It has become a habit on the once-a-month hour-long trips I make to Surprise for supplies, that I pull into McDonald’s drive through at the east edge of Wickenburg, for a cup of coffee to keep me alert. I handed the smiling clerk a dollar and she informed me that a small coffee was free all that week. It was a nice start to my day although generally 76 cents doesn’t stretch my budget too far.
Anyone who knows me personally or who has read my stuff over the last 20+ years, would know that cooking is not my forte. Walking through Wal-Mart, a puzzled looking young man stopped me with this, “You look like you are a good cook so you would probably know where to find the Liquid Smoke.” I’m not sure how he surmised I looked like a good cook. Maybe he figured if I had survived to this age, I surely had to know how to cook. At any rate, my guess was that it might be in the barbecuing section. A couple of aisles of running into each other later, he raised up the bottle of Liquid Smoke in triumph.
My MI sis-in-law Nora, who is in AZ for the winter (Can you blame her?), went to the Home and Garden Show at the AZ State Fairgrounds with me. After wandering what seemed like forever, we sat at a picnic table with four strangers. The fellow next to me was gnawing (literally) on a huge turkey leg, one of the show’s specialties. It wasn’t long before we were all teasing him and he gave back in full measure. We were soon swapping stories and telling whoppers. He was a real Arizona native, a rare find these days. We soon discovered that the other three people, along with Nora and I, were from various parts of Michigan. A small world after all.
Our church congregation encompassed only the Young at Heart for too long but in recent years, we have gathered in a few children, some who have literally learned to walk as they dodged the legs of mostly senior citizens. Our young choir director has two children, one barely beyond the crawling Rug Rat stage. Usually in a room with a teaching/babysitting type person, he escaped and ran pell mell for the chancel steps yelling, “Daddy! Daddy!” He was fast, but being very young, and very big with very long legs, Dad caught him on the top step and scooped him up to go back to “school.” This all happened while Pastor Paul was delivering some important and serious information but he never missed a beat. We in the congregation probably missed some of the content but despite the interruption, we were all smiling and I expect God was, too. God bless until next week.
Minshall’s RVing Alaska and Canada (A “How to” and “Why not” book) is available thru Amazon.
At 45, Widow Minshall began 20 years of solo full-time RVing throughout Alaska, Mexico, and Canada. Sharlene canoed the Yukon, mushed sled dogs, worked a dude ranch, visited Hudson Bay polar bears, and lived six months on a Mexican beach. She lectured at Life on Wheels, published six RV-related books and wrote a novel, “Winter in the Wilderness.”
Leave a Reply