An hour of conversation

 The convenience store in the rural coastal village in the Carolinas where I visited my college roommate last month is a central meeting point for the good ol' locals who gather there at around 5 p.m. when the chartered fishing boats have come in and the carpenter hammers have fallen silent. Although my long-time friend is a New Yorker, as am I, he almost achieves a local status among the locals there because he is so personable. They like him. Maybe in another 20 years. 

We both spent an hour in the store sitting around when I was there, and I graduated from a feigned elbow bump upon introductions to a fervent hand clasp when we left because we both were very voluble and cogent among these equally intelligent Americans in the ensuing hour-long free-ranging conversation. The only time we both fell silent was when the discussion turned to whether the descendants of slaves in the vicinity were better off than if their forebears had never been abducted from Africa by slavers.

The consensus from these higher-degreed, educated boat and business owners was that yes, the likely-not-college-educated local blacks who mostly lived at or below the poverty level in America, given their opportunities here, were definitely better off here than if they had been born centuries later in their forebears' native continent, with their relative prospective opportunities there. 

It was a fascinating hour I spent listening that I'll never forget.

Summer's almost gone . . .

 . . . but I did get away in this year that wasn't, once.

Summer's almost gone; Summer's almost gone; Almost gone. Yeah, it's almost gone; Where will we be; When the summer's gone?

The call came in on a Saturday at the end of August from a friend out west who I met in my college freshman dorm from whom I hadn't heard in years.  It was the first call from him that I can recall.

It concerned a college roommate, about whom he (and other dorm mates) was concerned who had recently suffered a compound leg fracture and waited for several hours (until the next morning) before dragging himself to his car and driving himself to the nearest hospital 30 minutes away.  (Roomie had dialed 9-11 when it occurred but, despite having insurance, engaged in the Republican health care plan of shopping for the best price option before committing by asking how much an ambulance ride would cost.  When the exasperated operator said she didn't know, he said he'd "call back" and dragged himself off to bed, leaving behind a bloody smear across the floor.)

My friend pointedly asked how long it would take me to drive down to roomie's house.  He obviously already had looked it up on Google because when I fudged by an hour or two and said about eight hours, he expressed disappointment and said he thought it might be a mere five and a half or six. The truth lies somewhere in between.

I drove down the next day.   I stayed at his house (and slept on his screened-in porch for five nights, it was so hot) and did what I could to make his situation more comfortable.

So I took a summer trip!  I was afraid up to that point that I would not a) go anywhere this summer or b) take a dip off a beach somewhere.

Mission accomplished.  I even threw in several attempts at capturing a picturesque sunup and a visit to the Civil War battlefield (several "battles," largely troop maneuvering that either succeeded or failed in dislodging the enemy from the river port city) of New Bern.  I will add here that Google seems to have commandeered Blog, "updated" it (which makes it more difficult to use) and rejects every attempt of mine to import pictures from my computer into a post like I used to do and hence has destroyed my ability to post pictures here and dramatically diminished my enjoyment in blogging here.

So this summer wasn't a total waste in this year-that-wasn't, I spent all or part of five days in rural North Carolina.  I swam off a "beach" (actually a river bank upon which the city had dumped a load of sand), sat around for an hour palavering with some southern good ole boys in a local convenience store, spent a half-hour speaking with the mayor at my roomie's house (she "dropped" by--I'm sure she was interviewing me to discern whether I was likely bringing the coronavirus to her region and hence should be quarantined) and enjoyed a subsequent fish dinner (cooked by roomie as he gimped around his kitchen in his rigid "boot") in this coastal village.

Associations Renewed and Maintained

This year I renewed or maintained in my retirement friendships that I wouldn't want to slip away.  Yesterday I went running with a friend and former colleague whom I hadn't seen since before Trump was inaugurated.  I remember that encounter (also a run) because he was telling me then how, despite what we all already knew about this loudmouthed unqualified, corrupt stumblebum, there was a way he might surprise us when he took office and become presidential.  Now my friend predicts that catastrophic, perhaps apocryphal, events may occur soon.  Who am I to say that this viewpoint is fantastical?

