A veteran is laid to rest.

On the fourth day of my trip I arose at the crack of dawn and went to Vandemere's waterfront to capture my sunrise picture.  Then I spoke with a local, Max, who had built a very unusual hurricane-proof house on the waterfront using waterproof fiberboard panels secured to the structure's steel skeleton comprising of a central embedded spine with overhead and deck-level girders emanating out like the spokes of a wheel to create a raised, round house that proved to be impervious to Hurricane Florence, which caused extensive damage to the town's low-lying buildings otherwise.  The roof is of  flat and made of waterproof fiberboard so it is leakproof and doesn't require additional covering and a mostly round house does well in high winds.

Max, an engineer, knows Jimmy well, and graciously explained the house's construction to me and gave me a tour of his new-age home.  I returned to Jimmy's house in time to accompany him on a drive to Cary where a World War Two veteran, the father of a friend of his, was being laid to rest with full military honors.  John Welsey Dickens was a sailor on a destroyer who was present in Tokyo Bay when Japan surrendered, having survived a typhoon at sea six months earlier called Halsey's Hurricane which capsized and sank three other destroyers and caused great damage to the fleet.

The memorial for this hero, who carved out a successful and prosperous post-war life in NC, was moving and his graveside service was very poignant, with a navy bugler playing taps as the US flag covering the coffin was folded up and presented to the family.  Jimmy's friend wept quietly, overcome with grief during this somber ceremony at the passing of her father.  Cary proved to be a nice little inland town, as Jimmy and I discovered walking around before the memorial, looking at houses.

My favorite part of Cary's small downtown, besides its stately pre-war theatre-turned-movie-house, was its paean to the free press, embodied in a statue of a newsboy hawking newspapers on a street corner.  After the interment, we returned to Vandemere and enjoyed a special bottle of season's ale, a Christmas gift to me from a friend of mine with whom I had spent Christmas day at her house.  Jimmy and I made plans for the morrow, and we decided to visit another seaport to look at houses there, a town where Jimmy had spent many a delightful day being with his friend so recently aggrieved by the loss of her father, as she lived in a nearby community.