chapter one

Chapter Three. Thirty-seven years ago today, my first grandchild, Nicholas Kevin Weller was born, in Killeen, Texas. His parents were in the Army. His early growing up years were in Florida, and I loved him as granddaddy's boy! Nick lives in Michigan. Happy birthday, Nick!!

Chapter Two. Forty-four years ago this morning, as I walked down a line of other Navy commanders, returning their salute, a bosun piped me ashore into civilian life. I was forty-two years old, a little more than half my lifetime ago. In my perception, life has been happening for me in more or less twenty-year chapters, each marked with memories, firsts, milestones, highlights, adventures. It's my blog, and my anniversary observance, so it occurs to me to think on it that way, and note a few things that come to mind, sort of chapter by chapter. And as things occur to me I may return to this page and add them to their respective chapter!

Chapter One, growing up in the household of my birth family, of which my brother Walt and I are the only two still living. What do I recall?

> two years old, having my tonsils taken out. Lying flat on a metal tabletop, in a bright white room, surrounded by grownups all in white wearing white masks, as I stared up into a brilliant white light, someone lay a soft wet cloth over my nose and mouth, and a buzzing sound started, growing louder, louder, louder. I woke up in a room with my mother and father, he holding a cone of vanilla ice cream, offering it to me, I took one lick, felt nauseated, and my mother ate my ice cream. My earliest memory.

> nearly six years old, Mama calling me into the dining room and saying, "Bubba, you're starting school tomorrow, what do you want them to call you?" Thinking, I said, "Not Bubba, how about Tom?" She said, "No, it can't be Tom. When I was in high school I had a boyfriend named Tom, and your daddy still hates him." From that, I was stuck with the name Carroll for the next dozen years, until I got to college. Carroll Junior actually. The next morning, Tuesday after Labor Day 1941, my first day at Cove School, our teacher, Mrs Violet Hayward, had me kick at a yardstick to decide whether she would make me write with my left hand or my right hand. She showed me to my desk, I looked around and panicked that my mother had vanished.

> July 24, 1942, Walt's third birthday. In our new 1942 Chevrolet, we family of five parked at the Standard Oil station at Tarpon Dock Bridge (where TD Seafood is now), see pic below!

A friend of our father's brought a tiny puppy to the car. The puppy was declared to be Walt's birthday present and Walt was to name him: "Happy Birthday," Walt said. A collie, shepherd mix, Happy brightened our lives with love and loyalty all our growing up years.

> Summer, I guess 1943? No, I was eight, so 1944. My mother and I rode the train from Pensacola to Washington DC, thence to New London, CT for her to visit my father, who was in U S Maritime Service officer candidate school at Fort Trumbull. We paused in WashDC several days, my aunt EG took us many places, including Washington Zoo, where I saw a spider beyond my worst nightmares. Tarantula: huge, big, bigger, biggest, black, hairy, with fangs, glaring at me personally, and the label on its glass cage read that it could jump fifteen feet with accuracy to catch and eat birds.

> January 23, 1947, coming home from school to the news that Mom, Carrie Lee Godfrey Weller, my grandmother, had died. My first heartbreak. She had the same heart issues that my father had, and that I have but in an age of vastly changed and greatly improved medical science. And the next day was Gina's ninth birthday. 

> September 1947, the Sunday afternoon after my twelfth birthday, our family of five rode out into the pine woods somewhere in Bay County where there were winding dirt roads, and my father taught me to drive. Three-on-the-tree, a stick shift car in which my left and right foot fought with the clutch and the accelerator. Besides my own excitement and extreme joy, I remember my mother as being, that afternoon, a distracting bundle of jumpy, exclaiming nerves. It may have been when I first heard someone shout "Oh my God".

> Summer 1950 our first family vacation. I was fourteen. In our 1948 Dodge, we drove from PC to Washington, DC and visited again with our aunt EG, our father's sister. Contemplating ordination as a deacon, our father did a program at the Episcopal Church College of Preachers. I recall two things. To my enormous discomfort, the neighbor girl across the street from EG's house developed a crush on me and I spent most of those two weeks trying to avoid her. And the long ride home with the three of us in the back seat: very tight, a time for Being closer but not not a time for Growing closer to siblings.

> August 1951, our second, and only other family vacation: one or two weeks at "Family Camp" at our Episcopal diocese's Camp Weed, Carrabelle, Florida. I was fifteen years old and remember that time for two reasons. One is NOYB. The other: observing our relationship, the family psychologist who was on staff to work with camper families said to my father, "You are always sarcastic with your son? Every word you speak to him is sarcasm". Knowing about that observation and "diagnosis" helped me understand myself and my relationship with my father over the years.

> September 1949, freshman at Bay High. We "rats" were forced by "upper classmen" to wear a rat cap for a day or so. The highlight of my high school years was being in the Band. A drummer. Band practice two evenings a week, parades, football games, bus trips, train trips, band festivals where all our ratings were always Superior, the highest. A memorable moment is that, having perfected the timing of pipe-cleaner fuses for cherry bomb firecrackers, my friend Parker and I exploded one in the boys bathroom next to Physics class after lunch one day, timed and exploded exactly five minutes after class started. 

> My favorite teachers at Bay High were Mr Whitley and Mr Weeks. Starting with Algebra One, my best grades were in math. I despised English classes. 

> The first semester of my senior year at Bay High, my best friend Philip fell for another girl, which meant I could now take up with Linda, five years of dating that began subtly at Sunday evening youth group meetings, St Andrew's Episcopal Church and settled into regular, then Steady, then Pinned, then Engaged. Our first "formal and official" date was the winter 1952 Christmas Ball, which was either in the Armory or the mezzanine ballroom at the Dixie-Sherman. Our first kiss was that night; by no means spontaneous, it was in the car, after the Ball, a kiss I had carefully planned and practiced at home alone, at great length, to make sure I got her lips and not her left ear.

> On the September 1953 Sunday before my eighteenth birthday, my parents dropped me off in Gainesville at North Hall, the men's dorm, University of Florida. Another "rat cap" but my new and joyful sense of independence was ignited and, likely to my parents' dismay, I never again considered myself under their control. At Florida, I pledged KA, worked for the Food Service Division, changed my major from pre-theology to business administration, served as president of AKPsi business fraternity. As a junior, with a friend, I bought my first car, a 1947 Buick Special: the car cost $75 (no state sales tax in those days), the insurance premium $78.80. 

> Graduated BSBA May 1957, my most enjoyed and useful courses having been Logic, German, and, summer 1956, Typing 101. Went to Summer School that year because Linda was transferring to Florida from her college in Virginia, and needed a couple of courses to rate Junior status. 

> June 1957: married Linda and went into the Navy to start a second chapter of life.

Maybe more chapters in due course. Or maybe not.

T