Thanks for the mysteries!

Winding down often requires a good mystery to take one's mind off the normal stress and routine. I seize on one author and read through all the titles. At eleven I remember sitting on the bench in the children's section of my grandma's little library under the single bulb hanging light fixture on dark, cold winter evenings, or at the big "grown up" table on hot summer afternoons reading two Nancy Drew mysteries at a sitting. At my other grandparents' apartment I would scrunch myself as small as possible in the most remote corner and read about Cherry Ames, the intrepid flight nurse.


Sometimes the mental vacation mysteries were non-fiction. I read books about great archeaological discoveries sitting up in our backyard treehouse; Troy, Tut, Mesa Verde, and especially Knossos. I still love a good Elizabeth Peters excavation season in Egypt. When my little students get messy I think of Peabody exclaiming, "Another shirt ruined!"


The mystery of King Tut is forever linked in my memory with the assassination of President Kennedy. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Alschwede, was reading one chapter to our class about Howard Carter each day in November of 1963.


In the tough years before my divorce Jim Chee, Lieutenant Leaphorn, and Kinsey Milhone probably kept me from going off the deep end. They gave me courage to put on my own little detective hat and figure out what was going wrong.

This winter break has lots of stress with my mother's illness. I hate to admit I read this blog's statistics daily. And that is the source of this vacation mystery distraction. Someone in Ploiesti, Romania hits this blog twice a day. What a gift that person gives me! I've had to get out maps, and read WWII history. Ploiesti has a population around 250,000 which is not far different than my city of Plano, Texas. Ploiesti has a Clock Museum and oil refineries. I still don't know how to pronounce Ploiesti, but I hope it fits into Burt Bacharach's song, Do You Know The Way To San Jose?

Do you know the way to Ploiesti?



Do you know the way to San Jose?
I've been away so long
I may go wrong and lose my way
Do you know the way to San Jose?
I'm going back to find some place of mind in San Jose
L.A. is a great big freeway
Put a hundred down a by a car
In a week, maybe two they'll make you a star
Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass
And all the stars there never were
Are parking cars and pumping gas
I've got lots of friends in San Jose
Can't wait to get back to San Jose
Do you know the way to San Jose?