Mark H.

I had a surprise phone call from my nephew, Mark. It’s always a delight to chat with him. He drives an eighteen wheeler and phones me from time to time from various points on his long haul trips. Mark and his wife Celia live in Missouri with their three children, although Celia and boys, Andrew and Jonathan and daughter Christina are presently on vacation in California visiting Celia’s family.

I’ve enjoyed knowing my sister Adeline’s children, Michael, Virginia, David and Mark. Each had charming personalities as children and as adults they are still charming and fun to know.

I first saw Michael when he was about a year old. At that time, my husband and I were in Philadelphia on business and I had an opportunity to visit Adeline in New York for an afternoon. Adeline had a regular routine of taking Michael for a walk in his stroller every afternoon so I helped bundle him up and off we went. The weather was cold and cloudy, but Michael was happy as could be.

Virginia was 18 months old before I had an opportunity to see her for the first time. Mom and Dad were babysitting her for a day. She was a cutie little cherub with dark hair and fair complexion and sound asleep in her playpen.

David was sitting in his highchair, eating cheerios when I first saw him. He was almost at the walking stage and Adeline asked me to fix his bottle while she got him ready for his nap.

One of my earliest memories of Mark was when Adeline asked me to baby sit one afternoon while she made a quick trip to the grocery store. She warned me to keep a close eye on Mark or he would sneak away and try to cross a busy street on his way to the bakery. As a toddler he had learned to climb the high brick wall enclosing the back yard and taking off to heaven knows where! As a slightly older child, he had repeated his escapes on several occasions, but neighbors, police and shop keepers were alerted to his forays.

As I sat on the couch reading Mark a story; he sat on the floor by my feet. He heard Adeline tell me to keep an eye on him and he promised me not to run away. He brought me a long 10 or 12 foot piece of heavy rope and said he would tie himself to my foot. I let him wrap the rope around my ankle and he wrapped the rope around his waist and sat on the floor listening to me read.

I once had Mark spend the night with me. When I took him home the next day, we stopped at a deli and ordered sandwiches and slaw to eat at one of the outdoor tables. As we were eating, Mark told me he was never allowed to keep any of the money he earned, his father made him put it all in his bank account. I was a bit surprised but when I asked if he got to spend some of his money on things like movies or candy, he said no.

The movie How the West Was Won was showing at a near by theater. Thinking the film title indicated it might be appropriate for children, I decided to take him to the movie before I took him home. We settled into our seats with popcorn, but it wasn’t long before I realized that Mark was too young to sit thru Hollywood’s history of the west, so we left.

Mark often made fudge in the afternoons after school. I happened to be around on several occasions when he made his fudge and served it to everyone. It was delicious, the best I’d ever eaten! He told me how to make it, but I didn’t write the recipe down. On the way home I stopped and bought the ingredients which included a can of evaporated milk and proceeded to make fudge, only mine didn’t fudge! I phoned Mark to find our why I was having so much trouble and discovered I had used a large can of milk, not the smaller one the recipe called for. My solution to the problem was to double the recipe and continue cooking the mixture. I ended up with a lot of fudge that was almost, but not quite, as good as Mark’s.

I once traveled across the country from Texas to California with Mark and his wife. Mark was driving a pickup with a camper, his wife and I took turns driving their small compact car. We caravanned in tandem, making stops at the same time. We pulled into the rest stop outside Deming, New Mexico late one morning. Mark was concerned that his truck radiator was heating up, so he checked under the hood.

As the three of us stood there looking at the engine, I noticed that a man some distance from us, start to run toward me with arm held straight out with his finger pointed at me like a gun. I just stood there looking from his hand to his eyes and back to his hand. In a flash the man had reached me, put his arms around my waist, whirled me around, and laughed. He asked if I knew who he was. It was Anno, a cousin I hadn’t seen for years! We asked how in the world he found us. He was making a fast driving trip from Florida to California, but had taken time to stop and say hello to Mom and Dad in Texas. They told him to look for us and described the truck and car. That’s how he knew it was us. I still marvel at that chance meeting in the desert! It was like finding a needle in a haystack.