1952 and 1964 in 2024

Too hot to step outside on 7H porch for a pleasant predawn morning welcoming the Wednesday. Muggy 83° and feels like 91° with a forecast of no rain and high of 97° feeling like 110° today. August 7 and, Jesus don't come, a week and a month until completing my 89th year and moving on toward 90. Five more weeks then, of myself as 88 and counting.

No one expects to live this long, eh? my life expectancy at birth was 61. So, what's right and facilitating this longevity, my way of life or the genes? Looking back into one-and-two generation ancestry, my father died thirty-one years ago a month after his 82nd birthday; my mother lived two months past her 99th birthday; one grandmother died just short of 70 of the same heart issues that I have but a half century before medical science could manage if; one grandfather died at age 90 the day after traipsing through the woods hunting quail or doves (from prior experience with heart attacks he knew he was having one so drove himself to the hospital); my other grandfather died at 92 while we were living in Japan; and my maternal grandmother lived past age 97. I don't hunt birds, but I do eat raw oysters and fried mullet.

And I remember the huge cast iron skillet filled with doves and quail, in bubbling dark brown gravy, on the old fashioned gas stove in my grandmother Gentry's kitchen. There would be mounds of white rice for the brown gravy, and all the birds you could eat. 

But I wander.

Reading, what? George Orwell's short stories. His writing is vivid and puts you in the scene, this morning I was sitting in an iron chair, under a tree sipping a beer in the outside closed-in back garden of his public-house Moon Under Water when he suddenly revealed that there is no such place, it was his ten point description of what the perfect London pub would be like if there was one but there isn't. The closest was eight points, he said. 

George Orwell had an interesting life in the dying days of the British Empire before anyone realized the empire was in its death throes. Sliding into a madman authoritarian government will move us further into the death throes of the American Empire as well, but I'll not go there this morning, life is too good and I haven't much Time ...

A busy morning starting early with delivering Kristen's car to Bay Town Tire to have the brake fluid changed out and everything else checked over. The car is under warranty, but I can't take it to Pensacola anymore, because driving back through SanDestin in the evening go home rush traffic is scary, and far, far worse and more dangerous than the rush hour traffic I remember in Washington DC in the late 1960s, or in Atlanta when we went there for cancer treatment in 1990 and 2004. I can't do it anymore, nomesane? If you don't know now, the Time will come when you will.

Wishing you long years

RSF&PTL

T88&c

image: when we lived in Japan in 1964, I bought, for $100 American, a twelve year old 1952 Chrysler Saratoga V8 club coupe, from a senior civilian employee who was retiring and heading back to the States. It was exactly like this car, identical, same blue bottom and white top. Power steering, power brakes and tip-toe shift, it was a smooth riding dream to drive. A close friend recently sent me this picture of a car he spotted, bringing back great memories.