Henry Edward Goebel - 1911 - 2008

Henry Edward Goebel - "Unc" to my brother and me - died Thursday, September 25, 2008 in Rochester, New York, well past his 97th birthday. He was the youngest son of Clara Marie Steinmetz and Heinrich Göbel, both German immigrants, and my mother's brother. He was an extraordinary man. If I had to use only four words to describe him, they would be "never a discouraging word". He was my uncle, my friend and my mentor. I caddied for him when he belonged to Brook Lea Country Club, and we golfed together in later years. I'd answer the phone and hear "Hey Rob, want to go hit some shots?"; he knew a couple of par three courses, so we'd take a 9 iron and putter and go try to make par. Or I'd hear "Hey Rob, want to go bowl a few games?", so we'd meet at the lanes on West Henrietta Road. He had a game where low score won; just pick off the 7 and 10 pins each frame for a perfect score of 20. A gutter ball was worth 10. Try it sometime. Or I'd hear "Hey Rob, want to go swimming?", and we'd be in the University of Rochester pool - free because he was an alumni.

I wrote about him in my blog in October 2006.

Every day was a new adventure to him. I'll miss hearing him say, when I call, "I'm vertical", and I know a bright light in our lives is gone. But, ah, such wonderful memories!

Jigsaw Puzzles

Grandma was holding a Scrabble contest with two former neighbors (she won 3 of 4 matches) so I decided to wander around the complex rather than have my tender ears assaulted by the shouted insults hurled by the combatants at each other. The billiard room was occupied so I checked out a sitting area down a side corridor. I found a "reading room" area with a table for working on jigsaw puzzles. There was one in progress, so I decided to give it a try and wound up finishing it off. Which reminded me of the times when my brother and I, in our younger days, would work on puzzles together. Only the "together" meant that we would go just so far before it became a contest to see who could put in the last piece. Our strategy was simple: hide one piece until the end. Well, it's difficult to put in the last piece when we each held one out. That usually led to parental intervention.

Now I have a place of peace and quiet to go to during the Scrabble wars.

The House

It seems as though I've been back to the house every day since we moved out. There was a lot more in the garage cabinets than I realized. There were some items we advertised on Craig's List that sold, and some items that didn't. I donated the 6 display panels I had built for the art sale two years ago, along with a bunch of frames we had no room for, to an art teacher in South Phoenix; they were picked up Thursday. We had taken two car loads to the Goodwill Store in Scottsdale. Today, we might sell the curio cabinet; the potential buyer came over this morning to look at it and will call later to let us know one way or the other. If she declines, we will call Terri's Consignment to check it out along with a decorative pot; they are the only items still in the house. The only items in the garage are some things the new homeowner will be able to use, such as paint, water filters, evaporative cooler replacement parts, furnace filters, etc. While we were there, we replaced the dead flowers in the front entry, and I trimmed some of the shrubs in the side yard. Maybe one more time to check for paint touch-up inside, then we should be done. Now all we need is a buyer.