my friend John

One of the happinesses of shopping at Fresh Market around holiday season is finding interesting cheese selections. Last Christmas, for example, they offered Limburger cheese from Bavaria, and I bought three little bricks.

The first brick I opened, obviously new, was not nearly as fragrant and tasty as the Limburger that I'd ordered online from the Chalet Cheese Cooperative in Wisconsin, the only place in America that still makes Limburger. I put the other two bricks aside in the little refrigerator, and left to ripen. It's been maturing since then, I reckon ten or eleven months, now to soft, creamy perfection. As proved Saturday morning when I opened a little square of saltine crackers, spread with salted butter from TJ's, opened a brick of the Bavarian source Limburger, and cut a nice thick slice of cheese. Spread it on the cracker, and tasted sheer excellence.

Normally I might have a glass of frosty white or rose wine with it, but decided to have cooled down black coffee instead.

Why now?

The thought of sampling my Limburger stores came from my browsing online, as I do now and then, to check on Navy officers I served with over the years. One old friend, John Shaughnessy, he was thirty-four and I twenty-seven when, living in Ann Arbor, we were Navy lieutenants and fellow students together at the University of Michigan. John's twin brother was also a Navy officer, in nuclear submarines, and John told me many stories of their growing up together.

Including, raised faithful, he went to Catholic schools growing up. One time, he and another student got into something together in class. The priest who was their teacher called them up front, chastised them both, then rear back and slapped the other boy in the face, knocking him across two desks and landing on the floor. For the next couple of minutes John was in dread, knowing the same was coming to him, as indeed it did. But he knew the worst was yet to come: when he arrived home the school had phoned to report his misbehavior and punishment. John told me that by far, far, the worst punishment was by his father, who neither spared the rod nor spoiled the child.

John Shaughnessy died last month, September 2022, and reading his long obituary took me back to our friendship sixty years ago.

We were best and fast friends our Time at Michigan, in some classes together, buddies after class and sometimes studied together. We enjoyed shopping for cars together, having a beer from Time to Time, buying coffee and donuts at the local Dunkin' Donuts because John had grown up loving them as a Sunday morning treat in his Massachusetts neighborhood, and introduced me to them.

The car shopping I remember: we went to Ann Arbor with a Rambler station wagon, and John arrived with a Ford Falcon. By the Time we finished shopping, John had a new 1963 Pontiac Catalina, we had a new 1963 Chevrolet Biscayne station wagon,

and our fellow naval officer classmate Joe Flores had a new 1963 Ford station wagon.The three of us had spent a month at Ford Headquarters, including factory tours, including their famous River Rouge Plant, between the summer semester and start of the fall semester, being in the Detroit neighborhood where cars were manufactured made it special fun to car shop.

In Ann Arbor, on the far side of town from the college campus, on what was a beltway of sorts as I recall, we had a favorite little cafe with a foreign flavor, mainly German I think but don't remember for sure, where we went now and then for a beer and a light lunch. The one Time I really remember and that my memory has held onto was, as we looked at the menu, I commented that I'd always wanted to try the Limburger cheese sandwich, but was always put off by the stench, and John said same with him. So each of us ordered a Limburger cheese sandwich, on German rye bread, and I don't recall what spread, maybe mustard, maybe butter, IDK. Anyway, our sandwiches came, and neither of us could get past the smell to take a bite. We finished our beers, paid our tab, and left, the sandwiches still sitting untouched on the table.

The next year, upon graduation, John was transferred, I think, to Washington, and the Navy PCS'd me to Japan. During my three year tour there, he mailed me packages of car folders that he'd picked up in American showrooms. Some years after that, working in the Navy Personnel Office in Washington, he came to see me at Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and got me assigned to a choice sea billet.

We stayed in touch off and on over the years, and once, on a driving trip, he showed up in his new Chrysler at the rectory at Trinity Episcopal Church, Apalachicola when I was priest there. He had retired from the Navy and was, as I recall, working for CONRAIL. We last exchanged letters, ten, fifteen or twenty years ago, we were home in Panama City and John was living in Arlington, Virginia.

Again, Saturday morning, thinking of John, I checked online and found his obituary, last month, just as I recalled, ninety-four years old.

Life goes on and in Time we are dust again. Blessings and peace, John.

RSF&PTL