Man I am in a FUNK! Just can’t seem to get this thing kept up. Not like I don’t have anything to go off either, we’ve actually been quite busy. Maybe that’s the issue, who knows. ANYWAY, poor excuses aside, we had a great holiday weekend. We locked up the house and headed north last Wednesday afternoon, destined for our friends Danny & Denise’s house outside Harvard, NE. We visited them last year and had such a good time that when they mentioned hosting another big party this year, we were ready to go. The party wasn’t actually until Saturday, but I’m not much on driving, so if there is a five hour car ride involved I’m gonna be there a bit. Matter of fact, by the time we got across the river I was pretty worn out, so we stopped at Martin’s house and ended up staying the night there. Gotta break those long drives up a bit.
Thursday we got back in the car and continued our north-west journey. Despite several stops along the way, we made good time and got there around dinner. We spent the rest of Thursday and all day Friday catching up, playing cards, and just sort of enjoying their farm, not to mention their pool. Last year we took Teagan along, but decided against it this year. This turned out to be a wise decision, as they recently brought two longhorns into their big assortment of animals, and I’m relatively sure she would have ended up impaled in short order. There was enough trouble with the horses last time, I think these monsters would have been too much for her to resist. I also spent a good amount of time wearing Dan out with irrigation questions. Not sure why, but for whatever reason I found the pivots rather fascinating on this particular trip. How do you water a square field with a pipe that travels in a circle? How often do those things break? What if the well runs out? Poor guy probably thought a two-year-old was staying with him. Then I noticed the surface systems and started all over again. Hey I thought it was interesting, what can I say.
Saturday was the fiesta, which was held at one of his boy’s houses. Actually the party was in the quonset, which seemed to be a quite popular structure on all the farms. (Naturally, upon taking notice of this, I bombarded them with another likely ridiculous string of questions. Hey, might as well get informed on these vacations.) It was an all-day affair, and we had a great time. The smoker was fired up with 20 pork butts working, there was a 100′ slip-and-slide for the kids, and assorted other forms of amusement. The weather suited the outdoor activities just fine, despite the sometimes annoying wind. Later in the evening a few more members of the 295th showed up, that I hadn’t seen in a good many years. They didn’t bite on my attempts to draw them into a discussion on what types of irrigation they found most practical, so we ended up rehashing old war stories of the Big One Of ’91, which as usual was good for several hours of laughs. After the enormous potluck that was dinner, we all sat back and watched his boys put on a massive fireworks display. I should add some pics in here, but of course I’ll never get around to it. They had two full pallets of the goods, stacked about four foot high. I have honestly never seen a display that big at a private party, it was great. Incidentally, the “Children of the Corn” reference comes from the fireworks. During the daytime the kids were shooting off parachutes, and with the high winds they were drifting off over the nearby cornfield. There would be twenty kids there, and then they would just suddenly disappear into the corn. It was eerie, I tell you. I’m sure the kids wondered why I insisted on calling them all “Malachai” all day.
Sunday was the unfortunate drive home. Ugh. I guess it wasn’t too bad, except I could barely stay awake. Went a lot faster than the drive up there, mostly because I was too tired to stop so we just kept hammering, save one required gas stop. We got home around 2:00, and opened to the door to an extremely baleful moaning from the second floor. Didn’t strike us as out of the ordinary; Kane (the cat) gets quite upset when we leave town for a few days. We set about bringing our bags in, making sure the house seemed in order… And still the wailing continued. Huh, that’s funny, he is usually right down here voicing his displeasure as soon as we get home. I called his name a few times, and he just got louder. Finally I headed upstairs to check it out, and found the poor little guy had gotten shut in a closet while we were hurriedly packing. On Wednesday. Four full days earlier. Oops. Needless to say, he was even a bit more put out with us than usual. That sounds like a crazy-long time, but he really didn’t seem too bad off. He headed straight for his food and water bowls, then set about telling us all about the horrors of being locked in a small closet with no litter box for days on end. He’s been known to hold a grudge too, we might be hearing about it for a few more days.