Tuesday, a typical Southwest corner winter day snuck between the rolling storms from the Pacific.

It has been a while. Back years ago, i expected with justification about thirty damp, rainy days clustered together sometime between November and March. For a number of years, with those belonging to el niña being the exceptions, it has been dry winters.

Not this year. The rainy season is working hard on two months. The weather guessers say it will end sometime next week. i’m not betting on it. But there are good signs. Like Tuesday.

Now before continuing, i wish to pronounce i’m not complaining. Compared to the rest of the country, the Southwest corner comes out okay. i watch the news of the extreme weather in my old haunts north and south, east of the Mississippi and feel sad for those who have been caught in the catastrophes. The past two months in the Southwest corner have produced a bit of discomfort but nothing compared to back east.

Tuesday, we got a reminder of our weather. When i write “we,” i’m talking about my golfing buddies, Rod Stark, Marty Linville, and Pete Toennies. The four of us played Sea ‘n Air, the Navy’s course on the Naval Air Station, North Island. It was in the 60’s with a breeze and clear, San Diego all around us, the Pacific in clarity to our west so clear the Los Coronados Islands stand out on the horizon. There are no photos of that day. i posted enough photos of San Diego in its glory. That was a respite.

And even though the dark clouds were rolling across the heavens Monday night, i received a harbinger of what was to come. i was grilling pollo asada for a Maureen dinner delight. The sunset on our hill above was going to be spectacular, perhaps even a green flash possible, but i had chores to tend to, like grilling.

Even the backyard in its seemingly endless state of repair, glowed in the last moments of sunset.

Grilling at this time of day is one of the more relaxing moments in my life. The world is mine and with my iPod and bluetooth speakers, i’m listening to my favorites, enjoying the evening setting in, and perhaps a glass of wine.

The clouds send their ominous warning, but before the setting of the sun, there is another moment of reflection: looking east, the glow off the neighbors’ Mexican fan palms give hope.

Darkness from the east and clouds from the west capture the night from the sun. Twilight is gone. And in the last throes of my grilling, i am greeted by a familiar whir to me. In the clouds directly overhead, i her ear the thump, thump, thump of rotor blades. The sound was not up close like it had so many times on flight decks, or over them, on my ships of the past. i look up and sea the Navy helicopter a whirring east, probably some pilot trying to make sure he has completed the required flight hours for the month. But impressive never the less, symbolic even, the clouds setting in, but the helo there as if protecting us from something worse, much worse.

The dinner was delicious, and we had a fire in the hearth. The world was good. And i played golf in damn near perfect weather.

With rain predicted on Wednesday, we said the heck with it and went to the zoo, my getaway place like Bugs Bunny’s briar patch. Even the orangutans had figured out how to ward off the rain. But it wasn’t bad, almost pleasant. If you are a zoo person as i am, Sarah more so, Maureen appreciative but not nutty like Sarah and i, you like going in weather like this. The nice weather thousands in the Southwest corner don’t go. The crowds are few and this time in the cloudy weather, many more of the animals were out for us to see.

And the zoo was the zoo. Always different. Always see something new. Always hit the spots we love. Like Albert’s, the restaurant in the middle of the zoo that makes you feel like you are on a safari. We even sat outside our favorite. i was blessed with two beautiful women as my companions.

It was a short visit. The kind i like. That all day thing can wear you out. Twenty years and more ago, one of my favorite things was to pick Sarah up at elementary school and get there about four. For an hour, we would go to see a half dozen or more exhibits we wanted to see that day (Sarah would always want to go the bat exhibit first). The newbie folks or tourists had been there all day: the kids were grumpy and tired, many asleep on a shoulder or in a stroller. The adults were worn out. We would pass them with Sarah on my shoulders and we were singing and laughing or excited about something we saw. All those other folks would look at us like we had lost our minds. Fun.

But this trip was even more special. We ran into, of all things, several groups of young women with black athletic gear. It was the Vanderbilt women’s lacrosse team, currently undefeated and playing San Diego State tomorrow night. We explained our connection. And, and Sarah took a picture.

And guess where i’m going to be tomorrow night?

Anchor Down!

This started out with a “Sean of the South” post i wanted to share with my wife, my sister Martha Duff, and Maren Hicks. i thought of some others and decided to repost it here:

https://seandietrich.com/tennessee/

But as i was working on the email before determining it should be a post, i decided to once again straighten out my account with PayPal. It has been hosed up since my friend Alan Hicks transferred some money to me via PayPal for his share of the condo we rented in Scottsdale with Alan’s brother Jim Hicks where we spent a weekend of Vanderbilt baseball.

PayPal’s website kept giving me a notice something was screwy with my account and i needed a new password. It turned out the password generator i used generated a most secure password but it was too long for PayPal to digest. i tried about forty times before i began to call them. So as i was waiting for a half-hour to get to a human, i wrote this email, which is now the other half of this post:

i thought you three would enjoy this while i listen to the most awful phone muzak on-hold music ever known to man, modern or otherwise, because i am afraid to hang up and have them call me because this is my sixth attempt to talk to a human being at PayPal in their office somewhere in outer space not fully manned because of inclement weather and they have cut me off two times , and some nice woman from some foreign country who i could not understand and i’m pretty sure she couldn’t understand me put me on hold with a bunch of clicks and voices in the background before she transferred me to eBay who tried to set me up with some guy named principle or something and then the eBay folks transferred me back to PayPal and i had to start over again and then they said they would call me back so i thought no-way, ain’t taking that chance and, hence the muzak that even the dog couldn’t bear and left the room and i wished i could for over a half hour for someone on the depleted staff in someplace far away with inclement weather to actually turn off that damn muzak and talk to me.

