Visit with Norma and Bob Jamestown, New York 2021

Dear Barb,

I hope you’re content and enjoying those grandsons of yours.

On September 15, I hustled through sprinkles to drop off my sewing machine for its yearly maintenance check at Fox’s in Meadville. Then, I drove Spence onto S6E, a two-lane highway in town. Rain drops bounced and ponded on the road. Wiper blades clacked. Ragged, gray clouds loomed over the landscape. But my cheek muscles ached from smiling because we were off on our first vacation since February 2020. South of Jamestown, New York, we would meet Bob and Norma. Norma’s my dad’s cousin, and she’s Spence’s favorite junior high science teacher.

We passed quaint towns, golden soybeans, and wet cows. With each route change—onto PA 957E in Columbus, Miller Road in Lander, and Riverside Road in Kiatone, the road narrowed. Riverside didn’t even have a center line, but it took us to the AudubonCommunity Nature Center and our cousins.

The next day, after touring the Roger Tory Peterson Institute, we hugged our cousins goodbye and headed home. Spence drove. Being north of Jamestown, he merged west onto I-86 then I-90. Sunlight sparkled off Lake Erie. He drove south on I-79 giving us four lane divided highways under blue skies all the way to our exit. Even the drives felt like a vacation after this past year.

Love,

Janet

Dear Julie,

I hope you’re enjoying fall, especially the mums you said your dad liked.

Spence and I met Norma and Bob at the Audubon Community Nature Center in Jamestown, New York. In the main room, we peered into a 4X6X3 foot tank to find Oneka and Tweeg, two female eastern hellbenders. The giant salamanders were over a foot long. Their stony gray faces blended with the rocky bottom. One had crawled into a white pipe. The other lay under a rock and twitched her tail. Were they watching us? Hard to tell.

Across from their tank, windows overlooked bird feeders. Nuthatches dined at the only one with seeds. The windows had frosted patterns for an experiment. Scientists tested which pattern—thin parallel lines, squares in regular rows and columns, and squares alternating in even and odd rows—if any, reduced birds flying into the glass.

We left the main room and dallied in the live reptile room. I glanced at the California corn snake and the yellow rat snake briefly but stared intently at turtles staring at me. From Wells Wood encounters, I recognized the box turtle and the wood turtle. I watched the spotted turtle the longest. Its shell had tiny polka dots as if someone had measured and painted them in an exact design. A painted turtle slid off its platform into the water. All four of its legs paddled as it maneuvered and scraped against the glass. It got one leg onto the platform only to slip into the water. Repeatedly. I wanted to reach in and lift the critter to the platform.

Norma warned, “No, you can’t do that.”

Spence said, “The turtle wouldn’t appreciate your intentions.”

I moved on.

Love,

Janet

Dear Amelia.

Are you having fun in preschool? I hope so.

Uncle Spencer and I had fun at the Audubon Community Nature Center. We saw an old linden tree trunk. It was over 100 years-old like your great-grandpa Art. Bugs had eaten the inside of the trunk. Then people hollowed it more and dragged it inside. While we watched, two little girls giggled and crawled through. I thought about crawling inside, but I didn’t. I stooped, peeked, and wished you were with us to crawl through for me.

The wall near the linden had paintings of frogs—including the gray treefrog, northern leopard frog, and spring peeper. Each picture had a button to push for the frog’s song. I pushed all the buttons again and again. Melodious trills, loud snores, and whistling peeps echoed through the museum. Uncle Spencer said if the museum workers hadn’t been desperate for visitors on the rainy afternoon, the workers would have thrown me out.

I played with another exhibit upstairs. A wooden model of the home for honeybees, a honeycomb. It had pictures inside each cell. I pushed buttons to light up facts like the queen can lay over 3,000 eggs a day, and a honeybee has five eyes. Even though I pushed every button, I didn’t bother anyone—not even Uncle Spencer.

The next day we visited the Roger Tory Peterson Institute. While we watched, a solitary bee crawled into a solitary bee house in the garden outside.

Love,

Aunt Janet

Dear Addy,

I hope you have good stories to read at school. I also hope first grade is fun.

Uncle Spencer and I had fun at the Audubon Community Nature Center in New York on a rainy September day. We didn’t let the rain stop our adventure. We walked along a path through a marsh with lots of ponds. Asters and goldenrod grew at the edge of the path. Two deer hid near the path. We didn’t see them, but they saw, heard, and smelled us. They burst out of the bushes and dashed away. The path led to the Blue Heron Overlook by Big Pond. We watched. We waited. No great blue herons came. Maybe they didn’t like the rain.

