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"Be blessed and be a blessing"
Kiptopeke “Kip” Manser 11.21.08 
In early November, brother Dave flew in from San Diego to spend a few days with the family and then drive Mom to the Outer Banks. His lifelong friend Paul was also making the trip with them and they were able to make some wonderful side trips on the way. They stopped in Richmond, VA to tour the town and see the Faberge Egg collection. Then they headed to Chapel Hill, as Paul had recently discovered a family picture of his Dad at the Bell Tower at Chapel Hill and wanted to see the spot and get a picture of his own. Then they spent the evening at the beautiful Chapel Hill home of another lifelong family friend, Cathy Lancaster-Primack and her husband Bill. The next day they made their way to their final destination - Kill Devil Hills and the Outer Banks Beach Club.
Paul and Dave flew out on Thursday and I flew in on the following Wednesday to drive Mom home. Normally, we would leave KDH on Saturday to arrive back in Oneida on Sunday, but since Karla was leaving Sunday morning for Florida, we decided to leave on Friday to be back in Oneida before Karla left. We had planned to spend about an hour driving through the Currituck Sound housing developments, but we spent more time than we had planned after waiting for the snowy weather (yes, snow!) to clear. Nevertheless, the timing was perfect as we arrived at the Currituck-Knotts Island ferry terminal 5 minutes before departure. As I hadn’t spent much (or any) time reading the directions of my new fancy-dancy GPS system, I fumbled through the menu screens and finally programmed it to route us home through The Cheasapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and US Route 13 instead of Interstate 95. Well, I’m sure there is a quicker way to the tunnel from the ferry terminal than the 75 minutes it took us, but my aggravation faded away when we finally reached the tunnel.
Mom prefers to travel Route 13 through the DelMarVa peninsula instead of Interstate 95. While Route 13 is a heavily traveled four-lane highway with a grass median, it pales in comparison to the traffic and accidents of Interstate 95. We’ve made this trip many times over the last ten years and Mom always recounts her early adulthood travels using the Kiptopeke Ferry in Kiptopeke, Virginia (Kip-tuh-peak). On this trip, as we passed through Kiptopeke at 3:45pm on Friday November 21, we noted the Kiptopeke sign as I quickly stopped the truck and pulled off the left-hand shoulder of the road. The reason for all of our delays became evident, as we barely missed hitting a dog as it made its way across the two lanes to the median. As I got out of the truck and frantically started waving my arms to slow down traffic, I noticed the little black speck that had been trailing behind the larger dog. The dogs started back across traffic, narrowly being missed again. As the black speck sat down on the opposite shoulder of the road, it registered in my brain that Mom was running across the two lanes of traffic to scoop her up. After catching up and admonishing Mom for running through traffic herself, we tried to lure the mother dog, a Beagle obviously still nursing, into the truck. For almost an hour, we used water, cookies, apples, Cheetos, HER BABY and anything else we had in the truck to try to get her to come to us. She would come no closer than 100 feet and if I approached her she would run away. We talked to the farmer plowing his field – wild dogs he said. Did he want them? “Nope, I got 7 huntin’ dogs of my own”. We followed the mother dog down a dirt road until we finally lost her in the woods. Hoping that she was returning to her other puppies, I asked Mom – “What do we do now?” Mom said, “We go home.”
So, we continued up Route 13 with the little black puppy sound asleep in Mom’s lap. We prayed that the mother dog knew her baby was safe and in good hands. We eventually stopped to buy a collar, leash, some towels and some dog food. The weather took a nasty turn as we drove through a whiteout and icy conditions, so we decided to stop for the night at the Holiday Inn Express in Seaford, DE. The wonderful staff offered us towels and anything else we needed to care for the puppy. They even waived their standard pet fee for us.
As we drove home the next day, I asked Mom what we were going to do with the puppy that we had named Kip, short for Kiptopeke. Mom said, “Well, first I’m going to take her to the vet to get her checked out and get her shots. Then she’ll have to be spayed. Then she’ll have to learn to ride in a car without me holding her. And then I’ll find a good home for her.” I somehow think Kip has already found the perfect home!
Kip Manser
Kip with Simon 12.28.08
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