Monday, March 14, 2011

THE BIG HOOP-DEE-DOO

Dearest Friends,

Neither of us can remember the exact details of this event, such as which side of the river John was on when it happened, or how he even got home that first day.  I find that rather strange, considering it was all anyone could talk about at the time.  Anyhoo, one day a giant truck went crashing through the only bridge that connected Anyer Beach to the B&R fab yard, and what I do remember is sitting on my little porch stoop, waiting for John to come home, with the growing sensation that something was terribly wrong.
By the time he did arrive, I was a sniveling mess.  Perhaps that was when they had to go way out of their way, and drive along the beach.  You know how long repairs like this take, even in the most modern of countries, so imagine what an ordeal it was, in a place with no infrastructure for that sort of thing.
All I know is that for weeks, if not months, afterwards, John got to add another hour or so to his already long commute and workday, six days a week -- driving as far as the river, parking his car, walking across that rickety little foot-bridge, then somehow being ferried the rest of the way to the fab yard.  Not everyone was upset, though.  The locals found it all to be immensely entertaining.

2 comments:

Sharon Lippincott said...

Oh, my! That does look like food for long-term conversation! And of course you were totally nuts waiting. I even appreciate the color-fading in those old photos. It lends such a retro air.

Hill Country Hippie said...

Those photos were the impetus for me having a second blog - which I NEVER planned on. In the back of my mind I kept thinking that maybe someday I'd write a memoir about this time period, in book form. But then we downsized houses and started sorting through all our stuff, which included a ton of photos from that period. My kids went nuts over all John's black & white photography that he was doing then, and I loved it that some of them had taken on a sort of sepia tone with age (which is what led to the idea for an antique scrapbook design). What a shame it would be to just put them back in the closet, rather than share them with the world! Plus, if I shared my tales in blog form, I could get feedback from others who were there with us, and might remember stuff that I had forgotten! So, here I am, having shared only a couple of months worth of stories, with at least five year's worth yet to go!