Mountain Woman

Happy Labor Day! I hope that everyone is enjoying a day off, or at least getting holiday pay if you had to work today. We grad. students had a fun picnic/BBQ over at Lake Charleston today. It is surprisingly close to our apartment--probably only about 5 miles away. You can see some pictures here of Alyson and me, then the view across the lake. I guess that a lot of people go there to boat and fish, but it's kind of like the Mississippi River in that when you look at the water up close, you decide it would be best not to swim in it. Everyone now thinks I'm a "mountain woman" because I was the only one out of everybody (including the boys) who knew how to heat charcoals on those campground-type grills. At first Kristen dumped a bunch of charcoals in there, doused them with lighter fluid, and threw a match in (scary!), but of course the extremely large flame died out in a minute or so. She kept pouring more lighter fluid on it, so I decided that for the safety of everyone involved (and the surrounding environment--the grass was pretty dry), I should step in and get the situation under control. I explained that the charcoals themselves aren't going to catch on fire--we needed to build a fire on top of them to make them hot. So we gathered wood and built a little tee pee over the charcoals--just like Dad has always taught me to do--and got a nice fire going. They wondered how I knew how to build a fire and heat charcoals, so I explained that I learned from my dad on family camping trips and hot dog roasts. The only casualty of the day was my finger--I think I sprained it playing football, but I was still the best quarterback :-) Speaking of football, one of the girls in the program graduated from the University of Michigan, so we had fun giving her a hard time about Michigan's loss to Appalachian State the other day. We had a great time just hanging out there and enjoying the nice weather. We decided that it almost didn't feel like we were in Illinois there at the lake--probably because we couldn't see any corn.

Today I e-mailed T-Dud's son, Rick Dudley, to schedule a time for an oral interview for the T-Dud project. He e-mailed me back, and it's kind of sad because he said that his dad was always gone and never talked with his family much--especially about his professional work or his childhood. So Mr. Dudley said that he actually knows very little about his dad, and most of what he does know he learned from his dad's obituary. :-( I take it that T-Dud wasn't much of a family guy. His son said that he would be happy for me to interview him, but remarked that he'll probably learn more from me than I will from him. This whole conversation made me realize that sometimes people are so concerned with making a name for themselves in the big world (i.e. T-Dud and his nationally-recognized labor union court cases) that they aren't around much to make a difference on a smaller scale in the lives of their family members. Most of us will probably not be nationally famous, but I think I'd rather have my kids know who I am than the rest of the country. I see now why our T-Dud exhibit is not going to include a "Family Life" section--just "Young Tilford," "World War I Years," and "Professional Career." It's a little sad really. I'm looking forward to talking with Mr. Dudley though--he seems like a very nice man. Well, I'm off to do some homework--it wouldn't really be Labor Day without a little labor!