Pine woods
Wind in the Pines is classic, poetic, takes me to Narnia and the Hundred Acre Wood, but it's true and real here, over the fence and beyond, the wind in the pines has a hush to it, a soft, continuous hushing shhhhhh. And the summer sun, when summer comes, will enhance it, bringing out the fragrance that sets piney woods apart from everything else. Summer 1955, I worked for the paper company, in high-top metal-toed shoes, tromping through northwest Florida pine forests "marking timber" to be cut. I was 19 almost twenty, summer outdoors before my junior year at Florida.
Except for enjoying working with my brother, there are no specific memories to most of my summers growing up, because Cove School and Bay High years I worked at the fish house every day, Monday through Saturday until 1952 and 1953 when I spent all summer at our diocesan Camp Weed, Carrabelle, Fla in various capacities as both camper and staff. My father was not happy with me about that, saying I should be at home working a paying job, but mama hushed him that I needed to do this and to let me be. My mother was nearly always on my side, "had my back" so to speak. Maybe not just "nearly". Although in truth I do remember being sent out into the woods next door to "pick a switch".
Summer 1954 I worked here at Panama City Beach, "delivering linen" to the cottages at Edgewater Gulf Beach, stories told here on +Time now and then. Toward the end of that summer I went to Birmingham, Alabama for my first visit with a heart specialist to have my heart murmur checked out and for fun adventures. Summer 1955 in the pine woods as I say, then working at Kelley Press in St Andrews, the business my father bought and worked when he closed his seafood business.
Summer 1955: various other memories associated with that summer, including driving along US98 by Apalachicola Bay heading west, back home to Panama City, and noticed that in the top-down Oldsmobile convertible coming toward us, the man driving and woman beside him were looking and pointing out into the bay, his car straying over into my lane and coming straight for me such that I had no time to honk, drove off onto the side of the road, missing a head on collision just as he noticed and jerked his car back into his lane. We drove on, shaken. They turned around and came back our way. When they got close behind, he honked his horn, and I pulled over and stopped. He came to my window and apologized profusely, admitting that his wife'd insisted he must do so.
See, my focus wanders: that was one of three times in my life that someone has apologized to me. Twice, my mother (remembering as I write this early evening Mothers Day eight years after the May 7th that my mother turned 99), apologizing for things she'd said or done that caused me distress, painful sadness. And this, the gentleman in the Olds convertible. In more than 83 years, I've apologized to many people for many things, but I've only heard "I'm sorry" and "Please forgive me" three times. How about you? What kind of person is willing to say, "I'm really sorry"?
Summer 1956 I went to summer school at Florida, because Linda needed a math class to qualify as an upper-classman starting her junior year at Florida when she transferred from Randolph-Macon in Virginia. I took two courses that summer, one being the most valuable, helpful and useful class of all my academic years, which was Typing. At least until I started seminary at Gettysburg. Then, fall 1956 began my senior year at Florida, and summer 1957 we married and I launched off to OCS into what I thought would be three years as a Navy officer, which turned into twenty.
Twenty years turned to business, traveling, adjunct professor of political science, seminary, ordination, best years as a parish priest, and finally this Mothers Day evening watching the tall pine trees behind us sway gently, listening and hearing. As the sun sets, the hushing shhhhhhh has given way to the sound of crickets and frogs: in developed lowland, this is a great place for frogs at sunset.
I don't know me. I don't know about me. I don't know nothing. I don't know what to say or do, and all this thinking and writing, blogging, comes on me against my will.
T
Pic: me standing in front of Cove School HNES Bill Lloyd Building about to take a shot of the school building.
Except for enjoying working with my brother, there are no specific memories to most of my summers growing up, because Cove School and Bay High years I worked at the fish house every day, Monday through Saturday until 1952 and 1953 when I spent all summer at our diocesan Camp Weed, Carrabelle, Fla in various capacities as both camper and staff. My father was not happy with me about that, saying I should be at home working a paying job, but mama hushed him that I needed to do this and to let me be. My mother was nearly always on my side, "had my back" so to speak. Maybe not just "nearly". Although in truth I do remember being sent out into the woods next door to "pick a switch".
Summer 1954 I worked here at Panama City Beach, "delivering linen" to the cottages at Edgewater Gulf Beach, stories told here on +Time now and then. Toward the end of that summer I went to Birmingham, Alabama for my first visit with a heart specialist to have my heart murmur checked out and for fun adventures. Summer 1955 in the pine woods as I say, then working at Kelley Press in St Andrews, the business my father bought and worked when he closed his seafood business.
Summer 1955: various other memories associated with that summer, including driving along US98 by Apalachicola Bay heading west, back home to Panama City, and noticed that in the top-down Oldsmobile convertible coming toward us, the man driving and woman beside him were looking and pointing out into the bay, his car straying over into my lane and coming straight for me such that I had no time to honk, drove off onto the side of the road, missing a head on collision just as he noticed and jerked his car back into his lane. We drove on, shaken. They turned around and came back our way. When they got close behind, he honked his horn, and I pulled over and stopped. He came to my window and apologized profusely, admitting that his wife'd insisted he must do so.
See, my focus wanders: that was one of three times in my life that someone has apologized to me. Twice, my mother (remembering as I write this early evening Mothers Day eight years after the May 7th that my mother turned 99), apologizing for things she'd said or done that caused me distress, painful sadness. And this, the gentleman in the Olds convertible. In more than 83 years, I've apologized to many people for many things, but I've only heard "I'm sorry" and "Please forgive me" three times. How about you? What kind of person is willing to say, "I'm really sorry"?
Summer 1956 I went to summer school at Florida, because Linda needed a math class to qualify as an upper-classman starting her junior year at Florida when she transferred from Randolph-Macon in Virginia. I took two courses that summer, one being the most valuable, helpful and useful class of all my academic years, which was Typing. At least until I started seminary at Gettysburg. Then, fall 1956 began my senior year at Florida, and summer 1957 we married and I launched off to OCS into what I thought would be three years as a Navy officer, which turned into twenty.
Twenty years turned to business, traveling, adjunct professor of political science, seminary, ordination, best years as a parish priest, and finally this Mothers Day evening watching the tall pine trees behind us sway gently, listening and hearing. As the sun sets, the hushing shhhhhhh has given way to the sound of crickets and frogs: in developed lowland, this is a great place for frogs at sunset.
I don't know me. I don't know about me. I don't know nothing. I don't know what to say or do, and all this thinking and writing, blogging, comes on me against my will.
T
Pic: me standing in front of Cove School HNES Bill Lloyd Building about to take a shot of the school building.