Fourths
Afternoon storms, apparently, but at the moment the sky is clear. Light blue for high humidity, but clear. Instead of sitting here by the front bedroom window typing a blogpost, I ought be out walking, neighbors are out walking, so might I be. Today's heat index is forecast to be 108°F and I'll bet a penny it's already uncomfortable out there.
Fourth of July. I know nothing, but seems to me PCB has a fireworks display after dark tonight. We could go in to 7H and sit out on the porch to watch Panama City's fireworks, but then, because 7H is uninhabitable, we'd have to drive back out here to Breakfast Point after dark and that's become no longer a reasonable option, precautionary, we don't drive at night anymore.
A favorite memory of fireworks is the Apalachicola years, driving down to battery park in my Ford F100 pickup with Nicholas to watch. I had to stop that because his ears were so sensitive to the loud noise, but a happy memory of Nick sitting beside me in the truck, parked facing the electricals.
First was watching the fireworks the summer of 1947, on the Mall in WashingtonDC, I was eleven and our Aunt Ruth had taken my first cousin Ann and me up, an exciting train ride, Pensacola to Montgomery, a movie at the theater in Montgomery while waiting for the overnight train to Washington. Or maybe it was two nights, I don't recall. Anyway, the fireworks.
From the Old Place I could just see the top of them over the trees from my upstairs front screen porch; I wonder how it would be now that so many trees are gone?
That was too long a paragraph, I'm going back and divide it in three or more.
Reading about Winston Churchill. He was my all time favorite 20th century hero until last week, almost simultaneous with reading about Churchill with Lord Kitchener avenging Gordon at Khartoum, I read in another source online, DelanceyPlace.com about the desolation of Khartoum, an entirely different perspective on British colonialism, the British Empire on which the sun never set, Kitchener's adventure in the Sudan and specifically in Khartoum. From Churchill's viewpoint according to Candice Millard, a seized opportunity to advance himself; from the other perspective, an inhuman outrage of monstrous proportion.
No, my first memory of fireworks, I would have been about three or four years old, so maybe July 1939 or 1940. About 1928, some ten years after Alfred's death, Mom and Pop had returned to StAndrews and were living in a rented house on Baker Court. I have other happy memories of that Time of my life, some of which I've recalled here. On that Fourth of July, we were at Mom & Pop's house, out in the front yard, late afternoon, maybe toward dusk, but not quite dark, because I could see quite clearly. I remember standing next to my mother and watching Pop, tall, thin, bald, leaning way over and down and stretching his long arm out with a match to light a roman candle, then jumping up and running back from it. The roman candle did its shooting up into the air and exploding in the sky, but I don't really remember that, what I remember is watching Pop. If that was 1940, I'd have been four almost five and Pop would have been 68. He lived to age 92, died July 1964, almost exactly 24 years after that evening, while we were stationed in Japan, leaving me with lifelong realizations, regrets, and lessons learned about how life is and watching life repeat itself in the sense that what goes round comes round. Today I'm fifteen years older than Pop was that first Fourth of July of my memory.
Life is nearly always interesting. Sometimes fun, but always interesting. Especially in recall.
T
Over StAndrewsBay, July 4, 2017, 9:10 PM
Fourth of July. I know nothing, but seems to me PCB has a fireworks display after dark tonight. We could go in to 7H and sit out on the porch to watch Panama City's fireworks, but then, because 7H is uninhabitable, we'd have to drive back out here to Breakfast Point after dark and that's become no longer a reasonable option, precautionary, we don't drive at night anymore.
A favorite memory of fireworks is the Apalachicola years, driving down to battery park in my Ford F100 pickup with Nicholas to watch. I had to stop that because his ears were so sensitive to the loud noise, but a happy memory of Nick sitting beside me in the truck, parked facing the electricals.
First was watching the fireworks the summer of 1947, on the Mall in WashingtonDC, I was eleven and our Aunt Ruth had taken my first cousin Ann and me up, an exciting train ride, Pensacola to Montgomery, a movie at the theater in Montgomery while waiting for the overnight train to Washington. Or maybe it was two nights, I don't recall. Anyway, the fireworks.
From the Old Place I could just see the top of them over the trees from my upstairs front screen porch; I wonder how it would be now that so many trees are gone?
That was too long a paragraph, I'm going back and divide it in three or more.
Reading about Winston Churchill. He was my all time favorite 20th century hero until last week, almost simultaneous with reading about Churchill with Lord Kitchener avenging Gordon at Khartoum, I read in another source online, DelanceyPlace.com about the desolation of Khartoum, an entirely different perspective on British colonialism, the British Empire on which the sun never set, Kitchener's adventure in the Sudan and specifically in Khartoum. From Churchill's viewpoint according to Candice Millard, a seized opportunity to advance himself; from the other perspective, an inhuman outrage of monstrous proportion.
No, my first memory of fireworks, I would have been about three or four years old, so maybe July 1939 or 1940. About 1928, some ten years after Alfred's death, Mom and Pop had returned to StAndrews and were living in a rented house on Baker Court. I have other happy memories of that Time of my life, some of which I've recalled here. On that Fourth of July, we were at Mom & Pop's house, out in the front yard, late afternoon, maybe toward dusk, but not quite dark, because I could see quite clearly. I remember standing next to my mother and watching Pop, tall, thin, bald, leaning way over and down and stretching his long arm out with a match to light a roman candle, then jumping up and running back from it. The roman candle did its shooting up into the air and exploding in the sky, but I don't really remember that, what I remember is watching Pop. If that was 1940, I'd have been four almost five and Pop would have been 68. He lived to age 92, died July 1964, almost exactly 24 years after that evening, while we were stationed in Japan, leaving me with lifelong realizations, regrets, and lessons learned about how life is and watching life repeat itself in the sense that what goes round comes round. Today I'm fifteen years older than Pop was that first Fourth of July of my memory.
Life is nearly always interesting. Sometimes fun, but always interesting. Especially in recall.
T
Over StAndrewsBay, July 4, 2017, 9:10 PM