Smiths

Cemetery for Hugh and Verda Smith

Cemetery for Hugh and Verda Smith

I recently made a visit to Ottawa Hills Cemetery to see the graves for mom and dad. I had contacted the cemetery and they emailed me maps to help in locating their graves. Their graves are in section EE and plot 84.

Map of Ottawa Hills Cemetery

cemetery-mom-dad

Bear in mind this comes from someone who deeply desires cremation. Nuke me and throw my ashes to the winds. I have never been particularly enamored with the idea of someone I love rotting in the ground.

This particular cemetery must not allow grave stones. I’m sure mom ordered the brass plate because that’s what was allowed at the time of dad’s death. I found them very depressing. With all the freezing and thawing of the ground in that part of the country the plates were all sinking down into the soil and there was no way to make them look good. Personally, if I were to stick someone in the ground I would want a marble stone that would stand for many, many years.

When mom chose the plot there was a pine tree and dogwood very near that I thought dad would like. Now there is no dogwood, no pine, only a very large tree — I couldn’t tell what it was.  Currently, their graves are located by the large tree in the center of the picture below. Who knows what it will look like in 10, 20, 30 years from now.

cemetery

Cartoons on fridge when Josh was teenager

Cartoons on fridge when Josh was teenager

Dueling cartoons

I was the first to stick this one on the refrigerator door. When I read it in the paper I thought it was the perfect cartoon to describe the mental state of my son at the age of 14 or 15 or any other teenager for that matter. I thought it was terribly funny. Josh wasn’t so amused.

Calvin and Hobbs cartoon when Josh was 15.

Not long after another cartoon showed up on the refrigerator door — Josh’s rebuttal to mine. Josh was a night owl and I was a morning person so my perky demeanor first thing in the morning wasn’t one of his favorite things about me.

Not much I could say to that one…

 

Homes in Toledo

Homes in Toledo

It was easy to recognize the house at 5723 Yermo even though the lilac bushes along both side of the back yard were gone, and the poplar trees along the back of the lot were gone. What had been new construction when mom and dad built is now a street lined with huge trees. Amazing what 30 years will do for trees.

In grade school my best friend lived across the street in the house one to the right of ours. When I looked across from our front door to her front door it appeared to be a mile away. Now I see they were small front yards, narrow roads, and her door was barely a hop and skip away.

The perfectly manicured yard that daddy maintained was no more, but still after all these years it looks like a really solid house. My bedroom window was the one to the right of the porch. I spent a lot of time looking out that window.

5723-yermo

Next stop was the high school Rick and I both attended — Whitmer High School. It looked smaller too.

whitmer-hs

Last stop was the last house they built on Raganwoods. Another perfectly manicured yard gone to pot. The TV antenna that Josh used to climb was gone. Huge trees had replaced the ones dad had planted. I was told the neighborhood is not going in a good direction.

raganwoods

This will hopefully be my final trip down memory lane in Toledo. I don’t have good memories and am not fond of the town and hope I have no reason to go back again.

Blizzard 1978 in Ohio and Michigan

Blizzard 1978 in Ohio and Michigan

Josh wasn’t quite 1 and Erik was days short of being 2 when the blizzard hit in 1978. Stacey wasn’t going to be born until that April so that meant Sandi was pregnant at the time of the blizzard.

We were living out in the country and were snowed in with an 18 foot drift in front of our garage door. The wind had scooped the snow away from the house creating a literal bowl of snow around the house that was so high we couldn’t see out of the first floor windows. It took 4 days before a front load Caterpillar could get to us and dig us out. My only experience with “cabin fever” — the feeling of being held captive made you simply want to get out of the house.

Kind people who did not know us, but were aware there was an infant in the house called to see if we needed diapers or formula snow mobiled to us. I was breast feeding and using cloth diapers so I thanked them for their concern and told them we were good.

It was amazing, but we never lost power — I can’t imagine what we would have done if it would have gone out.

 

Cartoon from 6/22/77

Cartoon from 6/22/77

I’ve been going through all the things I saved when Josh was a baby and will be posting those as I get them scanned.

I found this cartoon I saved when Josh was only 3 months old because the truth of it struck me so deeply. Children look up at adults and think they are so lucky because they have all the answers, all the solutions to life’s problems when the reality is a whole different thing…