If you have read a few of my recent posts, you know that I have written about my family’s departure from Hawaii on our way to Tacoma en route to North Dakota and the East Coast. I was ultimately headed to the East Coast to Fort Lee, Virginia to attend the Logistics Executive Development Course. The stops in Tacoma and North Dakota were to visit relatives. Oh yeah, the stop in North Dakota was also to retrieve my red Chevy van. You may have read my post about the really rough landing that my luggage experienced. To be brutally honest, my luggage was beat to hell. My luggage looked like it had been beaten by a bunch of gangbangers with chains and clubs to within an inch of its life. Well, after I settled all of the claims for my lost, damaged, and destroyed luggage with the airline and the Army, my family and I relaxed and enjoyed some vacation time with our relatives. The last thing on the agenda while we were in Tacoma was to celebrate my son’s birthday. After we had celebrated my son’s birthday and visited all of our friends and relatives that would see us and visit with us, we decided it was time to head for North Dakota. Now if you might remember, my brother Jethro was supposed to pick me up at the airport in Fargo. Well, he wasn’t supposed to just pick me up. He was supposed to pick my whole family up. But, of course, good old reliable Jethro didn’t show. This was back in the days before cell phones, so I couldn’t just call and find out where in the hell he was. I know. Shocker, huh? A time before cell phones. But yes, there you have it. A story right out of ancient history. And of course, good old Jethro didn’t exactly have a pay phone courtesy of AT&T hooked up in his car. So it wasn’t like I could just call him long distance to his car. Even if I did have a clue what in the hell that number might be. Thus, we stayed at my brother Ron’s house and went to the fair and then we went to my parents’ house. My brother Ron was nice enough to take us to my parents’ house on his day off. My stepfather and I took my red Chevy van out of storage and prepared it for operation. First, we flushed the cooling system and put new antifreeze in the radiator. Second, we changed the oil and filter. Third, we rotated all of the tires and then I took the van down and had the tires balanced and had a wheel alignment performed. Finally, we replaced all of the ignition parts such as the coil, the spark plug cables, the spark plugs, and the points. After all of my preparation was done, I purchased the air filter for the engine, and I scheduled an appointment to have an engine tune-up performed by my old friend Ed Johnson, and I had worked as an assistant mechanic for Ed in a Pontiac-Oldsmobile car garage when I was in high school. When the van was completely ready to go, my family and I spent the day visiting with my parents and then we took them to dinner at a local restaurant. My stepfather gave my children some rather inauspicious “gifts.” If you remember back-a-ways, I wrote another post about looking a gift horse in the mouth. Well, that’s what we should have done with those gifts. First, my stepdad gave my son an A.M./F.M. radio that only worked on half of the A.M. band and half of the F.M. band. But the goddamn radio didn’t work at all when he first gave it to us because the battery compartment was broken. I had to jerry-rig the battery compartment in order to get it to hold batteries so that the goddamn radio would work. That was when we learned that the radio worked on only half of each of the two bands. Nice. Dear old stepfather also gave my daughter a lunchbox that fell apart the first time that she used it. Another classic example of junk. The gifts that my stepfather bestowed upon my children were just junk that he was trying to get rid of. I guess he was too lazy to haul shit out to the trash can. I guess he figured that my kids were not worthy of anything other than junk. We told them that we were heading out to Minneapolis the next morning. We said that we would travel as far as Minneapolis the first day of our trip to Virginia. We threw away the junk that my stepfather gave us to haul away when we stopped at the first rest area we came to. I didn’t have to be in Virginia for three weeks but I had to find a place to stay for my family once I got to Fort Lee and I needed to check in at my new unit before my school started. And as with all trips, there were stops that we wanted to make along the way to take in scenic wonders. Plus, we didn’t want to rush things driving across the country with a young terrorist aboard. Of course, I was referring to the master of disaster. Perhaps you may have forgotten about him since it has been a while since I talked about the disastrous vacation in Hawaii (if you have need, just go back and jog your memory). I certainly didn’t need a repeat of that along the way to Fort Lee, Virginia. Oh hell no. Instead, we decided to drive cross country in short increments and stop frequently. We also promised to take my kids to a Minnesota Twinkies game when we arrived at my brother Craig’s house in Minneapolis. Who in the hell are the Minnesota Twinkies, you ask? Yeah. They aren’t really named the Minnesota Twinkies. They are named the Minnesota Twins, but all of the locals call them the Minnesota Twinkies. Go figure. I had an ulterior motive for going to the Minnesota Twinkies game. If you recall, way back when I was stationed in Korea, I attended a Cherry Blossom Festival in Jinhae and subsequently left my Minnesota Twinkies baseball cap hanging on a hat rack in a Korean restaurant. Obviously, I needed to replace that hat. But the Minnesota Twinkies game is a whole nother story. First, we had to get to Minneapolis. We left my parents’ house at about 9 o’clock in the morning and drove in light traffic all the way to Fargo. We got gas there and decided to feed the children, so we ate lunch. Then we drove the rest of the way to Minneapolis where I gassed up the van one final time before I followed the instructions that my brother Craig had given me to get to his house in Champlin, Minnesota. We arrived at my brother Craig’s house at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. My brother Craig and his wife were not home from work yet, so we decided to just hang out. My brother had a huge yard so we let the kids out to play. About a half hour later, my brother Craig arrived and we all went into the house. We experienced no exercises in futility during our trip to Minneapolis and my red Chevy van ran like a champ once more.
by 
by 