Thanksgiving-gig

At the Thanksgiving-gig. (Photo by Karley Henderson.)

For Thanksgiving I did what I call a surgical-strike, all the way to northern Delaware to attend a Thanksgiving-gig with relatives in south-Jersey.
On Wednesday, November 25th (2015) I drove to my brother’s in northern DE, where I would stay the night.
Thanksgiving-day, November 26th, I crossed the Delaware River on the Twin Bridges (Delaware Memorial Bridge) into south-Jersey, to pig out on turkey with my relatives.
On Friday, November 27th, I drove home after driving back to northern DE after Thanksgiving dinner.
What follows are details of my trip:

—RE: Arguing with the GPS lady (Wednesday, the trip down):
Yrs Trly has inadvertently joined the techies by using GPS to guide his trip.
I’m impressed, but I’m not a very good techie.
I argue with the GPS.
As soon as I departed I took issue with the GPS lady.
“Turn north onto N.Y. State Route 65,” the road I live on.
“What you been smokin’, girl? Um, Delaware is south of New York, not north. You can just get stuffed!”
I turned south.
“You are on the fastest route,” it bragged. “You will arrive at (whatever).”
“You always say that,” I said. “It’s like 30 seconds after I click the start-button, you’re programmed to say that.
And you say that despite my refusal 10 seconds ago to take your first command.”
I use the Google-Maps GPS app on my Apple iPhone-6 (gasp).
I get map-commands, and a running map-display.
I have my iPhone mounted to the dashboard.
It gave me a better route across NY than what I’ve usually used.
I previewed my route, and decided I’d try it.
Except I didn’t preview it well enough.
In Williamsport (PA) it directed me to cross the river and take a highway south = U.S. Route 15, not an expressway.
Route 15 would eventually intersect Interstate-80, but so did Interstate-180 east out of Williamsport, which does a dogleg compared to Route 15.
I had decided to try 180, but the GPS lady kept telling me to turn south onto Route 15.
I didn’t.
All-of-a-sudden, deafening silence.
“Uh-oh,” I thought. “Now I’ve done it. I made her mad.”
Cue Garrison Keillor on “Prairie Home Companion.” His GPS lady says “That does it; I’m outta here! You never listen to me anyway.”
But my GPS lady woke back up 30-40 miles later when 180 ended at 80.
From there on I happened to follow her suggested route, Interstate-80 to the Pennsylvania-Turnpike Northeast Extension, then south.
As I say, I’m impressed. I pretty-much knew where I was going anyway, but she didn’t muff a single turn.
It made my getting to northern DE a snap, plus I never got to preview south-Jersey.
But GPS took me right to my cousin’s house in the south-Jersey rural outback, and by a different route than what I’d used before.

