Finally Retired

My parents finally retired in 1997. Their plan was to travel the USA in an RV. They’d owned an RV for a couple years by then and had been practicing the RV life style on short vacations when they could get away from work.
But this was the big step. To start this trip they sold their house and shed all ties to the life they’d know as “normal” over the last 60 or so years. Their house, for the forseeable future, is a 17 foot box on 4 wheels and their home is wherever they park the box.
This book started as a means of keeping in touch with friends and family while on this new life adventrure. My mom wrote letters to me and asked that I send them on to my sister Judy, who would send them on to our brother Billy, to brother Fred, to brother David, and on to sister Kate, and then to the rest of the family.
To streamline the process I started a website, so when I got a letter from mom I’d post it to the website so everybody got to see it at nearly the same time. Looking back I think that web- site might have been the first blog, but the term had not yet been coined. It really was convenient for all of us to keep up with mom and dad in this way. And eventually we got them
a computer, at first with one of those phone modems, where you strap a speaker/microphone combination to a payphone handset, which would dial up the internet and send the latest letter via email. They eventually got an ethernet connection which most camp sites started offering and eventually a wifi connection, which are now so common, but back then were rarely availbable.
What I didn’t anticipate was how many people outside the family would find and enjoy our little blog. My mom has
a way of saying a lot in a short, optimistic letter that leaves you longing for more. Traffic rose quickly and I started get- ting emails from strangers anticipating the next post or asking about Fran and Bill. Yahoo Internet Magazine noticed us and featured an article about our site and the way we were using
the internet to keep in contact with mom and dad.
So I’ve had all these letters to home sitting on a web server for all these years. When I came across them again I realized they hadn’t lost any of the quick, rosy quality that had inspired so much interest so many years ago. And with the recent conve- nience of on demand publishing I thought it was a good time to get it together in book format while mom and dad can still enjoy reliving these 3 wonderful years of their lives.