A weekend with the Family

Memorial day weekend was an important milestone in my family. Dad turned 80. This is a particularly big milestone because all during my growing up years, my Dad swore, he would never reach this age. In fact he often expressed sincere and heartfelt desire to be dead before 75. Views on death are a little complicated in our family.

Well, with his birthday coming up my eldest sister decided we should get together in Idaho where Dad and Mom had lived most of their adult lives. That didn't work out. Most of my other siblings couldn't make it at that time and my Dad simply set in his heels and refused to go up there. So, my Sister decided to get herself and her now grown children together and come visit us in Utah. She told my mom to expect her at 10:00 am. Now as far as I know my sister has never arrived anywhere by 10:00 am. I can speak with some certainty that she has rarely ever arrived at a family function on time. She surprised me to no end by arriving right on time with two of her four children. We actually had a really great time. My sister has been much more attentive and respectful of me as an adult in the last couple of years. It really means a lot to me. It has been difficult for me to be the youngest in the family by 8 years. All of my siblings were out of the house by the time I was 11 and frankly, I don't feel like they know me all that well especially as an adult. I bear the blame in that because I haven't done enough to stay in contact with them.

Two important things that came out of this visit. First, my nephew who is only a few months younger than I am was a Marine, and not just any Marine, but a frontline, special forces grunt. He has some crazy stories to tell. He told us about one. He was on road block duty and following all the protocols. They were instructed that if a vehicle approaches to follow these steps:

1. Flag the vehicle and try to get their attention
2. Assertively flag the vehicle and warn the drivers
3. If the vehicle continues to approach fire a warning shot
4. If the vehicle continues to approach fire a second warning shot into the ground in front of the vehicle
5. If the vehicle refuses to slow down or stop fire on the vehicle.

Well, during this particular event a vehicle was approaching at high speed. My nephew didn't have much time and the first 3 steps happened in rapid succession with the result that my nephew fired a shot in front of the vehicle that ricocheted off the ground and bounced through the bottom of the fast moving vehicle and clipped the passenger in the @$$. The passenger was an older gentleman and once he had been shot the driver stopped the car and this older (mid seventies) man jumped out of the car and was dancing around from the pain in his derriere. It was a lot more humorous to see my Marine Nephew acting out both sides of this exchange, but I thought I ought to share. By the way, my older son thought it was the funniest thing in the world to pester and annoy the guy we kept reminding him probably knew at least 5 ways to leave him maimed or dead. Kids are stubborn.

The second and probably more important bit of information I gained from this exchange was the knowledge that I live in the heart of the Jello Belt, which extends along 1-15 from Rexburg, Idaho in the north to St. George, Utah in the south. Never heard that term but I suppose it is accurate.



View The Jello Belt in a larger map