Montrose....

I'm leaving tomorrow morning before the crack of dawn for....MONTROSE! I am SO excited!

I need to explain Montrose....

It is a small Pennsylvanian town in the "foothills of the Endless Mountains" as my mother was fond of describing it. "2000 population and 2000 elevation..." (I'm not sure of either, but it sounds good and is easy to remember). One thing we do know is that it was a summer enclave for rich Philadelphians who wanted to get away from the heat of the city. Drive down Lake St and the white Georgian homes of yesteryear will conjure up the clip clop of horses and buggies, ladies in lawn shirtwaists with large hats going to take tea with a neighbor, butlers and maidservants bustling around, and, of course, Mary Roberts Rinehart mysteries.

Our family (Mother, Daddy, Rosie, Rick, Lyn & I) went there for the first time in 1960. We stayed in the upstairs apartment of a huge house on High St. Daddy was visiting missions in South America, and he wanted to get us out of the heat of Detroit. Lao Lao (old old -- or the mother's mother in Chinese) and Granddaddy were going to be there as they had come home permanently from Korea. They would be living in Torrey Lodge so we would get an entire summer with our grandparents.

The upshot of the whole thing was that Mother and Daddy purchased an old (very old) log cabin (REAL log cabin) that Mother had lived in the summer of her 13th birthday. For years we came back to that falling down log cabin the day after school ended, and didn't go back to Michigan until the day before school started.

Mother and Daddy eventually bought land and built a home there where they lived until Daddy went home to be with Jesus, and mother married Amos, then moving to Bethany Village in Mechanicsburg, PA. Mother had the old cabin razed, building a new, modern, winterized one on the very spot.



Our families went back, summer after summer. Rosie and I and all the children would meet up there for two to three weeks, never missing the Blueberry Festival. It is Lyn and Tim's home when they are in the U.S. on home assignment from Berlin.

The fall of 2001 we rented the cabin -- and lost it to a fire.

I've not been back since then.

We had it rebuilt by the same builder that did the second cabin.

Rosie has been the prime mover and shaker for getting it built, with Lyn putting many of the finishing touches on it this year when she was home.

This is the first time I have been able to go.

I can't wait.

Lyn, Tim, Timothy, David & Rebecca will be there. Rosie, Rob, Helen Clare, Liz Anne and The Boyfriend will be there. (The Boyfriend is a Big Deal. No one is invited to Montrose unless it is a Big Deal!!), Rick and Susan are coming on Saturday.

I'm going alone. Bobbert can't come because of his new job. Timo can't come because of his new job.

But I'm going.....

I can't wait.