What a Summer!

It was a good summer, but a hot summer. Bill and I have both said, It didn't used to be this hot when we were kids! Geez, we sound as old as we are. We didn't even have air conditioning at home or at school. So you little munchkins get outside and play. After 10 minutes they are at the door begging for drink and to please come inside and take a nap. A nap, they haven't had a nap in at least 4 years and besides I wouldn't let those sweaty little bodies lie on anything but an old sheet on the playroom floor. Sandy sweaty socks go flying, shirts and shorts are tossed around the room. I have little half naked children laying all over the family room floor. Can we take a bath is the next question that comes, right after I need some coke. I relent to calm the troops and coke is poured and cool water is run in the tub. Bubbles are added and for thirty minutes all is good with the world. When the bath is over I come sliding across the bathroom floor where water and suds are at least an inch deep. I find some dirty towels and soak up the dirty water and grab the clean towels to dry off the sweet faces of my grandchildren. It is amazing how much patience I have with them. I wish that I had half as much when I was raising their parents. I would have had a coniption fit if they had emptied buckets of sudsey water on the floor. I now know what is important and water on the floor just doesn't get me that excited these days. After everyone is dry it is time for a snack and more coke and a movie. It really doesn't matter if they have seen the movie a multitude of times they are ready to chill and take a break and so am I. We have spent time at the beach, we went to the mountains, but we mostly just hung around town with the family and these times are precious. We ended the summer with Bill's surgery and it has been a rough couple of weeks and he has to have a melanoma removed tomorrow. He has been through a lot. We are blessed with fine doctors and good friends who have lifted us up in prayer. But these little sweaty, loud and messy children with all their complaining and playing and EATING they have made it all more bearable. God is so good he knows what we need. He has given us so much and with love you can walk through the fire, with faith, family and friends you want walk it alone. What a summer.....I can hardly wait for that first cool morning when Bill and I can go for a walk out here on the farm. Then I will be writing about how we got here, God carried us, thats how, God carried us and now we are on the other side of the fire. We are walking with the wind at our back and God at our side.

What a Summer!

My Grandson Troy

Today I wanted to tell the world about my grandson Troy. He is 12 years old and he is a terrific kid. Now as the good grandmother I am I love each and every one of my grandchildren with a powerful and blind love. I only see good and if they are misbehaving I am sure it is because they are either tired or sick. I am sure all of you grandparents out there get the picture. But with Troy it is a little different. He was the first baby in our family after 10 years so he was the family baby. He was a precious newborn chubby and so happy. He quickly became a toddler who always had a ball with him. Big balls, tennis balls, footballs, golf balls, whatever ball happened to be around. You needed to always be ready to catch a ball or you might get binged by one when you weren't looking. By the time Troy was 3 he was on a tee-league baseball team and he loved it. The whole family would come out and cheer for him. He could hit the ball a mile and catch any ball that came near him, but he had one little problem and that was his chubby little body that we all loved to cuddle wasn't able to quickly get around the bases. He would run as fast as he could, but unless the ball was hit a mile he would struggle to get around the bases. It really never bothered him that he wasn't fast of feet until he got older. When he got on a traveling baseball team it just got harder. Also, after getting hit by several balls it was interfering with his hitting. We all tried to encourage him, Bill and his dad assured him he would work through his batting slump, but after 7 years he wouldn't go out for baseball last summer. His mom told him he needed to do something that summer so he went to the local golf clinic with many other kids. He loved it. Yes, he was hooked. He played in the Don McNabb Tournament which took place after the golf clinic and he came in 3rd. place. He has been on the golf course ever since. He wasn't even 11 when this all started, but he understood his limitations better than we did. Now he is really coming along in his golf. Spanky, the golf pro is working with him one day a week and he is back at the clinic with 59 other kids. He has joined the Florida Youth Golf League and has played at two golf courses in Jacksonville. Next week Bill will be taking him to a tournament at the golf course at the Naval Air Station. He has not placed yet, but he has learned a lot about water hazards. His ball seems to always land in them. Spanky is working with him on how to stay out of the water and maybe he will end up with a trophy by the end of the summer, who knows? Troy really doesn't care...He loves that golf is a competition with himself. He wants to improve his game and better his score. He has met some wonderful men on the golf course who encourage him and give him advice. He has played with the guys on the high school golf team and they have treated him with respect, he has even played against the golf pro in the Presbyterian Golf Tournament. Troy has found a gentlemen's game to participate in and Troy is a gentle man. He loves to play a round with friends or he enjoys just playing alone against the course itself. Troy found a sport for him, one where he doesn't have to be the fastest guy out there. It is a sport where he can be Troy and take it as far as he wants to go. Whatever happens it is a game he will enjoy his whole life. Your family is so proud of you Troy and good luck this summer in all your matches....We love, love, love you.

