Brace yourselves kids, its a long one

6-8-10

I think I may need to break down the trip slowly. Maybe a little a day for the next week or so, and then later I can put it all together. We will see.

We headed out to Ohio on Saturday. We left Holly’s around 10 am. I was doing ok with the goodbyes until Ken asked me how I was doing. I broke down sobbing. Luckily, no one made fun. They knew how hard this was on me. I also was smart and was wearing sunglasses and was able to keep it together in front of the kids. Thankfully, too, the boys didn’t get too weepy.

I think we made it all of 3 minutes before my phone rang and the kids were on the phone. I had just calmed down. LOL!

Traveling without children is so much easier! I was shocked at how quickly I could get through security when all I had to worry about was my bag. I felt so organized.

The flight was uneventful aside from the fact that we had a stop we had not known about. We stopped in Nashville, but we didn’t need to get off the plane. I just chalked it up to one more state I could technically say I have been in.

Once we got our rental car, we drove from Columbus to visit with some of Papa Brenan’s cousins. You will have to forgive me when I honestly don’t remember everyone’s names. I know Deb was the youngest, who was awesome. Who am I kidding? They were all so nice! I tend to be uncomfortable in situations where I don’t know anyone. I was way out of my comfort zone. I don’t know if it was because I was flying without a parachute or if these folks were just that welcoming, but whatever the reason, I felt instantly comfortable with all of them.

These were Oppe family members. If memory serves, they are second cousins. They are descendents of Ken’s great grandma, Stella’s sibs. Either way, they were lovely people.

We hung out on their back patio area and got to know everyone in the light of the fireflies. It was so cool! Papa Brenan was so excited. I don’t know that I have ever seen him look so giddy. He got back about 15 years of his life just sitting around with family. I would imagine it was incredibly therapeutic for a man in his mid 70’s to get in touch with his roots. For the past 20 years, he has mostly been around his wife’s family, as often is the case with families where one side tends to be the dominant relatives for gatherings. Since his sister, Nancy died, I think there has been a true need for him to embrace his Brenan patriarch role and not be a figurehead. This was a crucial trip for him.

We had planned on going to get some dinner and then turn in at our hotel, but before you knew it, it was late and we were still immersed in conversation. They ordered us some pizza, which was super nice of them. Plus, it was fabulous pizza! We moved the conversation inside and continued to chit chat until 11:30 or so. Holly, Andy and I agreed we needed to get dad into bed so that he wouldn’t over do it the first night.

The hotel wasn’t great. Super 8 is mislabeled since there is nothing “super” about it. Unless of course the smell of fish and cigarettes was something that produced super skills and I just didn’t know it.

Holly and I got up the next morning and got ready. We all were supposed to be back at the Oppe house for breakfast at 8:30. We got a knock on the door and it was Andy telling us that Papa Brenan was not well. We all went to the room and found him all kinds of dizzy. He was having vertigo. It was such a shame to see a man who had refound his youth only a few short hours before to be struck down with what seemed like a bad ear infection.

Thank goodness Andy is a physical therapist! He told us about how for vertigo there is a maneuver to shift the bad crystals in your ear canal. Holly was familiar with it, having done it herself. Andy promptly got online and looked up the procedure. It was pretty simple, so the three of us did some Brenan family teamwork. Holly helped with towels and trash can duty (he was throwing up from all of this), Andy did the actual moves, and I timed it all. It was good. He did it maybe twice all the way through, but we tried it like 4 times. It seemed to help a little.

We all headed over to the Oppe’s, with Papa Brenan looking miserable. They had made us French toast and pancakes with blueberries. All yummy! Papa Brenan sat on the recliner and just about passed out from what looked like exhaustion. We all let him sleep. We also got him to drink some juice and eat some eggs since we knew he needed to eat something. He had not had much in the way of pizza the night before and with all thr travel, we knew that probably had something to do with it.

