Crusin'

When these two yahoos aren't pretending to be cowgirls and cuttin' up in front of the camera, they are students at Cal State University Long Beach. To be cousins and friends at the same time is a wonderful thing. They don't have classes together, but they do meet for lunch during the week. One of the perks of going to CSULB is that there is a beautiful Japanese garden with a large koi pond, which is free and open to the public.

The cowgirl on the right is Adrie, my sister's daughter, and the young woman on the left is Rebekah.

Her daddy, my brother Daniel, is the guy in the front there on the right who is looking quite distinguished these days with the silver in his beard and sideburns.

And this Deborah, her momma. Some day I will have to write about how important Deborah has been to our family. I believe the hand on the right belongs to my sister, or it could be Rebekah's hand. They both have long, beautiful fingers.

Debbie has a knack for getting things done and finding things out, and especially getting information out of doctors and arranging for things to "happen." My mom probably would have died in the nursing home from lack of attention if Debbie had not been on top of things. But that's another story.

The three of them took me to the pier at Manhattan Beach on the Saturday I was there, but I didn't get any pictures of that event on my camera because I left the camera at home. There is a neat little educational aquarium at the end of the pier where they do programs for school children. It happened to be open Saturday morning, and it was fun to see the exhibits.

But that's another story also. This story is actually about how Jerry, and Jennifer, and I cruised on down to CSULB in Jerry's 1952 Chevy on Sunday to see the Japanese garden and the koi (remember the them?).

So, Jerry was born in 1952 and he had a hankerin' for a car from that year. And he found one; a beauty with 41,000 original miles on it.


He bought it, and the owner's son shipped it out to California from Tennessee, complete with the invoice and the canceled check from 1952. If you click on the picture, you can see some of the details of the original invoice on the car. They charged for the tires. Fascinating.


And Jerry set to work fixing it up, and he did a beautiful job.

It is an interesting experience to go crusin' in a classic car. People stop and stare. They turn their heads to watch you go by. They wave. They smile. You can see their mouths move as they say "Wow, that brings back some memories." I had my own little set of memories -- Jerry's car reminded me a lot of my own grandpa's 1952 Pontiac.

Richard's father had a 1952 Chevy.

Men know their cars, Richard says. Men remember their cars. I can tell you every car I ever had.

And indeed he can. His first car was a 1947 Ford with a 1941 Ford front end, and then he had a 1949 Ford, and a 1955 Chevy... and so it goes.


When we got to the Japanese Garden, we saw that there had been a day-long chrysanthemum flower show that was going to close in 20 minutes.

So we didn't have to pay to get in, but many of the flowers were still on display.

Some were huge and very exotic, nothing at all like the pots of flowers one sees for sale at the local stores in the fall.


They were all very beautiful.

As were the koi, some of which were also huge. The koi reproduce themselves quite readily in this pond, so there were all sizes, and different varieties too. Some with long fins, some with short fins.

And we visited with a professor at the college who told us everything we wanted to know about the koi.


And then we cruised on back to Jennifer's house.


And I just realized that I mentioned Andrew's wife Donna the last time I posted, but I didn't include her in the pictures so... there she is sitting next to Rebekah.