We followed another path to a nature playground. You and Amelia could have climbed on Tank, a pretend turtle way bigger than a real turtle. Across from Tank was a long spotted salamander named Tilly. I bet you would have climbed her too.

Volunteers had painted the path near the playground with green deer prints and yellow duck prints. You could tiptoe on them. The path also had large painted flowers with numbers for playing hopscotch. Did your mommy or daddy ever teach you how to play hopscotch?

Love,

Aunt Janet

Dear Sophia,

Are you in sixth grade now? I hope your teacher is nice and your friends are in class with you.

Spence, our cousins, and I saw a bald eagle named Liberty at the Audubon Community Nature Center in Jamestown, New York. At first, I was horrified that they’d caged the magnificent creature—even in a space as big as a classroom with lots of stumps to perch on and a platform in the back for a nest. But a sign explained. In 2001, Liberty had been found with an infected left wing. A year of rehab in Washington State cured her infection, but she couldn’t fly. That meant she wouldn’t be able to catch food. So Liberty traveled across the country to the Audubon Center for her safety. While we watched, she hopped on and off stumps, spread her feathers, and uttered a few high-pitch whistling calls.

The Audubon Center didn’t have any other live birds. They only had a room of stuffed birds and a larger-than-life wooden carving of an eagle hanging from the ceiling.

The Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History also had a wooden eagle. Theirs hung from a tree along an outdoor trail. Spence, our cousins, and I had a picnic lunch in the gazebo beside the trail. While we ate, baby ospreys cried from hidden nests high in the trees. Adult osprey shadows moved across the grass outside the gazebo. The parents carried food to their babies.

Love,

Janet

Dear Reid and Claire,

I trust you two are weathering these crazy times with your usual grace. Stay safe!

Spence and I met my dad’s cousin Norma and her husband Bob in Jamestown, New York. We toured the Audubon Community Nature Center one day and Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History the next. In between, we had more fun than I expected at the Holiday Inn Express.

Before dinner the first day, I decided to swim. The hotel didn’t have pool guards so Spence had to go with me. He sat at a poolside table with his laptop and caught up on road notes from a volunteer trip to Cleveland. I slipped into the shallow end and breast stroked—only eight—to the deep end. Swimming back and forth made the water slap against the side. After a half hour my lips tingled from the chlorine. I got out.

Rain drove our picnic with Norma and Bob inside to the hotel’s empty breakfast room. They brought cheese, crackers, and fruit. We added spicy sausage, tabouli, blueberry-apple pie, and wine. A pink sunset outside illuminated our chomping and chatting. We cleared the table for games. Spence, not a gamer, didn’t play. He sat with us and watched his nightly dose of Maverick videos—his way of coping with the Ford Company not yet scheduling a build date for his new pickup even though he made the order last June. Norma and Bob taught me to play Skip-Bo (cards) and Farkle (dice). Bob explained the best strategies so, with beginner’s luck, I won the first Skip-Bo game. Norma quietly won the next three. She kept a modest lead in Farkle too, but, in the last round, Bob rolled three pairs for 1500 points and the win. Impressive!

Love,

Janet

Dear Robert,

It will be a while longer before Spence and I feel comfortable flying to Florida. But we did brave a two-day road trip. We met your grandpa Lohse’s cousin Norma and her husband Bob in Jamestown, New York to tour the Roger Tory Institute of Natural History. Planning via emails, Norma wrote, “I am sure we will find things to explore both days.” Neither of us could have predicted what we would explore Thursday morning. We’d finished breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and pulled out of our parking places. Bob immediately steered into another. Flat tire.

The hotel receptionist called AAA, and a blue hatchback, labeled Buster's Towing & Emergency Roadside Assistance, arrived within fifteen minutes. Buster removed the tire, put on the spare, and gave Bob directions to Dunn Tire. Driving Spence in the Subaru, I followed Bob. Spence cheerfully called off streets named for Presidents—Jefferson, Clinton, Monroe. I soaked in the warm sunshine through the window. At the tire shop, the mechanic predicted the repair would take a half hour. We explored the strip mall and sipped lemonade at Subway. We also bought lunch—a footlong sandwich for them and a protein bowl with veggies topped by turkey for me. After forty-five minutes, we checked on the tire. The mechanics had just started work.

