Glenna Shepard

Happy Birthday, Ellen!
Ellen means the world to Tom and me. Tom and Ellen can go head to head anywhere at anytime and still come out close as ever.

Billy and Ellen and Tom and I have taken many trips together. Being together with Tom and Ellen in a car with Billy driving is a treat no one should miss. On our trip to Louisiana to see the antebellum homes near Baton Rouge. Tom, of course being a Yankee by birth, got real tired of paying money to go on tours where the guides kept talking about how the “Damn Yankees” destroyed the way of life in the south, but Ellen got him to go to all but one.

The other part of the trip was that Ellen was controlling the map. Ellen is planner and Tom is a “winger.” Tom had traveled the countryside as a salesman years before and knew the way pretty well. But Ellen has planned ahead to make everything go well. Ellen had planned the next to the last day of our trip very carefully, and Tom had decided to take the directions into his own hands. Now remember, Billy was driving. Now I want you know that when a man tells another man which way to go and his wife says another way—the man driving will go with what the man says. Billy would come to a corner and Ellen would tell him to go right and Tom would say left.

The next year we went to Michigan. Ellen never said a word about the directions the whole way up to Michigan. I finally asked her why. She said we were going to Tom’s home state, so he better know the way.
Glenna Shepard