Father's Day

I have been one of those lucky people who had a great daddy and have a great husband. I had a Big Daddy and a Grandfather. My Big Daddy died when I was very young, but I have a few fond memories of him. One I remember most was sitting in his side yard with him in a double adirondack chair. He was telling me about the bugs that kept getting on his hibiscus. They were eating the leaves and he had tried everything, but they just kept coming back. I watched him intently as he smoked his pipe and curled his brows in frustration. A rather strange conversation for a seven year old to remember. I hope I came up with some wonderful advise for him, but I really didn't care what he was saying, I was just happy to be with him. Big Daddy was around 6'4" tall. He had extremely long legs that me and all of the other cousins wrapped themselves around as he walked. My Big Daddy died when I was 9 and I really missed our talks and walks around the garden. My dad's father was my Grandfather. He was quite elderly even when I was a child. I remember walks around his property at Penney Farms. He would talk about how he came here with his family to farm and nothing would grow in the sandy soil. He would tell me about my daddy being such a fantastic ball player. I don't really remember to much else except our visits to see him and my Grandmother's house were not very frequent. My daddy was the kind of Dad kid's dream about. I think it was because he too was a kid. He had a way of making fun out of everything. Raking grass was a chore, but sitting back and burning them was awesome. We would take our sticks and stir the leaves and sometimes your stick would catch on fire. Mama would come out and tell him to not let us play with fire and Daddy would act like he was fussing at us and when Mama would go back inside we go back to stirring. Daddy was spontaneous. He would say let's go to Georgia at 10:00 at night or let's go to Miami on a Fri. night and we would be packed up and on the road the next morning. On Saturday nights when he would come home from work and we would be waiting for him. He always came in and threw a bag full on penny candy on the floor and me and my brother Rick would scramble to gather in our booty. He loved to just sit outside on a night with the full moon and tell me about the moon ball. On Christmas after we went to bed he would see what my mom had bought for us and it was never enough. He would get in his truck and head back to the store where he worked open it up and pick up a few more things that he thought we couldn't live without. Daddy loved the beach and a few times he picked me up from school like he was taking me to a doctors appt. and we headed for the pier at Flagler Beach and go fishing. Fishing while everyone else was in Algebra, wow, what a great dad. After I got married and had the kids, he would sometimes show up at my house at 7:00 on a Sunday morning to pick up the kids and take them for a ride in the woods. They loved it and they would always come home with a bag on candy and some outrageous tale.Daddy would take all the grandchildren to the railroad tracks at the back of their property and they would put pennies on the tracks and wait for the train to run over them. He took them all on rides on the riding lawn mower to all of our objections. My Daddy died of cancer. It was so bad in was untreatable. It was hard to watch that carefree, fun person disappear before our eyes. We were with him at the end, we held his hands until he was on that beautiful trip to paradise. I look forward to seeing him again. My husband Bill is a wonderful dad. So different than my dad. Bill is the responsible one in our family. I think I am the wild child like my daddy and he had to be the adult. He takes care of us all. We know that he is always there for us no matter what. He is the one that makes sure that the coffee pot, the iron, and anything that will catch on fire is off before we leave our house. I never worry about stuff like that. He is the person we lean on,the one we count on. He is the one who gave the lectures that no one listened to until all of the sudden the problem that he told us about actually happened. He worries way to much and maybe we should worry about things a little more so he can just have fun. He deserves to have some fun and today he is having some. He is out at the Golf Course with his sons and grandsons. The girls and I are headed to the Country Club pool and we will all spend the afternoon together. He is a wonderful Dad! God you have blessed me with the Daddy I needed and you have blessed my kids with the one they needed. They both were and are special men!

