The First Week of November (and John Wayne Monopoly)

Wow! I can't believe that the first week of November has actually come . . . and gone. Again, we've been pretty busy. On Saturday, Mom and the two of us went out shopping for some things like long-sleeved tops for the Winter and slippers. Shopping has gotten to be a rather depressing thing these days, as items get lower and lower in quality and the prices get higher by the week. We've really gone to making old things last and make do. Every now and then, though, it's necessary to buy something new.

We went into the mall, which is something that we only do around Christmas. There is a game and calendar store there that comes in at the end of the year, so we went in there. We found two really cool things --- one of which, we bought. That was a deck of playing cards, but very special cards. They have John Wayne's photo on the back, and each of the fifty-two cards has a different photo of him on the face side of the card. They are really cool! And after learning all those new games last weekend, we thought these were just the perfect thing.


There was another thing that we would sure like to have. I guess we need to start dropping some serious hints to Mom and Dad about what we'd like for Christmas! It was a John Wayne Monopoly game. The whole center is a picture of him in a Western, and the different properties are all places from his films --- including Ireland (for The Quiet Man). The game tokens are all "John Wayne" related items, and the "Chance" and "Community Chest" cards are all film related as well. So, this is now on the top of our Christmas list! :)



Sunday was a fun day, as we had a nice morning at church. Our pastor played a sermon (on voting and the upcoming election) by David Jeremiah. It was really wonderful. We also had some time to chat with Sarah --- bringing her up to date on the weekend down in Cinci, etc. The day just kept on getting better, since Buddy and Kay were able to spend the whole afternoon at our house. We watched two "new" movies. One was an Alan Ladd Western, and the other was an airplane movie with Dana Andrews and Sterling Hayden. See the next post for more on these films. We haven't gotten to have Buddy and Kay up in months. Literally. So, we all had a really nice time. Lots of gab and relaxation.

Mom's aunt passed away last Thursday. She lived in Cleveland, so we were able to go up on Monday for the funeral. The service was at the cemetery chapel, and the message was given by Aunt June's pastor. He's fabulous! We've met him a few times, as we had gone up to go to church with Aunt June a couple of times. He also did Uncle Fred's funeral eight years ago. It is unusual to find such a conservative pastor in the middle of a large city like Cleveland. After the funeral was over, we all went up to a Denny's in Parma town. Both of Aunt June's daughters (Mom's cousins) were there, as were a lot of their children. It's always fun to get together.

We're reaching the end of all this cleaning out and organizing. We've finally gone through pretty much all of the books --- and gotten the new ones on the shelves. Not bad. It's kind of a nice thing to see the house getting cleaned out. Elizabeth and I went through all of our 45rpm records this morning. We've also been getting the camera situation all sorted out, but that's a long story --- for another post! More later.