While he slept, Andy, Holly and I ended up going over to look at this building that is shaped like a giant basket. It is some company that makes baskets and plates called Longaberger. I was unfamiliar with the company name, but Holly told me about the baskets that she has. They are incredibly expensive, which is why Holly said she doesn’t buy them. The ones she has were mostly gifts. I personally didn’t care much about the baskets, but their office building was pretty damn cool.

We went back to retrieve Papa Brenan who seemed to be feeling better, which was good. We still needed to head to Marietta and to stop in several small towns on the way.

Before really getting going, we stopped at this arboretum that two of the Oppe’s worked at and lived at. It was very cool. Lots of trees and a giant hedge that spelled out the name Dawe’s Aboretum so that you could see it from a plane. It is 2040 feet long!

We headed on and stopped in Summerfield. This is a little town that had some Dailey’s, which were prominent in the family line. It also was going to be the first cemetery stop of the trip, so I was all kinds of excited.

The town was so tiny. It had cute little houses, but a good lot of them looked run down. There was one house that looked like it was out of a movie. It was this old fashioned house with the wrap around porch, with tons of junk and equipment all over the place. There was even an old soda machine on the porch. It didn’t look like anyone lived there, but wow, it was thrashed.

We were not sure where the cemetery was so we asked the first of many people on our visit for help. It was a genuine hick, complete with a missing tooth and rocking a mullet. He was nice and directed us to where the graves were. No street names, just take this street up to the barn and turn left. Cool!

The cemetery was awesome. It was up on a hill in the town, near some other houses. The markers were clearly old. Some were broken, and some looked like petrified wood that had been on fire at some point.

We found some of the names we needed and took pictures. I took pictures of the whole place, too, since it was so cool looking. Of course, my camera died. Sigh. Luckily, Andy let me use his camera, so I kept snapping away.

One of the places we stopped was the little general store in the middle of the town. Mind you, middle is not saying much. It was a small store, and we asked the lady behind the counter for some help on names. She was super helpful, even allowing us to take one of their phone books. She told us where certain Dailey’s lived. We were also looking to get some supplies to be able to read the tombstones. Papa Brenan and Holly were heading out to the car and Andy and I were getting the toothbrush to clean the markers and a pencil. The pencil wasn’t sharpened, but this nice lady actually told us to just borrow her knife and bring it back when we were done. She didn’t know who we were, and yet she was loaning us a knife!

While we were there, I noticed another employee with a uniform shirt from baseball or something. It said Dailey! We asked and sure enough, she was related. LOL!

We went up to talk to one lady who was a Dailey. She was this tiny thing and she promptly invited us to sit down on her porch. Her gentleman friend followed, and we all sat down to explain why she was being invaded.

Papa Brenan starting asking her about family history. He wanted us to take notes, but instead, I suggested video taping her “interview”. This was brilliant. She was a talker. She told the story of her first husband being killed by a tractor that crushed him. She talked about the town a bit. She also rambled on and on about various stories, including ones she found hysterical even though we were not really sure why. One story was about someone changing the license plates off of a car in order to drive a mile. When they arrived, there was laughter about the plates and someone said to them, “You are…….my sunshine!” This put the woman in fits of hysterical laughter. She said that told that story for years and it always made her laugh. We were so confused! But seeing how happy it made her made me laugh since it was really cute to see this woman talking about things I am sure she had not talked about for a long time.

Her friend turned out to be her ex-husband who was now her friend. Based on his adoring gazes at her, he would love to be her husband again. He was so smitten it was positively adorable to watch. I have not seen the video I shot, but I hopefully captured the glances and sweet smiles he would have when he watched his love talk about certain things. Maybe it wasn’t really him doing this, but me being the hopeless romantic decided this had to be the case.

After we talked with her for a while, we went up to visit with her cousin, Betty. Betty was not as chatty. She tried, but she was certainly struggling. She showed us some old pictures, which was really cool. Poor thing, though, was not great with the memory.

