The two-week period surrounding my ninth grandchild's birth made me think of covered wagons, people who complain about life in America and the big business some profess to hate.

Huh? you ask.

Stay with me. I haven't gone off the deep end.

It's the Friday before Labor Day, and I'm driving to Spokane for brother Bob's annual weekend campout (queen bed for me). I'm listening to satellite radio and calling my wife in Denton, Texas with a cell phone and speaker on the dash. Berney has been laboring a few hours.

“No, she hasn't had the baby yet,” says Pat, who arrived the previous Tuesday.

I hang up in wonderment. I'm used to cell phones, but still I'm still saying, how cool is this? I'm on a highway in Washington keeping tabs on a daughter 2,000 miles away. In the covered wagon days we would have lost contact for life, most likely.

A half hour up the road, just after 4:30, Pat calls.

“Maximilian Valentine Neal was born at 4:22,” she says. “There's a picture on the way. Teddy (our son) will have it before you get to Spokane.”

Cell-to-cell, I call Teddy, who already knows about the picture. Yes, he'll print it out from his computer and bring it to the camp out.

How cool is that? Born in the afternoon in Texas, splashed all over Spokane that evening.

Meanwhile, daughter Jenny is in Denton, having arrived on Thursday to help Pat help Berney. They watch Berney's three kids, age 5 and under, while her husband Andrew attends to her at the hospital.

I've been used to planes all my life, but still I'm in awe. What Mr. Boeing did nearly a century ago is really impacting our lives at this moment.

On Saturday, Sept. 8, one day before Pat leaves, Andrew's mom arrives by plane from Walla Walla. She'll be the cavalry for a couple of weeks, and then Berney's good friend Alaina Hall will fly in from Yakima for a couple of weeks.

Again I thank that big business, Boeing, for being there.

I thank America for unleashing the minds that created cars, planes, computers and cell phones.

I thank God for creating America.

And Maximilian Valentine, of course.