Truckin’: Old-school Antarctic Snow Cruiser-style

These postcards are only about five years old, but the photos go back to 1939, when the Antarctic Snow Cruiser passed through – and stopped for repairs in – my parents’ hometown of  Upper Sandusky, Ohio. (And yes, this was before they were born.)

Click for larger versions at Flickr.

And the descriptor text, with some nifty statistics and perspective:

Click to read larger versions.

I love that kids got out of school, and that Dewey Dillon of “Upper Auto Parts” helped save the day, and that Ohio Highway Patrol car.

Also that, according to those history pages, they equipped this thing – a massive exploration vehicle whose very moniker includes the word “Snow” – with treadless tires. To go to ANTARCTICA.

Things in an empty glass

I love this glass, but I wish it wasn’t here in my office.

It reminds me of grandma’s house in Upper Sandusky, and it belongs in her kitchen cupboard, where it’s been since I was a little kid.

Unfortunately my grandmother is no longer capable of caring for herself, so she’s moved into a nursing home, and the house she lived in for most of my life has two For Sale signs in the yard and is slowly emptying of furniture and household items and knickknacks and the unseen memory markers and recollection triggers they carry.

Mom and Kelsey and I went to visit grandma last week, and spent several hours at the house that day, too. Kelsey sat for a bit in the small room that was always “hers” when we stayed there, leaning against the wall and holding a knitted afghan from the little fold-out couch. I took a short nap in the guest room where Jenn & I usually slept. Opened the bedside stand drawer and looked into the same round box of spare buttons that’s been sitting in there with grandma’s sewing supplies for as long as I can remember.

There are so many memories in that house – holidays and family and births and seasons and meals – that trying to even pick one to write about right now is like pulling the wrong plastic stick in KerPlunk, setting loose a chaos cascade of imagery and sense associations.

I may find myself in that house again sometime, but the days of pulling into its driveway and carrying our things in for a visit with grandma are over, and that feeling of an ending even hit Kelsey that afternoon.

She brought that blue and green zig-zag-patterned blanket home with her.

I brought the Shazam glass, invisibly and silently overflowing.