Deju vue all over again - August 9, 1974

---

Do you remember what happenned on Friday, August 9, 1974? It is the one reference question I could always answer without looking it up. Of course, the question is which was the more important event - Richard Nixon's resignation or our wedding?

It really was deja vue all over again at the Ford Presidential Library and Museum in Grand Rapids, MI when we saw all the tv coverage from August 9 - it was like reliving our wedding day - watching the news, hoping that Nixon would get out of DC and Ford would finish his speeches in time for us to get married! The Ford Library showcases Gerald Ford very nicely and you are left with the impression of him as a very decent human being...and at that time that's probably exactly what this country needed. Of course, all the memories of the seventies were great - how did we ever wear those white go go boots!!!

The drive from Grand Rapids to Winnetka was a true rust belt tour, as my cousin Sarah christened it. We drove through Gary, Indiana - I thought of the Sandburg poem " The Mayor of Gary" ...

"And I saw workmen wearing leather shoes scruffed with fire and cinders,
and pitted with little holes from running molten steel,
and some had bunches of specialized muscles around their shoulder blades
hard as pig iron,
muscles of their fore-arms were sheet steel
and they looked to me like men who had been somewhere."

The sky was like molten lead, the towering infernos of US Steel dwarfing everything else, a sense of tiredness and fear seemed to rain down...a city on the downside of life.

We spent Friday evening with my cousin Sarah Ross and her husband Norm Rosenstein at their home in Winnetka - it was great to see them, see Sarah getting around so well after her ankle replacement surgery and Norm looking happy and healthy after his kidney transplant last year - ah, the medical joys of aging... Great tapas dinner - bacon wrapped dates to die for. Thanks for the presidential suite, Sarah...and see you in Maine next summer.

---