Joe: on the ground in Florida

202212252057, 8:57 pm on Christmas Night, three hours left in the magic. Joe's plane has left Charlotte, NC and Tass and Jeremy have headed to FortWalton/Destin airport to meet him. Completion of the family gathering is running late here. We have Joe's bed ready in my study/office/den and, because the HVAC keeps that room coldest in the house, and because Joe is prone to getting chilled, a new electric blanket on the bed for him.

Winter weather, meteorologists called it a bomb cyclone, snow storm, temperatures here in the, what? low twenties, high teens? Joe was expected Friday, then Saturday, finally got out of Louisville to Charlotte on Sunday Christmas Day, and now enroute to the Florida Gulf Coast where we should be greeting him with a short sleeve shirt and a glass of ice tea. But Christmas Weekend 2022 did a number on our part of the world.

It's no complaint, more people are dead than alive, Life Is Good, and we are happy and fortunate to be here!

Besides, I remember spending the night in O'Hare Airport, in the United clubroom until they closed, and then in the general waiting area, standing at the huge window and watching wind driven snow outside where the chill factor was ninety below. Would have been my business traveling days, sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s. My flight on to Harrisburg was sometime the next morning.

Another memory from those days, late on a winter Friday afternoon after a visit to an aerospace manufacturer in Connecticut, delivering my Australian client to his terminal at an airport just as a forecast blizzard set in, then, instead of heading on home for Harrisburg, driving myself to a nearby hotel. In the lobby, a mob of people were trying to get the desk clerk's attention, he saw me standing toward the back of the crowd, motioned me forward, checked me in with a room (I had no reservation), gave me my key. I stayed the weekend as the snow piled up outside, not venturing forth until Monday morning. One thing I remember about that trip, a recently ordained Episcopal clergyman (I was in the war business, my defense industry clients did not know I was ordained) I was scheduled to preach/supply for our rector that Sunday but had to call Linda and get her to tell the Senior Warden that I was trapped somewhere in New England. That helps me date the adventure to winter 1983/1984, nearly forty years ago. What was I driving? Not my own car, a rental car, some Japanese or European make with a stick shift.

Joe to Tass just now, "on the ground" Tass to Joe, we are 12 minutes away" and they will drive him from Fort Walton Beach here, so we should be seeing Joe yet this evening.

From Tass: we have acquired Joe and are waiting at the luggage carousel.

Quoting someone in a lighthearted religious book I have around here somewhere, hallelujah, amen.

pic: sunset from 7H porch 25 Dec 2022, 5:20 pm.

RSF&PTL