Never Enough Time: Looking Back On Where It Went

Author

INTRODUCTION

I can’t recall a time in my adult life when I didn’t wish for more hours in a day. I remember how embarrassed I was when, years ago, my first husband told members of my Sunday school class during a breakfast social how frustrated I was every night because I had not completed all the things on my list for that day. I’m in my 70s now, and I still make daily lists. I still never have enough time to get everything on those lists done, and I still get frustrated. Retirement did not help. There is never enough time!

John and I married in 1966, a week after I graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Cleveland State University. A week later, John and I moved lock, stock, and barrel to Auburn, Ala., where he earned his master’s degree in nuclear physics at Auburn University. Our first son, Robby, was born in 1968. Matt, our second son, was born in 1970, a week before we moved from Auburn to Dothan, Ala., where John would teach physics at Wallace Junior College until he retired. In 1975 I was hired by Dothan’s weekly community newspaper as a staff writer. John and I divorced in 1985.

John is an outdoors person like me, but unlike me, his idea of outdoor fun includes putting his life at risk. The first three parts of this memoir relate our (mis)adventures in the great outdoors. When our family set out in a panel van customized into a camper on a 10-week trip to visit national parks in the West, we had no idea of the challenges, dangers, and new experiences that lay ahead. These are recorded in Part One. We didn’t know that our truck-turned-camper would refuse to climb hills in the summer heat. We didn’t know we could comfortably tolerate an eight-day backpack in Oregon wilderness. We didn’t know we would lose our boys on a Pacific beach, or that John and I would come close to killing ourselves crossing the Rockies on a motorcycle in a storm. Undeterred but wiser, we made another trip out West the following year. Those adventures are told in Part Two. My love/hate relationship with the Nantahala River while I endured whitewater canoeing lessons is recounted in Part Three.

Reliving these memories as I wrote the first three parts, I was particularly amazed by two things: The first was the food I fed my family (since I eat very health-consciously now). We ate at a lot of fast food restaurants. Many a day, the boys evidently survived on cold cereal and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Something heated up out of a can, especially stew, seemed to have been the main dish at supper if we cooked in the camper. I guess my excuse back then was that junk food was quick to prepare, a definite plus when up against time limits.

Even more shocking to me was the nonchalant way John and I left our boys on their own to fend for themselves while we pursued some activity without them. In today’s age of structured play dates and no unsupervised discovery/adventure time, our casual attitude seems close to child abuse. But back in those days, cell phones and PlayStations didn’t exist. Kids played outdoors all day out of sight of a parent. And they not only survived, they thrived. (I did, however, make our boys shake cans of pebbles when we hiked in bear country.)

The story of my mission trip to Mexico and all its nuanced relationships, an adventure I undertook on my own after my divorce, is related in Part Four.

During all the years since those trips, despite good intentions and copious journals, I never found enough time to formally organize all this raw material into a book. Time started nipping at my heels in a different way, in the form of the Grim Reaper. Maybe I did not have enough time left to get to some day. I started writing, editing, and compiling. My plan was to write for three hours every morning before tackling that daily list of tasks. Some days I was able to squeeze in only an hour or two. Sometimes for months at a time I had to put the project completely aside when other obligations took priority.

But ultimately, a book materialized. This book. Time, it turns out, was on my side.

PART ONE

SEEING THE WEST FROM A BREAD TRUCK

June 11 to August 20, 1980

For Better or for Worse

People get attached to their car or truck, especially if it has contributed in a significant way to their lives. They even bestow an affectionate nickname upon it. Not so for me. After spending 10 intimate weeks with our 1969 International Harvester motor home exploring the American West, I still coldly referred to it as the truck. My husband John, a physics professor at the local junior college, liked to tell people the motor home was converted from a walk-in bread truck, but I don’t think its past history was firmly documented anywhere.

