KEITH AND THE MOTOR HOMES

Written by Luz Leigh March 2007
 

            We spent many happy days on the parking lot of the Astrodome in Houston during the 1970s and 1980s.  Living in a leased motor home; cramped for space, but the fun overshadowed the inconveniences.

            Our children took part in the Houston Livestock Show, either exhibiting their registered Jerseys or participating in livestock judging contests.  A couple of times our foster son, Keith, would join us.  As a vocational agriculture teacher he had students who were also there.  He lived near enough to make the trip daily, but he managed to take some of his meals with us.

            One night as he was leaving for his home, he asked if there was anything we needed him to bring when he returned the next morning.  In fact, there was.  We were almost out of eggs.  He promised to be there early the next morning with some fresh yard eggs. 

As promised, early the next morning, Keith bounded into the motor home, but looking like something was wrong.  Our motor home was parked among a sea of such temporary residences so one had to know exactly what it looked like.  Poor Keith made an embarrassing error that morning.   Thinking he was at our “home”, he opened the door of a RV about two doors down the driveway from us, stepped inside and announced “Egg man is here”, only to find…..you guessed it.   Wrong home.  Complete strangers to him were still in bed, wondering who this egg delivery man was!  About all he could do was say, “sorry” and back out the door.

Another year when we were camped on the parking lot, Keith was sitting in the passenger seat of the motor home.   He leaned back, thinking the chair was going into a recliner position.  Little did we know that the seat was not bolted properly.  So when Keith, who at the time weighed well over two hundred pounds, leaned back, the seat came loose.  He and the seat tumbled back toward the open door, with him falling all the way to the pavement outside.  When I realized he was not injured, I laughed until I nearly cried.  It became a family joke.  What will Keith do this year to bring embarrassment to the family? 

I suppose the most unusual time we had was the year Leigh and Keith spent the night with us in the RV.   Keith would be at the Houston Show each day supervising his students while Leigh was at work.   On Friday Leigh accompanied Keith to the show.   Late that evening, when Keith would ordinarily have been leaving for home, Leigh asked could they just spend the night with us since he had to be back early the next morning.  The thought began racing through my head….”where will they sleep?”….for you see, although the RV could comfortably sleep six people, we already had seven staying there---my husband, our 3 children, 2 students and me.  But, Jack never hesitated for a minute before agreeing to their spending the night.  When we were all bedded down for the night, I found myself in the bed with Jack along with Leigh and Keith.   Never slept with anyone other than my husband.  LOL  Oh, and did I mention that Leigh was about six months pregnant at the time?   This meant that she had to make numerous trips to the bathroom during the night.

            The only problem with that…..Kenneth, one of the students who had accompanied us, was sleeping on the floor in the little hallway directly in front of the bathroom door.   Each time Leigh would get up, before she could get the door open, she would have to rouse Kenneth and get him to move over a bit.   During one of her trips, Kenneth rolled over and was blocking the bathroom door.   When Leigh was ready to exit the bathroom, she could not get the door open.  Nor could she arouse Kenneth from his deep sleep to get him to move without disturbing the rest of us.   Each time Leigh slid out of the bed for her trip, I would wake up, so I was awake when I heard her began whispering loudly for Kenneth to move.  When he did not, she began softly calling “Keith”… “Keith” and of course, Keith was sleeping soundly and did not hear her. I’m not sure if I woke Keith or if I woke Kenneth.   Either way, Kenneth was awakened enough for her to get the door open.  It was a long night.

Sometime during the same night, I was awakened by Keith waving his arm around in the air, as though he were trying to see his watch.   There was a small shaft of light coming through an opening in the window curtain above our bed from a street light outside and it appeared he was trying to focus the light on his watch.  I keep a flashlight near my pillow at night, so I clicked the flashlight on, shined it on Keith’s wrist watch.   Keith said “Thank you, Lord,” and continued with his rest.  The next morning I had trouble convincing Keith of his professed gratitude to the Lord.

These are just a few of the incidents that occurred during our years at the Houston Show, but they will show that we are a close knit family who loves to be together.  Over the years we opened our “home” to a number of students who otherwise might not have been able to exhibit their animals.