She told us about her cousin who for 105 was sharp as a tack. We thought this sounded promising since 105 would totally have a lot of information about the past. She was in a nursing home down the way, so we decided this was a place to go. Betty was still kind of chatting as we left.

Our travels took us to several small towns. It was crazy how many of these tiny towns existed. They all seemed to have a similar decorating motif in these giant 3 dimensional stars they would put on the sides of their houses. At first we thought perhaps they were some kind of military thing, until we noticed how many people had them, and the fact that the colors were not just red or black, but a few were painted like an American flag.

At one point we were in a town that must have consisted of only like 20 houses. It was small. We talked to this one guy who seemed to know a bit and he directed us to where he thought the cemeteries were. We found one, which was rather large and well maintained. In fact, there were several newer graves.

I know I was supposed to be looking at the old ones for certain names, but once those were found, I was allowed to wander around, which was cool. It meant I could see all of the different ways in which these people were honored.

I found one that was for a couple. The grave was surrounded by little rocks that was shaped like a heart. The tombstone had both their pictures, and surrounding it was several personal items. They had died in the last couple years. It was incredibly moving. These two people together in life and death.

We were aware of a smaller site that was supposed to have only a couple of graves. We knew it was behind “the old school house” which was not exactly easy to determine. There was an old brick building that seemed like it was the school. The problem was that it was all fenced off. Andy and Holly were able to get through and look around a bit, but it was tough since it was all over grown. So we opted to drive up the driveway that was in front of the school and up to the farm that was beyond it. Turned out it was an Amish farm!

We pulled in and there were maybe 10 or so kids, all around the same age. The women didn’t speak with us, but the kids were in awe. They all kept staring and making faces. They were adorable. The patriarch came out in full Amish gear, even rockin the odd beard. I don’t know why this shocked me, but it was cool to see this wasn’t just an act.

He was very nice and told us that there were some graves up on the hill behind the school house, and he told us we were more than welcome to go look, entering through his fences and up on his land. We hiked up to where they were. Unfortunately, they were not names on our list, but it was still cool to be up there.

The Amish farm had goats and about 4 of the horse buggies. We were a little confused at what was allowed and what wasn’t. We could see that the women were not to talk to us, but the kids were more than welcome to take a look. One of the little kids was playing with one of those plastic PlaySkool poppers, so we didn’t understand how that was allowed, but no zippers. Of course, we have no idea what their beliefs are. I chalked it up to the idea that although some religions arte strict, it is up to the family to decide how they feel they should follow it.

Our adventures took us then to the nursing home where the 105 year old woman was. I will tell you right now, it was tough.

We went in and no one greeted us. It was a very sterile looking environment. It looked hospital like, but even less warm. We went to the nursing station and asked a nurse where we might find her. She took us to the dining area and pointed off to where this little old lady was being fed. She had her eyes closed and she looked out of it. I was instantly depressed.

We didn’t want to interrupt her meal, so they told us they would wheel her over to us when she was done. We went into this area that had a couple of chairs and a tv off in the corner. It wasn’t super friendly feeling. In fact, it almost seemed like a mall was more private in terms of meeting up with someone.

She was wheeled over and the nurse told her she had some visitors. She said only a few rods to Holly, which was, “Are you my pastor?” The poor woman never opened her eyes. She spent a good 3 minutes rubbing her nose without saying anything else. Holly tried asking her some questions, but there was no response. She had just checked out. We turned off the video camera and determined that this poor woman didn’t even know we were there.

I was so close to tears. I just didn’t know how to handle this. This woman is 105, still alive only because of modern medicine and technology. I would imagine she doesn’t get tons of visitors, nor does she seem like her life is much of anything other than sleeping in a wheel chair, being fed soft foods and the occasional nap. I don’t want to be like that. Her mind may have been in tact, I suppose, and even though it was long blocked to the outside world, she was in a wonderful place up there.

