Sunday Serenity #187

I thought I was going to be seeing scenes like those above and below today.



Instead I saw a lot of scenes similar to this one:



Ed and I rendezvoused with my sister at Rice Hill this afternoon which is close to the halfway point between Phoenix and Portland. I'm to be spending the next month or so at my mom's in Longview WA and the plan was for us to head east to the coast and drive up the Oregon coast on Highway 101 maybe stop at a beach and walk in the surf.

It was a beautiful day for it too and we three sisters (Carri had stopped in Vancouver WA on her way south to pick up Jamie) were eagerly looking forward to seeing the beaches and hearing the surf. We all love beaches.

So we took Highway 20 just north of Eugene heading toward Newport. It was during the hour or so on that road that we saw many scenes similar to the bucolic barn scene above.

We were just ten miles from Newport when traffic suddenly began crawling and then halted altogether. We smelled smoke. Then traffic began flowing back towards us from ahead. It was cars that had turned around and headed east again. One of them stopped to inform us that a hay truck had caught fire ahead and the road had been closed.

So we had to turn around as well. By then it was after 5PM so we realized that it would be too late to make the six hour drive up the coast by the time we had made the hour or so drive back to I5 and found another Highway east. So disappointing.

But a really bizarre thing happened on our drive back to the freeway. We stopped at a rest area and while there my sister spotted an older couple exiting their car and was struck by how much the gentleman resembled our uncles--our mother's brothers and their father, our grandpa.

Now my sister, unlike me, is far far far from shy. She had no qualms about calling out to him and saying 'you look like you could be in our family.' In the course of the next few minutes she had elicited from him that his father had been from Indiana. Our mother's father had been raised in Elkhart Indiana. So she asked his name and learned it was Myers. Which is our mother's maiden name. And spelled the way her's was spelled which is the uncommon way to spell it as it is more often spelled Meyers. And the gentleman's first name was the same as one of our Myers cousin's. And someone else in his family (possibly his father, grandfather or uncle) was named Warren which is Mom's brother's name.

Now we know that Mom's dad, Howard Myers was the son of Amos Myers of Elkhart and Amos had six brothers.


Above was my attempt to photograph my mom's photographic print of the huge photo wall portrait of her Grandpa Amos and his brothers taken in the late 1800s. I don't know which one is Amos. Nor do I know any of his brother's names. But I think I would be willing to lay a bet that one of the young men pictured above is the great or great-great grandfather of Mr Myers whom we met on Oregon Highway 20 this afternoon. If so it might be possible his direct ancestor was my own grandfather's brother but since Mr Myers had not heard of an Amos in his direct line, it would be more likely it was one of Amos's brothers or even one of Amos's father's brothers.