#new goal one day is to get my parents 1st class seats for a trip

[drhu0806]

Sad that this will likely be the last time I'm able to ride first class for a while 😔

[rilenerocks]

You never know what small thing will set off a cascade of memories. I was driving along, running an errand, when  I went right by this construction site. The first thing I noticed was that the external rigid insulation wrap on the framing was green instead of pink. It’s the type of thing it would be normal for me to notice, as I spent over thirty years as an assessment official, specializing in commercial properties. I measured and examined them, ultimately determining their market value for the purpose of property taxes. Where I live, those values are critical for generating revenue for local taxing districts like schools, parks and municipalities. This particular location touched a nerve with me. The building that used to be there was once the home of the Prairie Dispatch, an alternative community newspaper I worked on with Michael and some other friends in the early 1970’s. We were legit. We had real press passes. This is how it’s listed in the University of Illinois Library System.

Title: Prairie Dispatch (Urbana, Ill. : 1973)

Alternate Title: City: Champaign-Urbana, Illinois  Country: United States ThFrequency: Bi-Weekly Language: English Subject/Audience: Alternative

Here are some photos of Michael and me in the office with another friend. We did everything, wrote columns, took and developed photos, designed and ran ads, and did layout. We even covered Richard Nixon in Pekin, Illinois. I wrote articles and shot and developed photos. Only one year into our relationship in 1973, Michael and I had many a frolic in the darkroom on the second floor. We all ate so many doughnuts from the Mr. Donut across the street. We kept long work hours, this volunteer newspaper being a sideline activity, not our day jobs. Sugar rushes and coffee kept everyone going. This was almost 50 years ago. Soon no one will associate these memories with that street corner.

Here’s another new building going up in another part of town. Like muscle memory, my brain still notices them, along with other building changes that are going on in our community.  The countless hours I spent driving through every nook and cranny of my hometown streets was referred to by assessment officials as viewing. I spent most of my time viewing either by myself or more frequently with Joanne.

Joanne and I have quite a story. My apartment in 1970 when I was a junior in college was in the house on the right side of this photo. Joanne rented a house located directly behind me. We were living in the midst of the alternative community, active in the anti-war movement, and trying to live outside “the establishment.” When we met, we became instant friends. She was a year ahead of me in school. She was also a much better student than me. I was always flying by the seat of my pants – Joanne, the fastest typist I knew besides my friend Fern, would invite me to her kitchen where I’d dictate papers straight out of my head and she’d tap away until they were finished. A lifesaver. She told me she just liked hanging out with me. How lovely. In those days,  Joanne was, and actually still is, a wonderful cook and baker. In her spare time back then, she prepared food for a hundred or so at Metamorphosis, the community restaurant where we ate soup, rice and vegetables, lentils and the like. I can still see Joanne coming out of the kitchen, with a steaming bowl of something that was tasty and cheap.

In the summer of 1971, I met Michael. What I didn’t know at the time was that Joanne and Michael had attended the same high school in a suburb of Chicago.  Although just friendly acquaintances, they got along well. She told me that he was so skinny back then that if he was standing sideways the only way you knew a person there was because he had a nose that marked his spot. She remembered that he played tennis, swam and was generally a really nice person. This little bit of history added a new layer to my friendship with Joanne. Nice. The following April, when Michael and I transitioned from friends to partners, she was one of the people who really believed we were going to be successful together, unlike some others who thought we were a mismatch, a disaster waiting to happen. Around then, Joanne introduced me to her friend Janet, a journalism student who was taking a photography class at the time. It was Janet who took these wonderful black and white photos which thankfully, still hang in my home 47 years later.  

