stardate 12.14.2020

Today we are going to hear from Sue Fox Akins.  Sue & Becky were my mom's best friends for years.  This is a special story about the beginning of that special friendship. 

How Sue and Becky met the Jan Kinkades and spent their first Christmas in Tucson

      July 1989:  Sue and Becky come to Tucson on a scouting trip to see if we'd like the heat and move from Washington DC.  It was HOT!!  We had heard of Jan through our friend Kansas who was living in Tucson.  We checked in at the hotel they had chosen and the clerk said "just a minute, I have something for you".  He bent down and came up with a sign that said "Welcome Home" and a jar full of little desert flowers.  Later, we drove by the 1st Street house just as Jan was coming over from school.  Complete with purple hair and chili earrings, she invited us in for a cocktail which consisted of Emergen-C and juice.  She said that if we were gonna live here we needed to learn about Emergen-C.  Then she said she new where there was a party with a band playing out in the desert at somebody's house ... and the rest is history.       

      OK, so it's September 1989 (yes,we bought a  house on that July scouting trip) and we're finally here to stay.  December rolls around and we are looking forward to our first Christmas in the warm climate of the Tucson desert, but we have the flu!  You all know it, that achey all over just want to sleep kinda flu.  We have missed the Christmas eve after church spinach enchilada and empanada fest at Jan's.  Christmas day we got up briefly and in our PJ's go out in the desert behind our house where we spread a tarp on the ground and open presents with the cactus patiently watching.  We smiled and went back to bed.  Sometimes the things that at the time seem uneventful make the greatest memories.

(Later that winter, we awoke to 4" of snow on the ground!  We freaked out!  We had moved here to escape snow.  It wasn't until we got to work and coworkers told us how unusual it was.  They were right.  30 years later and I've never seen that much snow here again.)