As we were about to leave, I placed my hand on her shoulder and leaned in to tell her thank you and wished her well. I was hoping the physical contact would perhaps help her a bit. I still had no response and it just broke my heart. We left her in the same spot, and the nurse said not to worry about her. I wonder how long they just left her there.

We went back to Summerfield in order to talk with one last Dailey. It was a quick visit as she was not exactly too sharp herself. Although the “relatives” in this small town were certainly characters, they were not the family historians we had hoped for.

We headed into Marietta, expecting a small hick town based on what it seemed like people told us about it. Instead, we found a lovely city. It wasn’t tiny, and if anything, it seemed pretty well off. They had several restaurants and hotels and yet still were able to keep their historic roots in tact. It was really a nice little place!

The Super 8 is where we would be resting again, and I am sad to say that this one wasn’t much better than the first one. But we would be here the duration of our week, so we made do.

We left Papa Brenan at the hotel and the three of us went out to dinner at Applebees. It wasn’t fab or anything, but it was food. It was fun chatting it up with them at dinner. We talked tv and movies and had a good time.

Andy then reminded me about bananas. Ok, for those of you who don’t want to hear the TMI, it would do you good to skip this paragraph. Banana was the code word for allowing Ken and I some quality phone time each night to continue our tradition of intimacy every day at least once. This was not going to be easy with a roommate. Andy had been more than willing to help out on this endeavor, so he gladly dropped me off at the hotel and took Holly with him to get a sandwich for Papa Brenan. This allowed me some time in the room by myself to make my call.

Ok, back to our regularly scheduled broadcast. Thankfully we had the free WiFi in the room, so Holly and I played on Facebook a bit and I found myself online until super late. The time change along with the lack of kids and other responsibilities was certainly easy to get sucked into a bed time close to midnight. I was beat, but thankfully I drifted off to sleep, resting up for the next big day.

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My travels will go on tomorrow. I still have work this morning and I know if I get too involved I will get nothing done.

I am anxiously awaiting Ken’s call this morning. He is at the meeting at the school about Dax’s possible enrollment for Pre-K. I am really excited at the idea of him being in school. Especially since at Maria’s yesterday, she said he seemed so somber and mellow. He got there sad, telling Ken he missed Bobby. The rest of the day, his normal chipper self was down. I know it will pass, but Maria said it was kind of depressing. Poor kid. She is having them all make a cake today to hopefully cheer him up. If Dax can go to the same school as Bobby, perhaps he will feel better overall.

Luna has decided the pool rocks. Ken heard some commotion outside and looked out to see Luna’s little head bobbing around in the water. She had jumped in, on top of the cover and all. Our main concern is her accidently putting holes in it. When we had her in the pool on Sunday, we put a bunch of the kids’ old socks on her, which padded her nails. But I can’t very well have her wear those all day. Trimming them will help, but it won’t make them perfect. We will see how this all goes.

Andy shared some of his Picasa folders with me. I found several pics from my baby shower that I didn’t know existed. It was so cool! I was all kinds of happy to have these now at my disposal. He has gobs more pics that he is sharing, but it takes some time.

Ken just called. He tells me he didn’t get in. I ask why. He tells me because he is white. I freak out. I asked if they really said this. He said that basically he didn’t speak any Spanish so it wasn’t for him. I am getting all kinds of pissed when Ken then does the gotcha moment telling me the meeting isn’t until next Tuesday. Sigh. I am going to have to kick his ass. On the plus side, I can go next week.

I am running reports that are taking forever in the system. It isn’t helping me stay awake.

I also just found out I have a meeting tomorrow at 1:15. This is one of those long ones, so I will undoubtedly be running late tomorrow. Not a huge deal, especially since the OT is always good. I am more worried about the mini meeting I have this afternoon only because Bobby may be dropped off here before Ken goes to work. He might not, which just means I will pick him up at Ken’s school, but knowing how things go, he will end up here. Hopefully our meeting doesn’t take too long.

