[Leica] a serious question

[h_arche at yahoo.com (H. Ball Arche)]

For god's sake Daniel, I hope you've hard copied that for your kids.


--- On Sat, 9/27/08, Daniel Ridings <dlridings@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Daniel Ridings <dlridings@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] a serious question
> To: "Leica Users Group" <lug@leica-users.org>
> Date: Saturday, September 27, 2008, 8:18 AM
> On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 10:58 AM, Frank Dernie
> <Frank.Dernie@btinternet.com> wrote:
> > the vast majority of
> > people who can afford these cars would be scared rigid
> long before they had
> > reached anything like their chassis limit whereas even
> my Mum can do the
> > "full throttle down the straight for a
> while" routine. From a purist point
> > of view I am unable to admire these things.
> > Frank
> 
> :-) My grandmother was no purist. She was a tough old lady
> who, as a
> Catholic, divorced a gambler in the 40'ies, leaving her
> to raise a
> Catholic (many kids) family and take care of her aging
> father all on
> her own.
> 
> Taking care of her aging father led her to owning and
> running two
> nursing homes (about 40 or 50 patients in each) and
> administering a
> staff to boot. She worked around the clock. Took in mental
> patients
> from Alton State Hospital that she took a liking to and
> gave them jobs
> cooking or cleaning. Let them house up in a crook and crany
> of the old
> brick building from which Abraham Lincoln once held a
> speech. Worked
> around the clock, I said that, be she did double time
> around the
> clock.
> 
> I moved in with her (yes, she took care of all the
> grand-children when
> needed too, she died leaving 104 children, grandchildren,
> great
> grandchildren and greatgreat grandchildren) when the family
> moved back
> to the US from Japan and I didn't want to do a 6 month
> stint in
> Oklahoma before my father was debriefed and declared clean.
> 
> She told me, in her sly way, meaning I shouldn't pass
> the info on to
> my mother or uncles, what she did at 2 am when she finished
> a work
> day.
> 
> She'd go out into her huge, heavy Lincoln Continental
> (with suicide
> doors) and head out west of Greenville on 159. There's
> a stretch out
> there in the woods and cornfields that runs straight as an
> arrow for
> about 10 miles.
> 
> She'd floor it. She'd keep it floored for 10 miles.
> 
> Then she would turn around and drive back at leisurely
> pace, with all
> of the day's stress out of her system, and go to bed
> (only to rise
> again at 6 am).
> 
> They day she realized that she'd have to give up her
> Lincoln was the
> day she got old. She made the decision herself, but she
> always missed
> that flat-out speed experience.
> 
> She died in her high ninties, just a couple of years after
> her
> maternal aunt. The ladies in our family are toughies.
> 
> But she wasn't a purist :-)
> 
> Daniel
> 
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