Readers and writers blog

Well, we’ve reunited today with all the relatives, and considering there are not many youngsters among them, they all seem hale and hearty. Then again, in Indiana, they wouldn’t tell you if they weren’t.

The Indiana weather, on the other hand, hasn’t been so taciturn. The tornado warning came in Friday night as we sat in a local restaurant while most of the other patrons filed outside to take a look. As we drove back to our motel, folks along the way were gazing at the sky as the tornado front bypassed us to the north on its way to Fort Wayne. A lot of hail, I’m told.

No one seemed too disturbed by it all.

There was more excitement at the reunion, held in honor of Maxine Stetzel, otherwise known as my wife’s Aunt Maxine. She will turn 90 on Monday, so several dozen of her relatives, in-laws and friends gathered with her today at her residence in Huntington, Ind., to celebrate the occasion. That’s her in the photo above, greeting guests as they arrived.

There was some talk about the tornado, but mostly folks were just glad to see each other, some for the first time in a long time. My wife Bonnie’s aunt and uncle, Pat and Paul Maddox, drove about 325 miles from Kentucky to be here. Bonnie and I and her parents, Glenn and Virginia Sunderman, drove about 750 miles from New York.

Our trip — well, I should say my trip — was both prosaic and proverbial. The proverb is the one about the nail that falls out of the horseshoe and, through a series of increasingly serious mishaps, eventually brings about the loss of a kingdom.

For want of a power cord, this entry might never have been filed. I left that cord, which powers this laptop I’m working on, at a motel in Pennsylvania when I obsessively tossed the coverlet over the bed as we were leaving, not realizing I also had covered over the neatly wrapped power cord. The more prosaic side of this story is that, like Jimmy Durante and his old novelty song, “I’m the Guy Who Found the Lost Chord,” I not only located mine but also a replacement to serve until we get back to Pennsylvania.

But it did have me flustered for a while. I discovered the loss of the cord at 3:30 a.m. Friday at a motel in Ohio, awoke my ever-suffering wife to get her cellphone, made a series of frantic calls to no avail, got lost driving to the local Walmart, which didn’t have a replacement, waited until 9 a.m. for the local Radio Shack to open, which did have a replacement but no three- to two-prong adapter, which Walmart also didn’t have but where I vowed I would do it myself, so I bought a pair of pliers to rip off that damned third prong.

The worst part is that when I went into a local quick-stop gas station to get a cold Pepsi to soothe my fevered self, I mistakenly bought not one but two Diet Pepsis with a chemical additive claiming to be ‘wild cherry.’ Jesus, that stuff was awful.

But here’s one of the good parts about the trip — the ‘well met’ reference in the headline: About 9:30 a.m. Friday, just when I was at my gloomiest, I heard my father-in-law, Glenn, sitting outside their adjoining room, playing an old song on his banjo. He likes to do that in the morning, so I went outside to play a little rhythm guitar for him. That’s when one of the young men from several units down the way came over toward us. I could see he was African-American and, oh shit, he’s probably angry that a couple of white guys were playing hillbilly music so early in the morning.

No sir, he was curious. As I was explaining to him that our little family band specializes in old songs, I started absent-mindedly playing “Amazing Grace.” Damned if we both didn’t start singing it.

So thank you, Orlando Corbin, one of the outreach ministers in United Restoration Ministries, for turning a bad morning into a good one for me.

United Restoration, which started in California and since has spread east to include 32 sites, specializes in restoring drug addicts, alcoholics and others who find themselves helpless in life. The organization’s Ohio headquarters are at the Toledo Restoration Church, 546 Western Ave., Toledo, Ohio 43609, telephone (419) 279-3351 or (419) 242-0497, pastored by the Rev. Eddie Mendivel Jr. They accept donations.

Corbin introduced me to Brother Ken, who at the time was sitting in the driver’s seat of the van that would carry the group on its travels for the day. Corbin said it was Brother Ken who brought him into the ministry. I looked at Brother Ken — about 400 pounds, I’d guess. If he reached out for me, I think I’d go along, too.

– Sid Leavitt

p.s. Sorry about the delay in filing. I usually try to get the entry up by noon Sunday, but there was that big Indiana reunion party.

p.p.s. Apologies also for not having new offerings today in our Works section. Despite my advance planning, I no longer seem able to access the files in which the new chapters of R.J. Keller’s Waiting for Spring and Gerard Jones’ Ginny Good have been processed.