A Short Trip East
My favorite month was quickly dwindling.
After church we sat around the table with self-made subs, bags of chips, and cans of RC Cola and Canada Dry Ginger Ale. Even Rose made it in after her late-night Moonlight Ramble with Joe and a buddy downtown, followed by cheeseburgers and discussions on saltwater aquariums.
About two o’clock in the afternoon we loaded up the van to visit the “dollhouse park” in Alton, a small green hill park sandwiched by hundred year-old houses.
“So,” Dad asked the crowd behind him, only short Joe and Jaya, “does riding in this van bring back memories of all the trips we took and how you all traveled together and argued about stuff?”
A few crickets of silence.
“Nothing’s changed, Dad,” Carrie spoke for us all.
Dad laughed, because he couldn’t argue it.
Before we hit the park – a stop by the old bakery for cream horns, cookies, cannolis, etc. Chocolate milk for Irish and Puck. However, I passed on the cannoli when I realized it was stuffed with lemon curd. This was not a very good idea.
Maybe something like half an hour, forty-five minutes later, we left the park, sweat streaming down my boys’ heads, as if it was actually a hot day or something. 90 degrees in August is like a cake walk. But they had enjoyed hustling up and down that big green hill a time or two before Dad called it an afternoon and we headed west.
On the way, Dad took a detour down some of his old caving haunts, an unexpected country road near the Florissant area, which eventually wound through Sioux Passage Park to the river.
“So, did they name this park because the Sioux Indians lived in this area?” I asked Dad. “We’re not in the plains though…”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dad replied. “I never thought about that kind of stuff when I was a kid. I was just interested in blowing stuff up.”
And we wonder where Francis gets it from. Or Puck, for that matter. Later when we got back to the Big House and he ran off to play with a friend down the street, he returned with a gallon ziplock stuffed with organic matter.
“This is our ANTI-BOMB!” he announced, Calvin and Hobbes style. “All we need to do is light it with gasoline and it will EXPLODE!”
CARDINALS:
4.5 games up on Pittsburgh: 84 and 46; 32 games remaining.