He’s gone.

He and Carla left yesterday morning, pulling out of our driveway and driving down the street headed for the airport.

When people i care about depart or i leave them, there is an emptiness i feel. In this case, it’s right silly of course. i will see him and his wife again, probably, hopefully quite a few times here and there for the rest of our lives.

But you see i had him for me for three days. Of course, Maureen was around for most of that time, and Carla joined us before and after the Romance Writer’s Association annual conference in downtown San Diego. Our time with Carla was way too short. She is a wonderful writer, woman, mother, and grandmother, and as smart as anyone i’ve ever met. Two nights and parts of three other days were not enough. But those three days with my brother were some of the best i’ve had in a while.

My brother Joe is five years younger than me. i sometimes like to think his observing his older brother behaving like a locomotive going down the track without an engineer might have given him a lot more sense than his older brother.

Joe read the World Book Encyclopedia before going to Castle Heights, and my memory says it was before attending Lebanon Junior High. i mean the whole thing he read.

He was spent his youth learning automobiles from our father, reading continuously, learning from his teachers, exploring, camping, and avoiding anything he saw his brother beat himself up trying to accomplish, like biking and water skiing. That is to say, Joe had some sense; his brother not so much.

Both earned scholarships to Vanderbilt. The resemblance stopped there. Joe graduated, earned two masters at Boston University, became a minister of high moral and ethical standing, and delivered powerful, thoughtful sermons. He married and remains married to the successful and widely read Carla Neggers, having a son and daughter, and now has three grandchildren.

Except for several annual trips to Ireland, vacations in Florida, returning home to Lebanon, Tennessee, and several other escapes, he has lived in New England, albeit bouncing around in that area of the country quite a bit, since leaving 127 Castle Heights Avenue in 1971.

He can write like nobody’s business. He wrote an inspirational book on prayer, The Elements of Prayer. His weekly articles in his church’s newsletter while he served in Springfield, Vermont, are some of the best writing i have ever read anywhere.

A retired minister in Vermont. He made the decision to retire completely and enjoy his life with his wife, his daughter, son, and son-in-law, and his grandchildren. He does.

He is a wise man.

His brother, aka me, blew out of Vanderbilt like a falling leaf: bad choice of majors, lots of partying, and not much studying. Finally getting his degree from Middle Tennessee, he escaped the draft by  going to Navy OCS, getting out after his initial obligation, writing sports in Watertown, New York, getting back in the Navy, wandering around the country and world until he completed active duty, has had about a dozen jobs since then, and to some degree is still working. aka me was married twice before the third one stuck.

By the way, he, aka me, wouldn’t change a thing because his life has produced an incredible forever wife, two talented, lovely, and caring daughters, and a grandson with unlimited potential.

So we’ve got this wise man who was a preacher, a Christian, in the Northeast, and this goofy guy who was an officer on fighting ships in the Southwest, about as far away as two could get in careers and location.

It is sometimes scary how much we are both alike.

While here, after Maureen had retired for the evening, or when we had moments with just the two of us, we talked a lot; or rather, i talked a lot; Joe talked when needed. One late night (for old men), i was sitting in my chair and Joe was sitting on the couch while we watched baseball on television. i could not help but think of other late nights when the others had gone to bed. My father would lean back in his recliner while i lay on the couch, and we watched baseball.

As Joe and i talked, i kept thinking he had the same experience with my father as i did, as he and i were sharing at that moment. In our case, it seemed to me we kept switching roles. i wondered if Joe made the same connection. i hope he did, but i never asked.

He’s gone now. With Carla, he flew back to Boston and drove back to Vermont yesterday.

In case you haven’t already figured it out, i admire my brother. Immensely. But more so, i love him. i ask his advice. i heed his counsel. i am overjoyed at his success.

i have a lot of close friends, buddies. He and i have a wonderful sister who should have been with us this past week.

For you see, Joe and Martha are my best friends.

There is an empty spot, actually two this morning at the breakfast table. Life goes on. Joe and i were meant to be about as far away as anyone can get and stay in this country.

Still, i miss him.

i read it in yesterday’s Union-Tribune “Off the Wall” section of the sports pages. i wish i hadn’t.

With all of the insanity going on in this world; my inability to vote for a presidential candidate of any merit; other serious, even scary stuff going on, i scan and then skip the news sections of my paper and go to the comics and the sports section. But after yesterday, i will have to scan my sports page content before reading.

