October 12

 

Reading this morning about folks, especially older retired people living on the Florida peninsula, west coast along the Gulf of Mexico, who are discouraged by all the hurricanes they're experiencing, looking for ways to leave Florida; and feeling sad for them, because their retirement dreams have been decimated. 

My dream is alive and well here in 7H, although I well remember the massive sense of defeat after Hurricane Michael, that I could barely "do this" one Time, and wondering where to go if it happens again, as seems increasingly likely as Earth moves beyond the ice age residual where glaciers still melted, into the next warm era. 

I'm not interested in arguing about whether we caused the climate change or it's part of Earth's natural cycling, but it's here. The hurricanes are growing in intensity and surprise and it's only going to worsen. Where would/will I/we go that's safer? California, maybe; or Oklahoma, eh? Or the mountains of Appalachia? New England or the MidWest, where I cannot stand the cold winters?  Texas, where political insanity reigns?

No, I'm thinking of a high spot like Frankford Avenue between north of 11th and south of 15th Street, the section that stretches over to Lisenby Avenue. Nowadays it's called Oakland Terrace.

Okay, here goes Time again. The scrub oaks and rolling dirt roads that were still there when I was in high school, the area where General Patton came to train and rest his tank forces during WW2, when a soldier picked me up and set me on top of his tank.

And where tribes of Gypsies used to set up camp and live for a Time in their travels. I remember them, our parents taking us to see them after church on a Sunday or two when I was a boy, me more interested in the enormous old cars they drove, huge Cadillacs, Packards and Lincolns. I saw my first Cadillac V16 there, and may have seen a Pierce Arrow there, they got those cars used cheap, during the Great Depression when wealthy Americans were ashamed and afraid to drive them as too conspicuous. The Gypsies, Romani people, were persecuted by Germany during the Third Reich. 

Gina knew them as special folks when she lived in South Carolina, didn't call them "Gypsies," she called them The Travelers, and ultimately got to be one of them herself with her traveling ways. My sister died three years ago today. 

That's really all that's on my mind this morning. It's pretty overwhelming.

TJCC are arriving about 9:30 with a u-haul type truck, to load up and take away a nice, new sofa-bed that we bought for Joe to sleep on when he's here; and to take away all our outside furniture that's increasingly a burden to us because it's too heavy for us to move inside and back outside every Time there's a hurricane in the Gulf. Caroline has a little townhouse now, and we are more than pleased to be able to help her furnish it.

My sister was an unusual person. In our growing up years, she was the sassy one who kept her relationship with our parents strained by insisting on being herself; the one who did not like coming along after me in schools and having teachers at first ID her as "Carroll Weller's sister," the one who, in later life when someone would ask, "Oh, are you Fr Tom's sister?", she would reply, "No, he's my brother." I'm glad to take that spot. 

Gina and I were a bit distanced our years growing up together. We got to know each other better, and feel closer, in our seventies and eighties. I'm grateful for that Time.

Bubba