this 'n that

IDK, besides rabbits and other small prey, it was one of many shots when I looked at eagle captures, including large snakes, a sizable shark, deer, a mountain goat and others. Judging by the pointed snout, that's a crocodile, not an alligator, eh? But is it real or somebody's spoof? IDK. Besides people, do large reptiles really have predators? Well, other reptiles, constrictor snakes, and we learned at Wakulla Springs last October that their alligator population is kept in check by predator birds and larger alligators eating the smaller ones. If you call foul on this photograph, fine by me, it doesn't appear that the eagle's claws are much imbedded in the croc's skin, but IDK. It could be interesting to eat a live crocodile.

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"In the former Time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter Time he will make glorious the Way of the Sea" (Isaiah 9). Yesterday was good at church, the Bible readings, and new hymn words to our old tune for "Once to every man and nation" we sang "Thy strong word did cleave the darkness." The tune name is Ebenezer or Ton-y Botel ("tune in a bottle). I brought home a bulletin for blogging about the Way of the Sea and contrasting the Kings Highway, but then got sidetracked into reading about the Silk Road, and wandering off in a favorite old fantasy about riding the full route of the Orient Express, then remembering "Murder on the Orient Express" wandering further into my mental wilderness by watching two Poirot films as late Sunday afternoon adventure. The television versions of Poirot episodes begin with what I remember from my childhood as a streamline train, which at the Time was a design marvel compared to our huge steam locomotives. Chrysler used a streamline locomotive in their ads for the new 1934 Chrysler Airflow cars.

But the maps!

In my Time I loved train travel best of all, and still! No more long car trips, and no more air flights or ocean cruises for me, I've had my fill of Time at sea, of Time in the air, of driving in scary traffic at night; and after Midnight Cowboy I'm not much for traveling by bus; but trains, yes as long as I can get a room or roomette, and the longer the trip the better. Though maybe not in America any more.

Couple of maps, the Silk Road and a map of the MiddleEast showing the King's Highway and the Way of the Sea (Via Maris) all being ancient commercial, merchant routes. Not that the land routes were paved or even smooth and easy, but routes commonly traveled; on land maybe especially by camel, with their long legs and built in water reservoirs for the long trek. And always robbers, bandits to contend with. The histories, stories, are fascinating to read and imagine having been there.

We are a religion of stories, indeed people ourselves are fundamentally a species of stories, Time is all we have, the instant moment (my friends, life is short, and we haven't much Time), the future to hope for, but civilizations are Geschichte, history, Historie, our stories of self-awareness about how we humans have used Time, and, religiously, Heilsgeschichte, our stories about our relationship with our God as particular from others' relationships with the same God, or their gods. In the Apocrypha, read about Bel and about the Dragon. And in Daniel and 1 Kings about foreign gods in competition with our God, who always comes through for us unless he judges and condemns our faithlessness and whistles for the locusts or worse. Read the Book of Revelation: victory for us but a Geschichte of nightmares for the unfaithful and for those who hate us.

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What I actually had in mind this morning though was a memory, a story of my own that I've told here before, that ginned back up in my mind yesterday on coming across a 1937 Cord for sale.

Whenever in Pensacola, including recently in connection with car maintenance and repair, I always love being in East Hill, where my mother grew up, where my parents met during my father's family's years if sojourn fleeing to escape their desolating grief after the death of my father's brother Alfred, East Hill, where my Gentry grandparents lived all my own growing up years, and where I had so much love and so many happy Times.

The beloved stories are numerous yea unto countless, the 1937 Cord bring one to mind, that I've told here before. Sunday mornings we went to church. Our grandfather Gentry, whom we called Daddy Walt, drove us, not in his car, which in those years was always a Plymouth coupe with a huge trunk for his hunting dogs; but in our grandmother's car. She was Mamoo, why I don't know, I was the first and oldest grandson, second to my first cousin Margaret, eight months ahead of me, who probably named her "Mamma".

Anyway, except for the two-tone red Auburn that I've talked about here now and then, and the silver DeSoto Airflow sedan, the key ingredient of yet another oft told story, following their first car, a blue Maxwell touring car, as Maxwell's decendants, Mamoo's cars were always Chryslers. From pre-war I do remember the black 1939 Chrysler Royal sedan,

but the car I first remember riding to church and Sunday school in, was the light green 1942 Windsor sedan, with Tip-Toe shift,

The five of us piled into the back seat, Daddy Walt drove, at East Hill Baptist Church he circled around and parked on the corner, car facing out for easy exit without backing up; turned around in his seat and gave each of us a nickel for Sunday school offering, and off we went to class. Gina with cousin Margaret Ann to whatever grade girls, Walt and me with cousin Bill to whatever grade boys class. I remember the class over the years, always the same small group of boys. I admired the Baptist arrangement of a class staying together as lifelong friends - - Daddy Walt was with his same Sunday school class from the Time he joined in about 1909 until he died in 1976 at age 90.

But the Cord. My mind is not bringing up the car's color, but nearly always parked next to our green Chrysler was a 1937 Cord. Four door sedan, with the concealed headlamps, and the elegantly machined dashboard

that was part of the car's luxury appeal. Cord was one of the early cars with front-wheel-drive, with the drive axle and differential quite prominent out front, ahead of the car's radiator grill. A design that gave the car the older-fashioned appearance of cars built through about 1933, until the 1934 Chrysler and DeSoto Airflow design with the front axle under the radiator instead of out in front of it. As a young boy, six, seven, eight, these things mattered to me and are part of meine Geschichte, my stories, Historie, to this day.

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The Volvo, which was Kristen's car that we bought as the safest car in the Universe after her first car was totalled in a collision her freshman year at Oxford College of Emory ten years ago - - at this moment the car is in the hands of Miller Mobile Car Detail being refreshed. I parked it at St Andrews Marina for them, but the morning was so chill and breezy that I see they've moved it to a less windy location, on Bayview Avenue across from Alice's.

And now they're texting me that they're finished and I can come get it.

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A ten year old car doesn't look brand new, but it looks better than in years!

RSF&PTL