Rex & Belgium
Starting a 50 year adventure
In Belgium we lived in a five story apartment building on a busy street running to Waterloo. The building had about thirty residences and as many as seven Cat families were there at one time and known lovingly as the Cat Kibutz We were the youngest pair there and Peg spent a lot of time with older ladies traveling and purchasing for a new household as well as spending a lot of time working at the American Women’s Club on the newspaper. My exroomate in Peoria and future boss in Belgium, Gene Pfotenhauer moved there from Scotland and about year later got married to Rilla and the four of us had a ball traveling the continent and celebrating regional festivals.
Peg finished the year teaching and returned to Duluth to work for the paper there pursuing a journalistic career while I pined away in Peoria. My Cat vacation was spent in Duluth and the BWCA with Peg as well as Thanksgiving. We were married December 28m 1968 in Duluth where it was -28 with over 100 in of snow on the ground to welcome our visitors from the south.
Honeymoon was a cold trip to FL in my '65 vette followed by a few days in Grand Bahama where Peg met her first cockroach in the hotel restaurant and our return to Peoria and Cat. Peg was a substitute teacher at Richwoods for the second semester and for '69-'70.
In summer of '70 I was offered a job on our international design group and with it a foreign assignment to move to Brussels for 2 to 4 years. Sept 1, 1970 to Belgium where Peg could not get a work card and was very disappointed but spent a lot of time at the American Women's Club working on their magazine and helping arrange fantastic trips to different countries in Europe and N. Africa.
Again Peg's wanderlust blossomed and in three years there we visited about 26 countries and put over 30k miles on our 142 Volvo. Jack came over and visited us for a short time and we drove to Oslo to pick up Gunndard and Helen and drove around visiting relatives in Norway. My mom came over and we ran the Rhine down to Austria, the Grossglockner pass to Yugoslavia and back via Venice. Met the Peoria Ski Club in Chamonix in '71, skied CH and Austria in '71 and the Zell am Zee area of Austria in '72 before returning in summer of '73.
In Belgium we lived in a five story apartment building on a busy street running to Waterloo. The building had about thirty residences and as many as seven Cat families were there at one time and known lovingly as the Cat Kibutz We were the youngest pair there and Peg spent a lot of time with older ladies travelling and purchasing for a new household as well as spending a lot of time working at the American Women’s Club on the newspaper. My exroomate in Peoria and future boss in Belgium, Gene Pfotenhauer moved there from Scotland and about year later got married to Rilla and the four of us had a ball travelling the continent and celebrating regional festivals.
Peg was not a museum person unless it was for art and we hit all of the hot spots in NL, F, ES, B and many in the UK. She and friends would travel to cathedrals around Belgium doing brass rubbings of the casket covers of the nobility buried in the cathedrals (typical brass rubbing picture in the gallery). Peg and friends attended a brass rubbing school in Devon, England and I drove from Brussels to pick her up and explore the SW coast of England in our left hand drive Volvo tank.
We returned to Peoria in September of 1973 and purchased a house on Picture Ridge Dr. in northern Peoria Peg started teaching again at Richwoods High and we continued our association with the ski club and Cat friends from Belgium. Next came Matthew in January, 1975 and Peg took a year and a half from teaching to concentrate on Matt’s development and picking wild berries as she and Matt explored the Detweiller Park by bicycle. Our satisfaction with our starter home did not last long and we moved to Germantown Hills and Bluff Lake Drive in March of 76. Peg did some part time teaching and think that was the time she worked with Bonnie ‘Wellman as window dressing representatives for JC Penny