Our choice for a vehicle boiled down to one that kept our boys, Matt. soon to be 10, and Robby, almost 12, at a distance during rambunctious periods but close enough to converse with them and share new sights as a family. Our limited budget also mattered. We looked at used vans, new vans, and all kinds of motor homes but were still undecided in March. Our June departure loomed large.

Then we got a call about an International Harvester motor home for $2500. It had 120,000 miles on it but runs great. We got a sneak peak at it at the local Ford dealership’s service department, where some front end work was being done.

We liked what we saw, but the call had come just before the week of spring vacation in March, when we had planned a three-day backpack at Oak Mountain State Park near Birmingham. This trip was terribly important to us. We had been accepted by the Sierra Club on an eight-day family backpacking trip in the Three Sisters Wilderness in Oregon in July, and we had never been backpacking before in our lives! We didn’t want to look like the neophytes we were.

Our first and only backpack before our Oregon excursion proved to be a rewarding family experience as well as an eye opener. We learned, for instance, the food and commissary equipment should be conveniently assembled in one pack, and the very top of a mountain, where stiff breezes and cold temperatures occur, is not the best place to pitch a tent. The sorest parts of our anatomies, to our surprise, were our fingers, bruised from working recalcitrant zippers in finger-numbing temperatures. The boys carried their 16-pound packs easily as long as we made short, frequent rest stops. We covered a total of only eight miles, but the point was we survived quite well in the wilderness for three days and two nights carrying all our gear on our backs.

Work, putting away camping gear, and general chores kept me occupied the following week. Not until Wednesday, my day off from the weekly newspaper where I worked, did I contact the owner of the motor home. By that time he had promised it to a used car lot, but the deal was not finalized and he said we could drive it that night if we wanted to. We did. In fact, we drove it a hundred miles on country roads. It handled well. The engine, which was located inside the truck between the two front seats, ran well, and we got 12 mpg. John liked its 19-foot length for maneuverability. I could picture whipping up scrambled eggs and hot oatmeal in the comfort of the motor home on near freezing mornings. Money changed hands the next day, and suddenly we were the owners of a motor home, for better or for worse.

Oh, how worse it turned out to be.

Our tribulations began with the first trip to the mechanic’s shop to get shocks and brakes replaced. The frame was so rusted that the mechanic either could not get parts loose at all or they crumbled under his tools. As I wrote the check I asked myself, What is $600 compared to the peace of mind of knowing the brakes are in tiptop shape?

I thought the interior of the truck was like a miniature house, with its four-burner stove and oven, cupboards under a small sink, refrigerator under a counter top, table, two L-shaped bench seats that turned into beds, and a toilet in a back closet. The floor and walls were upholstered in variegated orange/gold shag carpeting. But the mismatch was glaring between available storage space and the list of items we wanted to take along that filled one side of three pages of notebook paper. We decided the drastic tactic of removing some of the appliances was the only solution to creating more storage space.

The burners and oven were the first things John took out. Next went the refrigerator. Out came the gas bottle and then the heater, since it was useless without any fuel. He took out the toilet because its holding tank had a huge hole in it. Finally, John removed the 18-gallon water storage tank and the water pump, leaving the entire space empty under the front bench seat.

While John’s efforts definitely improved the amount of space available in the truck, the storage capacity of our house was being pressed. All the appliances from the motor home ended up in Robby’s bedroom, which was larger than Matt’s. It already had toys and camping gear stashed in it. By the time we added the truck paraphernalia, he had to thread a narrow path to his closet and leap the water tank to get to his bed.

We bolted an old Formica table top, after cutting it to size, to the cabinets under the stove exhaust fan to create a counter for our Coleman two-burner propane stove. This addition made the truck’s interior look halfway presentable again.