  In the fall of 1972, Michael and I moved but we always stayed in touch with Joanne. In a matter of a few years, she had a job working for our local county government, while I went from working at a bank to managing several hundred campus apartments for a family firm. We were smart women who didn’t have a specific career path. We had jobs. Her work led her into understanding that our local assessor’s office was badly in need of reform. I was detesting my job, working for people who were sorely lacking a moral compass as they took advantage of their captive university student tenants, by building shoddy apartments with steep rents. In the spring of 1977, Joanne ran for township/city assessor and won. She called me and said she knew absolutely nothing about commercial property. I said I only knew about apartment buildings and she said that was good enough for her. On January 1st, 1978, she took office and immediately appointed me auditor/appraiser which eventually became chief deputy assessor. I hurriedly took 60 hours of classes, several exams and by mid-year, attained my professional designation as  certified state assessment official. For all the decades we held office, we took classes every year to increase our knowledge and further the professionalism we felt the positions required. We had two other staff members, a deputy assessor and a secretary/receptionist. The four of us were to bring our township office into the modern world, eliminating backroom deals for taxes and establishing real fairness in the burden of taxation throughout our city. We administered a program for tax relief for senior citizens and made it our business to find them all and take care of them. Our aim was to become the model government unit in our field, in our state. And we did.

It was a heady business. We computerized all our records and updated every piece of property in town. We went “viewing” which meant driving around, measuring buildings old and new to make sure we had correct records. We learned our city street by street, alley by alley. We went from the office to the car to the office. We’d both gotten married. But basically, we spent more time with each other than anyone else in our lives, including our husbands and ultimately our kids.

This was our little office building. We used one half of it while the other was used by the township supervisor whose primary task was to minister to those people who came upon hard economic times, and who didn’t qualify for other social services. We started out in a small space and eventually built an addition. All four of us shared one room with a side office for Joanne. Later, she moved into the addition and I got her space with a door for privacy.

Joanne was a few years older than me as I’d skipped a year of school early in my life and she, like Michael, had graduated a year ahead of me. In a way, transitioning from a friendship to the additional roles of being coworkers, was similar to what Michael and I had done with our relationship. Again, I was so lucky because the change was basically effortless. We worked really hard in our first few years and we got along well. But we were also getting into our 30’s and tit felt like it was getting to be the time to think about babies, not just work. 

We two revolutionary young women were moving along into the next stages of life. Joanne had the first kid. I was with her at the hospital and at her house the day after her son was born. She and I were so different. I knew I’d want a private space around me when my turn came but she had a different attitude and that was fine. Thinking back, it’s remarkable how we approached life in such different ways. She was very relaxed and not one who was constantly plunging around in emotional spaces while I was intense and fiercely probing all the time. Once when we’d taken a number of our continuing education classes together, she told me she couldn’t sit next to me on test day because my vibes were too palpable and distracting. Hah! Our work goals were similar as were our intellects, but we had crazy-different styles. I think it’s magical how we worked together. I handled a lot of the confrontations that work required and almost all the letter-writing. She was the statistician and planner for tackling  the mathematical issues. Numbers were never my strong suit although I improved over the years. We complemented each other without knowing that was how things would work before we started. 

When I got pregnant, Joanne threw us our baby shower. I think the only real conflict we ever had was that she was eager for me to return to work faster after my baby was born, while I wanted to hunker down and be absorbed by my new little universe. We got past that. Eventually I returned to the office and the viewing and the sharing of our life together.

The years passed quickly. We had more kids. We attended their birthday parties. When she had her kids, I came to the hospital or watched the older ones until she came home. As we drove along, doing our job, we talked about politics, our families and our personal issues. We went through our parents’ aging, failing and eventually dying. The year after my father died, I took my mom and my kids on a trip to Williamsburg, Virginia which had been a lifelong dream of my mother’s. We were also going to see some Civil War sites, which was my dream as I’d spent years reading and studying about what was to me, an unfathomable moment in history. We did the Williamsburg part and then it was on to Richmond. We’d no sooner arrived when my mom attempted the impossible, a walk up three flights of stairs on a bad knee. By the time she descended, she was so crippled she couldn’t walk. I was devastated. The next day, we piled into the car and headed home.

Joanne felt awful for me. The next year she offered to take a Civil War road trip  with me. She said I could be in charge of all the planning and that she’d be happy to go along and listen to me talk. Oh, and that she’d pay for all the accommodations and food while I could pick up incidentals and gas. Who does that kind of thing? Joanne does. We took our trip and had a fantastic time. We threw in Monticello and she ate George Washington’s peanut soup recipe at a Williamsburg inn where we stopped for more history. I think that trip was the most selfless thing anyone outside my family has ever done for me. A mere thirty years ago.

