years
The oysters, I order their Louisiana oysters because they are large, and for me the bigger the better, and if they're not salty that's easily seen to.
So, even though we were overwhelmingly exhausted and down for naps before noon, the day turned out maybe even better, because it was no more costly than our plan would have been, plus there was nothing to do in our own kitchen here in 7H.
The bag of stone-ground grits is ready to open, and I'll take notice of the fish markets for when large red snappers are back in the ice case.
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A nice surprise was the book. I'm reading a McEwan book now, and Tass asked if I'd read "How Green Was My Valley" by Richard Llewellyn. The title rang a bell from the old Time, but I wasn't sure, so found it for reading free online, and had never read it. It's from 1939, when I turned four years old. I'm now well into it. Llewellyn's writing is charming, his capture of their Welsh expressions and syntax is quaint, and the book is a can't put down. Some of Llewellyn's other novels have eye-catching titles, so after this book I may see what else of his to appreciate as I've done with other authors' whose books can be read on my computer screen, wearing my computer/altar/pulpit eyeglasses and the print enlarged to comfortable, instead of wearing my reading glasses and fooling with the eyelash issue that my right eye enjoys irritating me with these days.
At the eye center some years ago, the doctor gave me two prescriptions, one for close reading that balances the sight of my two eyes; the other is for arm's length distance, as I say, computer altar pulpit, just computer now in total retirement. The arrangement is quite convenient, my prescriptions've not changed, and over the years I've acquired several pairs of each prescription; on my insurance plan, at the Tyndall eyeglasses shop they end up costing me $10 a pair. Neither prescription is for driving or everyday life (if I wear them while walking, I go instantly dizzy), so I wear the eyeglasses hanging round my neck, and to distinguish them, the reading glasses have a colored ribbon, the computer glasses have a black string.
Black string glasses now for reading Llewellyn enlarged on screen.
Modern technology is helpful, I'm glad to have lived into it.
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Life is Good. The only part of life I don't like is no longer having my own car, I like having two cars, one of my own, which I had since I was twenty years old. So, I keep an eye on Cramer's used car inventory just in case they get my perfect car in stock again. My perfect car would be another old white Buick sedan with the toothy front Buick grill that Buick started with the 1942 model year, and the air conditioning works, nomesane? Sure, it would sit in the garage most of the Time and be driven less than 200 miles a year, but it would be there when Linda's car or Kristen's car needs to be in the shop for a couple of days, which happens now and then. And it would be mine.
My first car was a used Buick and I'd like my last car to be a used Buick. Shall I tell that story again? I was twenty years old, a junior at the Univ of Florida. A friend and I decided to buy a car. We shopped several dealers on Main Street downtown Gainesville.
This was winter 1955-56. One dealer had three cars we liked. A black 1941 Plymouth sedan that failed our test drive because of the hole in the muffler noise and smoke coming up into the car through holes in the rusted out front floorboard. That old Plymouth is the car I've mentioned here in +Time on several occasions, that, in my growing up days of the Old South when Confederate veterans from the Civil War were the heroes in gray uniforms riding in big open touring cars at the Grand Finale of every parade - - the used car salesman Honest John assured us, "Best thing about that car, it was owned by White people," about which no further comment this Time.
There was a 1941 Packard, a green sedan with air conditioning (yes!), but at $350 it was out of our price range.
And there was the white 1947 Buick Special sedan with a rear fender skirt on the left side only (wandering again, Bubba) that we liked and bought. We paid $75 for the car and $78.80 for the assigned risk liability policy with AllState. As I've chronicled here before, there were several issues with the car, but what the hell, if you can afford a Buick you have to expect to pay a little more, nomesane? The car was standard transmission, of course, three on the tree: two issues. First, it was a screaming, gear-grinding mess to get the transmission into reverse, you had to do all kind of double-clutching to force it into reverse while grinding and screaming; plus, every Time you lifted your foot off the accelerator on the road, in town or on highway, the transmission jumped out of high gear into neutral and could not be forced back into any gear: you had to pull over, stop by the side of the road, and start over with the shifting. Not too big a deal in town, this was only inconvenient driving at speed, which we did, on the highway, slowing down behind the car ahead, and passing a car, when you lifted your foot to slow down as you pull back into your lane, the transmission jumped out of gear so we had to brake, pull to the side of the road and start over. It taught me to avoid passing cars on two lane highways, which was all we had in those years.
