Saturday: from 7H looking toward Davis Point
Out here on 7H porch with first mug of hot & black, eyes and ears on, watching, hearing, and enjoying nature's sound of waves slapping against the shore seven floors down, and flashes of lightning from the cloud far offshore over the Gulf of Mexico.
Weather radar shows tiny blips of green/yellow/red making their way north toward us, for a likely day of occasional brief thunderstorms. Our POD for Saturday 20 July includes a visit to the Farmers' Market next door in Oaks by the Bay Park, to buy tomatoes and also yellow crookneck squash if the Marianna couple have it at their kiosk.
Who the H am I trying to impress, myself?, kiosk? woo hoo, I mean at their booth, this is the South, Baby.
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What am I contemplating as I work at dropping the last four pounds before my annual doctor's appointment weigh-in on 5 August, two weeks from Monday? The fried (I think it's actually baked, but rolled in cornmeal it's like southern fried without the grease) catfish from the deli at Winn-Dixie, 23rd Street and Beck Avenue. Fried chicken, pan-seared crispy on the outside red-raw inside lean ground beef, nor nothing else won't do once you've found a place with fried catfish on their deli offerings. Well, it ain't fried, it's Shake 'n Bake and I helped by buying some.
The last Time we stopped there for the catfish, the cashier told us that this Winn-Dixie is closing early August and will reopen, probably January 2025, as Aldi's. We are solid Grocery Outlet folks, but catfish is catfish, nomesane? mox nix mir wie viel deutsche Bier sie haben, if they drop the catfish I'm outta there. Can fried catfish compete with fried mullet? That's too personal a question.
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What am I contemplating this early morning? In my first life (growing up) it was getting away from home. In my second life (Navy) it was getting promoted. In my third life (parish priest) it was Bible study, which I'm trying to push back at least slightly as I try to settle into this fourth life Wilderness far from Myself. So, I let my mind relax too much, and memories surfaced of cars I wanted but didn't buy.
One was a black Rambler V8 station wagon about 63 years ago: I ended up buying a 2-tone pink and maroon Rambler 6 station wagon that was never quite the spirit of the black V8, which never left my heart.
Another was a black 1940 Chevrolet four door sedan I checked out at Cramer's maybe a dozen years ago and should have bought and kept for life: it's still perfect in my mind. Could I have kept it running? IDK, that's basically why I let it go, but it was a car of my heart with memories in my childhood before WW2.
Most, though would have been, I reckon, about 1981, what? 43 years ago, when I seriously considered trading in my one or two year old black 1980 Cadillac sedan DeVille for a new Volkswagen Scirocco.
With clutch and 5-speed stick shift, it was a most appealing car, about as personal a car as a man could want. No, desire, is the word, not "want," or lust after. I went out to the VW dealer in Harrisburg to drive one, selecting that dealer because I knew Fred, the sales manager, who was a member of our church, Mount Calvary Parish. The car was perfect. I asked Fred, "Do you think it would be as comfortable as my Cadillac for the every day every week, long-distance driving I do? Fred said, "Oh yes."
Why didn't I buy it? It was a personal issue of pique: I'd told Fred I was coming. I was the only customer in the showroom, and Fred wasn't busy. I'd expected that he'd take me for the drive himself, but he surprised me by turning me over to one of his salesmen. I was offended, ticked, p-o-ed, and I didn't buy the car.
So I kept the damn Cadillac another year in spite of its quirks (Windshield wipers went AWOL during a driving snowstorm on the Pennsylvania Turnpike one morning and I had to drive slowly, flashers flashing, with my head out the window to the next exit and find a dealer to fix it and get me back on the road. Black vinyl top broke loose from its front sealing and would pop up into a huge, ludicrous bubble in the wind at any speed) and traded it for a white 1982 Cimarron 1.8 four cylinder car with red leather seats, that in 1984 we took with us when we moved from Harrisburg to Apalachicola.
There was no problem with the Cimarron until the day Linda's mother borrowed it and slammed it into Park while the car was moving about 5 mph: transmission repairs. A year or so later I bought a used 1986 Ford Taurus MT5 station wagon from the Ford dealer in Apalachicola, and gave the Cimarron to Dianne.
A then medium sized station wagon with a 5-speed stick shift, that Ford was one of my all Time favorite cars. But in my memories of idealism, the VW Scirocco would have been my perfect car.
Or, decades later, that 1940 Chevrolet sedan:
See, this is where my mind goes when I no longer have sermons to prepare. Nevertheless, Life is Good so
RSF&PTL
T88&c