We were getting older. Our different styles were beneficial in our personal lives. I was good at the emotional stuff. If her kid was driving her crazy and she was at the end of her rope, I could step in and help by taking on some of those conversations. When my sister had an accident out of state, and was coming home temporarily disabled, Joanne, a better money manager than me, had her house cleaned from top to bottom. When Joanne and her husband needed a getaway, her five year old daughter came to live with me. When my washing machine broke, she bought me a new one. Joanne hosted multiple fundraisers for political candidates. I always made my special and popular chicken liver pate as a contribution for the buffet. I remember bringing my daughter to one of those where we met Barack Obama when he was running for the Senate. I made him a plate of food after he spoke. Joanne always sent me home with a fair share of leftovers. We traded recipes. Her family liked my sausage-potato-broccoli bake with cheese. Mine was partial to her blueberry spice cake. I also remember a wild New Year’s Eve when Michael and I stopped by her house before heading to Chicago. I tasted her fabulous chicken drumettes in plum sauce which were unforgettably delicious. Decades later, I prepared them for my daughter’s law school graduation party. And by the way, you haven’t lived until you’ve tasted a slice of her cheesecake. 

Joanne’s had more surgeries than me and I’ve been with her through all of them. After back surgery, she called me way too quickly from the recovery room. I dashed to her hospital room to join her and asked how she felt. She replied, “ I’m just sitting here being totally catatonic.” We both roared. After a particularly rough knee surgery she was hooked to a machine that promoted circulation in the wounded leg. It was driving her crazy and she was in significant discomfort. I sat there, pushing her pain button for the morphine drip every ten minutes because she just couldn’t do it.

Our kids were growing up. When my daughter got married, Joanne was there, as she’d always been from the beginning. When my kid was laid up by knee surgery and Michael’s cancer required me to be with him, Joanne helped out by driving my girl around town. Her generosity to my family was unending. Here’s a lovely photo of the two of them at my daughter’s wedding. And of course there’s one of us as well.

I attended her son’s wedding, too.  We loved giving each other’s kids presents. Eventually they started having their own babies. Because her house was bigger, Joanne hosted my daughter’s baby shower. When her grandchildren were born, I sent them gifts as if they were mine. The truth is, all of our kids and their partners and their children belong to both of us. Sounds strange but it feels that way – an emotional investment that extends to all of them.

Somehow or other, over thirty years went by. Because I was a few years younger than everyone else in the office, I had a longer time to go before I could finish up. What a traumatic experience when everyone’s retirement time arrived. We’d spent a lifetime together. So much had happened between us, especially between Joanne and me. The final day came, we had the requisite party and cake and then I went back to work.

It was awful. I lasted 10 months. My daughter was pregnant and I offered to provide day care if they could pay my health insurance. They agreed and I took early retirement. That was a decade ago. In the ensuing years, Joanne and I have seen less of each other. How could it be otherwise as we’d gone from essentially being together for 40 hours a week to now being in our own spaces? Still, we were viewing  in a different way. I’d do my driving and she’d do hers, but we’d call each other to compare notes on anything interesting that we’d noticed. We remain fast friends. Seeing each other or not doesn’t matter. She’s still thoughtful and generous, dropping off treats from her trips to Chicago that remind of the tastes and smells of my childhood. There’s some inexplicable, ropey, psychic connection between us that’s hard to describe. It’s unbreakable ��intimacy which is steady and reliable whether I see her or not. When I start feeling her or hearing her in my head I reach out and invariably she’s feeling me too. Neither one of us is religious but it is a powerful force. I think it’ll last forever. One of life’s gifts to me.

Viewing with Joanne You never know what small thing will set off a cascade of memories. I was driving along, running an errand, when  I went right by this construction site.

