smile the while

20160112 sunrise at 7H in +Time+

Funny, isn’t it. Even with scoring 40 points against Alabama at the end of their glorious season as #1, the words “Clemson” or “Tigers” aren’t in print this morning, it’s all Tide. Slipping off to sleep during halftime when the score was 14-14 cost me dearly, including missing an onside kick, which I love to see pulled off successfully. Earth is best, America is best, the South is best, Life is Good Better Best when the most important thing is CFB. I could wish it were Florida or Michigan, but for sure it’s SEC, not Ohio State, nor that other ACC team. Got my 2016 hopes on Harbaugh. Still and all, my favorite game of the 2015 season, October 24 in Atlanta, FSU-GaTech and watching the field instantly swamped with screaming engineers.

As life moves on. 

Friday we had a funeral at St. Thomas by the Sea, Laguna Beach, afterward a nice reception and catered lunch in Jewell Hall, named for our old friend the Rev. George A. P. Jewell, whom we called Mr. Jewell, and at St. Thomas they called him Father Jewell in his time as I think their first regular priest at the beach. An Englishman, retired and up in age at least in the eyes of a pre-teen boy, Mr. Jewell was a character. He had a standing invitation, which he faithfully lived into, from my father, of coming to our fish house every Saturday morning for his “pound of shrimps” as he called it. Every Saturday as I weighed them out he would smack, "I love shrimps!" It was a generous gift too, shrimp were dear at 65 cents a pound. My mother said Mr. Jewell was divorced and his ex-wife in England -- a near-scandal in those days for a priest. 

When we knew him he lived alone in a tiny blue caravan type trailer on a vacant lot on the north side of Baker Court a few blocks west of the church. He was a dear man, always a bit unkempt, spilt food on his coat, who doled out the Communion wafers stacked in his fist the same way my grandfather Gentry passed out nickels to us carload of first cousins, for Sunday School offering after he’d parked in his corner spot at East Hill Baptist Church.

My five years as priest at St. Thomas were among my happiest, and I’m always glad to visit, though usually these days for a funeral. The vesting room with full bathroom and shower, someone told me, was built for Father Jewell as his living accommodation his years as their vicar. On the wall of the room where the wide closet is now, he had windows. I knew him in the late 1940s, that would have been 1955 and later, St. Thomas having been organized the same year as Holy Nativity, my sophomore and junior years at Florida. I miss Mr. Jewell and the years and their music. And being a boy.

At the reception and lunch Friday noon, there was a video about Rich, that included songs Arlene had chosen as his favorites from their years together. One that caught my ear was “Smile the while,” that has been badgering, haunting me unto melancholy ever since even though it was a 1918 song that, so far as I recall, never was part of my life or growing up years. Yesterday while waiting in my office for an appointment to arrive, I found it on Youtube and played it full volume like Snoopy with his root beer in that WW1 French cabaret. Link to the version I liked best! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61E_Vi0r3VI If I could change my life in any way, I'd learn to play banjo.

A hundred years ago the “Great War” was underway and, Wikipedia says, the song tells of the parting of a soldier and his sweetheart. The title "Till we meet again" comes from the final line of the chorus:

Smile the while you kiss me sad adieu,

When the clouds roll by I'll come to you,

Then the skies will seem more blue,

Down in lovers lane my darling,

Wedding bells will ring so merrily,

Every tear will be a memory,

So wait and pray each night for me,

Till we meet again.

Why is the song so familiar. IDK, maybe the George Gore trio used to play it to close out our Christmas balls and spring proms back in the same nineteen-fifties … sure stirs the melancholy though …

At the far left of the photo, the smoke from the paper mill shows there's no wind.

Thos+ well into +Time+ and smiling