Folk tales...

Folk tales...

Had a great evening tonight swapping stories at Pete's tonight, following supper with my mother and the rest of his family. I needed some good belly laughs.

Somehow he got to wondering how Goshen College tracked him down when he was working at Rocky Mountain Camp the summer after he graduated from high school. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that at that point he hadn't applied to college yet. Somehow admissions got him the application and got him there for the fall. I told him that was a no brainer: Dad had done it. Then I told how he was the one who kept bugging Waterloo until they accepted me at the last minute in the middle of August after my senior year. At the time I was bumming around somewhere in Wyoming or Idaho. I had pretty well given up on the idea of going to UW, and though he never said it, I'm pretty sure Dad called up on my behalf while I was on the road. I was home, picked up my stuff and was in Waterloo in probably less than a week.

That led to the story of that first move to Waterloo. Dad and I left home about 6:30am, and got about 45 minutes down the road before I realized I had left my guitar sitting in the house. I made a U turn on 131 and went right back to pick it up. To say Dad was miffed is an understatement. Still we made it to Waterloo by 1 or 2. He dropped me off, jumped in the car and headed home. Later he loved to tell the story about picking up a hitchhiker somewhere around London. The talk to turned to Canadian beer and Dad reported that he and his new hitchhiker friend pulled over at the Tavistock hotel and had his first Labatt's Blue right then and there. He still made it back that night, which led us to some well worn conclusions about how fast everyone - and especially Dad - drove 35 years ago. Which led Pete to tell of the time he drove me up to Waterloo and got back home so fast that he stopped to visit some friends for a couple hours so he wouldn't have to explain why he was home so early. Which reminded me of another time that I hitchhiked from Detroit to Waterloo. That trip included a ride over the Detroit bridge with a guy who stuffed his bag of dope under his dashboard when we got pulled over at customs. We/he didn't get caught. Then the next ride out of Windsor was with some guy in a Volvo doing at least 120mph en route to Montreal. We made it all the way to Waterloo in a little under 2 hours. Some trip.

What a great way to pass an evening.