Beach Trip 1957

It was a hot day in July and Daddy decided to take the whole family to the Crescent Beach. We packed up our old rusty gray ford pick up truck with everything from coolers to lawn furniture. We loaded up all of our beach toys, inner tubes and rafts which were all covered in sand from our last beach trip. My brothers and I piled in the truck bed sitting on heaps of towels and beach blankets and mom and dad were up front. We always had a couple of stops on the way. The first stop was at the ice plant. The old man that worked at the plant grabbed a huge block of ice from a cooler with a tool that looked like a claw protruding from his shirt sleeve. He put the block of ice in a machine that threw shavings all over the wooden porch and all over the old man. He poured the ice chips in our cooler and daddy put in the drinks. We were traveling down the highway with the windows down and we could hear guitars and banjos blasting out the latest country tunes all the way in the back of the truck. I can't imagine how Mama could stand it sitting in the front seat. It wasn't long before we made our next stop in Orange Mills. We always had to stop at the old Orange Mills Store. Daddy came out with his six pack of beer and a brown sack filled with penny candy for me and my brothers. With our treats in hand we headed for the white sand of Crescent Beach. The old ford sputtered across the wooden bridge that took you across the Intracoastal waterway. You were never sure that it wasn't going to crumble and our ford would fall into the swirling waters below. We all said a prayer as we heard the creaking from underneath the bridge as we passed over it. When we got to the other side we all breathed a sigh of relief and gave out a loud cheer. We made it across alive one more time, forgetting we would have to go over the bridge again at the end of the day on our return home. We made a quick stop by the pier to buy some bait and then we saw Pomars and the ramp. Now we were cruising down the hard white sand of Crescent Beach. The tide was low and the water was as smooth as a lake except for a few swells that crept across the shore just so you wouldn't forget where you were. The water was as blue as the sky and it was hard to tell where they met in the horizon. The old truck stopped and kids popped out along with toys, rafts and tubes. We all headed toward the water with our parents shouting not to go out past our knees. Floating over the top of the water was so much fun especially when it was interrupted every now and then by a big swell of water that lifted us up and sometimes flipped us over. Once in a while you would see a dolphin or a couple of dolphins swimming out in front of you. We would all laugh at the tourists as they swam toward shore screaming shark. We just loved seeing such beautiful creatures and I think they kind of enjoyed watching us. Maybe they were as curious about us as we were about them. We all were getting hungry and it was time for lunch. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches never tasted so good as they do at the beach. Along with sandy potato chips and oreo cookies this was the best lunch ever. There were plenty of cold drinks in the cooler and when you pulled one out the glass would be covered with ice and so cold you could hardly hold it in your hand. After lunch our parents banned us from the water for 30 minutes. We might get stomach cramps and sink to the bottom of the ocean and drown. Even worse the scent of peanut butter would certainly draw the sharks to us and we would become their lunch. So while we waited the buckets and shovels were passed out. We had to put on our t-shirts and hats. We were covered in tons of suntan lotion to protect us from the mid-day sun. We sat in the soft white sand and began building castles of every shape and size. The were misshapen beauties with drizzles and shells surrounding them. My brothers always had to have a mote and I was in charge of bringing up the buckets of water. I retrieved the water very carefully not going past my ankles, watching closely for the fin of a hungry shark who was waiting patiently to snatch up a small girl smelling of peanut butter. When the castle was completed it stood like a monument to be admired by all who passed by. Surely some tourist would have to have their picture taken next to it. At least Daddy got a picture of us diligently working on it and one he took afterwords as we all gathered round with big smiles, so proud of our beautiful castle of sand. As the sun moved behind gathering of clouds we knew our day at the beach was going to come to a stormy end. The rumbling in the distance told us to load up the sandy toys, chairs and other things we had brought along. We got in the truck and wearily headed home. Some of us slept and others ate the leftover cookies and chips, but we all had a wonderful day. This is a memory of one of many family times together and they are special to me and fun to share with you.

