Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Lois drove in to fax some papers and then drove back to pick up Patience and Jake at O’Hare airport. We drove our car in with her, but then continued on north to Milwaukee and the little town of Port Washington. We intended to do a Volksmarch there, but neglected to read the fine print which said it was only open until October 31st. We persevered on the off chance that they had forgotten to remove the start box and we could still grab the map and do the walk, but no such luck. When we arrived, the young lady reported that they had picked up the box on schedule.

We decided to walk around the town anyway and started off toward the harbor. But then we saw stairs and a sign for a lighthouse on the bluff above us, so we trudged up about 100 stairs and found a very picturesque little cottage with a lighthouse on top. I read on a plaque that the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg had contributed to the restoration of the lighthouse, and I was mightily curious what that was all about. We were taking pictures when a woman approached and asked if we would like a guided tour of the lighthouse. We love lighthouses, so we said sure and followed her in.

For the next two hours we were regaled with the stories of the history and more recent restoration of the lighthouse, which was still in progress. The restoration story was quite curious because the involvement with Luxembourg came about in a coincidental way. Apparently the Luxembourg government was tracing the descendants of Luxembourg immigrants to the Wisconsin area. They heard of the old lighthouse and made an offer to completely construct and install the light tower on top of the house if the local historical society would undertake the restoration of the rest of the house. They agreed, and only later did they find out that it required a complete gutting and reconstruction of the first two floors of the house to the original specifications, which was a tremendous task. During the tour she gave us a blow by blow description of the reconstruction process. They had acquired a nice set of antique furniture to represent the active period of the lighthouse from the 1860s to 1934. They knew how to arrange it because she had interviewed the daughter of the last lighthouse keeper (at age 94 and still sharp as a tack!) who had lived there for the last 20 years, and obtained the details of the house layout. The hand pump for the sink and the old icebox reminded me of the Michigan farmhouse I had visited as a child--nice memories. She took us all the way to the lighthouse turret on the top of the house—the steps up the final section were really, really steep but we were rewarded with a marvelous view of the lake.

After the lighthouse tour we didn’t have a lot of time to walk around the town, so we limited our walk to the harbor area and adjacent main street, wrapping it up with lunch at a deli right on the harbor. The food was good and we had a nice view of the harbor, so it was a lot of fun. We drove back to Lois’s, thinking all the while that we would be late, but as it turned out we arrived before she returned with Patience and Jake from O’Hare airport. It was nice to see them again and we talked nonstop while we made pizza for dinner.

That evening, Monika and Lois cleared the living room while Patience and Jake put a doorknob on a new closet door that had been installed by Susan. Jake patiently chiseled out the opening for the latch while Patience and I watched—I always learn by watching Jake do things and he doesn’t seem to mind. I gathered the tools and materials for installing an electrical outlet and cover plate beside the door, but decided to put off the installation until morning when I could see better. I really hate fumbling around in dim light when it comes to electrical work--I’ve been shocked a few times that way and it just ranks down there with my least-favorite things like replacing a car’s exhaust system with all the rust falling in your eyes. Speaking of my not favorite things, Jake and I also brought a table up from the basement and we were slipping and sliding carrying this table through the snow around to the front door of the dome, which is in the back. That might be confusing, but the “back” door of the dome is in the garage leading to the basement and we always use that one to come in or out.

After we set up the three tables for the next day, we could all talk a bit more and Patience told us about her teaching experiences in the Boise public school system—she has a very good orchestra this year and is enjoying working with them. Jake discussed some of his experiences in military service in Kuwait. He had kind of given up trying to understand the Arabs there, and given what my sister-in-law Helga had said about five years of living in Saudi Arabia, I had to agree with him. With friends like these, who needs enemies? Jake also discussed what could possibly happen during his last two years in the Air Force—he’s had three tours in Kuwait and other duty assignments, and definitely found the glamour of military travel to be vastly over-rated. Before the end of his 20 year hitch, the Air Force could very possibly try to send him off for another year to some garden spot like South Korea, which reminded me of the year I spent worrying about deployment to South Viet Nam or Germany in 1971. So we talked nonstop until Monika and I fell apart, after which we collapsed into bed. Copyright 2002 by Robert W. Holt