how are you called?
What am I doing? After extensively reading about it yesterday, trying one teaspoon of EVOO in my hot & black this morning, but not violating my magic mug with it. It's not noticeable except for the oil film on my lips.
And I can't use it, as I frequently do, as acidic hot coffee for cleaning my eyeglasses.
Why all this nonsense? If you really want to know, read about it yourself.
Which would be healthier for me, EVOO or the spoonful of cod liver oil that I remember having to swallow as a kid? Or the fried mullet red roe that I used to love - - I missed the mullet roe this year, when I was a boy working in the retail fish market, red roe used to show up in the mullet in our ice case in October. It was delicious, but don't eat too much, nomesane? If you don't nomesane, go ahead and eat too much fried red mullet roe and then you'll soon nomesane.
Except that we don't have any EVOO so I used avocado oil this morning. After our dermatology appointments this morning we're stopping by Target for a couple of things, and I may check out their olive oil offerings.
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Trying to collect Cove School memories in my mind, maybe sort them by year grade teacher, starting with first grade September 1941. First grade, Ms Violet Hayward, who was a home ec teacher at Bay High before moving to Cove School. What do I remember?
First, my too oft told here story of the night before, when Mama called me into the dining room and asked, "Bubba, you're starting school tomorrow, what do you want them to call you?"
Well, unlike some of the students whom I started first grade with, I had never been to kindergarten. I remember the moment shaking me a bit, because I was unaware, or had completely forgotten, that I was about to start school. Labor Day, Monday, September 1, 1941, I was five years old coming up on six in two weeks. So, the first memory is of being surprised: school was starting the next day.
Second, I thought for a moment and answered Mama, "Well, not Bubba," I said, (although my father's Bay High classmate, friend, and fellow football player was called Bubber all his life, and I knew and respected him), "how about Tom?"
"No, it can't be Tom," Mama said, "in high school I had a boyfriend named Tom, and your daddy still hates him."
In 2011, seventy years later not long after Mama died, I cleared out all sorts of things in her room and closet, and came across an old photograph of Mama standing with a teenage boy. On the back was written, "Louise 16 and Tom 17." I also have here somewhere, old newspaper clippings, Pensacola Journal sports page listing Pensacola High School Tigers football team members going into their game with Bay High, including Tom DeWeese (1911-1989) and Carroll Weller (1911-1993) and their positions on the Pensacola team.
And there's a clipping here from a year later, Panama City News-Herald as I recall, listing team members for the Pensacola Tigers, including Tom DeWeese, and listing team members for the Bay High Tornadoes, including Carroll Weller. That's the sort of historical research that would help establish when my Weller grandparents moved back from Pensacola to Panama City in their travails and frantic relocating in their inconsolable grief after the January 1918 death of my father's brother Alfred Weller, Jr.
See, the mind is like someone putting a jigsaw puzzle together to get a complete picture. A little piece here and a little piece there, and the pieces don't necessarily touch each other, but it all does eventually come together and start clarifying. In theological seminary and later, I learned the great fun and good of doing that kind of searching in Bible study, to put stuff together about a Bible book or person. Maybe most memorably for me, with Mark, Matthew, Revelation, John, all of Paul's letters. Moses in the Wilderness.
Anyway, to return to that greatly signifying pre-school conversation with Mama, I remember a downer feeling that I was about to be stuck with the name Carroll - - that is to say Carroll, Junior - - for the rest of my life.
A boy named Sue, and thank you very much Johnny Cash.
Going down that side path for a moment, the feeling of self-consciousness every Time I introduced myself over the years that followed. Explaining and spelling, "it's a surname, my father was named after an uncle, John Thomas Carroll, the husband of one of his father's sisters, it's two "Rs" an two "Ls" C A R R O L L and frequently seeing it spelled Carol or Carrol or Caroll anyway, and the rubber stamp my father had made for me to stamp my books, Carroll Weller, Jr. As too often told here in years past, I did not escape from it until after my eighteenth birthday, September 1953, registering as a new freshman at the University of Florida, and the IBM listings that the teachers had to call out names checking attendance, "Thomas Weller?" and I was saved, Tom Weller thenceforth.
What signifies in life? First for me, that dining room conversation with my mother the evening of Labor Day 1941.
There's a question in German: "Wie heissen sie?" How are you called?
Family, blood relatives, and everyone who knew me before my age six has always called me Bubba.
Everyone who met me from my age six on knew me as Carroll.
Everyone who met me from my age eighteen on calls me Tom. Or Mr Weller. Or Commander Weller (USAA still calls me that). Or Father Weller. Or Father Tom.
For now I think I'll stop with the Cove School memories and maybe resume with the next morning. Cove School was a much smaller building then, just what is now the north end of the main Bill Lloyd Building, with about five schoolrooms and two restrooms, boys and girls. Mama took me into the classroom. Ms Violet Hayward
The Cove was all dirt roads at the Time.
I sat down at my desk, looked around for Mama, and momentarily panicked because she had disappeared. But my first cousin and best friend Ann was sitting right in front of me, so all was well.
My first day of school.
RSF&PTL
T89&c
new top pic: dated 1944 so would either be school year 1943-44 (third grade) or 1944-45 (fourth grade). maybe Robert knows.