Class of 65' Reunion

I've been to many reunions over the past 45 years, but I think I enjoyed this one more than any of the ones I have been to in the past. I think I have an inkling as to why that is. I am 61 almost 62 years old. I am overweight. I have little brown age spots on my arms, legs and face. I moan a lot of the time when I get out of a chair, because of a chronic pain in my hip. You would think I would hate to go out and share what is going on in my life with anyone. Do I really want anyone to see me pudgy and whiny? For some unknown reason I have reached that point in my life where I just don't worry about what other people think. It is so refreshing to be at that stage in life where I feel like I have earned every gray hair, every wrinkle, every pound and maybe even every ache and pain. I love who I am and well if anyone doesn't like it toooo bad. I didn't pick out what I was going to wear until 30 minutes before we were leaving. I did make sure my outfit was clean and pressed. I did my hair and makeup and decided that was the best I could do. Bill came into the bathroom and told me I was as beautiful as the day he graduated from high school and he gave me a big kiss. I knew somehow he really meant it and that is why I love him so much. We headed to the country club and immediately started seeing familiar faces. There were lots of hugs and hellos. It was awesome to see everyone. There were a few faces I didn't recognize, just as I had put on weight and a few wrinkles so had our former classmates. Some of them had heads of silver hair, some had no hair, but when you saw those smiles and twinkling eyes no one had really changed all that much. It was great to see old friends I haven't seen in a while, like Brooks and Steve Dumas. Brooks and I try to get together when she gets to town, but it has been months since I saw her and maybe years since I saw Steve. Brooks looked so beautiful and always the southern lady and Steve is as crazy and charming as ever.Some people had actually changed very little, Linda Kazmar was beautiful in high school and I always thought she looked like Gina Lollibrigida. Let me tell you she still does. She is still movie star gorgeous, but so sweet and down to earth. Sally Linton was one of the cutest and bubbliest girls in the class and she is still adorable and full of energy. Bill S., Chuck, Steve, Buddy, and Bill all looked so great and I loved that they dedicated a plaque and pictures to Coach Bennett. Allegra, Pam, Lela, and Donna worked hard to pull off the presentation even getting Carl Flagg to come and present Coach Bennett the key to the city and named June 4th. Coach Bennett day. It was such a great idea and he was so touched. Saturday Bill and about 7 classmates walked the ravines and reminisced about how they ran all over the ravines as kids. We met up with several friends at Gator Landing and had lunch. Some of the girls met up at Chili's. Then Sat. night we congregated at City Cafe. We all have some good memories of the old City Drug Store. We all met out in front of the drug store when we had parades. That is where the band would stop and perform. We also met there many Saturdays for lunch and shopping across the street at Belks, French Bootery and the Fashion Shop. We all enjoyed a dinner of hamburgers and hot dogs. Pictures were taken in the back for a yearbook. It was a fun night. We sat with Dr. Shan Purinton and her husband Mike. Shan is the former Shirley Ann Garrett, but she is now our Shan. They had been on a cruise to Anartica, I was so surprised at how much they loved it. It made me want to go on a cruise, but I think I might want to go somewhere a little warmer, Alaska maybe. We were all exchanging email addresses and cell ph.#s, boy times have changed. There are no excuses now not to keep up with each other. On Sunday morning after church Mary Virginia Neck Brown and her husband Elliot, Jane Faber, Marilyn Young and I went down to City Cafe for breakfast. There we found Bill Sproull, Chuck and his wife, Charlie Self and his wife all having breakfast before heading home. We pulled up a table and continued talking and laughing and sharing pictures. Bill got there in time to say goodbye to everyone. We decided that we needed to get together with the classmates that live around town at least once every couple of months. I think that is a great idea. Thanks class of 65 committee for putting so much work and love into your reunion.