Also, the car smoked a little, such that when we headed home to Panama City we had to have a case of a dozen 30W oil cans in the trunk.
Another problem was that every twenty or thirty miles on the road, steam suddenly poured up from the radiator, such that, driving between Gainesville and Panama City, we had to have a bucket in the trunk for stopping by a ditch to wait for the engine to cool down so we could bring water from the ditch and refill the radiator. You get a lot for your money when you drive a Buick.
When Better Automobiles Are Built, Buick Will Build Them.
We did manage to put a brand new set of four tires on that car, all balanced, which was nice.
The car's only other problem we didn't even realize. I had it at home the summer of 1956, and one day my father crawled under the car and discovered that the front brakes were disconnected. He spent the afternoon under the car attaching brake lines to reconnect the front brakes. It's a memory to hold in my heart when I reflect on how tentative my relationship with my father was all our lives together.
I'll finish the Buick story again now. When I went back to UFla for my senior year, 1956-57, my parents had bought a Buick Century V8 two door hardtop coupe from Nelson's for my mother, and my parents offered me the choice of either the green 1948 Dodge sedan or the brown 1949 Plymouth station wagon. I loved the station wagon, which had been our dating car all my high school and college years, but I'd also been involved in the ongoing maintenance of its wooden body, which was MAJOR; also, the Dodge had Fluid-Drive, which made it easy for Linda, who was not used to a standard transmission as on the Plymouth; so I chose the Dodge, which was the first car Linda and I owned together.
Going back to Gainesville for my senior year, Linda had transferred to UF from her college in Virginia, and we took the Dodge and I left the Buick at home here in Panama City.
No longer needing the Buick then, by agreement with my friend the co-owner, I sold it. Having the car here in Panama City, one weekend I drove the Dodge home from Gainesville and took the Buick to several used car lots. Only one man offered to buy it, the owner of a used car lot on East 6th Street at the end of Massalina Bayou, across from what years later was the homeless shelter. After all these years, there's still an empty lot there today, which reminds me of this story ever Time I drive past it.
Anyway, the used car dealer offered me $75 cash for the car. We were hoping to get $100, so I declined and told him I'd have to check other lots. Receiving no other offers, I took the car back to that lot on E. 6th Street. The man said, "Well, now my offer is $50." I was stunned, but having no other possibilities, I took the $50 and used the phone on his desk to phone mama to come get me. I signed the title and handed the man the keys.
Leaving his office, I walked up 6th Street heading west toward Harrison Avenue, until I was out of sight of the used car lot and my first Buick, knowing what to expect. The man had not tried out the car, and the engine ran smooth as a Buick straight eight did in those days. I'd parked the car in an open space so that if the man tried it out he wouldn't have to shift it into reverse to move it. But after our sale/purchase transaction, he'd have to back it up in order to turn it around and park it facing the street for sale. From my hearing place out of sight up the street, I heard the car's transmission scream and grind and grind and scream as the used car dealer tried unsuccessfully to shift it into reverse. While the transmission was still screaming and grinding, mama arrived in her classy Buick hardtop coupe, and away we drove. I figured that both he and I had gotten what we had coming, me the $50 for a great looking car in terrible mechanical condition, and the used car dealer for lowering his purchase offer just because he knew he had me.
If this were a Harvard Business School case study, you might address the issue of honesty and ethics, IDK.
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Sixty-nine years is a long Time for a woman to be patient enough with a bozo husband to stick with him anyway. We have several children, several grandchildren, and one or two great-grandchildren. We had twenty years in the U S Navy, living about fourteen different places. Winters in Rhode Island, Michigan, Ohio, WashDC, and Pennsylvania were unbearably cold at Times.
For three years of our life we lived in Japan, in an idyllic spot on a Yokohama hilltop overlooking Tokyo Bay in front of our little house, and in the other direction, on clear days seeing Mount Fuji some thirty-five miles away, rising breathtaking against the sky, with a cap of snow at the volcano rim.
We got to love living in Apalachicola for fourteen years, and now back home in Panama City high in 7H overlooking St Andrew's Bay. Life is Good, and Life together is nice and long for us, in our nineties as we hope to celebrate our seventieth wedding anniversary this Time next year.
RSF&PTL
T90