Norma shooed us off to buy tickets at the institute and wait “in prettier surroundings.” She was right. The institute’s gardens with asters, coneflowers, and ornamental grasses were prettier than the strip mall. Norma and Bob arrived only twenty minutes after us. Before going inside for a guided tour, we ate our Subway lunch in the institute’s gazebo.

Love,

Janet

Dear Nancy,

I hope you are safe, content, and enjoying your granddaughters.

Spence and I met my dad’s cousin Norma and her husband Bob in Jamestown, New York. We toured the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History. Our guide, Melissa, started with an explanation of a mural of Peterson. She emphasized his conservation work and, as Spence whispered to me, skipped over the use of taxidermy models for painting. Melissa dressed in a flowing sleeveless blouse, capris, and block heels. She loved to talk. In the main exhibit, Art That Matters to the Planet, she talked as long on each of the sixty pieces as I’d expected for the whole exhibit. So, after standing on the cement floor while she droned on, my knees felt like they’d been stabbed with steel skewers and encased in cement. I collapsed onto a bench near the latest painting she described. Blouse swishing, she turned a concerned face to me. “Are you okay?”

Embarrassed, I said, “Yes, but my knees ache from standing in one place so long.”

She extended her hand as if pressing me down. “Rest. I’ll keep you moving.” She finished that explanation, and many more. I whispered to Norma, “She’s verbose.” Norma frowned. “She talks too much.” Melissa led us up marble stairs to a timeline of Peterson getting DDT outlawed to save ospreys. There was also a lovely collection of osprey photos in a tall turret lit by high windows. The tour ended viewing Peterson’s artifacts including the Presidential Medal of Freedom given to him by Carter. Impressive—as were Peterson's paintings which spoke for themselves.

Love,

Janet

Dear Ellie and Lori,

I hope both of you are safe and content despite these crazy times.

Spence and I treated ourselves. We toured the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown, New York with my dad’s cousin Norma and her husband Bob. We behaved politely while the tour guide droned on about the nature art inside. Escaping the cement floors to sunshine and nature trails outside felt like leaving school for summer vacation.

We stepped over roots and holes. A side path circled a pond edged with salvia and creeping water primrose. Sunshine turned the blue sky yellow-gold behind trees and made ornamental grass glow like a glass chandelier. All along the trail we found wooden sculptures—an eagle and owl suspended from overhead branches, a turtle at the edge of the pond, and trilliums carved on a log.

The trail passed behind the institute’s stone patio where Saturday Morning Yoga with the Birds classes are held. We visited on a Thursday so I missed the class. But I didn’t regret the timing. My yoga mat on the wooden deck at home is more comfortable than a yoga mat on stones. Besides, I hear robins sing cheer up cheerily, chickadees call hey, sweetie, and the resident hummingbird buzz overhead to check my poses.

Love,

Janet

Dear Susan,

I trust you’re finding retirement delightful.

Spence and I took our first overnight trip since February 2020. I drove through hard rain on rural roads to the Audubon Community Nature Center in south Jamestown, New York without getting lost. The drive from the Audubon Center to the Holiday Inn Express? A different story.

After traveling north on US 62, I turned left on NY60N, Foote Avenue. But 60 leaves Foote at South Main. Google Maps told me to make a “slight right” there. The slight turn off Foote made a left. I stayed on Foote and watched for signs. No Main. No 60. In desperation eight city blocks later, I made a right onto East Second. That led me past three pizzerias and several furniture stores. No Main Street. I chose a furniture store parking for a turnaround and retraced my path back to the fateful corner. With another turnaround in a UPMC parking lot, I drove west (left). Eventually I found a Main Street sign. I relaxed until I got caught in a left turn only lane. Another turnaround in the Family Video parking lot put me back on Main Street. I just had to find Bob Evans on the left and turn into the hotel. I didn’t see Bob Evans tucked behind trees on the right but caught a glimpse of the hotel too late to turn. Using my honed, parking-lot-turning skill at the Kwik Fill Truck Plaza, I drove back to the Holiday Inn Express.

Getting lost let us sightsee. Several times we crossed the Chadakow River, passed the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum, and used Lakeview Cemetery as a beacon that the hotel and interstate were just ahead. When Spence tried a new way to get to NY60 from the Roger Tory Peterson Institute and ended up on Second Street instead of Main, I didn’t worry. I knew the way.

Love,

Janet