Mountain Trip

I recently went on a trip to the mountains. This is the second time we have gone during spring break so I think that means we have started a yearly ritual. There are six of us that drove up to Blue Ridge, Ga. Bill has a cousin that has a beautiful mountain home up there. She graciously invites us up to share in the beauty of the mountains and it is truly a retreat from the daily problems we face as women. We get together before we go and plan our meals. Each of us is responsible for one meal while we stay. It is really nice that you prepare one breakfast or dinner and then get to pretend you are at a Bed and Breakfast the rest of the time you are there. Well, I decided to drive my car up, because I can get seven people in it when I put up the third row seats. So, when we went into Blue Ridge or Murphy I could get everybody in one car. Driving meant I would have to drive through downtown Atlanta. This is always a challenge for me. I was driving through Atlanta a few days after Christmas when it began snowing and sleeting, so I knew this couldn't be worse than that. Well, I shouldn't have been so quick to speak, we had rain almost all the way there, but when we got into Atlanta it was just drizzling. I was making good time in the diamond lane, I love the diamond lane. Then all of the sudden a taxi came barreling right in front of me slamming on his brakes. The other car full of ladies was right behind me. Thank God I was paying attention and thank God, Vicki had gotten her brakes worked on before we left home. When I looked in my rear view mirror I saw a car with the hood up trying to make its way into the diamond lane. The hood had popped up while the car was traveling at about 60 miles and hour and they slammed on brakes and started swerving and that is why the cab had ended up in my lane. When my heart finally slowed down and came out of my throat we continued following the diamond trail through downtown Atlanta. We arrived at Jan's about 4;00 in the afternoon. It was so good to be there and it was so beautiful on Soaring Eagle Mountain. We all settled in and picked out a room. Jan always says pick any room you want. I always pick hers and we get a good laugh and then I go to my usual spot upstairs. We ate and drank for the rest of the evening. We laughed and caught up with each others lives. Carolyn was expecting her first grandchild, Jan waiting to hear about getting a home in Jax. Charlotte telling us about her grandchildren, Charlene's trip to Italy, Sylva moving into her new home on the river, and Vicki's dancing granddaughter. We tried to stay away from tough subjects after all that is why we were here, to rest our bodies and minds. There was a lot of talk of diets and calories,as we ate blueberry pancakes, grits casseroles, apple pie and lots of other fabulous food. We visited Blue Ridge and Murphy, but the best day was when we hung out at the pavilion by Jan's house. I got a happy log to get a fire started at the fire pit and we just sat around it and had a glass of wine. Vicki and Charlotte went down a ladder beside the pavilion and climbed down the side of the mountain holding onto a rope tied to a tree at the top of the hill. They made it back safely and we got some great pictures. Sometimes it is just fun to be a kid, but some of us just enjoy seeing someone be a kid especially when you have bad knees or hips. Getting old sucks....Too soon it was time to pack up and go home. It is hard to leave the tranquility of the mountains and head back into the flatlands of problems. But at least I am more rested and ready to take on whatever is ahead. God has blessed me with good friends and a loving family. He is with us through the good and the bad, I saw him in the beauty of those mountains, but I also see him in the faces of my beautiful friends and family. Thank you God for loving me....