Posted on Monday…after all, i am a curmudgeon

i was just wondering what all of those folks on every visual medium: television, talk shows, interviews, etc. are going to have on their bookshelves when ebooks the books i can feel and smell.

i am trying to envision shelves crammed with old iPads, iPhones, smart phones, and all sorts of electronic gizmos used to read ebooks.

i don’t think it will have the same aura.

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i have been observing friend, good friends, even on occasion myself, espouse their political viewpoints in winner-take-all, vindictive comments on social media.

Today, it occurred to me that if all of this rock throwing against each other could be channelled into getting rid of the clowns at the top, all parties, and we put our efforts into term and age limits for all politicians, how much things could be better.

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A glorious weekend for an old Southern boy:

Friday night, Maureen sponsored me cooking one of my (few) favorite meals. She found and bought okra (a difficult find in the Southwest corner). i cooked the goofy guy’s meal that relates but is not exactly like many Southern dishes: okra, Tennessee Pride Country Sausage, onions, mushrooms, and diced tomatoes, adding a bunch of spices of which i wing it. Served with my cornbread (Maureen prefers my cornbread to cornpone, and i struck to the basics, foregoing my usual side of cornpone.

Saturday, we had a late lunch at Rod and Joann’s La Jolla home. They had prepared a wonderful traditional Irish meal of corned beef, beets, rutabagas, potatoes and corned beef with Irish soda bread.

Tonight (Sunday), we had Maureen’s salad with the leftover cornbread, Maureen buttered and heated. i finished off the cornbread with molasses (wishing it was Southern sorghum molasses).

My stomach is happy and so am i.

Ever since the Vanderbilt baseball team, a.k.a. “The Vandy Boys” began their early West Coast games, Alan Hicks and i have attended almost all of them. If i have it straight that began in 2010.

Alan came down from San Francisco. i picked him up at the John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana. We headed to the Hilton Doubletree at the Port of Los Angeles Marina in San Pedro. That evening, we went to watch Vanderbilt beat UCLA in baseball. Saturday, we watched them lose to USC’s Trojans. Sunday morning, we went back to UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium where the Commodores lost to UConn.

Even though our “Vandy Boys” lost two out of three, it was a great weekend, a frolic of two old boys reliving what they’ve been doing since 2010 any time Vanderbilt made a West Coast swing early in the season. We made a habit of such Vandy jaunts to this part of the world when Alan was the Director of MARAD’s Golden Gateway and i was making weekly jaunts to Long Beach for safety inspections and training at Pacific Tugboats facility in the Long Beach harbor.

The Geezers dined at one of their old haunts on Friday after the game at The Whale and Ale restaurant, a British pub in San Pedro. Saturday after the game, we hit another one of our favorites, King’s Fish House in downtown Long Beach (the oysters were fabulous).

In many ways the trip was wondrous. Good times with a more than good friend adding to our memories. It also was grueling for this old fart. Over 550 miles were covered traveling to the games…and this was in the worse driving in the good of U. S. of A. As i have said many times, there is horrible traffic in many of our cities including the Southwest corner. But no place, no place has traffic that bad 24/7, seven days a week over 100 square miles.

But you know what? It was worth it for this old Geezer.