[laurasilsbee]

OUR LOVE STORY

It's my Senior year in high school ​on Saturday, September 1st, 1989 and my girlfriend and I were heading to a party at another good friends home. We were stopped at a stop sign and I was about to go, when this Jeep Wagoneer out nowhere blazed right though the intersection. All I could see were multiple heads of the passengers. We just cussed a little under our breath about how rude that driver was and then went on to the party.  Twenty minutes later that same Jeep pulls and all these younger guys are jumping out of the truck looking to have fun. I asked who the driver was and they told me it was some guy named Mead, a sophomore, and he just turned 16 today. And that was that, for the rest of the night I never met Mead. But his name stuck in my memory.  The next few weeks I kept running into this Mead guy, but never realized it. We had a lot of the same friends and hung out in the same circles. I never really thought much more about it. During this same time I had bought a Rolling Stone Steel Wheels ticket from my friend Jennifer. She had bout about 8 tickets and was putting together a fun group to all go to the concert. The big day was here, October 5th, 1989. We met at her house and that is when she said that Mead was driving us. Well, I hope he doesn't run through anymore stop signs I thought to myself! He pulled up to the house in the Wagoneer and got out and introduced himself to me. He was pretty polite and seemed really nice and fun. I sat in the back middle seat while he drove. Little did I know he was not really focused on the road, but more so on me. You see he had moved the rear view mirror so he could see me while he drove us all down town. We parked the truck in Southside, and he said he had to go run and meet someone real fast so he disappeared for about 15 minutes. I didn't really think anything of it, but when he came back I asked who he met. He told me he had to go break up with his girlfriend. Well OK then... We took the shuttle bus to the concert and we hit it off, and talked the whole way there, during and back. He was pretty cute too. Even though I was 2 years above him in school we just connected. The next day he was waiting for me at my locker and we started spending time together after school everyday. We were becoming inseparable. Meanwhile my girlfriends kept saying that this would never last. Well we have been together since then, through high school, college and graduate school. I never thought of him being my boyfriend, but a week into "hanging out" his friend was driving us around and called me his girlfriend. Did I hear that right? Girlfriend? That was that! The rest of my senior year was fun. I was ready to move on with live, but really was falling in love with Mead, and he with me.  Then next year was really hard. I was going to college in Virginia and I had made all new friends from all over the state. Friends that did not know Mead at the time. They didn't get us. So they all got to see photos of him or listen to me babble about things we had done together. Mead and I would talk on the phone almost daily. But I was getting really depressed and missed him terribly. The phone calls would sometimes end up in a stupid argument because we missed each other so much and got jealous of what we were missing out on that the other was doing. I decided the next year, I would come home and take classes in Birmingham, just for 1 year.  That next year in Birmingham while I was at UAB was so fun!!! We didn't miss a beat. By now this was his senior year in high school and he and I spent as much time together as possible. The day he graduated was awesome! He had gotten into a school in Virginia and we would be able to be up there together!  Mead was 2 hours away from me and I was so excited to have him up there. I made a promise to myself to never skip class, so I only visited him on the weekends and he would usually come see me in the middle of the week. We would definitely put some miles on the car, but it was worth it.    It was the beginning of Mead’s senior year in college when he proposed to me. We had been together a few years and his family was like mine and mine like his, by now. He had driven us to the lookout over Birmingham in Redmont. It was a beautiful night and we were talking, then the next thing I knew he was on the ground on one knee holding a ring and asked if I would marry him. I started laughing and said yes!!! I never thought this day would happen, but it did! We drove to our friends to share the news and I had asked him what my father had said. There was silence, he had not asked him. He called my dad up from our friends and told him he had asked me to marry him and my father said, "What did Laura say?" I love that! Anyway, he was excited for us and I told him not to tell mom yet.  By the time he dropped us off at home, it as pretty late. My mom was up waiting when we walked in. She was annoyed we were so late, but she saw of faces and I held up my hand for her to see the ring. Next thing you know she's opening up a bottle of champagne.  In 1996, a few days after I finished graduate school we got married and officially started our life together as husband and wife. We had a huge, fantastic wedding. We had it at Birmingham Country Club, and had all of our college friends and high school friends, plus so many others. It was a total blur and the entire evening seemed like it had lasted for only 15 minutes. The next thing I knew we were in a limo going to a surprise destination, which was Cabo San Lucas, by way of Atlanta. We probably had the most fun in that limo eating and drinking our entire way to Atlanta.   