Too family, don't even open it to read

Another predawn of lightning growing in brilliance, and its thunder drawing closer. A huge, long jagged streak out my window, into the Gulf just beyond Bay Point.

But who knows, the storm may pass completely by. Yesterday’s ominous cloud brought wind but only light steady rain, not the drenching gully-washer we expected and watched at the beach and east of us in town.

This is a fine spot for watching weather gather, approach and drive through.

The mind wanders. Out highway 98 West in what my grandfather’s generation called “Little Dothan” gone to the wreckers is the curvy, art-deco showroom where the Kaiser-Frazer dealership opened a year or so after World War II. Curvy corners and that signature round window that held my memory those seventy years. The building must have been right sturdy, because the wrecker is taking weeks to pull it down. Always it reminded me of Pop because he had the family’s only Kaiser, their first model.

Using my usual model of car memories, I can date that and age Pop.

It was more than a year after Mom died January 23, 1947, because we already had the 1948 Dodge that was mama’s 36th birthday present, May 7, 1948. Pop was still driving his 1937 Chevrolet but considering a new car.

Pop's car was just like that, but without the WSW tires. I remember many times riding in it, with Mom and Pop and my first cousin Ann, up to Grand Ridge to visit Mom's sisters Alice and Nell, who were married to the King brothers. I also remember riding with them to Pensacola to visit my father's sister Ruth, who taught school there all her adult life.

Anyway, when Pop said he was car thinking, my father got a Dodge “Town Sedan” from Karl Wiselogel at W&W Motors and brought it to St. Andrews for Pop to look at. Pop was incensed that his son was interfering in his business and wouldn’t even come out and look at it, and soon afterward bought the Kaiser. I was out of school to watch that episode, so it was summer 1948, wasn’t it. Born on February 13, 1872 and 75 when Mom died, Pop would have been 76 years old when he bought the Kaiser. He drove it a few years and traded it in 1951 for a new Chevrolet,

a black Styleline Deluxe sedan. Pop stopped driving a few years later, when he had a wreck in which a little girl was hurt. He died in 1964 at age 92 while we were in Japan. Today seeing myself in him, I am sad when I think about opportunities missed and lovingkindnesses not committed.

The storm has passed by east, to the south of us.