Photo © Ryan & Heidi Henderson
Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque at sunset after the snowstorm.

UPDATE -- plenty of snow in the Southwest
by Heidi Johnson Henderson
Albuquerque, NM

Photos © Donna Johnson
A big blowout for Jayce! He blew out all eight candles. Whew! Rylie & Jayce check out the birthday cake, left; Rylie, Jayce & Katie Hoffman are in front at right; Caity & Brooklynn (held by Wyatt Johnson) are in back.

---

Photo © Janie Anderson
Nathan Hill, Melanie Shockey, Barb Anderson holding Jonathan Hill.

UPDATE -- more holiday birthdays
by Janie Anderson
Wahpeton, ND

Photo © Janie Anderson
Family picture. Back row: Jason Hunt, Barb Anderson, Brenda Hill, Nathan Hill, Eric Shockey; front row: Tami Hunt holding Jonathan Hill, Janie Anderson, Dwight Anderson holding Jaxon Hill, Melanie Shockey with Jazmine standing in front of her.

---

Mavis Anderson Morgan
Estero, FL

---

I spent a lot of time trying to put names to the faces on the GUESS picture. Of course, the one on the right is Dorothy, but the middle one keeps coming up Elizabeth Bakke, and the eyes on the one on the left are so familiar that it just bugs me not to think of who it is. I was wondering if it might be Vivian Russell. I hate to wait a whole week to find out for sure, but I can't find anyone who will cheat and tell me, ha.

Editor's Comments: I agree that the center one does indeed look like Elizabeth Bakke. Unless Jim Miller sends his guess, I doubt anyone else is going to guess the middle lady. I would think that Jim, Blanche, Gert and I are the only ones of us who have ever met her. Lillian Tepe lived in Beloit, Wisconsin, near the camp where Jim trained during World War II. She had many of the soldiers for Sunday Meeting and then for dinner at noon. This picture was taken when the three of us visited her after the war was over and Blanche and I had finished teaching a year.

I don't know how many flat tires Jim changed on the way there -- but his uncle got him a pair of black market tires for the trip home from Chicago. A couple of years later, Gert and I made the trip to visit Lillian and we went by bus.

I talked with Jim this afternoon. He said Tom had wanted to know who the tall lady in the center was. He thought it might be their sister Lenore ... but Jim told him he was pretty sure that it was the lady in Wisconsin where he went for meeting in his soldier training days. He wondered how I ever got there but the minute I mentioned the trip to Beloit he remembered the flat tires involved (and how his uncle found him some black market tires in Chicago) ... and when I mentioned Lillian he added "Tepe." --DMA

The mystery photo would be Mom (Blanche Dake Miller), Grandma Miller (Olive Quarnstrom Miller, Jim and Tom Miller's mother) and my favorite aunt, Dorothy.

My next stop was Albuquerque. I arrived around midnight and pulled into a truck stop to fill my tank again. I decided to catch some sleep but didn't want to pony up for a hotel room for what I intended to be a short night of sleep, which would allow met to get right back on the road. I found a parking stall outside of the truck stop and got as comfortable as I could in my tightly-packed car. It had been a long day, so I fell asleep quickly despite my less than ideal accommodations.

I woke up after a couple of hours, a victim of a flaw in my plan I had failed to consider in advance: sleeping in the car in Albuquerque in late October is COLD! Although I was wearing a long sleeved shirt and a jacket and was draped in a blanket, I had to turn the engine on so the heater would do its trick.

After a few minutes of warm air blowing into the car, it reached a comfortable sleeping temperature again, so I turned the ignition back off. All in all, I got a decent night of sleep, interrupted by periodic re-heating sessions.

I woke up for good at around 6 a.m. and hit the road again. I had decided to take a different route home from Albuquerque so I could see some different country. So instead of heading north toward Colorado, I drove west toward Tucumcari, New Mexico, and the Texas panhandle.

I had traveled this stretch of road before on the way back from my legendary road trip to El Paso when the Gophers football team played in the Sun Bowl in December 1999. OK, so it may not have been a legendary trip, but my fellow travelers and I still look back on that trip as one of the greatest memories of our college days.

It was fun to recollect that trip as I drove across northeastern New Mexico. But I have to say that was the ONLY fun aspect of this long stretch of highway. Eventually, I crossed into Texas, then Oklahoma. Soon, the seed would be planted for my next adventure.