When I took a week-long car trip through the south over the July Fourth weekend, rather than be around town to listen to an old, foolish, loudmouthed crackpot on the National Mall, surrounded by "his" tanks, rant on about the Revolutionary War troops "taking over airports".  During my trip I stopped in to stay for a night as a guest of my BFF during my last year at SIA before I went off to boarding school for four years.  He lives alone in an old port city in South Carolina and I was glad to catch up with him after several years of not seeing him.  He has had occurrences in his life as a parent that are eerily similar to mine.  We went out on the town that night and the next morning I got up before dawn and ran 2 miles in the stifling summertime heat of a seaboard southern city before I left after sunup to further pursue my trip.

In January I took a car trip to stop in overnight to see my cousin and her husband in Hampton, Virginia.  I hadn't seen them since shortly before the last presidential election where, during a restaurant dinner with her extended family present, it became abundantly clear that politically I was supporting a clear upcoming winner (the qualified former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton) and victimhood resentment was obviously abounding on the part of her larger family when I was asked why all democrats maintained that all Trump supporters were uneducated (stupid, I guess), because didn't I know that many Trumpites had P'Hd's?  I felt a little ambushed as I allowed as to how undoubtedly there were many Trump supporters who had received an education somewhere and let it go at that because Clinton was so overwhelmingly predicted to win handily.  After Trump won, we didn't speak much for a couple of years.  When I visited this year, I walked on the beach with my cousin and her dog early the next morning and we had a short, hesitant political discussion about the "deep state" and the "criminal presidency" and I guess that's a start because we both listened respectfully to each other.  It did seem like two ships passing in the night on divergent courses though, with me knowing that my assertions were based on actual facts and believing that her assertions about the "dirty dems" must be based on what she perceived to be as facts.

During that trip I stopped in to see my college roommate on the Inner Banks of North Carolina who I visit occasionally.  He lives alone in a house on stilts in hurricane country on the bank of the New Bern River and I enjoy visiting him because we sometimes sit around on his screened-in porch watching the river flow, eating fish and sipping beer.  One of the last times I visited him I canvassed locally with him for a few days in 2016, monitoring early-voting at the courthouse for the Democratic party where, I'll never forget, a big ole caricature of a Southern elderly male voter took me aside and whispered in my ear, "You all are on the wrong side, boy."  I laughed him off to myself because it was so obvious to me at the time that America was on an upward orb to ever more greatness.  Little did I know the dark underside of Amerika being hidden inside the fetid belly of the outdated, republic-killing electoral college.  My friend this year was looking to move out of his tiny coastal village, where life was awful slow, and move into a bigger seaport town so we toured the towns of Oriental and Southport, looking at their downtowns and nearby residential neighborhoods and looking at residences for sale.  It was an interesting trip wherein I saw a person I thought I once knew well but never really did in the least.

South Carolina

On the 3d day of my vacation, I arose early in Vandemere, North Carolina, to capture the sunrise, then headed out to drive to Charleston, South Carolina, to visit a friend from high school who had recently moved there.  Enroute, I stopped in at a seaport town for lunch at the Trolley Stop in search of the perfect hot dog in North Carolina; a quest that was stymied in January because the restaurant was closed that day when I was in that town with my host of the prior two nights, Jimmy, who was looking around for a house to buy.

Entering South Carolina I drove by Myrtle Beach and could see its carnival atmosphere from the roadway, a ferris wheel loomed on one side and King Kong swung from a building on the other side.  Reaching Charleston, I met my high school friend Lew, and we toured some nearby beaches that were prominent in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Then we had dinner at the Poe Tavern on the main street of the beachfront community.  Poe was a soldier stationed in Charleston when he was in the service so the community has an affinity for this Baltimore native.

Getting up early the next morning, I ran 3 miles in the coolness of the predawn hour and then headed out for Atlanta by driving over the very unique-looking Cooper Rive Bridge.  I had to make a baseball game that evening at the Braves' new stadium in the far northwestern suburbs of Atlanta, SunTrust Park, one of two existing major league venues at which I have never seen a baseball game (new Yankee Stadium in the other park).

