Pioneer Spirit on the Road Again

--The cry from the back seat is familiar: “Are we there yet?” The DeMarco family is traveling from Ohio to Southern California and the five children are beginning to fidget. “The kids don’t have the same conception of time and distance,” said Pam DeMarco. That may be because the family is riding in a Conestoga-style wagon drawn by a tractor. Pam and her husband, Thomas-Angelo, built the covered wagon for cheap transportation and as a way of protesting 20th-Century life styles. DeMarco, 37, is a woodworker by trade, but his business in Kipton, Ohio, began failing last year. His wife, an American history buff, suggested that the family move west by covered wagon with hopes of one day buying a farm. They assembled a vehicle from an old farm wagon and salvaged parts and were last reported 30 miles east of Indianapolis. “A lot of people come up and say: ‘I envy you,’ ” said Thomas-Angelo. “They say to my wife: ‘You can leave your refrigerator and washing machine and not know where you’re going to stay.’ Hey, a quarter-million people went west in covered wagons.”

--A new elementary school in The Woodlands, Tex., has been named after David, “the Bubble Boy,” the youth who spent most of his life courageously confined within a series of bubble-like sterile isolators because of his inability to fight disease. He died at the age of 12 on Feb. 22, 1984. (The news media at that time and since has upheld an agreement not to disclose the family’s last name.) “He inspired us all,” said his mother, Carol Ann, at ground-breaking ceremonies for David Elementary last week. “I want students to be inspired by his experiences as well.” David had a keen interest in the outdoors and school district Supt. Richard Griffin said the school will have an outdoor education center. The boy had dreamed of “running through the grass barefooted,” his mother said. “It’s fitting that the school would be here, in the forest.”

--Nearly 1,000 magicians attended the 52nd annual Abbott Magic Get-Together this weekend at Colon, Mich., hometown of the Abbott Magic Co., which organizes the meeting. Trouble is, the town, about 35 miles from Kalamazoo, has no hotels. Over the years, Herman and Helmine Oldenberg, both 72, have opened their home to as many as 20 of the visitors. “We have only one shower so they have to line up for a shower,” Herman Oldenberg said. “And I don’t understand our hot water heater,” his wife added. “It never runs out of water.”