warm pair of socks

 

Waning gibbous 94%, Moonset 8:50 AM  58°F and Mostly Clear. 93% humidity, Wind NE 6 mph with gusts to 10 mph. Forecast to be 74°F today: if it's climate warming I'm sad, if it's just another Florida Gulf Coast winter morning, I'll take it happily.  

Along with my magic mug of hot & black, a slice of Pepperidge Farm's very thin sliced whole wheat bread smeared thickly with a runny soft creamy yellow cheese from Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

It was a small wheel of washed rind cheese, and there's just enough left to enjoy one more Time. The top and side crust is edible, but not the bottom, a bite of burlap.

Tuesday, December 17, 5:05 AM, slip on a pair of socks so my feet won't be cold, cover my lap with my plaid lap blanket. Open the shutters and gaze out into the darkness.

Tomorrow would be the birthday of my grandfather Walter Henry Gentry. I think 1885, and if so then 139. Next week it would have been 140 Christmases ago. Daddy Walt was special to me, what comes early to mind? His kindness, his brother my Uncle Eb who, along with Daddy Walt's other brothers who died before my Time, was in Gentry Bros Loans & Pawns, Est. 1909. Browsing his pawn shops from whence came the two Christmas gift bicycles of my growing up years, the floor radio in our living room, and my blue sports coat for Sundays. 

The mind wanders, doesn't it: that, my first bicycle was a youth size. Bill Bailey begged me to trade with him for his regular size boy's bike that I loved and wanted to trade for but would not because mine was a gift from Daddy Walt. Time was Depression and War Years when there was no money left over for discretionary, years when - - yep, the mind does wander - - I dared not ask my parents for a dime a day for a saltine cracker and half-pint carton of ice cold milk those mornings at Cove School. 

See, still wandering - - comes round again to the day my father gave me a quarter to go to the movies at the Ritz Theatre and I made the mistake of spending the change at the concession stand instead of handing him the change when he asked for it. I mean, it was a BIG mistake and with our father, you didn't argue or talk back. Gina did notwithstanding, but Walt and I knew better.

Wandered far enough now, Bubba.

Someone wrote that when you reach sixty it's Time to let go of all the negative and embrace only the positive. 

+++++++

Reading these days, Atlantic magazine for January 2025 came yesterday, second favorite to The New Yorker, which is more a weekly - - I think 48 issues a year, getting a fortnight issue about once a quarter. 

Rambling again, my two favorite magazines bring me forward in life to my travels in my forties after Navy retirement, buying one or the other magazine at the news stand in Washington National Airport before boarding my flight for LAX or SFO. 

Still meandering - - flashes through my mind that I once missed a week of class at seminary, and a fellow student took notes for me - - I left a foot deep snow in Gettysburg to fly to meet an Australian client in Los Angeles, where I had a poolside motel room and beautiful weather for taking a swim every day after business meetings, where? I don't remember, it was when the Australian government was choosing an American fighter, seems to me F-14, F-15, F-18, and the Australian manufacturer I represented was vying for the opportunity to manufacture parts for whichever plane Australia finally settled on. 

That would have been the week I inadvertently said the A-10 Warthog was the ugliest plane that ever flew, only to have one of the American company executives present take offense that he had been on the design team for the A-10 and it was a beautiful aircraft. 

If age sixty is a Time to forgive and forget, age forty-something is a good age to learn when to keep your mouth shut, nomesane?

The eighth or ninth Episcopal priest in my family in the past two hundred years, I've had a varied and interesting life, not least a full time occupation involving warplanes and submarine torpedoes while also going to theological seminary full-time and teaching graduate courses in major weapons systems acquisition part-time. 

All that ended the day we arrived in Apalachicola in July 1984.

If you thought you knew me and now see that you never knew me at all, you still don't know me, there's lots more to not tell than there is to tell, nomesane?

Enough, eh?

Ray sent me pics of a car in a museum in Richmond, Virginia, where he, Britany and Lilly are living right now.

Tomorrow maybe I'll blog about what I meant to visit today, the lectionary propers for next Sunday, Advent 4 Year C. Till then,

RSF&PTL

T89&c