Stephenson Tales

Our eldest child is named after her mother, Lucy Chase Wright, who was named after her mother, Lucy Chase Denny, who was named after her mother Lucy Chase Chapman, who was named after her grandmother, Lucy Chase. We call our daughter Lucky. She was a remarkable child, although, since she was our first, we did not realize it. She began talking at six months and by the time she was a year old she constructed sentences better than some of my college students. At two she was playing in our baggage trailer in the back yard. "I am in the trailer. I am going to get out of the trailer. I am getting out of the trailer. I got out of the trailer." is an example.
At the end of the summer at Music Camp, we decided we would take our house trailer and visit Iowa. At one point we were on a side road that had recently been covered with asphalt and, because of the hot weather, had not set firmly. Our trailer wheels oozed deeply--almost as deep as the tires--in the soft surface. Needless to say I crept out of there as steadily as I could. Looking back the road looked like the rutted country roads I knew as a child! A little later we were traveling along a regular highway and to my dismay I saw, in the rearview mirror which looked beyond the width of the trailer, the flashing lights of a police car. Of course the usual sinking ice wind materialized under my belt. I pulled over and the officer stopped behind me and came up to my window. I showed him my operator's license and he informed me that our trailer was swinging. I knew that, but assured him that I would redistribute the load so it would quit. He gave me a warning and let us go. I stopped at a rest stop and moved some of the things in the trailer farther forward--which solved the problem of the swinging. Suddenly, as we drove along in silence, Lucky piped up. "I made up a song." We had become accustomed to being startled by our eldest, so Lucy Chase and I just looked at each other: "Let's hear it." So she sang it:
     Away we go with our trailer swinging to and fro
     As we go down the roads it squashes them like dough.

     Policeman stop us
     Say our trailer swings
     We say we know it--
     It thinks has wings!

     Away we go with our trailer swinging to and fro
     And in to the distance we will go.

We all cheered and sang it for hours as we drove along. When we stopped I wrote down the words and music. It still goes through my head when I see a car pulling a trailer.

Home Page

Cast of Characters