08.08.08 – My Lucky Day

I’d hoped to finish my posting about summer jobs before this special day arrived. But I didn’t, and before 8:08 p.m. tonight, my children and grandchildren will all arrive and the Olympic torch will be lit at 2015 Cessna Street in Ames. We have four birthdays to celebrate, the Iowa State Fair to visit (the one the musical was written for-- not Texas; that was the movie version’s corruption), Thomas the Tank Engine and the Boone scenic railroad to ride, and kid’s day at Iowa State U’s athletic department to take in. Whew!

Oh, and of course, we’ve also got to root for our local gymnastic sweetheart, Shawn Johnson of Des Moines, as she goes for gold in Beijing.

As the last crop of rhubarb turns into a pie and the beds are freshly made up, I’m thinking of my blog and hoping, dear readers, you’ll check back next Thursday, at which time normalcy will have returned and I’ll have a new posting.

Office closed

For now, I have gone fishin’, figuratively. I’ve been looking for a way to use this image that Carol Kress Freburg sent me last month.

She went fishing a lot with her father, Bill Kress, who owned and operated the Swap Shop on East Street. Among many other things, he sold fishing and hunting gear. (Guess where Carol was working in summer 1958?)

Meanwhile…

I’m passing along a message (already on the class website) from Pete Brandt about one of our NAHS teachers:

PLEASE SEND MR. CONWAY YOUR BEST WISHES

Bill Young gave me the assignment of contacting several of our teachers to invite them to the reunion. The other night Mr. Duane “Jake” Conway called from North Fort Myers, Florida, to thank me for leaving a voice mail message inviting him to our party. He regrets that he can’t join us; he had been away from home when I called getting chemotherapy.

I asked him for his address, and he willingly gave it to me. At the time, I was thinking of visiting him when we return to FL in October, but on second thought, I think now is the best time to communicate. If others who remember him as fondly as I do would drop him a note of encouragement or a card, I think it might please him. He had kind words for members of the Class of 1958.

His address:

Mr. Duane Conway

5620 Captain John Smith Sloop

North Fort Myers, FL 33917