Monday, August 15

44 Road

Photo from 44 Road, of Route 141, in Gateway Canyon, mid-day.

The Orenstein-Stanfill roaming family circus picks up sticks and heads for Utah via Route 141/90, taking a scenic detour to Gateway Canyon Resort, on Stan's recommendation. We caravan with Stan and Silver and Marcus.

As the Shakespeares' changes shall be upon us, their transition discussed (or ignored) by the family. Thackery gives us guidance, Dear Reader, below, which I read to the kids, who cover their ears:

"James Crawley, when his aunt had last beheld him, was a gawky lad, at that uncomfortable age when the voice varies between an unearthly treble and a preternatural bass; when the face not uncommonly blooms out with appearances for which Rowland Kalydor [anti-zit cream] is said to act as a cure; when boys are seen to shave furtively with their sisters scissors, and the sight of other young women produces intolerable sensations of terror in them; when the great hands and ankles protrude a long way from garments which have grown too tight for them; when the presences after dinner is at once frightful to the ladies, who are whispering in the twilight in the drawing-room, and inexpressibly odious to the gentlemen over the mahogany, who are restrained from freedom of intercourse and delightful interchanged of wit by the prescience of that gawky innocence; when, at the conclusion of the second glass, papa says, 'Jack, my boy, go out and see if the evening holds up', and the youth, willing to be free, yet hurt at not being yet a man, quits incomplete banquet. . . ."
--William Thackery, "Vanity Fair", 1848