Steve’s favorite holiday was always Halloween. (He was destined to live in Irvington.) We had way more Halloween decorations than Christmas. For 20 years, we hosted an annual Halloween party, starting in 1985. It was a family tradition. Steve took it all very seriously. We would decorate every inch of the house and cover all the furniture with white sheets (which worked great, since most of our upholstered furniture had become our cat’s scratching post).
I would make all the costumes. We have been everything from Henry the 8th and Anne Boleyn with an axe in my neck, to me as Sarah Palin and him as her pet Polar Bear, with a target on his back. He was even bacon and eggs with me as a flow-thru Lipton tea bag. Once he went as a professor, with me as his white lab rat. He was the Walrus and I was the Carpenter. Another year, Steve dressed as a highlander in a kilt and I was the bagpipes. Steve’s been kings, a vampire, a pirate, the Jolly Green Giant, the Grim Reaper, the mummy, Fred Flintstone, a Greek God, a genie and more. His most memorable costume was at our last Halloween Party, when he went as “The Burning of Atlanta” to go along with the “Gone With the Wind” theme our daughter and I had put together. She went as Scarlett (she looked just like Vivien Leigh). I painted the silhouette of the skyline of Atlanta, the scene with Rhett pulling the wagon next to the train cars in the flames, on Steve’s sweatshirt. I made him a flaming hat from orange silk mum petals and draped his arms in felt flames. I went as Prissy.
The party was always huge. I would make 5 pots of chili every year. Steve’s friend Don Zessin would show old movies like The Wolf Man on a white sheet hung on the garage. The largest crowd was 65 and believe me, our house doesn’t hold that many people – luckily it was warm enough that year for outdoor partying too. For years, the kids had their own kid’s party across the street at our friends, the Fletcher’s house. Our daughter and her friends would babysit the whole crowd of little kids. (After she left for IU, she refused to come home to watch all those kids, unless she could go to the grown-up party.) I remember one year our daughter was Cleopatra (she was about 10 yrs. old) and upset that none of the other kids knew who she was – obviously they hadn’t seen Elizabeth Taylor as her. When our son was Robin Hood, it was the Errol Flynn version he knew so well.
Steve loved vacations too. Most of the previous installments of this series, have been about trips to Boston and Disney World. But we did have many other shorter, closer vacations too. We visited Amish Acres in Nappanee on a long weekend and stayed with a Mennonite family. The man of the house talked football with Steve and made plastic lawn furniture for a living. We traveled to Kings Island many times and down to Holiday World. We took day or weekend trips to the Dunes, Madison, New Harmony, Brown County, Spring Mill Park, Indiana Beach and Chicago (once on a train to see all the museums). We took a few longer trips to St. Louis to see our good friends Miki and Mark (who were in our wedding) and stopped in Springfield to see Lincoln’s home and a Frank Lloyd Wright house. We toured the Arch, Zoo and Botanical Gardens. We went to Dallas, Texas to visit my brother Mark and ate at the Medieval Times restaurant, where Steve and Chris were knighted. Mark had a huge pool with a hot tub waterfalling into it, which we enjoyed very much. We also took trips to western Kentucky for family reunions and stopped at Mammoth Cave. We went to Lookout Mountain and the Smokey Mountains, and to Nashville to see William Henry Harrison’s Home and more. One 4th of July we went to Mackinac Island in northern Michigan to visit library friends Carol & Pete Thompson in their cabin on the lake. Mackinac has a historic fort (1780) so Steve loved that.
The summer of ’93, we went to visit my sister Gail who was living on the island of Nahant, just north of Boston, with a view of the skyline. It was Steve’s birthday when we headed out in my Dodge Shadow. The drive was long and we waited too late to find a hotel. The casinos had just opened in New York State and there wasn’t a room to be had. We took turns driving until 3 a.m., our teenage daughter volunteering for the late night drive, and then pulled into a motel parking lot (with no rooms available) and tried to sleep for a few hours in the car. Shadows are small vehicles, so to say it was crammed with the four of us is an understatement. We woke with the sunrise at 5:30 a.m. and hit the road. We knew we were going to arrive hours early at my sisters. As we neared Boston, I needed to navigate to Gail’s with the map and Steve refused to drive in that crazy city. So our teenage daughter drove through all those tunnels, bridges and round-abouts and Steve just sat in the back with his eyes closed. We arrived early and went right to bed. Gail lived on the second floor of a three-story, 100-year-old, cedar-shingled house. Her lawyer landlord lived on the first floor with his young wife and son and his first wife and older son lived on the 3rd floor. Gail had a school teacher roommate on the 2nd floor, who was gone that week. The house was right on the ocean (too close for today’s building codes). Through every window you saw the ocean and the Boston skyline and all the boats at the dock – picturesque! We had a picnic out on the rocks in the bay.
We visited lots of fun, historic places. Salem was a hit and Steve found a little museum full of Revolutionary War memorabilia. The guy who ran it said he wanted to retire and Steve sure wanted his job.
We went to New Hampshire and drove to the top of Mt. Washington (tallest mountain east of the Mississippi). It was 28 degrees up there, even though it was in the 80s at the bottom. It is known for the highest wind ever recorded (231 miles an hour). It was a steep, scary, nail-biting drive down that mountain.
Gail knew a cellist that played for the Boston Pops, so we went to Tanglewood, where the orchestra spent the summer to hear a concert and stayed with the cellist in her A-frame cabin in the Berkshire Mountains. They played the “1812 Overture” in an outdoor concert, with cannons booming! What a treat!
We stopped at every historic site we could find. I remember our son loved listening to the tour guides behind the rope barriers. He said that’s what he wanted to do when he grew up.
We even found Robert Frost’s grave, by accident (we literally took the road less traveled by), in a quaint little church cemetery in Vermont.
One night on Nahant, Gail grilled swordfish for us in the full moon light on her deck with the ocean splashing against the rocks – wonderful memories. Steve and I ate two lobsters apiece in a little fish restaurant on the island (I think they only cost $13 for two). Steve loved fresh fish!
Another day, we took a whale watching tour from Gloucester. The tiny boat rocked and rolled and if you were the sea sick type, this was not for you. An hour out, our son Chris with binoculars, was the first to catch a glimpse of the humpback whales. All the sight-seeing boats were in a big circle with the whales jumping in the middle. They were bigger than our boats! They had all been tagged and named and were performing for their lunch.
Next Time: Steve becomes an actor!
Steve’s Celebration of Life will be Sunday, May 1st at Oakley Hammond Funeral Home at 5342 E. Washington St. with visitation from 1-3:30 p.m. and service at 3:30 p.m. In lieu of flowers. Donations to the Weekly View, 195 N. Shortridge Rd. Suite D, 46219 in his memory will be greatly appreciated.