Corolla

On the first full day of my summer vacation, I arose early to watch the sunrise from the Vandemere town dock.  Then my host Jimmy and I took the free ferry across the Pamlico River and drove up to Corolla on the very northern tip of the Outer Banks to visit my sister who was vacationing there with her family.

I took a dip in the ocean.  There are wicked currents at play on the beach there and the surf was up so being in the water was a bit of an adventure.

Then we visited the brick Currituck Lighthouse.  For $10, you can climb its 220 steps.

We missed the last Pamlico River ferry so we had to drive the long way around throughWashington, North Carolina (little Washington, they call it) to get back to Vandemere.  After a dinner of a fried flounder sandwich ($2.99 at a local Stop 'n Go) I retired because I had to get up early the next day to drive to Atlanta to see a Braves game at the new SunTrust baseball stadium in Atlanta's northwestern suburbs, far, far from downtown and not even remotely served by MARTA.

North Carolina

I went away for my summer vacation, a 2500-mile car trip in seven days, driving through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia to see people and things. I went on average 357 miles a day, an exhausting daily regieme but I saw and did things that I have been meaning to see or do for a long time.

Primarily, I wanted to get away from the District over the July Fourth week before our president took over that celebration of our nation's birth and turned it into a military hardware show (look at my tanks!) and further displayed his colossal ignorance (the Continental Army captured all the airports in our region, a strategy that led to us winning the Revolutionary War, during which it soundly defeated the British on the ramparts of Fort McHenry).  I certainly didn't want to stick around to see the despicable Proud Boys strut around the National Mall in support of their reprehensible idol or hear the see-no-evil nonsense spewing forth from the moronic brains of the cult-leader's base.

I started off by driving to Vandemere, North Carolina, to stay for a couple of days with my college roommate, Jimmy Sherwood.  He had recently visited me in Falls Church and I wanted to return the gesture.

Life in Vandemere, a dirt-poor small town on North Carolina's Inner Banks, is simpler than up here in DC--taxes are low, government pensions aren't taxed by the state, you can go around half naked and barefoot and there are no policemen around anywhere to watch out for or to tell you what you can't do.  When I got there after a seven hour drive, I hung out with Jimmy on his porch in his house on stilts overlooking his wrecked dock, a casualty of hurricanes Irene and Florence, and we ate a po' boys' dinner of chicken parts, mustard greens and taters, purchased from the Piggly Wiggly for under $2 total.

Home again

I returned home from my little six-day trip to North Carolina last month on the day after my college friend and host Jimmy and I went to tour Southport, a seaside town near where his girlfriend lives on Oak Island and where Jimmy has contemplated moving to.  On the day I left I got up before dawn and made the 363 mile drive in good time, arriving back home early in the afternoon.

It was an eventful trip, despite the three days that involved travel, during which I saw my closest cousin, visited with my university buddy, and we toured three North Carolina towns looking for houses he might inquire about to buy.  We partook in local food, especially seafood, local beer, and paid our respects to a vanishing breed by attending the burial services of a World War II veteran.

My favorite parts among many were getting up early every day to take pictures of sunrise, touring seaports especially Oriental and Southport, relaxing in Jimmy's house on stilts on the water as darkness descended and the bustle of the day calmed down, and making calls to friends from college to start planning our 50th-year reunion of our arrival as teenage newbies at our college co-ed dorm.  The worst part of the trip was driving through the tunnel under Hampton Roads from Hampton to Newport News which was dark, narrow and long, and bothered me because its low light environment affected my vision so soon after my eye surgery of a few weeks before.

The trip stirred up memories of yore, for shore.  Seeing people again whom I have known for decades and who were such an integral part of my life in the past was good and, in one instance, cathartic.

A visit to the firehouse.

My friend Jimmy and I had a great time in  Southport, NC, where we went to to get a feel for the town and look at houses as we walked and drove around because Jimmy is looking to move to a livelier coastal town.  Because Jimmy was a volunteer fireman previously in his current town of Vandemere, upon arrival in town we presented ourselves at the firehouse, and were treated to a tour of the station by Red.