The next morning we left so early to go to Mexico, once we got there we realized this was the first time we had ever spent so much time alone. We were always with friends or family. It was so nice. During the day we vegged out at the beach or the pool and ate and drank and relaxed. We were so exhausted from the wedding. Well as luck would have it we were in a bar on the beach watching the American version of the weather station and they guy was saying the the eye of some hurricane was going to hit Cabo San Lucas in a 1 ½ days. Wow! We decided to stay and just deal with it. The rest of the trip wasn’t near as relaxing or romantic as the first part. We lost power and hot water and had to sit in the hotel lobby with all the other guests for about 8 hours until the storm had passed. The only good thing was we got free cocktails and food from the resort. We ended up having a fun time regardless and made friends with other couples from the states on their honeymoon. It was definitely memorable.    Three weeks later we left hour home in Alabama and moved to Park City, Utah. We decided we wanted to spend our first year of married life in the mountain close to a ski resort, since this was the only time in our life we could do this. We rented a condo sight unseen from the newspaper. We spent 3 days driving out west and finally got to Park City, our new home. We got “real” jobs, but always seemed broke, however we loved every moment of it. We had each other and we were starting our life together! During the year, we had so many people come and visit us, we skied, we ate in 5 star local restaurants and we hiked and camped and were in the most beautiful surroundings. Best of all I was with Mead. It was like a dream come true. Before we could blink a year had come and gone.   We ended up buying a home and living out there for six years because we loved being in the mountains and the summers out there. We became parents to our first puppy, a German Shepherd named Lisa. We would travel out west and camp and hike. We made amazing friends, and by then we had fantastic jobs in real estate and lived the most incredible lifestyle. In 2001, Mead’s brother got sick and it was life threatening, so Mead had to fly back and forth many times to AL. Finally we decided that we needed to move back home and be with the family. The next thing I knew I bought a house, while I was home for a wedding and Mead hadn’t even seen it yet (he was still in Park City). Two weeks later, Mead came home for a wedding and saw the house we bought and went on some job interviews. The next thing I knew he had a job and he was moving home. I still had job commitments and I couldn’t move for another few months. In June 2001, I moved back home.    When I got to Birmingham I drove to my new house, which Mead had already moved into and unpacked. He was so excited to show me things he had done the the house, like plants he planted and photos he had put out. It was so exciting and scary that we were back here at home. We had the marriage thing dialed in, but we were never married where we lived in the same town as our families. Thank goodness Mead and I have a very loving, stable relationship. We are so lucky that we are each others best friend, in addition to being married.   Both of us are social people and love to entertain at our home. Cooking helps both of us unwind from work and we enjoy spending the time together catching up. Even now, after the kids go to sleep, we pop open a bottle of wine and sit outside to have fun and talk about our future, dreams, our goals and future children. We have fun spending time with each other at the lake and beach!  Mead and I we so young when we got married and have grown up with each other and have experienced many things together. I guess the main thing we had to adjust to when we got married was being around each other so much. But it was really nice, because we also had to completely depend on each other because we were alone Park City and so far from home.    I have a deep love for him!!! Now we have been together for over half of our lives and he is my part of my heart and soul. When Mead walks by me, he always smiles my way, which still melts my heart.  He is so supportive, caring and giving with the people he loves. He is a warm and genuine person and is always conscious of my feelings. I can’t even count the times he has brought flowers home to surprise me. Mead is the most optimistic person that I have ever met; he is always looking on the bright side of things. His thoughtfulness radiates from him; if I need him to help me do something he will stop whatever he is doing to help me. Since I have known him, he has been extremely respectful of me, our family and our friends. How can you not love that!!   We have been through a lots of rough patches since we moved home. I struggled with infertility, our twin passed away due to premature birth, my father passed away and his brother passed away. Just some really crappy cards. but he is my rock. I look at him and still crush on Mead.  I can’t envision life without him and am still in love with him and am looking forward to continue to growing old together! ​cheers to another 30 years together!!! Not to shabby for 2 kids in love as high school sweethearts! Time flies when your having fun!!! Love you babe! xox, Laura