October 6th to 9th – Pittsburgh Part I

After a restful sleep and faithful completion of my two hundred Ohio pushups, I enjoyed a short and beautiful drive from Harrison State Forest to the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When I arrived in the little town of Murrysville, my Great-Aunt Mary welcomed me warmly into her cozy apartment.

My first evening with Aunt Mary (I don’t call her Great-Aunt Mary because it sounds strange to me — and to her) was spent in conversation. We had a lot of catching up to do. The first (and only) time we met previously was about fifteen years ago when my family flew out for a week-long visit. I still remember two things from that visit: a delectable lunch of pigs-in-a-blanket and an afternoon snack of gummy bears that brought unspeakable joy to my young self.

On the first full day of my visit (Saturday, October 7th), I got to visit with Aunt Mary’s son, Kevin. We began the day lazily by watching a movie. After that, Kevin wanted to make sure I got the full Pennsylvania experience. The first stop was a shooting range where we shot several of his pistols. In his opinion, I did very well for a California city boy.

Next, we drove to a neighboring city to visit Jamie and Kim, who are two of Kevin’s best friends. I got to watch Jamie cut up a deer he had shot the previous day and enjoy a tour of their house, which included quite a few guns and a couple hunting crossbows as well.

A few hours of visiting later, we were all a little hungry. Kevin and I went to a popular local pizza shop to pick up a pizza and some local beer, which we brought back to Jamie and Kim’s house. We ate dinner outside in their beautiful backyard. It was such a nice evening that I forgot to take a picture of the scenery.

So that was Kevin’s version of the Pennsylvania experience. I loved every minute of it! Aunt Mary promised me another tour on Monday. First, though, came Sunday. I joined Aunt Mary at the Presbyterian church she attends and enjoyed the Sunday School and sermon. She introduced me to the pastor and her friends. It was fun to be the “great-nephew from California.” I almost felt like a celebrity.

After church, we had a relaxing day at Aunt Mary’s apartment. I gladly joined her in the weekly tradition of having a homemade milkshake for an afternoon snack. I certainly didn’t complain about our dinner of salad, french fries, and bacon-wrapped steak either.

The next morning, Aunt Mary began her tour by giving me my first full view of the big city — Pittsburgh — from the little hill that somehow obtained the official name of Mount Washington.

After enjoying the view, we circled back to a different part of the suburbs so that Aunt Mary could give me a lesson in our family history. As I have met previously unknown relatives on this trip, I have been constructing a family tree to make sense of it all. Our first stop at the family cemetery gave me a very tangible experience of that tree’s roots.

This side of my family (my mom’s dad’s family) established themselves in Pennsylvania a long time ago and didn’t budge for the most part. My great-great-grandfather was born in the late 1860’s. He and my great-great-grandmother were buried in the cemetery in the 1950’s and many of their descendants, including my great-grandparents (Mary’s aunt and uncle), are buried there too. Since Aunt Mary grew up around these relatives, she has been able to tell me many stories about them.

Our next stop on the tour was even closer to home for me. Aunt Mary took me to the house my mom lived in for the first twelve years of her life and the elementary school she attended.

We saw much more on the trip as well: the Assemblies of God church my mom attended as a child, the house Aunt Mary grew up in (which is now a gun shop that has seen better days), and the house Aunt Mary spent most of her life in with her late husband, my Uncle Buzz.

Our last stop on the tour brought us back to the present. We visited one of Aunt Mary’s grandchildren at the creatively labeled salon where he works; Hairy Solutions. I appreciated the name because I had a very hairy problem to solve. My hair has been growing out for two months now and I’ve been feeling rather unkempt over the past week or two. Steven took care of my problem just as advertised.

That is about all the excitement I’ve had in these first few days in Pennsylvania. I have had a few spare moments to discover and visit a nearby basketball court twice to get some exercise. It is relaxing to stay in a single location for a while. I am looking forward to the rest of my visit and I hope it doesn’t go too fast.


September 25th – Leawood, Part 3

     Today I had the chance to live a normal day, just like I would at home. But I’m not at home. I’m in Leawood Kansas. Opportunities like this are the best part of my trip. They aren’t the highlights and there really isn’t a lot to say about them individually, but they are still the best parts. They are full of a thousand little things that we don’t usually think about because they are normal. As I travel the country, they become more and more interesting because I get to compare the thousand little things of one state and city and household with the thousand little things of another.

     I’m not a psychologist or an anthropologist – I’m not building theories of human behavior. I’m just watching people and living alongside them. I am learning to empathize with new people and to uphold my own life choices while I respectfully learn about theirs.

