happy birthday, Walt!

Friday morning, July 24, my brother's 2026 - 1939 = 87th birthday. An early memory, often told here, is that early evening on July 24, 1942, we stopped at the Standard Oil gas station that was where Tarpon Dock Seafood is now, and a colleague of our father brought a puppy to the car, a tiny ball of fur that Walt had the privilege of naming because the dog was his birthday present, and Walt named him Happy Birthday. 

So, he was "Happy" his years with us. Our parents told us that Happy was a mix collie and German shepherd. He grew big, the biggest dog in the neighborhood, and easily the most loving, loyal and protective. 

A few years later, in "dog shows" at Cove School during summer vacations, Happy would always win blue ribbons for "Largest." Indeed, one summer there was another dog in competition about Happy's size: the judge, an adult male, decided that, since Happy had always won the blue ribbon before, it would be fair for the other dog to take blue, and Happy take the red ribbon for second largest. This started a loud argument, near fight, by me insisting that Happy was the largest and entitled to the blue ribbon. With my unrelenting protest, the judge backed down and awarded Happy the blue ribbon for "Largest" dog again.

Happy seemed aware that he was more Walt's than ours: when Walt was little at Cove School, Happy would walk the two or three blocks up to the school grounds and be waiting when Walt got out of class.

Walt is two months shy of being four years younger than I am. He was a year and a half (January 24, 1938 to July 24, 1939) younger than our sister Gina. As we grew up, with me enough older to sense the age gap, I was always the loner and the two of them were always a team, a year apart in school, and the other side when there was a disagreement. 

When our father was away from home during World War Two, I somehow stepped up, phased in, as the authority after our mother, who was working at F. A. Black Insurance on Harrison Avenue downtown. I don't recall Walt ever mentioning it, but in our adult and older years, Gina recalled that, my "authoritative" position, any number of Times, enough to make it clear that those years had raised a barrier between us that was lifelong, at least for her. 

In our family growing up, Gina was the rebel, sassy, "talking back," always at odds with our mother and our father. Walt and I were alike at home, wary of our father. Starting age nine, I worked in our father's seafood business, in the retail market, washing his trucks every Saturday, at fourteen taking the weekly wholesale and retail receipts deposit to Commercial Bank at Harrison Avenue and Beach Drive. As soon as Walt was old enough, he joined me at work, which I loved, and where we formed memories that we still share to this day. 

Including fishing, with our fingers, raw oysters out of the tin bucket in the ice case in the retail store, and eating them, cold, raw, and salty. Opening a ten gallon tin of salted mullet to strip meat off the bones and eat it. During the reception at Linda's parents' house after my wedding, Walt went to our house and brought back the red 1957 Ford Thunderbird that I had borrowed from Cook Motor Company for a flashy "get away car." 

Where I was quiet, a reader, Walt was the loud, popular comic relief in his school classrooms. Growing up, he was the strong athlete, boater, hunter, fisherman that I'd never been and always wanted to be, and as such he was my much admired younger idol who could do anything I could not do. 

Living a different lifestyle from me, my brother learned and still does all kinds of things that I never could do. 

While I was in the Navy, Walt was in the Air Force, then lived in Louisiana, where he married and raised a family. In later life, after his wife died, Walt reconnected with his high school sweetheart and moved to Pensacola, where they are together. His happiness brings me overwhelming joy. I'd thought that when he moved closer, I'd see him more, and though life's aging has made frequent drives no longer possible for us, we stay in touch, text, telephone. Life is Good.

Our voices sound the same, and although neither of us especially sees the likeness, we have been asked, "Are you twins?" 

I'm thinking of Walt this morning, and wishing him a hundred and twenty years.

RSF&PTL

T90  

pic of us, Walt standing, me seated, is in the family room at The Old Place, between 2000 and 2014