Chapter 7
What then? Keeps coming to mind the Navy commander, or, it's been decades since I read it, he may have been a Navy captain, in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" who, having offended authorities in the Soviet labor camp where he was a prisoner, was given one of the standard harsher penalties, tied naked to a post in the camp in winter, a punishment a prisoner was unlikely to survive, whether in freezing bitter winter or summer with the heat and mosquitos. It was a place where one was no longer a person but something to be tormented.
How did Ivan Denisovich survive? He was careful. He was careful, totally obedient and uncomplaining. When he received a care package from home, he opened it in the office, took a bite for himself and gave the rest to the guards. His luxury may have been a carefully concealed extra pair of socks, but it's been so long that I'm not sure.
Why does it surface in my thoughts? IDK, maybe because at some point in life I identified somehow with the Navy officer in "One Day." Wait: when you are this age you will have your own strange thoughts and maybe you will be able to work out why.
Maybe you too will have a weblog to write and post more or less daily, as your substitute for journaling your thoughts and days, or scribbling them down in a diary, or working through them in meditation or therapy.
Maybe breakfast will give you fits, as it has come to be for me. Tuesday after my doctor's appointment, to Golden Corral for eggs over medium, mushrooms with white sausage gravy, two fried chicken drumsticks, and black coffee. Protein and no particular effect as I recall though not positive. Wednesday as reported yesterday and the worst effect of all Time so far. Thursday, this morning, a single serve of guacamole very early with coffee; later, coffee, handful of heart meds, serving of baked red snapper along with a serving of crab casserole I made yesterday to comprise a seafood feast with the baked snapper, and one of the aforementioned tiny blueberry muffins (afore was yesterday, I think, though never sure of anything): within seconds, the heavy head and intense ache in the neck and down across the shoulders, but reasonable low BP this Time, crash for hour's nap.
Have I entered a new chapter? Is breakfast, a favorite feast, now to be a memory? IDK. Life is Good.
Life is Good. Mind wanders. Life is real. Life is earnest. Warren, a unique soul, reciting before our Cove School class
Psalm of Life, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. We can make our lives sublime. How'm I doin? In that life itself is both personal and vocational, pretty well, as I see it, looking back, especially where the personal and vocational merged and meshed those top of the mountain years in Apalachicola.
Although! Our years in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania before relocating to Apalachicola, our house was "creekside" they called it, backing up on Conodoguinet Creek, the peaceful view of all peaceful views. When we relocated to the rectory of Trinity Episcopal Church, Apalachicola, the kitchen window looked out to the east at the side of an old, two-story garage/garage apartment, covered in green asphalt roof tiles and the window patched over with black tarpaper; north side of the rectory right on US Highway 98 with 24/7 traffic, trucks shifting gears, ambulances and firetrucks; front porch looked west across 6th Street to a long-vacant tumbling down mansion that creepy men with brown paper sacks regularly crawled in through a broken window; but the south side was part of the Trinity Church complex, and from the front yard I could see Apalachicola Bay; and most charmingly, roosters all over town began crowing hours before dawn every morning.
Tass grew up there with us, Nicholas was born while we were there, Ray, and Kristen whom I claimed as my own the instant the ultrasound showed she was a granddaughter.
The three of us are going to Pruitt to see her mom later today, then Kristen is coming over for pizza.
But back on topic, after Apalachicola, The Old Place on St Andrews Bay, and now 7H, we can make our lives sublime.
+++++++++
The red snapper. My weeks of eating leaves and twigs, I promised myself that if my annual weigh-in was successful at the doctor's office, I'd treat myself to a large red snapper, which I would bake our old family way. Those fish house years (I started working at the fish house the summer of 1945 as WW2 ground to victory, and through graduation from Bay High in 1953), if we decided to have baked red snapper at home, it was my task to pick out the best three-to-four pound red snapper in the ice case, and prepare it. Scaled, gilled, and mama always wanted the eyes out, so okay. Baked with canned crushed tomatoes and onions, it was always sublime.
God help me if anyone got a fish scale, and I made damn sure that never, never happened. Well, the fish are good and freshest at Tarpon Dock, and if you want a bigger one, they'll go in the back and get a bigger one out of the cooler: anymore, I want to get several meals out of it, so I'm there for a five-to-seven pound red snapper. This one was six-point-one pounds, perfect. They are good there, although they don't scale a snapper worth a damn, it gets home with dozens of spots they missed scaling. Plus, I learned and like to slice down both sides of the back fin, dorsal fin, and pull it out with pliers, so as to remove all those tiny bones: once, I asked them to remove the back fin and all they did was cut it off, leaving all the tiny bones; so I do that part myself now. The fish was, is perfect. Baked for an hour on 350° then tested for doneness and put back in for another seven minutes.
Sure, I could be writing about preparing my next sermon for my turn in the pulpit, August 20, but I'm still working on why breakfast has become my enemy instead of my best friend, nomesane?
Turned the page. A new chapter, ninety to a hundred starting a couple years early, eh?
1. Born and raised years. birth-21
2. Navy years. 21-42
3. Washington years. 42-48
4. Apalachicola years. 48-63
5. The Old Place years. 63-79
6. 7H years, 79-88 phasing into
7. ... too soon to name it years
RSF&PTL
T
Caribe Liza 422x67 arriving from Coatzacoalcos to unload molasses. She's obviously very heavy, possibly risky to maneuver, therefore the tug behind her to help push and guide. Tuesday, Aug 2, 4:44 pm. In the foreground, small craft with two people, a man and a woman, apparently dismantling our Wreck, the burned out shrimp boat. The superstructure that stuck out above the Bay surface is about gone, they've taken it away.