Looking Back #4
Our primary goal for full time RVing was to see America. Many of our parking areas provided us with a location where we could take side trips and explore a large area of attractions/locations we wanted to visit while parked there.
We had long time friends from our military years that were also traveling full time and their goals were much the same as ours. They also had a fiver and diesel powered dually. Our first time together was in Johnstown, PA.
When we purchased out Everest at Lazydays RV in Seffner, FL we were given a handful of complementary gifts. One of them was for a one-year membership at KOA CGs. KOA Johnstown was the first one we used for a long-term parking and exploring layover for a month. We had reserved 2 weeks but decided to stay another 2 weeks. We had to move to another site because the one we were in had a reservation.
Our site at this KOA was a large, level, grassy, back-in with a lot of tree cover making it very hard to find a dish TV signal. After a half dozen tries, I finely found a signal. The KOA is large with a full-service camp store and a huge fire ring area where there was live entertainment on the weekends. Thank goodness we weren’t parked close to it. Our friends were coming from Pieria, IL and were a day behind us.
Our first side trip was to Lititz, PA where we took a buggy ride from Intercourse, PA through an Amish farming community. We ate breakfast at a little café across the street from a wonderful candy factory (Wilbur Chocolate Co). While having breakfast, a discussion started about one of Linda’s friends, Erma Miller. Linda and Erma had become friends while I was on a deployment to faraway places. The year was 1965 and we lived in Virginia Beach, VA. Shortly after my return from the deployment Erma’s husband was killed when he ran his car into the backend of a school bus. No children were hurt. There was no indication he had tried to avoid hitting the bus and no skid marks. An autopsy revealed he had a sudden instant death heart attack. Erma had two small children. She moved back to her hometown, Lititz, PA. Our waiter in the Café overheard our conversation and found a local phone book for Linda to look and see if Erma was still using her married name (Miller). Because of the way her husband was killed she was eligible for Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC). It was a tax-free monetary benefit paid to eligible survivors of military Service members who died in the line of duty. She could receive monitory benefits from the program until her children finished schooling, including collage. The catch was, she could not get remarried. If she did, she would forfeit the DIC benefits. So, her name was found in the phone book. She and Linda swapped Christmas cards for many years but as they aged, they trailed off, and contact had been lost. Later that day, when we returned to the trailer, Linda called Erma. The following day she came to the trailer, and they talked like school kids that whole day. Don and I went golfing. (Erma’s children both graduated from college).
Continuation of this story will be in the next installment, Looking Back #4A.
