Coming 2021

 

     The Story     

 

Of yellow pine logs.

A pet llama.

Trailer life in Pennsylvania’s backwoods.

Fire.

A global motorcycle trip.

A doomed Olympian.

South American barrio track stars.

 

 

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About

Jonathan Warner

I started writing this story the summer of 2019. It’s the scoop on the impressive and unorthodox humans that I got to grow up with – the people that I still idolize. It’s my parents’ unlikely exploits and the bizarreness that was our home-life in 1998. It’s the story of a weighty legacy too – an account of the pressure and self-doubt that can come from living under long shadows.

I began writing it all down last August – how my dad ended up on the cover of Ecuador’s biggest…

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The Pictures

Mom and Dad with the Kirkwood maintenaince crew and golden retriever, Brit. 1980s
"no mortgage, no contractors...just one crazy impossible man building his family a house in the woods with his bare hands for 3 years by reading books and digging trenches and cutting down trees and swinging hammers under spotlights late at night and early into the morning."
Mom, rocking the face that caused a riot in Santiago when the locals thought she was Jane Fonda on a motorcycle
"Pablo was our pet llama. He had these big beautiful eyes but always seemed pissed that he had to live in Pennsylvania instead of the high altitude climes of his native Andes"
"Kirkwood was a meadowed utopia, a haven of Keatsian dells and a kaleidoscope of colorful mysteries."
Dad and Mom on "The Beast" at the equator in Ecuador.
Dad and Mom in Olympic National Park with the backpacker tent they would sleep in across 3 continents
Dad coaching "Operacion Go" on the track in Ecuador 1968.
Julio Lucin, the doomed Olympian, before the accident. Guayaquil, Ecaudor 1965
Dad (R) and Uncle Park riding home to Delaware from the Panama Canal on British dirtbikes in 1968
The newlyweds the day before taking off on their 32,000 mile motorcycle trip
Dads brain-child: a track program for the barrio kids of Guayaquil Ecuador that he created when his Peace Corps assignment was going nowhere.
Operation Go kids getting some instruction from Dads Peace Corps partner, Ray Contrares
"Everyday there were fresh piles of torn earth, giant cavities crawling with underground beetles, rolling pyramids of cavernous PVC pipe," Jenna and me with "Tilly," our big yellow backhoe
Mom and Dad backpacking in Yellowstone National Park before heading south into Mexico
"Dads post and beams fit together like a warm handshake."
"...in Kirkwoods thousand afternoons of green and gold." Jenna and me in Kirkwoods lower meadow.
Dad in Yellowstone with his camp tent and the BSA. "That was before he met me and he was trying to look like a macho-man with his motorcycle in the woods." ~ my mom
The Philadelphia Inquirer article that was written about Dad getting Julio Lucin out of Ecuador in the nick of time.
"...leaping over makeshift hurdles, the kids feeling strength fill their gifted limbs for the first time." Operation Go, Guayaquil, Ecuador.
"we dubbed the dump truck Kiwi because it was green and compact and oblong." Dad with "Kiwi" behind Shafer Schoolhouse Rd.
Mom going profile to profile with Half Dome in Yosemite Valley
Dad and Mom atop "The Beast" on the highest paved road in the U.S. - Mt. Evans, Colorado
"Moms walls of blue fieldstone snaked the length of the driveway like a Robert Frost poem." Our driveway going down into the woods behind Shafer Schoolhouse Rd.
Mom and Dad with the Kirkwood maintenaince crew and golden retriever, Brit. 1980s
"no mortgage, no contractors...just one crazy impossible man building his family a house in the woods with his bare hands for 3 years by reading books and digging trenches and cutting down trees and swinging hammers under spotlights late at night and early into the morning."
Mom, rocking the face that caused a riot in Santiago when the locals thought she was Jane Fonda on a motorcycle
"Pablo was our pet llama. He had these big beautiful eyes but always seemed pissed that he had to live in Pennsylvania instead of the high altitude climes of his native Andes"
"Kirkwood was a meadowed utopia, a haven of Keatsian dells and a kaleidoscope of colorful mysteries."
Dad and Mom on "The Beast" at the equator in Ecuador.
Dad and Mom in Olympic National Park with the backpacker tent they would sleep in across 3 continents
Dad coaching "Operacion Go" on the track in Ecuador 1968.
Julio Lucin, the doomed Olympian, before the accident. Guayaquil, Ecaudor 1965
Dad (R) and Uncle Park riding home to Delaware from the Panama Canal on British dirtbikes in 1968
The newlyweds the day before taking off on their 32,000 mile motorcycle trip
Dads brain-child: a track program for the barrio kids of Guayaquil Ecuador that he created when his Peace Corps assignment was going nowhere.
Operation Go kids getting some instruction from Dads Peace Corps partner, Ray Contrares
"Everyday there were fresh piles of torn earth, giant cavities crawling with underground beetles, rolling pyramids of cavernous PVC pipe," Jenna and me with "Tilly," our big yellow backhoe
Mom and Dad backpacking in Yellowstone National Park before heading south into Mexico
"Dads post and beams fit together like a warm handshake."
"...in Kirkwoods thousand afternoons of green and gold." Jenna and me in Kirkwoods lower meadow.
Dad in Yellowstone with his camp tent and the BSA. "That was before he met me and he was trying to look like a macho-man with his motorcycle in the woods." ~ my mom
The Philadelphia Inquirer article that was written about Dad getting Julio Lucin out of Ecuador in the nick of time.
"...leaping over makeshift hurdles, the kids feeling strength fill their gifted limbs for the first time." Operation Go, Guayaquil, Ecuador.
"we dubbed the dump truck Kiwi because it was green and compact and oblong." Dad with "Kiwi" behind Shafer Schoolhouse Rd.
Mom going profile to profile with Half Dome in Yosemite Valley
Dad and Mom atop "The Beast" on the highest paved road in the U.S. - Mt. Evans, Colorado
"Moms walls of blue fieldstone snaked the length of the driveway like a Robert Frost poem." Our driveway going down into the woods behind Shafer Schoolhouse Rd.

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