Like most teenagers,
my sons Troy and Teddy think I am embarrassing.
Most of the time it is like a war zone around here.
Me passing out chores and them rebelling against said chores.
So in 2010 it came as a surprise that our sons were stalking us.
I could see the handwriting on the wall in 2010.
Troy was fifteen and I knew it was getting time for him to fly the coop.
I planned one big family road trip thinking it was our last family vacation together.
We camped most of the time at KOA campgrounds.
Did you know KOA was invented so people back East come could to the Seattle World's Fair in 1962?
Pretty big doings with Elvis filming "Meet Me At the World's Fair" when I was six.
So, I planned for months for our big trip.
North Cascades Highway, Winthrop, Grand Coulee Dam, Virginia City Montana, Yellowstone Park and Chico Hot Springs.
Our last hooray as a family.
Only snag was the van broke down before Winthrop and we limped into town thinking it was all over.
Then Troy and I had one of our huge fights at the campground.
Don't even ask me what we were fighting over. We've been fighting since he was two and Teddy showed up.
Troy never forgave me for having Teddy.
The van got fixed and eventually we got to Virginia City Montana.
On the way stayed in a one hundred and fifty year old cabin in Nevada City. Get what you pay for. Bed bugs.
In the morning I parked the van on Main Street Virginia City and told Troy and Teddy,
"Meet us back here in an hour. I want to show your dad where my great grandparents lived
and the courthouse where great granddad was the DA."
Terry and I walked across the street to the Vigilante gift shop
and wandered in and out on the boardwalk looking at all the
businesses. Most Western towns in the United States burned down
and Virginia City Montana is one of a handful that didn't.
With Terry being a poptart over two hundred and sixty-five pounds
I was surprised the old wood boardwalks didn't cave in.
As we browsed the first gift shop Troy and Teddy came in and started trying on cowboy hats with their dad.
Terry thinks since he lived in Ellensburg ten years that he is a cowboy. Think Leif Erikson in a cowboy hat.
That began our funny tour of Virginia City with the kids
stalking us.
Every time we entered a store, they entered a store after us.
They thought we didn't see them.
Then they'd get ahead of us and try to not let us see them.
It's a small town.
The candy shop lady looked at me and Terry and said,
"Are those your two boys you cute sons lady?"
I did not want to admit to it.
"Why?" I said cagily in case they were awful to her.
"We'll they're just about the best mannered kids I ever saw."
Terry and I looked at each other in shock.
I asked the lady to describe them and sure enough, she was talking about our kids.
We got ahead of them at the end of the street and crossed over to the penny arcade.
My mom took me and my sisters there in 1971 when I was Teddy's age.
Next thing I know both kids are shouting at me to look at this and look at that.
Before motion pictures had film, they had flip cards that made little movies.
The kids were wild over them. For two bits they could turn the crank and watch old movies as the cards flipped.
Terry and I left and went to the bar-cafe. I was showing Terry where old Bobby Gahn told mom
and my sisters and me where the trap door was in 1971.
He even had a bit part in the awful Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson movie filmed there, "The Missouri Breaks."
He was ancient in 1971 but he remembered my great grandfather and told us how he'd
get the telegraph from the feds during prohibition that they were coming for a raid.
Gramps would run down Main street from the courthouse
and pass all the booze down to Bobby through the trap door.
So Terry and I sit down to order buffalo burgers and
I looked up and saw the hungry kids trailing us.
I turned to the waitress and said,
"Help! My children are stalking me!"
Book!!!!
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