We saw all of its shiny fire engines.  The place even has a fireman's pole, but we couldn't slide down it because training is required before a person is authorized to use it.

We peeked in on the fire chief, and were shown the bunking quarters, the kitchen, dining area, recreational space and weight room.  Out back was a tall tower which was a training confined area with several flights of stairs (think of the hundreds of heroes clomping up the stairs of the WTC on the morning of 9/11/01 as everyone else fled down those stairs).

Afterwards we enjoyed touring charming Southport, a true tourist mecca, by foot and car.  While driving around gawking at the stately (but crumbling) restored southern houses there, I swear I fleetingly saw someone I thought I once knew on the sidewalk.  Small world.

A trip to a picturesque coastal town

Last month I took a trip to North Carolina to visit my college friend Jimmy for a few days, after visiting with my cousin overnight in southeast Virginia.  On the penultimate day of my trip, Jimmy and I went sightseeing in a picturesque seaport town on the North Carolina coast to see if Jimmy, who is considering moving to a more lively town than the one he currently lives in, would like to move there.

His girlfriend lives near there, and it is in that town where he presented her with a ring a year or so ago to represent the current state of their relationship.  Plus, he told me, there is a restaurant on the main drag in that town which has terrific loaded hotdogs for very cheap.

Disappointingly, the establishment was closed since it was a Monday.  I guess we should have checked the Internet about that, as many other places in town were also closed due to it being Monday, such as the restaurant on the water where he and his girlfriend went to have a drink to celebrate their relationship after he gave her a diamond ring at the local Episcopal church, which was also locked up tight when we went to visit.

So we spent the day walking about downtown residential streets to get a feel for the town after we perambulated its small business area and waterfront park.  Then we drove around town to look at houses one last time before we headed out to return to his house, since one of the bridges to nearby Oak Island, where his girlfriend lives (she was away taking care of her father's estate), was out due to hurricane Florence and we feared that driving there as we originally intended to would delay our return trip so much that it would cause us to get home long after sundown, since I was driving and my eyesight for driving after dark hasn't been tested satisfactorily yet after my spate of eye surgeries last year.

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.

Looking for a House on the NC Coast

After I drove to Jimmy's house, my college roommate at CU oh so many years ago, in NC for a short stay, we talked about the benefits of living in NC, as he does as a federal retiree, as I am.  He expressed a wish to move to a more populous seaport town in the state, and he was very persuasive in  his exposition as he explained it to me on the evening I arrived.

The next morning I arose early and went out at sunrise to try to catch a sunup shot across the water to the east, as Jimmy lives on the water on the coast.  I went to the town boat launch and shot pictures of the rising sun from the park there.

I have sometimes thought of moving out of the DC area myself, as my property taxes kill me (about $9K per year, not counting my car tax, the cost of the town sticker for my windshield and the surface impermeability tax on my lot), and the faux president has punished the true Americans in the Northeast who didn't vote for him by not allowing local taxes to be deducted anymore in his tax giveaway to the ultra-rich, so I happily accompanied Jimmy on his house shopping quest in the next few days with a thought that perhaps I would find a good situation for myself too.  But first we went to a local restaurant in nearby Bayboro for breakfast to an establishment where he hadn't been in years, Charlie's, to indulge in good old North Carolina home cooking.

Our hunger more than satisfied, we toured a nearby seaport town where we looked at some good real estate deals.  After visiting that town's local microbrewery, we enjoyed some fried local seafood for dinner back at his place and had late night phone conversations with former college dormitory roommates about attending the 50th year reunion next year of the first coed dormitory at that university.

Passing Through Newport News

Day 2 of my trip to North Carolina earlier this month dawned overcast but my cousin and I went out for an early morning walk on Buckroe Beach, which her condominium unit overlooks.  We brought her three-legged pet Gabe, who lost a hind leg as a puppy in an encounter with a car but who gets around just fine as an adult dog.

