Over the four plus years of this nightly blog, I have gradually told the story of the "husband sitter," the project Jeep that has been in my garage for the last four homes I've occupied. Someday, it will be completed, and be completely street legal and back road capable. We thought today might be that day. I was told I wasn't allowed to post to Facebook when we set out in it, because it was going to be a big surprise for the people we were taking it to see. But me and my big mouth, I just had to post an excited "this is happening" post and I jinxed it. We were about six blocks from here when it started making funny noises. And by funny I mean not funny at all. It sounded like a cross between some fluid boiling and turning to steam against very hot metal and a wire brush scraping against a spinning fan. We tried a couple things and drove another block or two with it, and then we headed for home, with it making these terrifying sounds. By the time we reached the last stoplight before the house, the noise quieted. But we were both unwilling to risk the engine that had been under construction for the last ten years without being able to investigate it fully. We swapped over to my little blue car and headed up in that instead.
Seeing the Jeep running, and even being able to drive it, was supposed to be a present for one of our oldest friends, and for his parents from whom the Mr bought the Jeep. It was their vehicle in the 1980s, when the boys (as they were then) were just learning to drive. This was specifically the car our friend learned how to drive in. It was passed around through his brothers and sisters, until finally, many years ago, it gave up the ghost, and sat idle on their mountain property above Boulder for a very long time. Mr S-P nagged our friend's mom for years until she finally caved in and sold it to him, and he spent years tinkering with it, teaching daughter number two about rebuilding an engine with it, and then in Charleston, working furiously to restore it. Now it is as beautiful as it can be, and has a unique kind of charm with its Rhino-lined paint job inside and out. But the engine continues to be a thing of mystery. It's possible the engine is about to become a thing of a salvage yard.
The reason this was so special for today was that our friend was in town to mark the occasion of his parents' anniversary. They were married 50 years ago yesterday. All the kids came home to celebrate with them, and they went out to dinner at the same rustic gold mining town restaurant and inn where the Mr and I were married (27 years this Friday). It's a beautiful venue for that sort of thing. While our friend and his brothers were digging around their old home, they came across the wedding movie, shot on 8mm film outside the church and at the reception in the garden at a gorgeous family home. The movie had been transferred to DVD a while back, but no one could find it. They found the film, and an old projector, and set it up to watch. When we saw it this afternoon, in a daylit living room, we had to view it on a small section of the screen, because the lamp wasn't bright enough to project too terribly far. But it was enough to see how adorable the couple was 50 years ago. Our friend pointed out how much they looked like the actors in The Graduate, and he was right. They were all in the first blush of their beauty, happy, festive, and enviably dressed. Even her bridesmaids dresses were lovely. (Knowing the hideousness that I subjected my bridesmaids to, it was even more noticeable that these ladies were elegant.) That movie, taking up that tiny portion of the screen, transported me to a place in my past I love to visit often, if only in my mind, where people dressed for the occasion, where everyone talks to everyone else, and no one sits in a corner with their face in a screen. It doesn't exist anymore, but it's nice to have a window to see it, once in a while.
Happy 50th anniversary, SD and DD. You are an inspiration.
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