April 2, 2012

• Bros on the Road

  After an enjoyable week together, Dan and I are taking our re-union party on the road. First stop will be Dan's Uncle Jerry in Port Charlotte, where a round of golf is contemplated. Then onto Fort Lauderdale and Dan's new cousins, who are eager to meet him...

  

  Having Dan here is like having Dad as a pal, only a cooler and hipper, less judgmental version of Dad.

  

  Us, looking as unalike as we can

  

  Our Dad, on the left, and Uncle Bill, his brother. Think we favor them any?

   

  There will be dispatches from the front, unless I am sitting in the back. I will just update this post, unless things get unwieldy.

   

  DAYS 2 and 3

  Day One was travel, not much to talk about. We took the woodsy route, and beat Holley and Michelle, who were taking the Interstates down to Sarasota. Holley is moving there, Michelle is helping with the driving.

  Anyway, we left the house about an hour after they did, and we reached the Sarasota area about the same time. Of course, we didn't scoff and chortle, being too adult for such things, and we had another hour of driving to do in order to reach our first goal, the home of Jerry R., Dan's uncle.

  

  Jerry is one cool dude; he is retired, lives alone, and helps the local jazz society and a performing arts company by building sets and handling ticket sales. His nephew designed the comedian Gallagher's water-spewing, outsized furniture that he uses to hose down his audience during his act. He took in my brother during a time of family difficulties, and they remain close. We sat and reminisced for two whole nights, while listening to some truly tasty jazz.

  

  A pretty bush graces Jerry's front yard. Anyone know the name of this plant?

   

  The real prize of the first leg of the trip was seeing and touching this.....

  

  When Dad and Florence got married, they bought a house in Detroit. The developer gave each new homeowner a ladder. After they lost the house, Jerry went over and got the ladder, and has kept it all these years, bringing it to Florida when he retired. After we had sufficiently grokked the heck out of it, the ladder joined some yard waste, it is being picked up by the trash truck as we speak. Jerry kept a piece of the paint tray, I took pictures of the 67 year-old appliance, then left it to its fate. Sorry Pops, no room in the Hyundai for 6.5 ft of memento, and Jerry wanted it gone. Thanks for keeping it just long enough, my friend.

  

  Jerry remembers Dad as a get-rich quick wanna-be sort of guy, which is polar opposite of the penny-pinching, money-saving debtophobic that raised me. Guess dad's experience with losing home and family affected him. He joined the CAA, soon to be the FAA, for its swell retirement bennies.

  I think we are leaving for Fort Lauderdale today, but Dan is no more an anal-retentive plan-each-moment type A personality than I am.

  I will let you know as soon as I know, deal?

  days 3 thru 5

  I've been a little busy, sorry to keep you waiting. We did leave for Ft. Lauderdale the next day. and had a pleasant ride across the peninsula via Alligator Alley. 

  

  Kathy and Mitten, our cousin and her husband, were glad to see us when we got there, and took us to a ball park to watch their grandson play T-ball. Jason, their eldest, is the coach for the team. Rain forced a cancellation, and we returned to their house for dinner and conversation. Dan's Uncle Jerry had surprised us with the news that our dad's older sister had an affair with Jerry's brother back in the day(1940's), and we got share that juicy gossip with Kathy. Thursday morning, mitten took us with him to drink coffee with his crew at a cafe called Einstein Bros. While they are no dummies, we saw no evidence of genius, either in the customers or the employees. So Dan and I decided that they were EINO's, Einsteins In Name Only. 

  

  

  

  Dan and Mitten;s Mom, a wonderful lady

  

  the site of the annual Swartwelder Easter Egg hunt

  

   

  After sharing info and pics, we decided, pretty much on a whim, to head for the Keys, so Dan could see the house on Summerland Key in which Mom and Dad had lived in the middle to late seventies.

  

  Then we drove on the Key West

  

  

  

  

  

  Your better photographers look for and capture the symmetrical harmony that is inherent in the natural world

  

  While pondering the state of the world in Cowboy Bill's, Dan gets a call from our cousin Shirley, who had just gotten off the phone with yet another cousin, Janet, daughter of our Aunt Dorothy. Janet happens to live near our planned route northward, so we added a day to our trip, and two long-separated brothers will be meeting with a long-lost cousin this afternoon. Janet's sister Carol has passed, and her other sister, Doris Jean, is ill. Doris Jean lives in Hawaii, so meeting her is out this trip. I plan on getting her number from Janet, or maybe calling from Janet's would be the way to go. 

  We saw Janet! More later!

  Days 5 and 6

  

  We experienced little hassle at the border...

   

  Janet is the oldest of Frank Cobb's grandchildren, only Richard's daughter Kelly is younger than I. Janet, or Jan, which she prefers, and I are 28 years apart in age, but she is one fit lady, I'm here to tell you. 

  

   

  Jan lives in a very nice trailer park near Tampa-St. Pete. She is active in her church, she is a distributor for an alternative health supplement supplier, and she paints.

   Boy, does she paint! Observe....

  

   

  

  She also has paintings of feet and dogs, which I failed to photograph, and she paints pictures on husks of the seed pods of palm trees, which she collects from the piles of yard waste in her trailer park.

  

  

   

  

  

  Jan would not part with any of her pieces, although she does sell some, and she gets paid to do portraits of peoples' dogs. I hope that she can find the time to do a picture of one of our Pomeranians.

  

  I have discovered this week just how lucky I am to have such good and creative people in my family. 

   

  After an enjoyable meeting and dinner, Dan and I bid goodbye to our cousin, and got a room in Homosassa Springs. Stop snickering, out there. Homosassa is a Creek Indian word, meaning 'land of many pepper plants'.  

  Cathy met us in Perry yesterday, and we said our goodbyes. I would have been glad to have spent another week with my new-found brother, and I think Dan felt the same way. I am decompressing now, coming back to my regular life at a slow steady pace, pondering the discoveries and familial camaraderie of the last six days. 

  There was no reason to expect that Dan and I would find common ground, that we would bond, or even enjoy one another's company. All three things did come about, however. Both of us needed closure concerning Dan's abandonment by our father; every day, Dan felt Dad's absence in his life, and I have always missed not having a sibling, especially since Mom and Dad passed. We were each other's friend, counsel, soundboard, and confessor this past week, the best week of my life.

  See you real soon, brother-man.

  • 7:34 am
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