Interesting weather we’re having these few days, predawn storms announcing themselves with thunder. Hearing from the family room in the back of the house, I head out to get Linda’s PCNH before it’s soaked, greeted by broad, intimidating flashes of lightning out over the Gulf of Mexico and covering half of the southern horizon, and already raining lightly. We don’t get a choice, but I like these better than the summer afternoon thunderstorms, which generally pass to the north of us, blessing Lynn Haven, North Bay and Southport but not St. Andrews. Sometimes even Lowe’s or as slightly north as Sam’s but still doesn’t rain on Beach Drive.  This too pleasant to miss, I’m on the downstairs front screen porch. Light rain here and increasing as I enjoy, lightning and thunder beyond Shell Island south of me. From my chair, navigation lights: I can see one green flashing. For some reason, the green lights are easier to see than the red. Suddenly it’s not all that far south. Incomi...

For the moment I'm done reminiscing about Alfred. But the photocopies of  St. Andrews Bay News that Dr. McKenzie sent me have fascinating old news clips and bits. The four editions are January 8, 22, 29 and February 5, 1918. World War I was in progress, the Germans were the bad guys. And there was local news, a few tidbits below from January 8, 1918: “ The grading on Bay View avenue is complete. Now, for a good, wide coat of clay on top of it. ” (Bay View Avenue was later renamed Beach Drive. I don’t know when the street was paved, obviously after 1918, but it was already concrete paved from my earliest memories in the nineteen-thirties.  So were a few streets in The Cove, concrete paved, from Cherry Street north a few blocks and from E. Beach Drive east a couple of blocks. 12th Street in St. Andrews, on which our fishhouse was located, was wonderfully deep, thick sand, and  where the Shrimp Boat is now was wide white beach swarming with millions of fiddler cr...

Slightest drizzle of a Saturday morning. Slept until nearly walking time...  It’s beyond me how I can think or write about anything else. Unspeakable is a word that has been used, shooting down MH-17, a passenger liner. Remember USS Vincennes (CG49) mistakenly downing an Iranian civilian passenger jetliner, Iran Air Flight 655, over the Persian Gulf on 3 July 1988, killing all 290 civilians on board (including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children). Today the scene on the ground is unbearable, especially when the eye lights on a child’s toy or book. The individual stories will be coming out now, Karlijn Keijzer the Indiana University student from the Netherlands, and Laurens van der Graaff, her sweetheart. 296 stories to go, I can’t stand it. And Israel’s morally rationalized actions in Gaza, the Palestinian children murdered. My answer, my solution: I won’t go there. Why not muse and blog about that: because there’s nothing to do but weep. The dehumidifier wants emptying twice every...

Pleasant this morning, more humid than yesterday, but no breeze or I would be on the downstairs front screen porch. Judging by the lights on her, a sizable vessel gliding silently westward as I went down for Linda's PCNH, but too dark to tell for sure, and so dark I couldn't even tell whether she was in the near channel heading in to port or in the far channel headed out to sea.  This morning I'm going to publish the second, more detailed, account that Dr. McKenzie so kindly sent me. There are a couple more for another day, to which I will add my own personal family remembrances.     From his earliest childhood my son Joe has been gifted at building scale models, airplanes, boats, cars. Three years ago he built a model of the Annie & Jennie. The sails are remotely controlled, and Joe and I have sailed her here in front of the house when the Bay was calm. I'm a cautious person, afraid something will happen to it, and haven't sailed her again. She's the ce...

Years Mind. Three years ago this morning, my mother slipped away into whatever God has in mind for us. We don't know what that may or may not be . There are all sorts of hopes, but we can't see it from here, so it comes down to hope. Hope and faith. By the mercy of God may all the faithful departed rest in peace. A&J. Some weeks ago I was working down in the lower part of my front yard when a man from Atlanta stopped his car to chat. His name is McKenzie, a descendant of Panama City's pioneer family, and his family lived here in my house after WW2, from the middle 1940s to the middle 1950s. Yesterday's mail brought a package from him with some pictures, a copy of the Deed for when my grandparents sold this house in 1923, a copy of the document when the McKenzies bought the house in 1946, and copies of the local newspaper  St. Andrews Bay News for January 8 and January 22, 1908, reporting the wreck of the fishing vessel Annie & Jennie, on which my Uncle Alfre...

What interests me, what concerns me? Every person with a heart has something of interest, some targeted worry, what is mine, what interests me ? It’s children, basically, something, anything about children. My children, anybody’s little ones, anyone’s belovedy. Here for this morning is a definition of nuts : any parents who think they will stop worrying about their children once they’re out of their teens, up and grown and out of the home. Climbing up here to this ancient aging to peer out beyond Octogenarian Hill, I still agonize about mine even as they grow into late middle age. My first act most mornings: walk out on the back porch and look in the carport between our two houses here to verify that the red light is blinking on the dashboard of Kristen’s car, telling me she arrived home safely. Will I ever be shed of worry? I hope so. My idea of Heavenly Hereafter is not to be wafting around in a Ghostly Being as someone’s guardian angel or keeping an eye on and worrying about! ...

Yesterday a friend reminded me of a car that in my early childhood fascinated me because of its striking design. It was the Sharknose Graham, which began as the Paige.  Paige cars came into the world along with my father in 1911 and were produced through 1927, when the Graham brothers bought the company out.  The Graham-Paige was offered 1928-1932, and when I was a boy people continued to call them Graham-Paige,  although the Paige name had been dropped after 1932 as the Graham brothers developed their dream.  Like many independent car makers, they were a casualty of the Great Depression. Graham cars were striking in appearance and it was not all that unusual to spot a Graham “Sharknose” on the road before WW2,  and after the war to see one parked on Harrison Avenue when cars were in high demand and short supply and most of the cars on the road were still pre-war.  T he last Graham...