A welding shop cut off the wrought iron porch on the truck’s rear end and added a new iron bumper. The taillights had been attached to the porch. Making three trips to a camper dealership parts store to finally get the correct flush-mounted taillights was bad enough, but deciphering the wires that protruded from the truck was impossible. An auxiliary battery for accessories was located in a rear compartment. Wires from the front battery were connected to the rear one, and other wires exited from the rear battery. The colors of the wires didn’t seem to be meaningful. The wires to the right rear taillight were hidden under the plywood and shag carpeting on the interior wall. How John ever got the lights to work correctly was a miracle to me. Somehow, after several afternoons and much frustration, with one of our boys in front working brakes, lights, and turn signals as John called for them, and with a couple of wires left over, we had working taillights. The truck was street legal again.

I didn’t help our crowded timetable when I backed our 1973 Plymouth Grand Fury, inherited after the death of John’s father, past the motor home and rubbed against the back right edge of it. The whole length of the corner seam split open. A sheet metal shop bent a light strip of aluminum into the necessary angled shape, and we fastened it to the motor home successfully with pop rivets.

Our next major project was to build a flatbed trailer to carry John’s Kawasaki 200 motorcycle and sundry other items we wouldn’t need access to every day. We intended to build it from the skeleton of an old foldout camper. We had been trying to sell that camper years ago when a windstorm demolished it right in our front yard. We had a terrible time getting the wood floor off the old trailer, because the smooth carriage bolts simply turned in place. Once we had the floor off, the boys arduously filed and drilled off the rivets around the metal tire well covers so we could use the covers again.

The following Saturday we intended to drop the truck off at a radiator shop (open only until noon) and then build the new trailer. In a heavy rainstorm, I drove our Volkswagen Rabbit and John followed in the truck. After a short distance, I noticed he was no longer behind me. I went back and found the truck parked askew on an upgrade not a quarter mile from our house. It had stalled going up the hill. When John tried to back it up, he had run over a mailbox on the curb to his right, putting a gash in our brand new aluminum edge. Attaching a rearview mirror outside the passenger side was one task we had not done yet.

Two helpful men and John could not get the truck to start. Finally, one of them pulled the International behind his pickup to the top of the hill. John tried to pop the clutch, but the truck still refused to come to life. He coasted all the way back to our house and parked the truck in disgust on the front lawn. It started later that day but it never got to the radiator shop.

Hours behind schedule and with rain still pouring down, the four of us worked on the trailer under a neighbor’s carport. We worked hard the rest of that day and Sunday and the next precious weekend before the trailer was essentially completed. It lacked taillights and caulking, but the angle iron framework had been extended, plywood floorboards fastened down, fenders put in place, a track to hold the motorcycle wheels fastened to the floor, and the wood weatherproofed with polyurethane clear varnish.

Meanwhile, the truck was back in the shop. A compression test showed the cylinder pressures were too low, and John decided to have a valve job done on the worst of the two banks. He also told the mechanic to check the radiator. Its core was rotten and needed to be rebuilt. Our bill came to more than $500.

We loaded John’s motorcycle on the new trailer and left both at a canvas and leather shop, where a custom tarp was made to fit over the trailer and motorcycle. We also had a ground sheet made for each of our two tents that exactly matched their floor shapes. We had learned the hard way on a previous camping trip that if the ground sheet was larger than the tent, it acted as a basin to capture and funnel rainwater under the tent, especially if people or backpacks were depressing the floor of the tent.

More complications arose when we tried to replace the International’s rear tires and spare. The shop had trouble getting the new tires on the rims, and we had to go to a second shop to get them and the front tires trued and balanced. To add to the truck’s idiosyncrasies, the back wheels were a different size than the front pair, and neither size correlated correctly to the odometer. Consequently, during our trip the odometer showed about 85 miles for every 100 of actual travel.

Adding seatbelts up front went comparatively smoothly if the contortions were disregarded that were necessary to reach the almost inaccessible area under the platform to which the driver’s seat was bolted.

John spent one whole day working on the console panel. All the bulbs were burned out. The only good news came when he found a loose wire that, when reconnected, made the oil pressure gauge work correctly. He eventually gave up trying to fix the gas gauge.

