This Stop Willoughby

When I was  four years old, we drove from Michigan to Florida.  It's the first family vacation that I have any memory of.  My mom's favorite aunt and uncle were living there, so the plan was to visit them, go to Disney World and spend some time at the beach.  Disney World opened in 1971, so it was less than a year old at the time. The Cover of Life Magazine in October, 1971 Because I was so young, I only remember bits and pieces of the drive, but I know we took the station wagon and that my grandparents followed us in their car.  This was, of course, a long time before cell phones, so we kept in touch with them by holding up signs in the back window of the car.  I'm not sure who wrote out the signs, probably one of my brothers, but they would say things like "Gas station, next exit". I also remember that as the summer of America.  Not the country, the band.  It seemed that every radio station along the way was playing "Horse With ...

Then: Back when I was a kid, in the 1970's, family vacations were a little bit different. First of all, in those pre-internet days, you couldn't just sit down at the computer and look at different destinations. If you didn't have a specific destination in mind, you would probably start by looking at the road atlas. Once you found a place of interest, you would usually go to the local AAA office and get a travel guide for the area. From there, you could call or write to the different hotels/motels for lodging information. A week or two after that, you would start to get letters and brochures in the mail from the hotels/motels you contacted. There were no travelers' reviews to help you make your final decisions, so you had to hope the brochures were good representations of each establishment. Having once stayed at a motel where our room overlooked the town dump, I can tell you that many were not. Now:   Sit down at the computer, Google the name of your destination or t...

You know what I'm doing right now (besides writing my blog)?  I'm sitting on my back porch watching the sparrows come and go on the bird feeder.  I'm also watching a few butterflies that have taken a liking to the shrubs on the other side of the porch railing.  The sky is blue, there's a nice breeze and for the first time in a few weeks the temperature is a mild 79 degrees with low humidity.  There's nothing earth shattering about any of it, but it's good.  Simple, but good. The best thing about simple pleasures is that you don't have to go far to find them.  More often than not, they find you.  A little while ago, for example, while I was sitting here quietly, a hummingbird stopped by to check out the petunias in my hanging baskets.  This amazing little creature hovered effortlessly above a flower, not more than six feet away from me, for several minutes.  It wasn't the first time I'd ever seen a hummingbird, but it was a wo...

The other day, Mr. Willoughby said "I miss your blog."  You know what?  I do, too.  So here I am. It Doesn't Sound As Funny Once You're Used To It When you've lived some place for a while, you get used to the names of cities, towns and streets around you.  Even the most ridiculous names become commonplace and you stop noticing how funny they really sound.  Even if it's just a simple case of mispronunciation. I live in Michigan and my little town has a perfectly normal name.  Nothing funny about it at all.  Same goes for the street I live on.  But if you go to the edge of town, you'll run into a road called "Gratiot".  If you're not from this area, you may not know how to pronounce that name.  Phonetically, it's pronounced "Grash-it", but if you're giving directions over the phone, it often comes across as "Grass Shit".  Now if you go north of my little town, you will eventually run into the town of Port Hu...