couple memories

Our church has a Dining Out group, which is meeting tonight across the street from 7H at Alice's on Bay View in StAndrews. We'd love to go, but events of 2018 changed our circumstances, and the after-dark 25 mile drive back to SoWalton would be a foolish risk for us, most unwise. And it's an Episcopal event, which suggests the not unlikelihood of leaving with a buzz on. 

The church event brings back to mind our annual "birthday event" Dining In my Navy years. For officers, it was a command performance, which wasn't necessary because it was not to be missed anyway, fun and formal in the fancy dinner dress uniform that we almost never otherwise got to wear, a classy dinner of many courses, with a never empty glass, the wine changing with each course, and lots of toasts. Part of my recollection is that there was only wine to drink, no water on the table, and always drinking a lot of liquid with my meals, at the first one I got totally smashed even beyond days of returning to the ship after an evening at the Guantanamo Bay Officers Club when I was an ensign. So before the next one I went in and told the XO that there would have to be water on the table as well as wine. He said no that's not traditional, wine only, and everybody has to be there. It was to be a few days before my retirement from the Navy and I wanted to go, but told him that if there would not be water glasses at every seat and water served I wasn't coming. What can you say to a short-timer commander who's weeks from retirement and doesn't give a rat's axe what you order him to do. Really, it was no big deal, and the captain said okay, we'll have water too. Off the record, that captain later made rear admiral and a bit later was reported for having sailors under him work on his antique cars during working hours, and the four star admiral above him kicked his butt out. And you should pardon my French.

Yesterday we had the memorial service for an outstanding person, whom I'd known as a parishioner for, I guess, twenty years. An early memory of total delight was during a time that those of us who were there still call The Troubles. There was trouble with our senior clergy, and she wrote the bishop about him. When the priest called her in to explain, he should have known better than to think she was the one going to be On the Carpet. He demanded, Why did you write the bishop, why didn't you come in and talk to me? She said, Because you weren't here you were away on yet another of your long trips. He asked, Then why didn't you talk to Rev X? She said, Because Rev X is not my rector, YOU are my rector. I won't add except that The Troubles had a satisfactory conclusion, and now, twenty years later, happily, the memories are fade, fade, fading.   

WTH, it's my blog, and that memory of her delightfully tolerate-no-BS personality came to mind yesterday during the homily at her funeral service. She was, as the preacher said, a piece of work. Dearly beloved.

T