Saturday Ramble

A brilliant burst of light brought me fully awake and a glance at the red-glowing bedside clock said it was three-something, I don't remember exactly what, 3:28? Maybe. IDK. My first thought was someone was still fishing with a light below and had shined it up on the building, or it was the occasional ship passing by at this hour and ran a searchlight along the shore. But then it happened again and the rumble that followed signaled a passing t-storm and if I wanted to watch and enjoy I had to get up right now. Father Nature, coffee, and ringside, my chair at the bayside window. Streak lightning and a splendid fireworks display with delayed rumbles not claps of thunder, count eleven, safe distance.

Before the 2018 collapse during which Joseph was lightning struck, I loved these, anymore it's no longer the grace that is unconditional love, but awe mingled with fear and hope that nobody was at the strike point. It gets personal, Zeus, eh? Thor, Thunor? Is there a Hurricane God as well? June-December is at hand, we need to set up our votives for appeasement.

Breakfast: because there's never white bread here, a hamburger bun rolled out flat with the rolling pin, lightly toasted, both side smeared with mayonnaise, a thick slice of raw onion cut from the center of the largest onion in the sack of Vidalia onions bought from the Bay High Band. Mug of black and hot. Out here on 7H porch. Memories, my first uniform, marching with a snare drum on my right knee. After the first, blue-purplish-black bruise, mama sewed a foam pad that I tied around my leg just above the knee. Mr Whitley forbade that, but couldn't see it, no harm done. My adventures with what R Orin Whitley billed as the Bay High Million Dollar Band were the highlight of my high school years. My special friends for wandering the cities where we went for band festivals were Parker Reynolds and Sherry Whitley, both years dead now. Tallahassee, Dothan, Tampa? Seems to me we traveled by buses to a band festival in Tampa. We always waited breathlessly to get our ratings from the judges, and we were always rated Superior in every event, a Good would've been No Good, unthinkable for us.

So the memories stir. The practice room for us drummers was not the lower level practice rooms but to the left of the band room and with an outside door, my own outside door to the dirt parking lot where, right outside the door I parked the brown Plymouth station wagon many days of my senior year. I wasn't unreasonably studious that year, I remember having World History with Bill Weeks, Solid & Trig with Miss Holliday, English with Miss Faye, and Senior Band. For me that year, three A-subjects and Fun.

My only afternoon class that year was World History in a temporary building moved to the school campus from either Drummond Park or Annie B Sale wartime housing project. The class was right after lunch, and my desk was right by the pot-bellied stove heater. During that winter of 1952-53, the after-lunch drowse I could not fight off was only interrupted by Mr Weeks slamming that yardstick down flat on the desk of someone who gave the wrong answer or, bad worse worst, stared open-mouthed in the silence of their ignorance. My two favorite teachers in high school were Orin Whitley and Bill Weeks, and I remember attending both their funerals. Mr Whitley's was at First Baptist; as I recall, Mr Weeks' was at First Methodist? Both deaths came after I was long graduated, both gave me the same stunning shock of unbelief, the incredulity that I remember feeling on hearing the radio announcement that President Roosevelt was dead.

So, where I was going with that was that with one afternoon class then two "study halls" as band practice in my drum room, I was frequently gone after History class, IF Mr Whitley's Olds 88 was missing I went over the hill.

Haze out here, 73°F 85%, Wind w 3 mph. Time to go in and finish prep for tomorrow morning's Sunday School class. It'll be Trinity Sunday, about our peculiar way of experiencing our One God. I'm not preaching, so I look forward to a Sunday School hour of questioning skepticism by D. Thos OctoGee.

RSFBLMPLMABC&PTL

Moonrise from 7H. 9:33 PM, Thursday, 27 May 2021