The headlights took another whole day. When we bought the truck, the headlights lit on one beam, whether high or low was impossible to determine. We bought new lamps and a new dimmer switch, but with so many variables we could not isolate the part that wasn’t working correctly. For some reason, John’s volt-ohm meter never read the same twice from the same contacts. We discovered some of the fuses were merely rolled up pieces of aluminum foil and had to buy new ones. Finally, mostly by sheer blind luck, we got the wires sorted out and the beams working correctly.

John then decided to take the fog light off the Plymouth and put it on the front of the truck. Doing so was another battle. Part of the radiator grill had to be cut out, and the remaining ribs threatened to shake loose from the saw’s vibration. The screws for the dash switch were unnecessarily tiny, so small a man’s fingers simply could not manipulate them. The newly bought outside mirror we installed on the passenger side also proved to be poorly made. Its adjustment would not hold, and one bump meant the mirror was no longer correctly aligned for the driver.

John was not happy with the way the truck swayed when he drove it. The International shop had put on shocks designed for passenger cars because it could not determine appropriate heavy duty ones. No one could find our truck’s body style number. John went to a muffler shop and, through a process of elimination, found the correct heavy duty shocks in its catalog. The muffler shop installed them.

The time had dwindled down to a week before our scheduled Wednesday departure. Between taking the boys to a Recreation Department swim clinic in the mornings and going to Matt’s baseball games in the evenings, we kept whittling away at the list of jobs that still needed to be done on the truck.

The gas tank on the motor home held only 10 gallons, so we either had to add another tank or plan to carry extra gasoline. We were told about the owner of a garage way out in the country who built gas tanks, and we contacted him. He explained how complicated and, consequently, expensive building a gas tank correctly was. But he said he might be able to locate one that would fit under the International. He did find a 21-gallon tank, a stroke of luck for us. The Wednesday afternoon of that final countdown week we prepared to drive the truck out to his garage so the tank could be installed the following day. Imagine our discouragement when John turned the key and nothing happened. The truck would not start.

John felt sure the alternator was at fault. We lugged out our battery charger, got the truck started, and managed to deliver it to the country garage on schedule.

The owner was very competent, and the tank was installed in one day as promised. When we came for the truck late on Thursday, John asked him whether he had tried out the plumbing. It’ll work, the man replied, and John knew it would. The bill was $300, reasonable enough now that we understood what all was involved. At any price, a second gas tank was vastly preferable to operating on a 10-gallon capacity or hauling gas along in storage cans. The garage owner gamely charged our battery so we could drive the International back home.

Friday John took the truck to an alternator shop. After the alternator had been worked on, however, it still would not charge the battery. Unable to determine the problem, the mechanic finally cut off a mysterious second wire coming from the alternator where only one should have been. After that surgery, the alternator worked. But John was worried. That wire had been there for 120,000 miles. It must have been good for something.

The muffler on the motor home had ruptured when the IH mechanic test drove the truck after the valve job, so the next stop was back to the muffler shop to have a new exhaust system put on.

Somewhere between shuffling the truck from shop to shop, we finished the trailer by adding wires, taillights, and license plate. The wiring diagram that came with the harness proved worthless. John had a master’s degree in physics and was not inept in these matters. The colors in the directions didn’t match the colors of the actual wires, and after step three the directions talked about three wires when we were left with only two. The poor quality of the products we purchased constantly amazed and frustrated us. Since we had already wired the truck for the trailer lights, I was tremendously relieved when we plugged the harnesses together and the lights on the trailer worked correctly.

John fixed an electrical outlet in the truck that had no power. I glued the rug back on the closet wall where we had accessed the taillight and put the new porta-potti in place.

For two weeks we had worked in temperatures in the mid-90s with no rain. On the Saturday before we left, John decided he could not tolerate such temperatures on the trip. We were dipping down into Texas to visit friends before heading for the mountains. He thought we should buy a small room air conditioner for the truck. After comparing sizes, features, and prices at four stores, we bought an 8000 BTU model at Montgomery Ward.