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Monday morning we got up in Ohio ready to explore. We started off at breakfast at the local Bob Evans. These places seem to be everywhere. At first, we had hoped it was Bob’s Big Boy, just a different name. I mean, Carl’s Jr was in fact Hardees where we were. It had a similar feel, but it turned out it was just a similar restaurant that was lacking in hot fudge cakes.

We visited a house that some relative lived in. The homes in Ohio were awesome. We drove around down where the Brenan home would have been. Clearly he had some money back in the day based on the street and the view. The real shame, though, was despite all the other historic homes there, the Brenan home was now home to apartments.

The house was up the street from a fort, which was kind of cool. It made me really wonder what it was like to live so close to things like that.

We explored the town, checking out various locations. We then hit up the Oak Ridge Cemetery. It was huge! And gorgeous I might add. Lots of beautiful trees with all of the old style stones everywhere. In this cemetery, we would be looking for Brenan, Oppe and Dailey. We found all of those.

The main Brenan marker was so fascinating to see. I don’t know why. It is just one of those things to know that relatives were there.

We then all went in mostly different directions in the cemetery. I wandered off and found so many beautiful markers. It was hot and muggy out and the cemetery was lots of hills, but I managed to not pass out or hurt myself. I suppose I should have been concerned about getting lost, especially with all of the spotty cell service we had been experiencing. I didn’t worry, though. I knew where I was in an odd way. I made my way back to where the car was. They were not there, so I headed down the road, looking at other spots. I was greeted by the car about 15 minutes later.

It was at this time we were heading to West Virginia. I didn’t realize we were so close to another state! And not just close. We were just across the way. We went over a small bridge, and pop! Another state!

The family we were meeting there were Oppe’s. Once again, I have no idea the lineage, which makes me fail, but I am ok with this.

This was a huge gathering. Becky and Jim lived there. Becky was the genealogist of the group. She also had married into this, so it was cool to see her so immersed. She showed Holly and Papa Brenan all of the stuff she had on the computer, which was several hours worth of data. In addition to Jim and Becky, their kids were there, along with grandmothers and nieces and nephews. Andy and I talked with many of them, who were all very nice and personable.

The visit wasn’t without chaos and crazy. They had something like 5 dogs that were all kinds of crazy. Super cute and sweet, but crazy when you get them all out and excited. One was a set of labs, one Lycos’s age and one Luna’s age. Lycos looked much better for 10, but these dogs were sweethearts. There was also a fat, kind of ugly yap dog that was named Julio that was cute for all the ugly.

There also was a sudden downpour of rain. It was still hot and sunny out, though. It was odd for us city folk.

We got a call that Caroline, our friend on Facebook and another semi distant relative was at the hotel so we needed to head back and meet up with her. We were able to make some plans with Becky to go with us to a few of the locations in the week. She had done a lot of the paperwork portions of genealogy, but had not been able to do the cemetery runs and houses. We said our goodbyes and headed back to Ohio.

In Ohio, it turns out animals don’t look both ways before they cross the street. It is really not a good idea to look on the side of the highways at any time. One of the signs on the on ramp mentioned no animals, which meant we determined that truly they need some kind of education program for these illiterate critters since it was becoming some kind of brutal Quentin Terrintino version of the zoo. There was just too much carnage.

In addition to road kill, Ohio seems to be big on porn. There were a shocking number or giant billboards advertising for these adult warehouses. I was incredibly curious as to what kind of stuff they had since you think of Ohio as being rather conservative. Apparently this is not the case when it comes to adult entertainment.

Carolyn lives in Ohio but in another part. She drove to Marietta to spend the next couple days with us on our hunts. It was cool to meet her in person. We had been Facebook friends for some time now. She made us look like total amateurs when it came to looking this stuff up. She had like 4 giant 3 ring binders full of data she had brought. She was amazing in how versed she was about all of the family. It was cool! She was a little stiff at first, but she loosened up as time went by. She was sweet and asked me how the boys were doing and even told me how much she loved Bobby’s hair cut. Too cool!

