For their 50th wedding anniversary, telling us kids that they were spending our inheritance, my folks chartered three busses and took their kids, friends, and relations on a three-day tour of northern Arizona.\u00a0 We visited the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, and Sunset Crater.<\/p>\n
For breakfast, we pulled into a rest area and dined on day-old sweet rolls (with raisins) and glasses of pineapple\/grapefruit juice\u2014the standard breakfast fare back when our family of seven kids went on long road trips.<\/p>\n
At dinner my oldest sister, Janice, stood up and told the group that our father was always a good provider, but he wasn\u2019t good at holding a job.\u00a0 She then went on to recount all the jobs he had held over the years\u2014teacher, farmer, underground miner, truck driver, carpenter, construction company owner, and finally a life insurance salesman.<\/p>\n
His partner in the construction business was a guy named Lloyd Coon.\u00a0 Lloyd, and his wife, Lois, were from Iowa.\u00a0 Brought up on Midwest farms, both my mother and Lois were used to taking midmorning snacks to the farm hands out in the fields.\u00a0 When Lloyd and my dad ran the construction company, my mother and Lois took turns providing forenoon coffee to their work crew.<\/p>\n
Lloyd and Lois were also good friends, and our families spent many mealtimes together at our house or theirs.<\/p>\n
So today, as I was baking my pumpkin pie, I was thinking about Lloyd Coon.<\/p>\n
As I mentioned last week, my mother\u2019s pumpkin pies were top drawer.\u00a0 And when Lloyd and Lois came for pumpkin pie, it was always served on the blue-bubble dishes my folks received as a wedding present.<\/p>\n
One night, Evie dished up the pie and then set one piece in front of Lloyd and one in front of my father.\u00a0 Lloyd immediately whipped a measuring tape out of his pocket and measured the two pieces to make sure my father\u2019s piece wasn\u2019t bigger than his.<\/p>\n
To this day, whenever I pour glasses of wine or milk, I always move them side by side to make sure both glasses contain the same amount.<\/p>\n
We call that \u201cLloyding it,\u201d and now you know why.<\/p>\n
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For their 50th wedding anniversary, telling us kids that they were spending our inheritance, my folks chartered three busses and took their kids, friends, and relations on a three-day tour of northern Arizona.\u00a0 We visited the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, and Sunset Crater. For breakfast, we pulled into a rest area […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-holidays"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-L7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2921"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2923,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921\/revisions\/2923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}