Correctionville

I have to apologize to my regular blog readers for my lack of posts recently. I update my blog from home (except for that one time I did it on a Friday at work when I took an extended afternoon break — let’s just keep that between you and me) and I have not been home much in the last two weeks.

Last weekend I went to Correctionville, IA for a family reunion on my mom’s side. Correctionville was having its sesquicentennial (150 years) celebration at that time so we all got involved in that too. My Grandma Hoppe (Sue’s mom) has six other siblings. Each family associated with each sibling wore a different color t-shirt. Since there were seven families they picked the seven colors of the rainbow. The Hoppes were blue. Because the whole Utesch (my grandma’s maiden name) family is large and Correctionville is a small town it was neat to see so many people walking around town with bright colored shirts on. As hokey as the whole thing sounds, it also helped me figure out who was who and belonged to what family.

As part of the sesquicentennial celebration Correctionville had a parade. There were over 200 entries in the parade and most of them were old tractors and cars. One of the floats was the Utesch family reunion float that portrayed a picnic family reunion – imagine that. It was actually really well done and won the Mayor’s Award. What exactly that means no one could decide.

I rode in the parade with my mom in Grandpa’s 1979 green Dodge pick-up, which is still in very good condition, especially since it was used on the farm. Last weekend was the first time I had ridden in a parade since my homecoming float elementary school days. I remember the Pet Cemetery movie theme resurfaced at those homecoming parades almost every year. The Marion Bear would be burying the Bridgewater Wildcat or the Centerville Cougar and there would be gravestones and blood all over the place. Did anyone else ever do the Pet Cemetery float?

Anyway, after the parade I went to a quilt show in the local Methodist church. The pews were just covered with quilts old and new. Grandma Hoppe, in her floppy “pioneer” hat, kept running around scolding people for touching the quilts. Even when the quilts had plastic covering them people would pull the plastic off and touch the quilts. Then, when they were scolded, they acted like they had no idea no touching was allowed. I mean, seriously.

I worked at the golf course last weekend too. I worked a close shift on Sunday. I had never done that before so I called Trent about five times on his one day off to ask him questions. I felt bad for bothering him, but if I had been properly trained and if they had some sort of manual I would not have needed to call him so often. Tomorrow night I’m bartending for an event at the course and then it’s off to Lake Shetek in Minnesota for another Summer 2005 camping adventure.