Lug, Gary’s father, turns 90 today and we’re holding an open house for him in Fort Dodge. 90 and still going strong. He still mows his own lawn and snow blows his driveway and sidewalks in the winter. Since he’s been in Fort Dodge his whole life except for a few year after WWII when he went to art school in Chicago, he’s pretty well known. Not only that but he had 12 brothers and sisters while his wife Darlene came from a family of 9. Gary and his sisters grew up with a passle of cousins.
Cathy and he planned most of it when we were in California this winter and had to guestimate how many might come so they could order the cake and arrange for the room to hold it. Lug goes out to the local HyVee store in the mornings and meets some friend there who actually have a band that plays at weddings, anniversaries, etc. So he hired them to come so we actually had live music for half of the gala.
We sent out invitations and put an announcement in to the local paper and we also told others about it so all was ready for the big day. I had scheduled my brother’s colonoscopy for Monday morning so Gary and I planned to stay up in Fort Dodge Sunday night. Sunday morning we awoke early and drove up to meet some friends at 9:00 for breakfast. Since the open house didn’t begin until 2:00 we then checked into our motel to relax and change.
The open house went really well. Cathy had booked the room for 2:00 - 4:00 and people began to arrive right on time. Luckily we had bought some name tags so that everyone could see who was who, especially helpful for someone like me who didn’t grow up with all those cousins. About 1:15, the room was full and the Starlight opened up a partition so we could have two rooms with more tables. Of course Lug got to make a speech and he thanked everyone for coming and expressed his amazement that there were so many there.
I’ve never seen Lug at a loss for words. He can talk for hours and keep on talking. Well, here he is at a loss for words. Obviously, Gary can’t believe it either.
But he recovered shortly and was off and running. But, you’ve got to notice that fancy hat. Cathy made it for him with big felt numerals ’90’ and lots of stars circling it. Pretty special. Here’s Dawn, Lug, Tom, Cathy’s husband, Cathy and Big Gar. He asked his family to come up with him and I caught this picture before I walked up.
My brother came and tried to avoid looking at the cake since he was had his colonoscopy in the morning and wasn’t supposed to eat anything solid. He drooled a bit but we moved him away from the food. Most of the guests must have been having a good time since so many stayed the whole 2 hours. The Michehls (Darlene’s family) were here, the Maceks were here, we had a load of Eischeids (Lug’s sister’s family), a bunch of Insko’s from Illinois (we had been to Danny Insko’s Memorial Service last weekend and they held another in Vincent this weekend for all the Iowa relatives) and loads of Lugs friends from Hy-Vee. A good time was had by all.
And, by the way, here’s Lug’s OLDER brother, Johnny, who is 94 this year and a younger brother, Ron .
Finally people drifted out and we closed up at 4:30, drove over to Lug’s, put 2 large sheet cakes into his freezer, said our good-byes and left for the motel. Here we changed into something more comfortable in the 100+ heat and drove over to Jack’s for a short while. He kept leaving our sciltialtting conversation and heading into the bathroom. Wonder why. He keeps saying something about ‘whooshing’ and his hands with fingers spread wide, make a sweeping motion from his chest to his hips.
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