New York, 2000

The summer before my brother left on his mission, our family took another trip to upstate New York to visit Great-Grandma King. This is what I remember about that trip.

We flew in to Columbus, OH, and rented a car at the airport. I remember noticing that "Avis" (the car rental place) was an anagram of Visa. The parking lot had those spike things that hurt your tires if you go the wrong way; I remember stepping on them with David and figuring out how they worked. 

The next day, we drove through Ohio and then through a little bit of Pennsylvania. We stopped at a gas station. At that time, I liked to proclaim the capital of the states I saw on license plates. It only applied to states that you weren't currently in, which meant that after we crossed the border into New York, I would no longer say "Albany" but then I could say "Harrisburg." 

One day, we traveled to Palmyra. We saw the Joseph Smith house. We saw the new Palmyra temple, and I liked the stained glass patterned after the Sacred Grove. Susanne and I stayed in our hotel while our parents and David went to the temple. We went to the Sacred Grove the next day, but I didn't like it because there were too many mosquitoes. In the parking lot, I saw a van from Utah that had the first Harry Potter on the dashboard.

One of our first nights at Grandma King's house, maybe the first, she had made spaghetti for dinner, and she knew that David and I didn't eat red meat, so she made special sauce without meat for us.

One day, we went to a local store to get some clothes. I got a blue t-shirt and some athletic-type shorts that had buttons on the side. It was annoying, because the dressing rooms were locked and you had to have an employee open them. My mom always made me show her the clothes after I tried them on, so I had to keep coming out, while the employee was waiting for us to be done.

One day, we went up to Niagara Falls. I think this was the time I was really thirsty, so it was hard whenever we walked through the mist from the falls because that emphasized my thirst. We went in a gift shop, where I got a four-color pen modeled after the Canadian flag.

On that same Niagara Falls trip, we went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. On our way there, we saw a man dressed all in gold. My mom expressed her disapproval of an exhibit of some canes, one of which was mildly inappropriate. At one point, they had a mirror to see if you could roll your tongue. My mom and brother told me that it was really one of those mirrors that is a window on the other side, so that people could laugh at you. But I didn't care and I rolled my tongue anyway. I even showed off a little, twisting my tongue upside down and folding it (some people call it a clover). But as I was walking away, I decided I didn't like the idea of people laughing at unsuspecting people, so I went back and scowled. Later in the museum, there was a hologram of a leprechaun. At the end of the museum was a walkway surrounded by a tunnel that moved. I liked standing there, but my dad said, "I've got to get out of here!"

One day, we went and saw some locks for ships. While we were there, a fellow tourist pointed out to me the nest where a mother bird was feeding her children. So then I pointed it out to my family. Every time the mother came, I would shout, "There she is," thus scaring her away. I was reproved for my yelling.

One evening at the pond, I was on the porch, trying to play my mix tape on the Walkman my brother handed down to me. But I couldn't figure out how to do something on it, so I went to David to ask him how to do it. He got mad at me for interrupting his study of Jesus the Christ, which I find ironic.

When we left Grandma King's, she and my mom were crying, and Grandma King made her trademark remark about her bladder being too close to her eyes. That was indeed the last time we saw her.

We went and saw some Church history sites in Ohio. There was another large Mormon family there that had a lot of kids. I think one family was from Virginia (or somewhere like it), and a single mom with a toddler was from Arizona. They were all riding in a big motor home, and they kept showing up at the same sites as we did. We went to the Kirtland Temple, where our guide was an RLDS missionary. They had a gift shop, and David bought a copy of the first hymnbook. We went to the N.K. Whitney store. Before our tour, we met in a room to learn about it. The toddler of the Arizona woman was fussing a little bit, and the volunteer who was talking said to her, "There's a toy in the lobby he can borrow," and then as an aside to explain herself, she said, "so that we can feel the Spirit." I found that inappropriate. We went to the room where the elders chewed tobacco, leading to the Word of Wisdom. Later we went to the Isaac Morley farm, and I really liked the feeling there. We saw the motor home family go to a fast-food restaurant, and my mom and Susanne were saying that they were surprised they would do that with such a big group; if they had such a big group, they would just make their own sandwiches.

We went to a cemetery where my mom's Ebbert grandparents were buried. My mom called her aunt Kaye to see if we could see her, but the aunt declined and suggested we eat at Hometown Buffet. We went to lunch at a fast food place, maybe Wendy's, and there was a little Snoopy in my kid's meal. Then we went to a commercial garden my mom had visited as a kid. We checked in at a hotel near the airport, and there was a swimming pool, but we had to get out because there was a thunderstorm. I had left something in the pool area, so a passing stranger/hotel guest opened the door to the pool, since we didn't have our key on us. That night, we caught the musical On the Town on TV and watched it. David said he thought the Simpsons spoof of "New York, New York" had a better flow, using a mild swear word instead of wonderful in the line "It's a wonderful town." (I just found at that's because the original used the swear word, but it was changed to wonderful for the movie version.) After taking a shower, Susanne was whistling in the bathroom, and Mom said she must have been happy.

The next day, we went to the airport and were informed that we couldn't get on our plane. We would have to wait twelve hours for another. So wait we did. We went to a Wendy's in the airport. I wanted a kid's meal to see if I would get another Snoopy toy, but that required waiting, since it wasn't lunch time, so I just got a breakfast item instead. My dad, however, waited so he could get a burger. David got a coffee straw for his orange juice and was fascinated that it had two tubes. We looked at the mini art gallery above our seating area, and I remember seeing two people making out. I read a book that my mom had brought, which was about a girl and a horse. The Columbus airport wasn't very interesting.

Finally we got on our plane. The benefit of having to wait was that we got to ride first class. As all the people in coach passed us to go to their seats, I wondered if they thought we were snobs. I think we had a layover in St. Paul/Minneapolis; at a gift shop there, they had gummy suckers with the Peanuts characters on them, and I wondered if it was because Charles Schulz was from Minnesota. Once we were on our flight again, the stewardesses came around to give us our drinks. In an immature manner, I said to Susanne, "Guess what I'm getting? Apple juice!" which was what I had gotten on all our flights. She also asked for apple juice, but there was some kind of problem, so we had to wait a minute, and I said, "Maybe I drank too much apple juice." We also got sandwiches. On the flight, I read from the first Harry Potter again. Then we got home.

I'm sure that I will remember more things after I post this. Like how on the last post, I forgot about the little fish I caught that swallowed the hook, so to get it off we had to rip its guts out.