By clearing out the back storage compartment that opened from the outside and cutting out a panel from under the back bench seat to give access to the interior, we installed the air conditioner and turned it on. It hummed and blew air. Warm air. We waited, and waited—no cool air. We looked at each other in disbelief. We had managed to buy one that didn’t work.

We barely had time to get the lemon back to the store before it closed. It had no more of that model in stock. We agreed to take the floor model. At least we knew it worked because it had been running when we’d made our choice.

For the second time we struggled to position the unwieldy air conditioner in the hole we had cut for it, flipped the switch—yes! We were actually getting cool air. Although the arrangement eliminated lowering the table to make the double bed in back if we were running the air conditioner, I figured it was worth the trouble and expense if it gave John—and the rest of us—relief from the heat.

Sunday we constructed a leg for the bed support slat because the air conditioner installation had eliminated the panel it fit into. We also thoroughly vacuumed the shag rug interior and switched batteries with the Plymouth because the Plymouth’s was brand new.

One of the last things we did was install a new door knob because we had no key to the knob that was on the door when we bought the truck. We needed a knob that key-locked on both sides, but not a supplier in Dothan had that kind in stock. We had to take our chances with one that locked by key from the outside only.

Late Monday afternoon I finally began moving in. Up to that point the truck had been scheduled to be in one shop or another, and we didn’t want to chance having our gear stolen. Actually putting supplies in the cupboards was pleasant. Doing so made a Wednesday departure seem a little more realistic. In the cool of that night, we cut aluminum squares to fit over the holes in the side of the truck where grills and vents for the removed appliances had been and riveted or screwed them in place. They were necessary to keep the rain out and the air conditioning in.

Tuesday we worked all day and into the wee hours until 1 a.m. doing jobs such as buying a bicycle rack and installing it on the back of the truck. The installation was no easy task, we discovered, because the bikes’ handlebars were meant to fit over the sloped trunk lid of a car, but the back of the truck was vertical. We arranged all our gear in the truck or on the trailer.

We took time out only to watch Matt pitch his last baseball game that evening. We were leaving town right in the middle of the baseball season, which pleased neither Matt nor his coaches. In fact, his assistant coach offered to keep Matt until the season was over and put him on a plane to meet us. But we thought our trip was more important in the long run and decided to keep the family intact.

Wednesday, Departure Day, we got up at 6 a.m. with several hours of work still ahead of us. I spent all morning emptying closet space, dresser drawers, and bathroom shelves for the young woman who was staying in our house while we were gone. I cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed the bedroom and den, and mopped the kitchen floor.

About noon I dashed to the grocery store to stock up on things like dog and cat food for our house/pet-sitter as well as food for the trip. Whom should I run into but the wife of Matt’s assistant coach. I thought you were leaving first thing in the morning! she said. Lady, if you only knew! I silently replied, but out loud just called back, We’re working on it! as I raced by her down the aisle.

One last aggravating battle with the right rearview mirror and we were ready. John’s motorcycle, the kids’ bikes, four lawn chairs, an old suitcase with the two-man tent in it, and our backpacks filled with camping gear were secure under the tarp on the trailer. John’s and my 10-speeds were on the bike carrier. Inside we had clothes under the back bed; camera gear, lots of film, sleeping bags, and our new three-man tent under the front bed; winter jackets, vests, sweaters (as ridiculous as they seemed in the 90-degree heat), water storage cans, a radio, and a small electric heater in the closet; miscellany (hair dryer, letter writing materials, clothes line, bug spray, flashlights, our only 8-track tape, Willie Nelson: Greatest Hits) stuffed in all the small upper cupboards; maps, tourist information, and the battery charger where the heater had been; our stove and food plus games and activity books for the boys under the counter; raingear and towels under a front seat; fishing tackle and poles in the compartment that housed the windshield wiper apparatus above the front windows; a few dishes above the sink; a few pots under the sink; and things such as our saw, ax, engine oil, and propane fuel in an outside-access-only compartment on the side of the truck that had held the large propane bottle.