     The day of little things started with a late breakfast and a few minutes of reading A Walk Across America. Then there was a trip to Home Depot with Ruth for some bags of topsoil which we carried into her backyard.

     A friend of Ruth’s came by for a visit in the late morning. Her name is Maureen, and she has done fairly well as a ghostwriter. She encouraged me to continue pursuing my interest in writing and told me I’d better keep my blog up to date, or she would follow me across the country and give me a good whipping. I’ll do my best, but I may have to keep an eye out for the rest of my trip.  

     Ruth had a coupon for a free car wash, which she generously donated to my filthy vehicle. Now it is as good as new! After a quick lunch at Costco, we returned to Ruth’s house so that the neighborhood handyman could install some shelves in the dining room. I helped him as much as I could.

     In the evening, Ruth picked Rachel up from school and Jared came over for a piano lesson, since Jared does not have a piano at his house. I talked to the piano teacher, scootered with Rachel, and tried to help with dinner. Then we were off to Jared’s little league baseball game. Sadly, he did not win – but he did get his first hit of the season. After the game, Ruth and I returned to her house and finished the evening by watching a little bit of TV.

September 24th – Leawood, Part 2

     Being a twenty-one-year-old in an adult Sunday School class and a stranger from California draws a lot of attention. That was the situation when I went to the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection with Ruth this morning. We arrived early to give her time to prepare for teaching the class (today was the first of three lessons she is teaching on biblical happiness), so I had time to visit with the friendly people who came over to welcome me. One man – George – told me about his time as a college student in California when he kept himself employed by cleaning pools in Beverly Hills. Everyone wished me well on my journey.

     After Sunday School, we went home for lunch. We planned to return to the church in the evening for a worship service. At lunch, I met Ruth’s daughter, Rebecca, and two young grandchildren, Rachel and Jordan. We talked about school and sports, and after the meal, I was requisitioned by the kids to join them in their lego building and card game playing.

     Ruth is involved with giving tours of the church she attends (it really is a grand building and it is becoming famous for the enormous stained glass window housed within), so she had to leave for the afternoon. I tagged along with Rebecca and her children to spend the afternoon at their home. In the course of my time with them, I took a tour of their dad’s huge collection of baseball cards which are displayed in the basement, played Spot It (a matching card game), and I was coerced into playing Just Dance (a video game which is exactly what the name makes it sound like).

     In the evening, Ruth and I went back to church and listened to the pastor, Adam Hamilton, preach a sermon on the famous story of Peter and John as they met a met a lame beggar on their way into the temple. Then Ruth had Handbell practice, and I got to catch my breath, write all this down, and get ready for bed.

September 23rd – Leawood, Part 1

     Today I met a very distant relative – a first cousin twice removed. Before leaving on this trip, I knew that my mom had a lot of relatives, but I only knew a few by name. So I called the ones that I did know and arranged to stop by and see them on my trip.

     One of those relatives – my Great Aunt Mary – told me that she keeps in close contact with three of her cousins, and encouraged me to contact them. I followed her advice and found that all three cousins were excited to meet me and also wanted to have me stay with them for a few days. I made arrangements with all of them, and today I met the first one! Her name is Ruth, and she lives in Leawood, which is a suburb of Kansas City, Kansas.

     Incidentally, I’ve found a wonderful resource as I’ve tried to piece together how my family members relate to me. It’s a website called Wolfram Alpha. I’ve used it in the past to solve math equations, but I found out recently that it also has a genealogy calculator. I just had to type “my great aunt’s cousin” into the search bar in the middle of the website’s homepage, and it told me that Ruth is my “first cousin twice removed.” That didn’t do much to clear things up for me, but the diagram that was displayed above the technical name did help to show how our common ancestry works out.

     The meeting with my first cousin twice removed went well.  To be more specific, it went well once I made it to the correct door. Somehow I managed to enter Ruth’s address into Google Maps incorrectly when I left Milford Lake this morning. My phone did its job and directed me perfectly to the address I’d entered, which was not Ruth’s address. Thankfully, no one was home at the address I went to, so my several knocks and rings of the doorbell went unnoticed. After a couple minutes of waiting, I called Ruth to ask if she was home. When she said that she was standing right outside her house waiting for me, I made the spectacular deduction that I was at the wrong address.

     Her house was only two blocks away from the incorrect address I’d found. I got back in the car and found it without difficulty. Now that I’d embarrassed myself before even meeting Ruth, the rest of the evening went wonderfully. We went for a walk, had dinner, and looked at some old family pictures that she had. She told me a lot of things about the parts of my family I didn’t know, and we both talked about our immediate families and our personal interests. Ruth has a daughter and two grandchildren that live nearby. I will get to meet them at lunch tomorrow, after we go to church.