Spring Break visiting can make one delinquent with everyday chores

Dorothy Milligan Byng Correspondent

I love going visiting.  I particularly like climbing on board a plane and going someplace I haven’t visited recently. However, I have discovered that taking eight days out of  my normal week can make it hard to catch up on some of my routine activities.  Reminds me of a sign I saw in a local business: “The further I go, the behinder I get.”

On Saturday morning, March 15, my adoptive daughter Abby Barron and I boarded a plane in Dallas to fly to Baltimore for a visit with her daughter and my granddaughter, Dawna Michele “Chele” Milligan.  We had a lovely week, getting to know the family of her friend, Tom Reeves.  (We had met Tom last year when he came with Chele for a visit.)  We took the train to Washington, D.C. for one day and visited the new American Indian museum.  We spent another day in Hampden which is full of neat little shops. (Hampden was the location for the musical “Hair Spray.” One day was devoted to Little Italy with lunch in a great Italian restaurant, and another gave me my first acquaintance with Johns Hopkins University’s Career Center where Chele is senior associate decorator.  Every day was fun-filled and busy.  We flew back on Saturday, March 22, with brief stopovers in Detroit (snow) and Saint Louis.  Richard and Mitch picked us up in Dallas and we arrived at blessed Byng about sundown.

I give you this condensed version to make my original point.  Such visiting can certainly get one behind on routine activities.  Mind you, I don’t get behind on household cleaning.  I subscribe to the theory that when I go on vacation the dust bunnies and cobwebs get time off as well.  I don’t get behind on my laundry because that was the last thing I did before I left, and I washed my dirty clothes before I left Chele’s house, so that’s no problem.  What then, you ask, is there to get behind on?

I can’t speak for everyone, but I get behind on my newspaper reading and my naps.  Eight days of mail I dealt with by opening it near a wastebasket, extracting one bill and two small checks and disposing of the rest.  Ten minutes.  Done.  Newspapers are a different story.  I generally read newspapers from cover to cover, ads and all.  Normally, that doesn’t take long, but a week’s supply is something else, particularly with all those Sunday special articles. (Two Sunday papers to be read!)  A newspaper needs to be read slowly and luxuriantly with a big cup of coffee in hand.  Then, when the last one has been absorbed the reader needs to nestle down further into the recliner for a nap. To my way of thinking, a Sunday afternoon nap is Divinely ordained, and it is a necessity.   This was starting to be my second Sunday without one, and I couldn’t afford to get any further behind on my napping.  Vacuuming and dusting I can skip (gladly) , but I’ve got to keep abreast of my reading and my napping!

                                         *********

          I hope all of you had a happy, uplifting Easter.  Our pastor, Jasper Ligon and his wife, Holly, left on Friday, March 14, took their four boys to visit grandparents, then they took off to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary by flying to Hershey, PA,   Jasper, a history buff, was planning to tour some Civil War battlegrounds (Gettysburg, in particular), then going to Washington, D.C.  (I kept looking over my shoulder when we were there, wondering if we’d run into them.) They will be back at their jobs on Monday morning. She is a teacher, and he is a Hospice chaplain.

          Jerry and Lou Jean Studebaker were with us for the two Sundays that Jasper was gone, and it was great having them again.  They were in my Sunday School class many years ago, and they have been dear friends ever since. ( Lou Jean was my walking buddy when she lived in the community)  They now live in Ada, and Jerry is director of International Students Activities at ECU.  Lou Jean is still a teacher at Latta Elementary.

                                                               *********

           Larry and Sammie Montgomery are moving this week to Choteau where he has accepted the pastorate of the Free Will Baptist Church.  For the past four years, he had pastured the First Free Will Baptist Church at Ada, and the couple had lived at Byng.  The Montgomerys were pleased to find a house they liked in Choteau, but told me they were sorry to be losing their neighbors at Byng.   “Our neighbors probably added at least $10,000 to the worth of our home at Byng,” Larry declared, and his neighbors reciprocate.  Fran Henley, who lives next door bemoans losing the Montgomerys.  “He was a Master Gardener, and he always gave me such great advice and help with my yard.  I’m surely going to miss them.”  The Montgomery house has been bought by Justin Presley and his family.  He is the older son of  James and Janice Presley who live across the street.

                                              *********

          Lane Self, New Bethel’s youth minister, was away last week on a mission trip with the Baptist Student Union group from East Central University/   Fifty young people drove to Glorietta, N.M. where they did repairs and renovation for the well-known religious retreat.  Their work included painting, roofing and cutting brush.   According to Lane, they worked hard, but they ate very well and had time for study and play. 

                                                     *******

          Betty Allred, Byng Alumni president, reminds all former students that the annual reunion is scheduled for June 2l.  The class of ’58 will be especially honored this year.  For reservations or further information, call Mary Barrett, 332-6513 or Betty Allred 332-0525.

                                                     *********

          The only thing I like better than going visiting is coming home.  I was happy to see that spring had tiptoed in while I was gone.  Many of the trees are leafed out; Bradford pears are in full bloom and the redbuds are peeking out.   The periwinkle that covers much of my front yard has hundreds of blue-purple flowers.

          My adoptive kinfolk, Richard Barron and Mitch Garris did all sorts of nice things for me while I was gone.  Not only did they feed Petey the Pup; they also bathed him, and they detailed my car.  It was almost unrecognizably shiny.  My Number Two Son, Ralph, Madill, and his friend, Darla Herndon, Ardmore, came for church Sunday morning and we had lunch together.  They brought me a beautiful pot of tulips.  My cup runneth over!