—RE: Giving my Aunt May the business (Thanksgiving day):
I arrived at my cousin’s about 2:30.
My cousin David, in his 60s, arrived about an hour later.
David was the main reason I attended this shindig; I hadn’t seen him in perhaps 50 years.
Our entire lives had been lived; we’re both now retired. My wife came and went, and he never met her.
What I knew about David, and he about me, wasn’t much.
“I see my Uncle Rob,” I exclaimed. “Same gait, same stature.”
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” David said.
We chewed the fat a while.
“I’ll want to know how your knee-replacement goes,” he said. “I may have to do that eventually myself.”
Then my Aunt May arrived, one of two remaining aunts I have.
She was born in 1930, which makes her 85. The other is 98&1/2.
Aunt May was 13, about to become 14, when I was born.
1930 makes her a Depression-baby, “a mistake,” she was told.
After my Aunt May, my grandfather was banished from the boudoir — Lizzie refused to sleep with him: “no more of that foolishness!”
My father, the oldest, was born in 1914, my Uncle Rob in 1918. May was the mistake. By then my grandmother, May’s mother, was 41 years old.
Dealing with a baby in the Depression was difficult, and guilt was hurled at my aunt.
The whole time she was growing up she was loudly badmouthed.
Does wonders for your self-image.
I know all-too-well, since I was first-born of two tub-thumping Christian zealots.
I was so smart they didn’t know what to do. Although my father was very smart too. He skipped a grade, and probably should have gone to college.
But as a child-of-the-Depression he was told to get a job.
Whither, Einstein caddying a golf-course.
My parents decided to badmouth and clobber me. And that included my mother, no matter what my younger siblings say.
I was told I was rebellious, as if I could lead a revolution.
I couldn’t kowtow to my parents. I don’t know as they actually told me I was a scumbag, or of-the-Devil, but the implication was there. I was treated as such.
It did wonders for my self-worth. I think my mother realized my father was losing me with his continual rages.
After college I walked out; left it all behind.
When I revisited my home over 20 years ago it got me crying.
I felt like I never had a family, just continual madness and putdowns.
Clearly my mother regretted I was gone. And my father looked forward to my return as the Biblical prodigal-son.
But I didn’t return, which probably made him angrier yet.
“Why do people become that?” I kept asking my aunt May.
Like why did her mother put her down? Why did my grandmother become that way? She was the only girl in a family of boys.
My take is something started an inferiority-complex that got passed along between generations.
Most of my time at this Thanksgiving gig was spent with my aunt May — two peas in a pod.
Our reaction to madness is to blurt wisecracks and snide remarks.
“Oh shaddup!” “Don’t start, MayZ.” “Oh, a smarty-pants, eh?” “Not so loud, Bobby. I’m right next to you. You don’t have to shout.” “Will you stop making me wet my pants? Every time I laugh: SPRITZ!”
(Both of us were wearing Depends; me because of my recent operation.)
Back-and-forth it went; Steaming piles: “Baloney-alert!”
I don’t know if anyone else can make May laugh, but I can.
She’s had a hard life. Worst was her upbringing: “What are you doing that for? What’s wrong with ya anyway?”
She apologized for her eldest brother, my father, treating me like he did.
“It ain’t your fault!” I said.

—RE: Driving the GPS lady crazy (Friday, the trip home):
Everything went fine until Williamsport, where I wanted to patronize Mighty Weggers.
I had come into Williamsport from Route 15, crossing the river, the route GPS suggested going down.
But no sign of Weggers.
I follow expressway along the riverfront, and Weggers is on the expressway.
But no sign of it. I got off at the “Maynard” Street exit, but “this doesn’t seem right. I want ‘Hepburn’ Street.”
Perhaps I had them backwards. I always patronize the Williamsport Weggers coming back from Altoona (PA).
So began my making the GPS lady crazy. She was trying to get me back on the expressway, and would stop in mid-sentence when I didn’t turn.
I finally ended up in far western Williamsport, so came to Mighty Weggers from the west, as I do after Altoona. By now the GPS lady was completely off-the-wall. She was having to recalculate every 10-30 seconds.
I changed routes in New York so I could go get my dog, who was in a kennel about 15 miles west of my house.
But GPS took me over a better route than I would have taken.

• Karley Henderson is apparently the girlfriend of my cousin’s son Daniel. She does photography.
• RE: “Apple iPhone-6 (gasp).........” —Some of my siblings claim anything Apple is inferior, even of-the-Devil. That’s because I have the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to use an Apple MacBook Pro instead of a Windows PC, thereby proving me rebellious and stupid.
• My left knee will be replaced Monday, December 7th. Arthritis; I’m bone-on-bone.
• My grandmother’s name was Elizabeth; my grandfather called her “Lizzie,” much to her dismay.
• RE: “MayZ........” —My uncle Rob called her “May-zie.”
• “Bobby” is me; BobbaLew.
• “Mighty Weggers” is Wegmans, a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester where I often buy groceries. They have a store in Williamsport, and are expanding in the east-coast megalopolis.
• Altoona, in central PA, is where I chase trains. The railroad crosses Allegheny mountain, and is quite busy. I’ve been to Altoona many times. —I’m a railfan, and have been since age-2.