On the road thinking of Dora

My grandma Dora, born in 1880, a seamstress and Western Union telegrapher and schoolteacher and farm wife, was progressive, not nostalgic. She came from abolitionist stock and was deeply disappointed that her dad wouldn’t take her to the Chicago Exposition of 1893 where she hoped to see the moving sidewalk, motion pictures, the Ferris wheel, and hear recordings of the human voice. Her heroes were George Washington Carver and Einstein. Grandma came to our house when she was 82, my age now, and she watched TV covering John Glenn’s ride in orbit around the Earth and Grandma said she was sure that man would land on the moon someday and she was sorry she wouldn’t be here to see it.