Some of my fondest memories include goofs, those silly mistakes that often end with a good laugh.
I was on the phone with a friend who started telling me about their visit to see their little, great-granddaughter the day before. When she began to describe where the family lived in North Prairie, Wisconsin, I interrupted her. I knew exactly where the village was located, although I hadn’t been there in seventy years.
After our conversation, my mind replayed that long ago incident. During the fifties, while Ken was serving in the navy, my cousin, Doris, and I did a lot of things together. She was fourteen years older than I, so Mom trusted her to watch out for me. Our age difference seemed to shrink–we were just two young women having fun. On that particular summer Sunday after church, we went to Edgerton, Wisconsin, to see our mothers’ Aunt Maggie and Uncle Martin, who had built a retirement cottage on Lake Koshkonong. After visiting and enjoying lunch, Doris and I donned our bathing suits and walked down to the water. She tried to teach me to swim but it was too little too late. It started to rain, so we dressed and left. When we came to Highway 59 on our way home, it reminded us that this was the last day of the Green County Fair. Maybe it wasn’t raining in Monroe– she turned onto the highway. When it seemed like we’d driven long enough to be close to the city, we came to the village of Eagle, which neither of us had heard of. Then we entered North Prairie, another unknown. Doris stopped at a gas station and asked for directions. The attendant opened a state map and moved his finger to the right instead of to the left. We were nearing Milwaukee–she had turned the wrong way on the highway. With the overcast, we had no sun to orient us. We laughed, turned around and headed toward home.
Do you have any happy memories of goofs?