Internment

My mother-in-law is in her final resting place.  We had the funeral on Saturday and her entire family was there.  It was very nice, with a short service at the cemetery and a lunch-get-together afterward.
My father-in-law held up very well, and was grateful everyone came.

I drove up Friday and spent the weekend with my friend Linda and her father Theodore (Teddy).  Linda, who has also known my mother-in-law for years, and her sister came to the funeral as well.  As always with funerals, one is happy to see the rest of the family, even though it's not the happiest of moments to get together.
And no, there are no photos from this family-event, it just didn't seem the right time.

On the way back to her house, Linda and I stopped at this store, where my mouth dropped open:

I know this company through catalogs, but had never seen one in real life, here you first stop in the door:

Not enough?  How about this, close-up of what I'm afraid of running into in the morning:

this one is stuffed, we have the real thing in the neighborhood.

I was teasing Teddy that I caught a fish and he didn't - fishing season started in Connecticut on Saturday, and every brook, little stream, pond and lake was busy with fishermen.
And here something I've never seen in Germany:

Guns and rifles for sale.  From the simplest gun all the way up to antique pieces, the most expensive rifle I saw was $20,000 - twenty thousand Dollars!!!
And then I took a dive into the past.  I hadn't been back in East Hartford, where my husband's grandparents lived, for at least 30 years.  But since it was close, I had Linda drive by, here a typical New England Congregational church, where my parents-in-law where married, my mother-in-law confirmed:

And then the real blast from the past, I wanted to see if my grandparents in law's house was still there, and yes it is, but not the same:

It looks different now, it had a gate, and a garden, and a grape arbor in the back.  My grand-father in law used to take the tomato seeds from tomatoes that were used in a salad, or just eaten, and dry them, and then start seedlings in the spring on the porch....

Last night we went to a tavern on the Connecticut/Rhode Island border, about an hour away, and ate there:

And it was very good!  I had the fried clams, New England Style, with the bellies attached.

Oh, so fattening, and oh, so good.  With sweet potato french fries and cole slaw.