledge of the inner-workings of the local vibe. I am not that person. I only want to share with you what little I know, and how wonderful I think it all is. Juan Ponce de León and Hernando de Soto had both made significant exploratory inroads, but the French settlement of Fort Caroline was already established when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine for the Spanish in 1595. Menéndez had been in the service of the Spanish military since he was fourteen, and he was a devout, if not obsessed, Catholic. Upon landing, he said something in the line of, “Yep, this’ll do,” and immediately conducted what is believed to be the first mass on the continent. Only later did he figure out that the French Huguenots were already here, pretty close to where Jacksonville would be today, in what they called Fort Caroline.

Define Adventure

4/01/2022

After visiting Bok Tower and Gardens near Lake Worth, I wrote what I thought was a great piece on Edward Bok. He was an amazing man, an immigrant who became editor of Ladies' Home Journal and subsequently married his publisher's daughter. The coolest thing about him, though, is his contribution to our modern domestic set-up and vocabulary. He mass-published house plans with a more everyday family-friendly lay out than what was otherwise popular at the time. In doing so, he made housing plans available to America's growing suburban middle class, and did what he considered a service to domesticity by doing away with the formal parlor and instituting the “living room” as a room actually used every day by the family. While he did not invent the term “living room,” he certainly propelled it into our American vernacular, and in doing so, he changed the way families thought of, and how they actually used, their own homes. But, alas! as interesting as this man was, my piece about him was not. Turns out, it read like a Wikipedia article, so I nixed that post.

RV Touring 2

12/31/2021

Part Two

As I continue to search for a new-to-me RV, the comedy also continues. I watched a video tour of a unit in north Fort Meyers where the guy actually said, “This refrigerator is either off or on.” And another video of a unit in Stuart where the guy said, “For privacy, close the door.” And then there’s the listing with photos, no video, and about six paragraphs of written description, ending with, “Call for more information or to make an appointment” but no phone number. I should thank these guys for eliminating themselves BEFORE I drove hither-and-yon to see their units. Now for the ones I DID travel to see.

RV #3 – Lakeland

This wonderful listing for an immaculate unit in the correct price range with the correct features popped up yesterday. I’m getting a little tired of driving to faraway places, for too-good-to-be-true listings, but apparently not tired enough, so off to Lakeland we went. Lakeland is across the state, toward Tampa, about 120 miles from Vero Beach on State Highway 60.

RV Touring

12/22/2021

Part One

Touring the country in an RV is amazing. To be fair, I don’t really “tour” the country as much as I just get somewhere and sit for a while. But, I did tour huge chunks of the country in an RV as a child, and I did tour the state of Arkansas in a travel trailer just recently, during the height of concern over COVID contagion. That’s not what this is about. I’ve been more-or-less living in Libby, my 2019 Sunset Liberty 24-foot travel trailer, for just over 2 years now, and it’s time for an upgrade. I had no idea what an adventure shopping for an RV could be.

Booth has been handling the research. He has spent hours, days, MONTHS on Craig’s List and other buy/sell/trade forums evaluating what’s available in the correct price range with the correct features. And it has been a learning experience for us both. Frankly, my knowledge of self-contained RVs is what my 10-year-old brain chose to retain about what was then a 10-year-old RV, and what my now 54-year-old brain can recall of that. So, yes, research is a vital part of this project. Every few days, Booth would find something appealing to him, and I would sit through slide-shows of photos that looked like every other slide-show of photos of every other RV ever. If the current unit of interest was still available on my next day off, we would have a road-trip adventure to wherever it was located, to see it in person. Sounds fun, huh?

Meet Sarah Campbell

12/14/2021

This is an edited version of an earlier Facebook post from when I lived and worked in South Dakota. I was greatly inspired by this woman, and felt her story was worth revisiting.

Meet Sarah Campbell.

In 1825, when Sarah was twelve, her presumptive father gave her freedom from her slavery upon his death, but somehow that didn't come to pass. She was sold, then her labor was leased out to another, to work on a steamboat on the Missouri River. When she was fourteen, she met a lawyer on this same steamboat. She mentioned to him that she had been freed, but was somehow still enslaved. This lawyer told her that because the Dakota Territory was not part of the slaveholding Union, she should be free anyway, and he wrote a petition to the court asking specifically for her freedom and damages for her continued enslavement after she had legally been freed. An elite passenger on a steamboat on the Missouri River stuck his neck out for a working-class kid who was well beneath him in class and social stature of the times. Wow. Just wow! On his petition, she was GRANTED her freedom by a US court of law (but was only given one cent for damages). She was granted her freedom. Her freedom. What a remarkable thing. Just freaking WOW!

Disney World

12/03/2021

In probably November of 1971, my life changed. To be fair, it might have been October or December, or maybe even January of 1972, but the point is that it was right at 50 years ago, before I turned five and before my oldest sister Bonnie left home. While attending some convention in Miami, our parents saw a newspaper article about the newly-opened Walt Disney World in nearby Orlando. Dad called our grandmother back in Pine Bluff, Arkansas (a feat of its own because the very concept of long-distance rates was ridiculous to him) and said, “Put the kids on a plane.”

New Orleans

11/26/2021

It somehow seems fitting to launch “Adventures with Susie” with the place of biggest adventure for me: The City of New Orleans. New Orleans is a place for sensory overload. It can be an overt assault on the senses or a gentle manipulation, but one cannot deny the never-ending stimuli of smell, taste, and sight. But, today, now, I want to talk about sound. So many people associate the City of New Orleans with her music, and rightfully so, but I want to share with you my recent emotional journey with the more subtle, or if not subtle then less-mentioned, sounds of my city.