MY MEMORIES

RAGBRAI (continued)

From the campground I called an elderly Grandaunt on my mother’s side and she and her sister came to the campground one evening. We sat in the motorhome chatting about family when one of the Grandaunts dropped a bomb. “I remember how upset Aunt Lilly was when your mother got married,” she said. It took me a moment to figure out who Aunt Lilly was, my grandmother was Lillian. I replied, “I thought my father got along just fine with my grandmother.” Then the bomb, “It wasn’t him it was the other fella.” When they realized that I had no knowledge of any other fella, they suddenly got amnesia and would say nothing more. It took two years of genealogical research to find the ‘Rest of the story’. At age 19, my mother was indeed married to another fella. The marriage ended a year later in divorce, there were no children. Eleven years later my parents were married.

As the result of the semi destorying of our borrowed camper trailer, I had a badly bruised ankle and walked with a limp for a week. However, I found I could ride a bicycle just fine so we traveled on in our rented motorhome to Siowx City where we picked up Alyse and Eric and we three rode RAGBRAI with Nancy as our support crew.

Previous PAGE Next