I had grown bored with my music CDs and the books on CD I had borrowed from the library prior to my trip, so as I drove across the desolate plains of western Oklahoma that afternoon, I began searching through the AM dial on my radio. Eventually, I recognized the sounds of a football pre-game show.

As it turned out, the University of Oklahoma had a home game versus Colorado that evening. Kickoff was scheduled for 6 p.m. By my calculation, I would be arriving in Oklahoma City at around 5 o'clock. I had intended to drive straight through, possibly making it as far as Kansas City before stopping for the night. But then an idea dawned on me. When I reached Oklahoma City, instead of driving north toward Kansas, I could make the short drive south to Norman in time to catch a game at Memorial Stadium, one of the classic college football venues in the country.

As I reached the outskirts of Oklahoma City, I stopped at another truck stop for gas. When I got out of the car, I was immediately buffeted by a strong, cold wind in the 40-something degree air. I decided to search the truck stop for warm weather gear, which I figured I would need if I were going to spend three hours sitting outside in those weather conditions. All I could find was a pair of brown jersey gloves. I decided they would have to be enough. I hoped I wouldn't freeze my ears.

I got back on the road and followed the signs directing me to Norman, then to the university and finally to the stadium. I exited the freeway and began driving down the street toward the stadium. Soon I noticed a friendly fellow waving at the passing cars. Then I realized he wasn't just waving; he was waving tickets. I pulled off the street and procured my pass to the evening's game, then found a parking spot in someone's front yard, which was converted into a lucrative little parking lot on game days.

As I made what ended up being a long walk toward the stadium, the cold wind stung my face. I noticed the gray clouds overhead and the sun beginning to set and I wondered if it ever snowed during Oklahoma football games.

Eventually, I made it to the stadium and found my seat. I was wearing a University of Minnesota hat, so I figured I should prove to the Sooner fan sitting next to me that I wasn't totally out of place. I utilized the one piece of Oklahoma football knowledge I had: "So is Peterson still out?" I asked, referring to the Sooners' injured star running back.

"I don't know, I guess he must be," was his reply. It turned out he was an alumnus who now lives in St. Louis. He only makes it back for one game each year, so he was about as clueless about the home team as I was.

We settled in for the game, as Oklahoma jumped out to a 10-0 first quarter lead. After the first Oklahoma score, a white covered wagon pulled by two white ponies emerged from the tunnel at the corner of the endzone to my left, drove a figure-8 across the endzone, then quickly disappeared into the tunnel.

"What the heck was that?" I asked my alumni neighbor.

"What was what?"

"That wagon train thing!"

"Oh, you mean the Sooner Schooner," he clarified, with a voice inflection that implied I was the world's biggest idiot for failing to identify the "Sooner Schooner." He went on to explain that it was a tradition that after every Sooner score, the Sooner Schooner makes an appearance.

When I thought about it, I did recall seeing a covered wagon on TV during Oklahoma football games. I had always assumed it was driven by great white stallions, not two tiny white ponies. The sight of them chugging their stubby little legs as fast as they could, pulling a small covered wagon while the crowd roared, made me laugh -- although I wasn't about to admit that to anyone else in the crowd, lest I offend them by belittling their storied tradition.

After clearing up the covered wagon mystery, I returned my attention to the action on the field, which slowed considerably as the crowd shivered through scoreless second and third quarters. The Sooners added a couple of touchdowns in the fourth, setting off two more inspired dashes by the Oklahoma ponies.

With the game nearing its end and the home team holding a comfortable 24-3 lead, I decided to beat the traffic out of the stadium and was heading back north on I-35 by 9:30. It had been a long day and I was getting tired, but I had one more stop I wanted to make before saying goodbye to Oklahoma...

January Special Days
January 1---New Year's Day
January 15---Martin Luther King Day

+ LETTERS TO THE EDITORS?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click here to review last week's Bulletin

EDITOR'S POLICY: If you wish to subscribe to The Bulletin, simply send me a statement of that fact. If you wish to keep receiving it I hope you will contribute to one of the columns that are running in this family epistle (at least occasionally!). My e-mail address is dma49261@juno.com

This Bulletin is copyright Dorothy M. Anderson; the contents are also copyrighted by the authors and photographers and used with their permission, and the contents are not to be used for any commercial purposes without the explicit consent of the creators.