We headed over to where Stella used to play as a girl. Stella, as a reminder, is Ken’s great grandma. She never went by Grandma or even Mom to her own son. She is the basis of most of our hunts since she is the one who was cool enough to write down many different things including her travels from Ohio to California and lots of other family data. We mostly used her information as starting points to figure out where things were.

Papa Brenan must be quite fond of his grandmother. He was pretty excited to go to the covered bridge that she played under and crossed the river at for school and church. It was pretty run down, and filled with graffiti, which kind of sucked. But it was pretty cool to be there.

We headed up to several different small cemeteries, many of which had graves we were looking for. The old cemeteries were crazy, though. Nothing was maintained, and often they were just this little patch off to the side of the road. The tombstones were worn and hard to read. Some of the cemeteries were in people’s yards! That was pretty awesome, actually.

What was super depressing, but expected were the high number of children. Most of the time, there were family markers and the parents and then a tiny tombstone with no info on it just stuck in there next to them. It seemed pretty common to just put something down for the baby, even if they didn’t have a name. There were so many. Of course, this was the 1800’s, so it should not shock me or anything. It didn’t take away the sad of seeing them.

We were searching for the Pfeiffer house, which was supposed to be on this road called Cow Run. Yes, no joke, the road was called Cow Run. There were only a couple of houses there. We also were looking for the Pfeiffer cemetery, which was to be small. The one it seemed to be was in a yard (of course) but there were no names that helped us. It seemed odd, since there should have been family members there. We ended up asking a couple of “good ole boys” sitting on their porch if they knew the Pfeiffer’s. One of them actually led us to where they knew the cemetery was, which turned out to be the same one we thought it was. We moved on, then hoping that we could determine the address of the house.

We had already stopped at another house to get some information, which happened to be the same house that Carolyn had stopped at a year before when she had to pee. So when she had to pee again, it seemed only appropriate for her to pee there again. After the failed cemetery hunt, we were back near this house when it occurred to us it was in the correct spot that the Pfeiffer house should have been. So Papa Brenan got out and started talking to the owner some more. Turned out, it was the house! His great grandfather built that house!!! The owner, who was super nice invited us in to take pictures and even had an old areal shot of the house, which was cool to see since we had some old pics of the house.

It had not changed too much. He had added on and obviously work had been done to keep it in good condition. Upstairs, he had actually preserved some of the original beams (it had been log cabin style) behind glass so that you could see what it used to look like. What are the odds that this guy would go to that much trouble?

What was even funnier is that this was the second time for him owning the house. He had owned it before, and in one year, his wife and father passed away and he got laid off. So he sold the house. The guy he sold the house to ended up defaulting on the loan a couple years later, so the original guy bought it from him for $40K less than he paid for it originally, happened to have been remarried and got his job back at the place. Talk about fate!! He and Papa Brenan exchanged email addresses and they promised to send each other some paperwork.

With this success under our belt, we headed back to the hotel all excited at our find all because of Carolyn’s bladder.

We had some dinner at the local place next to the hotel. Carolyn, Holly and Papa Brenan ended up staying there for a while, working on paperwork for the next day, and I headed to the room for my banana time.

It was another late night since I ended up staying up pretty late again. Oh well, I was on vacation, right?

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Obviously I had some more time. LOL! I have been running these reports and in-between each of them I have been able to jot down information. I am sitting here in shock at how busy each day was. We packed them full. We started at 9 am and went till it was dark, which was close to 9 in the evenings. It was a full day. The only real problem was that food was a low priority for Papa Brenan. I learned very quickly how to not worry about how hungry I was. This may serve me well with Team Gena and the weight loss plans.

I have a meeting after lunch and I still don’t know about Bobby. I guess we will figure it all out.