The beach has a center square with a pavilion which serves as a sort of dog park where neighbors can meet.  There's a sign in the common area there which warns that there might be live ordnance buried on the beach, dumped there by mistake by the Army years ago after dredging operations offshore on a firing range a mile or so out to sea that was active during the war.
I left in mid-morning to drive to Vandemere, the tiny town on the North Carolina mainland coast where my college roommate lives in a hurricane-resistant house on stilts, driving through the tunnel to Newport News in Virginia to take rural backroads through rustic North Carolina.   Along the way I drove past gas stations advertising gas under $2 per gallon, the first time I have seen gas so low since the last administration.

Arriving at Jimmy's place mid-afternoon, we relaxed on his porch, overlooking his riverfront view past his former dock ruined by hurricane Florence, and then enjoyed a spaghetti and sausage dinner and called some college friends out west as the evening wore on.  We made plans to visit several North Carolina towns in the next few days as Jimmy is contemplating moving to a larger town someday and, who knows, I like picturesque seacoast North Carolina too, where federal retirees get beneficial tax benefits.

Some Sunrises

On my little car trip along the North Carolina coast this month, I arose early every day and went to the water to try to capture a nice sunrise.

I went to the beach, a riverbank, a waterfront park, traipsed over someone's front lawn and even shot from the highway on a travel day, looking for the magical shot.

Here are four of my best efforts, all shot at different locations.

My I-phone 8+ takes wonderful pictures, it's got a great camera--imagine, a camera that doubles as a phone and a handheld internet surfing device that sends sand receives texts too.

A Trip

I finally took a little car trip beyond going to Columbus as I recover from my third and hopefully last eye surgery and I went south to visit relatives and friends.  The first day I drove to Hampton to see my cousin and her husband and enjoyed a day walking on the beach with her and a dinner of a fried seafood sampler plate that evening at a waterfront restaurant.

The next day I continued on to Vandemere, passing by gas at $1.69 a gallon along the rural highway, and enjoyed a dinner of spaghetti and sausage links prepared by Jim, my friend from college, in his house on stilts on the waterfront.  Jim, despite the incredible natural beauty of his rustic coastal location, might be moving to another town where there are more sailing opportunities, so we looked at houses near the water in a seaport town the next day and indulged in sightseeing, including sampling a tasty local brew at the town's brewery during happy hour.

 Then came a somber day where we attended the funeral of a World War Two veteran who survived Halsey's Typhoon during his service in the Pacific War, on a destroyer no less, which yawed during the tempestuous storm to within 2 degrees of its keel over point, learning in the big blow's aftermath that three other destroyers within the fleet capsized with great loss of life.  Then came another day of looking at houses and sightseeing in a seaport town.

I got up early and drove back to DC the next day, having had a fun and satisfying little car trip of about a thousand miles.  I saw people on this trip that I knew from my life that stretched back decades, to even when I was married, and before.

The year in review, part 3 of 3

In September I slowly came back to running after my surgery from the prior month and I saw my sister who came to town for a visit.  I also started working for the Hillary campaign so that, in the ridiculously unlikely scenario that The Donald actually won the presidency, I could hold myself above reproach for any repercussions from such an outlandish and disastrous occurrence.

In October I worked really hard for the Hillary campaign, canvassing in Northern Virginia and electioneering in North Carolina.  I hadn't worked for any campaign since the McGovern campaign in 1972, which should have been a sign.

In November I took a trip to Newport News to poll watch on election day, an undertaking which, in retrospect, was a complete waste of time and money, as a vocal minority of Americans spoke loud and clear on that day.  I also spent a day in Shenandoah park getting use out of my lifetime National Park pass and took a trip to Colorado to inspect some properties, where the weather cooperated and the views were, as usual, spectacular.

In December I laid off running for a few weeks due to injury and I unsuccessfully tried once again to start healing my fractured immediate family by going during the noon hour on Christmas to my favorite restaurant in Westover.  I also attended a very nice Hanukkah party at a friend's house and spent a lovely Christmas afternoon in the District with a friend.

Do you think 2017 will be more, or less, momentous?