Yesterday, “Off the Wall” reported Joe Frazier’s jock strap (athletic supporter, if you wish to be politically correct) is being auctioned off. The bidding has begun on the internet and someone (i’m not sure i would label anyone who placed a bid as “someone” since that implies there is a brain in there somewhere) has already made the opening bid of $5,000. Joe’s jock that protected his privates while he beat Ali in “The Fight of the Century” in Madison Square Garden is expected to be sold for more than $10,000.

Not believing this or even wanting to know it, i still did a search on the internet.  On the TMZ sports website, i found that not only Joe’s manhood protector was on auction, but that the jock strap Nolan Ryan wore when he pitched his seventh no-hitter was sold several years ago for $25,000.

My biggest question is what the hell would you do with a jock strap you bought for $25,000 or $10,000? Frame it in a shadow box and hang it in your living room? Have it bronzed and use it for a front door knocker? Of course, the scariest possibility is the idiots who spent that much money to get Joe or Nolan’s equipment protector might actually wear them.

So yesterday after reading the article, i determined the world is completely out of balance and there is not a damn thing i can do about it.

There is this small photo, badly faded, i have kept with me since 1974. It captures a two-year old as a bike rider. She is in a Texas A&M sweater and knit cap, and she is making the Aggie’s “gig ’em” sign with her left hand, her thumb jutting up in the air, with a big smile on her face.

i cropped the photo down to fit in a small frame and put it on my fold out desk in my stateroom on the U.S.S. Hollister in Long Beach. i would have put it in the log room, the chief’s engineer’s headquarters on a FRAM destroyer, but i seldom used my desk there because of so many engineers needing access to the space.

i did put it in the first lieutenant’s office when i transferred to the U.S.S. Anchorage in March 1975. The smile of  the girl in the photo lit up my day every day while my ship was on a seven-month deployment to the Western Pacific.

Even before my next tour at Texas A&M, the marriage was unraveling, and i realized i would not be a at-home dad for the girl in the photo. At A&M, the photo was on my desk in the NROTC office. The girl’s smile gave me hope in my darkest hour ever.

Then i truly went away. The girl in the photo stayed with her mother in Texas. That was the way things worked in those days. Regardless, i was faced with making a heart-breaking decision because i was determined to do what was best for my daughter regardless of the pain i felt at my loss of being with her every day.

From then on, the photo always has been near my desk, wherever  that might be. Tonight, it is on the lower hanging shelf above my desk. It is the first thing i see in the morning, and i greet the day with the thought of “Gig ’em.” The photo has always made it easier to take on the day, regardless of the impending good or bad.

Ironically, the girl in the photo, one Blythe Jewell Gander, eventually graduated from tu, or the University of Texas, Austin as it is called derisively by the Aggies, and she is not an Aggie fan.

i am not wise in the ways of modern photo touchup technology, so this is pretty much the way it looks in my small frame.

But it makes no difference for that photo of her smiling with that thumb pointed to the sky makes me smile, and i am ready to get it on every day.

i often write about how the weather in the Southwest corner is impacted by the marine layer. Sometimes i praise it. More often than not, i complain about it causing “May Gray” and “June Gloom.”

Sometime in early July, it goes away.

If the truth be told, in spite of San Diego having the best weather in the world year round unless you like below freezing temperatures, snow for four months out of the year, or hot and humid days, one of its real attractions for me is the marine layer giving the Southwest corner an aura of the place being a real seaport town, not a paradise. When the marine layer rolls in at night, i can smell, feel the sea where i spent a significant part of my life; i remember other sea towns in far off places; and for brief moments, i am a mariner again.

But for most of my readers, the marine layer is an unknown. It’s hard to describe, hard to understand.

Friday during our weekly early morning round of golf, the sun came through around 10:00 a.m., or four bells to an old sailor. We had just finished the fourteenth hole when i looked up and saw the perfect example of the marine layer. It had receded from land and west off of Point Loma and was hovering waiting for the perfect July weather in the mid-70’s to give way to the evening cool and swoop back in to give us a gray evening.

Perhaps this might give you a better idea of my marine layer:

For all of those who might wonder, Maureen and i arrived home about an hour ago. We have unpacked. Maureen is doing a quick grocery run, and i fooling with this dagnabbit contraption before a serious nap.

We had an incredibly wonderful time with Alan and Maren Hicks in Sonoma. Our dinner last night with Bob Thiel and Peter  in Santa Barbara was, as it always is with Bob, a great dinner and a super reconnect.

More later, but a NORP is waiting.