Updates from Lennie: February 2017

John and Kathy's visit was great.

On the way home from the airport we stopped at the original Honey Bear's Barbecue in Phoenix, a famous family-owned restaurant/takeout place. (They also have an outlet in north Phoenix.)

We had a night out to see Hans Olson play at the Handlebar Pub and Grill.

There were two evenings at Dale Sr.'s "man-cave" on 5th Avenue, where John and Dale Jr. played music.

Also present were Jerry Gargalione on his gut-bucket bass

And neighbor Cam on his acoustic bass

One evening we made pizza in the pizza oven in the back yard. We went to get our ingredients at the huge El Rancho Mexican supermarket on Southern Avenue in Mesa.

No, I don't know what these things are, and we didn't get them for the pizza. I just photographed them because I thought they looked interesting!

We ate lunch at their buffet

Back in Apache Junction, we had to start the fire for the pizza had to be started mid-afternoon.

Making the dough and cutting vegetables:

Making the pizzas: here you can barely see the pizza cooking in front of the fire

All in all, a wonderful visit!

The services for Dale Sr.'s Uncle Ted, on January 7th, were beautiful, meaningful, and very well-attended. I was so pleased that both Dale Jr. and Brian Lawson and Marie could attend.

There was much about Ted Lewis' life and accomplishments that I had not known.

I could see how it helped Donna that they lived in the retirement home area of Apache Junction where they lived (and she still does). There is are people there who regularly help with any function, and Ted and Donna were among those people. When I went to use the rest room at the reception at the clubhouse, I saw a group of older people sitting in the room adjoining the main clubhouse function room. I asked them if they were the ones helping Donna with the reception, and they said, "That's what we do." "He always helped us." Things like that.

I could see how living in a place like that would make things easier at a time like this. It made me understand something about that sort of place that I hadn't thought about before.

Regular houses on lots, city roads, no fence around the development, but they were all built at the same time and they have a clubhouse, by-laws, etc. (Whatever by-laws are.)

Someone said that Uncle Ted used to ride around that place in his golf-cart, which he had attached fancy tail-pipes...

After the eulogy, there were really interesting tributes given by Ted's son Jeff and his two sons by his first marriage. There was much about his life that I didn't know. Donna had kept incredibly detailed scrapbooks, including newspaper clippings of when Ted, as Pinal Co. Sheriff, apprehended a fugitive criminal for whom there was a state-wide chase.

There was also a photo of Donna with some other Democratic Club officers! Ted apparently ran as a Democrat when he ran for sheriff.