Most Glorious Vacation Day II<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Allow me to start by telling you about a friend that I\u2019d never met before.\u00a0 Her name is Ginny (That\u2019s what she likes to be called) Toney and she lives in Houston.\u00a0 We exchange emails from time to time, and on a few occasions we have talked on the phone.\u00a0 Our common interest is that we are a little bit related and she has written a book about our families.\u00a0 \u201cThe Reuter\/Riter Family of Germany and Wetzel County, Virginia\/West Virginia\u201d by Virginia Lee Simms Toney <\/em><\/strong>published in 1988, it is a genealogy of our families starting with Johannes Jacob Reuter and Anna Kunigunde from Staufenberg, Germany in 1654AD.\u00a0 Records prior to this date were destroyed by the war, mainly the bombing of Dresden. This is not some tablet of notes based on one or two conversations with some of the old folks.\u00a0 It is a professionally done document into which she invested many years of trips and serious research going to places such as Germany, Salt Lake City, and wherever records required she go to make it complete.\u00a0 It is more than 300 pages of painstaking detail.\u00a0 Every family needs a Ginny Toney for records.\u00a0 From 1988 forward we may have to find a replacement for her.\u00a0 If Ginny doesn\u2019t mind, I\u2019ll probably tap Ingrid for the job.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t mentioned it to either of them yet.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, of course I am listed in the book.\u00a0 Page 197 says \u201cRiter, Jerry Roger IX-1-1-1-3-5-16-4\u201d.\u00a0 The Roman numeral indicates that I am the 9th<\/sup> generation from Johannes Jacob Reuter.\u00a0 The last Arabic number by my name means I was 4th<\/sup> born in my family.\u00a0 My father was the 16th<\/sup> (holy crap!!) born in my grandfather\u2019s family.\u00a0 Grandfather was 5th<\/sup> born in his family and so forth.\u00a0 Long story short\u2014her grandmother is Helen Reuter whose little brother, William was my grandfather.\u00a0 This is not Ginny\u2019s only writing, but probably her most difficult. According to the Houston papers she is also a respected lecturer.\u00a0 I was coming to Texas to see my daughter on this trip and I would be darned if I was going to miss a chance to have breakfast with Ginny.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The problem was that my 1st<\/sup> stop for gas today (3.422 gal-21,319 miles 10:00 AM) was a reality check.\u00a0 Exhaustion had made me sleep late and I was still a couple of hundred miles from Houston.\u00a0 I called her from the station and asked if we could trade the breakfast date for lunch and estimated I could get there before 1:00 PM her time.\u00a0 She agreed, so I hung up and hit the saddle completely forgetting that I was still in Louisiana.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A few miles west of Baton Rouge there is an 18 mile bridge across Atchafalaya Basin.\u00a0 It\u2019s part of the largest swamp in the United States.\u00a0 Modern and wide, the bridge is the nicest and safest stretch of highway on all of I-10.\u00a0 It also has the lowest speed limit.\u00a0 The limit had been 70 mph for the last two hundred or so miles.\u00a0 I usually drove with an indicated speed of 75 mph knowing that bikes always read a few miles optimistically.\u00a0 I had calibrated my own speedometer with a GPS just yesterday, and I found it read between 7 & 8 mph high at this level.\u00a0 In other words, I was driving about 67 or 68 mph.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Suddenly, the side of the road came alive with several Highway Patrol cars each singling out a motorist to run down and exact a toll from.\u00a0 I was one of those.\u00a0 The officer pointed out to me that the speed limit was now 60 mph and accused me to going 80.\u00a0 I explained that I had not yet noticed the change in maximum speed posting, but that under no circumstances was I doing 80 mph.\u00a0 That would mean showing 88 or 89 on the indicator.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t do that unless there was some kind of emergency.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t buying it, nor was he moved by the poor old man on a little bitty scooter routine<\/em>.\u00a0 I must say, his demeanor and deportment were excellent although he was mistaken about the speed I was travelling. He didn\u2019t want to be there.\u00a0 Policemen hate traffic duty, especially running speed traps.\u00a0 It\u2019s a case of a decent young fellow whose job for now just stinks. He gave me a number to call sometime in the next month to find out how much I\u2019ll owe.\u00a0 See 1st<\/sup> comment.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I arrived in Houston about noon and Ginny took me out and bought me lunch at her favorite deli.\u00a0 We had a wonderful time trading stories and agreed to keep in touch by email and phone.\u00a0 Thanks to her marvelous book, friends that claim kinship to me can get their pedigree on line for the asking.\u00a0 The book is out of print now, and Lloye and I bought what we thought were the last three copies.\u00a0 I sent one to my sister whose daughter, Penny (a devout Mormon) was extremely grateful.\u00a0 Ginny found one last remaining copy of it and asked me to give it to my daughter, Rachel, who I was going to see in Austin this evening.\u00a0 Next stop, next blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most Glorious Vacation Day II \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Allow me to start by telling you about a friend that I\u2019d never met before.\u00a0 Her name is Ginny (That\u2019s what she likes to be called) Toney and she lives in Houston.\u00a0 We exchange emails from time to time, and on a few occasions we have talked on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}