I SAID not to mention it
Block of dark chocolate, mug of black coffee, Thursday my favorite day. Or is it Monday? For years Monday was my day off, but these years my day off can be any day but Sunday. Retired, I may scatter several days off through each week and watch the clouds, ships, and pelicans sailing by. Osprey snatching mullet from the Bay, flying away screeching triumphantly. Checking out Doonesbury, Calvin and Hobbes, Cul de Sac, Get Fuzzy, and Candorville on my iPad.
Sadness: President Jimmy Carter’s announcement that he has cancer, spread. I met him once, on a plane from Washington National to Atlanta. In the terminal, we watched as a car drove up to the plane and someone was mysteriously whisked aboard. When we passengers loaded, there he was in first class. After takeoff, he walked back down the aisle greeting folks, shaking hands, pausing to chat. I asked him, “How’s your mother, Mr. President?” He beamed and said Miss Lillian was fine and told me something about her. When Jimmy Carter was president we knew his whole family including his brother Billy. Billy Beer, remember? When was that? IDK, nearly forty years ago, I reckon. I was retired from the Navy and on my way to Pensacola to teach one of my two political science courses at UWFlorida: Major Weapons Systems Acquisition I and II, how’s that for a priest? They were graduate courses taken mainly by adults, DoD employees and people in the defense industry working on masters degrees.
My other contacts with presidents — a Navy chief petty officer named Cook who worked for me back in the early 1960s had worked in the White House during the Eisenhower administration as a first class petty officer. He’d had frequent contact with both President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon, disliked Nixon but loved Ike, a kind, thoughtful, considerate man. Told me Ike ate mayonnaise and it had to be Hellmann’s. These things get to be obsessions, don’t they, and once on a train trip around America with the president, the galley crew told Petty Officer Cook they were out of Hellmann’s. Panic, because there were to be sandwiches for lunch. At the next small town whistle stop, while the president was standing on the rear platform making a speech, Petty Officer Cook and a Secret Service man dashed into town, ran to a couple of grocery stores hunting Hellmann’s, grabbed two or three jars, commandeered a taxi, and met the presidential train at the next stop.
There’s a third president story, but at the moment it slips my mind. See, that’s what happens.
Nice sunrise this morning, not spectacular, but most of life isn’t, is it.
Sky as we arrived home from church last evening.
Then the arrival of a violent thunderstorm.
We were driven off the porch by two flashes of lightning striking between us and the red buoy just off our porch. Simultaneous light and sound. The first flash and crash gave us a rush of air here on the porch, I’ve never experienced that before.
Coming up at church is our wildest Sunday of the year: “Rally Day” and “BackPack Sunday.” There’ll be tables up with displays proclaiming our various ministries. My display is always the best, but for some reason it always gets stuck down at the end of the hall outside the exit door beyond the choir room. There’ll be food unimaginable, dishes folks bring, fried chicken, baked chicken, and this year the rector said he’s bringing the barbecue that he takes to Shell Island on Shell Island Sunday. In church, we’ll be coming in singing “Earth and all stars” and going out singing “… a song of the saints of God.”
I think Jimmy Carter has been one of those.
There’s the seven o’clock whistle from the paper mill, which I can see from my porch here, time to post. Time to turn on the radio and listen to Carl Gray. One of Mayor Gray’s lines: if you don’t want to be in the news, don’t do it. He was at Bay High with my father, along with Bubber Nelson and the Cotton brothers. Visiting him in his office one day, I watched Mr. Nelson take out a huge picture of their graduating class all in cap and gown and ask me, “Can you find your father in this picture?” I think it was Bay High 1931.
Two large Navy craft heading out for a busy day at sea. Tired and salty, they'll be back in port before the bell rings for Happy Hour.
T
Not to mention lunch at Sandbar at "the Y" and the accommodatingly commodious pissoir in their men's room.
Sadness: President Jimmy Carter’s announcement that he has cancer, spread. I met him once, on a plane from Washington National to Atlanta. In the terminal, we watched as a car drove up to the plane and someone was mysteriously whisked aboard. When we passengers loaded, there he was in first class. After takeoff, he walked back down the aisle greeting folks, shaking hands, pausing to chat. I asked him, “How’s your mother, Mr. President?” He beamed and said Miss Lillian was fine and told me something about her. When Jimmy Carter was president we knew his whole family including his brother Billy. Billy Beer, remember? When was that? IDK, nearly forty years ago, I reckon. I was retired from the Navy and on my way to Pensacola to teach one of my two political science courses at UWFlorida: Major Weapons Systems Acquisition I and II, how’s that for a priest? They were graduate courses taken mainly by adults, DoD employees and people in the defense industry working on masters degrees.
My other contacts with presidents — a Navy chief petty officer named Cook who worked for me back in the early 1960s had worked in the White House during the Eisenhower administration as a first class petty officer. He’d had frequent contact with both President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon, disliked Nixon but loved Ike, a kind, thoughtful, considerate man. Told me Ike ate mayonnaise and it had to be Hellmann’s. These things get to be obsessions, don’t they, and once on a train trip around America with the president, the galley crew told Petty Officer Cook they were out of Hellmann’s. Panic, because there were to be sandwiches for lunch. At the next small town whistle stop, while the president was standing on the rear platform making a speech, Petty Officer Cook and a Secret Service man dashed into town, ran to a couple of grocery stores hunting Hellmann’s, grabbed two or three jars, commandeered a taxi, and met the presidential train at the next stop.
There’s a third president story, but at the moment it slips my mind. See, that’s what happens.
Nice sunrise this morning, not spectacular, but most of life isn’t, is it.
Sky as we arrived home from church last evening.
Then the arrival of a violent thunderstorm.
We were driven off the porch by two flashes of lightning striking between us and the red buoy just off our porch. Simultaneous light and sound. The first flash and crash gave us a rush of air here on the porch, I’ve never experienced that before.
Coming up at church is our wildest Sunday of the year: “Rally Day” and “BackPack Sunday.” There’ll be tables up with displays proclaiming our various ministries. My display is always the best, but for some reason it always gets stuck down at the end of the hall outside the exit door beyond the choir room. There’ll be food unimaginable, dishes folks bring, fried chicken, baked chicken, and this year the rector said he’s bringing the barbecue that he takes to Shell Island on Shell Island Sunday. In church, we’ll be coming in singing “Earth and all stars” and going out singing “… a song of the saints of God.”
I think Jimmy Carter has been one of those.
There’s the seven o’clock whistle from the paper mill, which I can see from my porch here, time to post. Time to turn on the radio and listen to Carl Gray. One of Mayor Gray’s lines: if you don’t want to be in the news, don’t do it. He was at Bay High with my father, along with Bubber Nelson and the Cotton brothers. Visiting him in his office one day, I watched Mr. Nelson take out a huge picture of their graduating class all in cap and gown and ask me, “Can you find your father in this picture?” I think it was Bay High 1931.
Two large Navy craft heading out for a busy day at sea. Tired and salty, they'll be back in port before the bell rings for Happy Hour.
T
Not to mention lunch at Sandbar at "the Y" and the accommodatingly commodious pissoir in their men's room.