The house was the cleanest and neatest it had been in months. I had even done my once-a-summer thorough cleaning in the boys’ bedrooms so we would not come home to such a mess. My spring garden of English peas, broccoli, Sugar Snap peas, corn, bush beans, carrots, squash, lettuce, and radishes had been eaten or frozen, the crop residue chopped and added to a newly built compost pile of scavenged leaves and grass clippings, and a deep mulch spread to discourage weeds. The garden was on its own for the summer.

We posed at the side of the International for a departure picture. Then we drove a mile to McDonald’s and had a what did we forget? hamburger lunch. We couldn’t think of anything. Actually, I suspect we just couldn’t think.

At 1:15 we crossed the traffic circle that ringed Dothan and, at Robby’s request, honked the horn three times. In farewell? In triumph?

We were on our way.

Fishhooks and Fathers

Our first destination was a rendezvous with my parents at Kenlake State Resort Park at Land Between the Lakes in western Kentucky. They lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and we saw them usually only twice a year, once during the summer when they drove to Alabama, and once at Christmas when we braved the snow to visit them. Because we would not be home this summer, we decided to meet at a midpoint at the very beginning of our trip. They stayed in a cottage; we were at the campground. From fishing off the little dock behind the cottages to roasting marshmallows over a campfire at our campsite, we thoroughly enjoyed the week’s visit and the leisurely pace after those hectic weeks before our departure.

One of the activities we looked forward to was fishing with Grandpa, and, although we hadn’t planned it, the day we took him fishing was Father’s Day. We rented a boat and motor for the day and tried our luck in the morning while Grandpa rested. We fished in a large cove sheltered from the wind that looked very fishy around its edges. We didn’t catch any fish, but John did hook a large turtle that had greedily swallowed his worm. The fun part was watching John, with the turtle held between his knees, try to disengage the hook while the turtle tried to bite John.

After lunch and the opening of rather token Father’s Day gifts, my dad joined John and me and our boys in the small boat, and we returned to the cove. Grandpa was just operating the motor since he did not have a fishing license, but once we were at the back of the cove quite a distance from any passing boats, he couldn’t resist putting a bobber in the water himself. The second cast he caught a nice little bluegill and then another bluegill and two drum while everyone else sat there without a nibble.

I wasn’t fishing, just enjoying looking at the scenery and watching my dad catch those fish. It was very peaceful until suddenly something struck me in the forehead quite forcibly. It was Robby’s lure, a treble hook Mepps No. 2, and it was imbedded very solidly smack dab in the center of my forehead.

The wound didn’t bleed, and after the initial shock it didn’t hurt very much. As my father hurriedly headed the boat back to civilization, I’ll have to admit I was torn between crying and laughing at the mental picture of myself with that decoration parting my bangs, its spinner tinkling against the frames of my glasses.

I was really relieved when John and my dad decided to go directly to the little dock behind the cottages rather than back to the marina. If I was lucky, there would be no people there at all, and I could get inside my parents’ cottage before anyone saw me in this ridiculous state.

Sure enough, the dock was deserted. Even though I felt like I could walk on my own, my father insisted I lean on him as we climbed the steps up the hill to their cottage.

Equipped with wire cutters and pliers from his tool box, Dad and John operated on me on the bed while my mother kept asking, Don’t you think you should take her to a hospital and let a doctor do that?

John let my father take over because, he told me afterwards, my father obviously wanted to do it himself, as though this might be the last chance for him to be Nancy’s daddy. The most difficult part for both of us was when he pushed the hook through my skin so the barb could be cut off. John said blood spurted when the hook was then withdrawn, but pressure