Previously: “Hey, Ana, wake up again. Wake up” … “That road back there, that one right back there that we just drove under, it was named Fangboner” … “This is a dumb game” … We were just east of Cleveland, driving to Erie, conducting the world’s most pointless thought experiment.
Take it from the top:
fernweh (fern-way) n.
1. An ache for distant places
2. Being homesick for anywhere but home
Mildred Frances Boones was born in Minot, North Dakota on March 12, 1914. She was the oldest daughter of Thomas James Boones and Margaret Elizabeth Boones (née Halstead). Mildred, or Millie, as she was known to friends and family, graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in nursing. She served as a nurse in World War II, during which she lived in England. After the war she moved to Mankato, Minnesota, married Arthur Donald Alderson, a farmer and lawyer, and gave birth to two sons, Edward Spencer and Thomas Matthew. She was a member of Lutheran Church of the Redeemer and she served many years on the Mankato Memorial Day Planning Committee. She died at home on March 11, 1986, one day short of her 72nd birthday.
- Obituary from the Mankato Free Press, March 17, 1986
Millicent Dorthy Boones taught elementary school in Jacksonville, Florida for over 30 years. In 1974 she was named Educator of the Year in the Jacksonville Unified School District. Called Millie by those closest to her, she always found the time to make pies for her friends and neighbors. Apple was her specialty, though she often complained that it was difficult to get a decent apple in all of Florida (and she knew good apples, having grown up in Wisconsin). An avid traveler, she was preparing for an Alaskan cruise with some of her high school classmates when she was felled by a stroke, three weeks after her 87th birthday. She is survived by a sister, Bernice Higgins, of Charleston, WV.
- Obituary from the Florida Times-Union, July 15, 2002.
Thank you for reading. Next week starts like this:
We sat in Neat!, in upholstered chairs, next to a bookshelf holding vegetarian cookbooks from the seventies.
Then Jackson and Ana argue about ghosts and the people who believe in them.