A Trip to Remember

Anne and Algebra in the Grand Canyon

As you get older, you begin to assemble lists of the things you’d like to do before you… well, before you… You know! You know what I mean! Don’t you?
by Charlie Leck

If you’re up around my age, you know exactly what I mean by the statement above… or at least what I was trying to say in the statement above.

I’ve listed here before a few of the things I want so much to do before… before,… you know!

The Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul

A cruise in a small ship into the Alaska wilderness

A few days in Oklahoma (which, after Alaska, would be the only state in the Union I haven’t visited).

A ball game at Fenway Park

There’s more, but they’re really only personally important… you know!

Last year I was able to take a visit to Prague off my list. I had such a wonderful time there that it made the rest of my list seem ever so much more important to me.

I only discovered recently how important my wife’s trip down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon was to her. She and her daughter attempted the trip down from the South Rim of the canyon. My love came home with over 250 photographs.

“Here, print these for me!”

It wasn’t a stern command – just an impatient one! She was bubbling over about her trip and how exciting it was – and how fulfilling! She wanted to go over the photos again and again.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do – something I’ve only dreamed about.”

She did the trip her way – riding down there on the back of a mule. You have to know her! She loves mules. She’s owned one mule or another (and sometime more than one) from the day I met her. Molly was her faithful mule when I first met her. Oh, my! How Molly loved and trusted my wife – and vice versa!

For a while she owned a pair of matched, pinto mules (Katie and Becky) and they brought us tons and tons of fun (but that’s another whole and long story). A fellow came to our farm and met these two beautiful mules, and simply had to have them. He was such a mule lover that the dear woman thought they’d have a better home with him than us. It was a nice thought, but, I’ll tell you, Becky and Katie lived a life of which mules could only dream while they were with us. We have a photo of them hanging in one of our most used rooms in our house – the toilet room off our master bathroom. My, they were beautiful girls.

Other mules followed them in residence here on our farm. Some, like Strawberry, weren’t quite so successful. Our current family mule member is Reba. She’s a beauty and she and my wife go out exploring together on a pretty regular basis.

When I ran all of her Grand Canyon photos through Light Room and properly exposed them and sharpened them and, eventually, printed them, I was so impressed with the beauty of the flora and fauna, the spectacular colors of the rising sun in the deep, deep canyons, the unusual color of the river running through it, and the spectacular and bright colors of the gigantic rock, that I understood the fascination she had about the adventure. My wife went first to the photos of the mules and wanted to talk about them and describe them and talk of their dexterity and strength and loyalty.

I don’t know how to explain it. You just have to know her. None of it came as a surprise to me.

She enjoyed her voyage so much. She was aglow with excitement when I picked her up at the airport. After she’d gotten in my car at the airport, she virtually bubbled over as she tried to tell me everything in the first five minutes we were together. In fact, it will take weeks for all the excitement to expend itself. I’ll enjoy these moments, watching the fire in her eyes and listening to her descriptions of the canyons and the mules.

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For Whom I Write

Elgin, Lagrange and Oak Lawn, down in Illinois, for Memorial Day.
by Charlie Leck

I was with a couple of the grandchildren this weekend – down in Illinois. Anne was judging a horseshow on Saturday (28 May) in Elgin and it seemed a good opportunity for me to join her and take the train from Elgin to downtown Chicago and then out to Oak Lawn to visit my daughter, son-in-law and two of our grandchildren. Mind you, I’m six weeks out from my hip-replacement surgery and everyone surrounding me wondered if I should be taking trains to Chicago and walking through Union Station and climbing up into a commuter train to the suburbs. But I – I – well, I love trains and I love venturing out on my own and I’ve been feeling a strong dose of cabin-fever lately. I needed out.

Oh, my! I had a wonderful time.

Anne dropped me off at the railroad station in Elgin. She was having some trepidation about the whole thing and beseeched me several times to just let her drive me all the way into Oak Lawn.

“Nonsense!” I told her with great firmness. “You know how I love trains. I’m excited about taking the Metra Line to Union Station and then finding my way out to Oak Lawn.”

I wasn’t putting her on. I love trains. And, I love riding on them. A few weeks ago I made a list of the half-dozen things I’d like to do before I die. Two items on the list had to do with trains.

I’d like to take the Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul!

I’d like to take the Canadian VIA train from Toronto to Vancouver (Sleeper Touring Class)

This September I’m trying to work it out so that I can take a train from Paris to Prague. Another of the items on my “bucket list” is to visit the city of my maternal family’s heritage.

A young man – of twenty or so – helped me move around in Union Station and joined me in the long ticket line to purchase passage for the short run out to Oak Lawn.

“Can’t I just buy a ticket on board?” I asked.

“But you save $3 if you purchase the ticket here,” he explained to me.

The line looked to be a half-hour long and I don’t stand around to well after this hip surgery, but the boy was so genuine and helpful that I tagged along with him as we wound around and around the queue barriers. We learned a lot about each other’s lives (his certainly sounded more exciting) and I enjoyed my time talking to him. On top of that, I fell in love with the lady behind the protective glass shield at the ticket window.

“I’d like a one-way to Oak Lawn,” I politely told her.

“Are you a senior citizen?”

“Why, yes. Yes I am.”

“Sure? Sixty-five?”

“Indeed,” I laughed. “Seventy!”

“You certainly don’t look it,” she lied with a wink and a big smile. "Take the Manhattan Line on Track 14."

It’s a 35 minute ride out to the Oak Lawn station. The first 20 minutes of it are spent creeping through the rail yards that lead into and out of Union Station. The rush hour had started early on this Memorial Day weekend and extra trains had been added. It slowed the trip down as the trains traversed the crowded tracks near the depot. Once away from the yard, the train made up the time it had lost and flew through the Southside of Chicago with stops only in Wrightwood and Ashburn before pulling into Oak Lawn. They were waiting there and they were a beautiful sight for my tired eyes and I loved the hugs and kisses they shared with me.

Well, seeing two of my grandchildren – for whom I write this blog (so that there will be something of a memoir left behind me) – was just wonderful. Oh, my! How they grow. The oldest grandchild, now seven, was reading to me like an adult – swift and smooth and with meaning!

They made sure I had a good time – and Grandma, too, when she joined us on Saturday night. A family barbeque with lots of my son-in-law’s uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces, plenty of time playing children’s games, an attractive tattoo for my arm and a really lovely visit to Lagrange – a really handsome and colorful town that I will always remember as a special and good place. Breakfast at Mulberry Hill was terrific!

I’m home now and I’m ready to tackle some of life’s complex problems. Here I go again! I’ll be offering solutions for world peace, ending homelessness and hunger, growing jobs for America and the industrialized world and improving agricultural out-put. Tune in again when I’m not so melancholy about grandchildren and trains.

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If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.