Last night I visited my 83 year old friend on the lake. We stepped out of the house to go canoeing close to dark, when a black widow spider landed on my forehead. That will teach me to make fun of Michelle’s Arachnid dress.
It was perfect canoeing conditions, despite the unprecedented 70ºF heat – which had shut down the schools a day earlier. I asked her about Chicago in the 1930s, and she didn’t remember anything about the weather – but she did remember seeing the wreckage of the train tracks in the Florida Keys from the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane. She drove by there in 1943, and remembers seeing seven miles of completely wrecked tracks. She also told the story of how people had fought for ownership of those tracks prior to the hurricane.
Most importantly, she said that her father forbade the family from using the word “Roosevelt” in the house.