She finally did cut it off and talk and we finally got it straightened out but not in the way i originally desired because you can’t do those sort of things like having a password too long because PayPal apparently thinks they are special and do things differently and it only took me about two hours to resolve something that should have taken five minutes, but that is okay because i will not use their services again unless i want to listen to the most awful muzak on-hold music ever known to man and my account will lie there fallow with my hope it gets them screwed up like they did to my phone number, which quite possibly was the real problem in the first place.

But Sean had a very nice article, and i too love fires in the hearth, especially in a cabin in the woods even with coyotes, and i am a huge fan of cast iron skillets of all kinds.

And oh yes, ESPN’s muzak for waiting through never ending commercials you can’t see when streaming rivals PayPal’s.

i am too much of a purist in a sports world where purists apparently don’t exist.

i also am faced with whether i should eat my words or not.

Last year, i lambasted the Boston Red Sox’s exorbitant spending leading to another World Series championship. i escorciated Larry Lucchino, who as president of the Padres had beat up the Yankees for spending such money as the “evil empire” and then turning around when he moved on to Boston and creating another “evil empire.”

i took umbrage for that blasting of the Sox. My brother Joe, who is one heck of a lot smarter than me, and my sister-in-law Carla, who is as equally smart as her spouse, rightfully gave me crap for dousing cold water on their (and the Red Sox nation of fans) World Series Championship while they still were celebrating. They were correct. There was no need for me to blast the run away spending of baseball management at that time.

Now, i am faced with a dilemma. i am in a quandary, in fact several quandaries.

My San Diego Padres just signed super star (maybe) Manny Machado, who i don’t particularly like for his questionable sportsmanship, to a ten-year, $300 Million contract, setting a record for a professional baseball player’s contract. There is even speculation the Friars are still considering signing Bryce Harper, another super star also with some question about his sportsmanship, to an equally outrageously ginormous contract.

By forking out so many coins, the Padres have greatly improved their chances of winning according to all the talking heads and sports journalists who claim to be experts. i suspect such predictions are a  bit premature as winning teams have great pitching staffs, and the Padres are far from proving they have that quality on the mound. The amount of payroll, although still well short of the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers, Giants, etc. moves the Padres toward becoming yet another “evil empire.”

It is a financial world i do not comprehend, can’t fathom. Would anyone of these big spenders drop about a million in my pocket for being a fan? They wouldn’t miss it and i need it more than they do apparently. i would even try to help others with mine.

The Padres have built up a superb minor league system often being rated as the number one potential among MLB clubs. i liked that. i liked watching youngsters learn in the show. Only bad thing has been they didn’t win often.

That just changed. Oh, we’ve been through this before.

The Padres pulled off some extraordinary trades in the early nineties with a major spending and got to the World Series in 1998, losing to the original evil empire in a four-game sweep. Still, Maureen and i rejoiced at the community spirit and joy the Padres brought to us. The post-game reaction of the fans remains a wonderful experience in our minds.

So?

After the season, the Padres had a fire sale to end all fire sales…well except for the dozen or so the Florida Marlins have conducted.

i love baseball as baseball. My buddy, Jim Hileman and i got Padre full season tickets after  together we watched Orel Hershiser break the consecutive scoreless innings record in a game the Padres won 1-0 in fifteen innings. Turns out Jim and i were both huge Pittsburgh Pirate fans. Jim and Sharon would go to one game in a three-game series, Maureen and i would attend one, and then Jim and i would go to the third. That became tough later, so we went to half-season tickets. We were season ticket holders for 25 years. i loved to watch the game played at the highest level.

Then, the Padres played the city-assist-poor-owners game. After a lot of resistance from the Libertarians, creating a four-year delay and preventing Mr. Padre, Tony Gwynn, perhaps my favorite player ever, although Dick Hoak and Roberto Clemente could compete for first in my book, from playing in the new stadium. The Padres moved to Petco Park downtown.

Petco Park is a wonderful venue for baseball. i had half-season tickets there for a decade. But there were some things that bothered me. First, i knew we would never be able to afford seats similar to the ones we had at Jack Murphy Stadium (my favorite of  at least four monikers for the Mission Valley stadium). It didn’t disturb me so much, rightfully so. We got great seats, just not as great as our previous ones in the old park. What bothered me is there were a whole lot of folks with season tickets in the old park who would not be able to afford the seat pricing in the new park. Now i’m close to being one of those folks. My season ticket buying dried up in 2014. To go to a game with two tickets, two hot dogs,  two beers,  a bottle of water, a bag of peanuts, and parking would cost me more than $100/game. Crazy.

So now, San Diego is ga-ga over the new situation. Money, money, money. i either have to quit watching or eat my words. The entire MLB is all about the money. Since i turned my wife into a big Padre fan and my younger daughter has been one all of her life: she went to her first Padre game when she was five months old, i’m pretty sure i’ll be watching, even going to some games. But wife and daughter are not an excuse. i am excited too. It will be interesting to watch how the Friars fare in the next several seasons.

So shut my mouth.

And after all, it’s not my money…oops, oh yes it is.

It was a long time ago, seemingly forever in a good way. We are steaming toward our thirty-sixth anniversary at the end of July, but it seems like it’s been about forever we’ve been together. Our families have melded. We know pretty much all of each others faults and strengths (she has much more of the latter than moi). i could go on. It’s worked.

i was writing something else and needed to check on a fact. i opened a file drawer in the old oak file cabinet next to my desk. It’s where we keep stuff we know we might need. Next to the hanging folder i was looking for there was another i moved and saw the list.

It was the caterer’s list of food for our wedding.

We initially were planning for the wedding to be a relatively big affair at a beautiful venue in La Jolla. Then we realized how much it would cost. So we opted for a somewhat less expensive venue. Free. Maureen’s father, Ray Boggs’ back yard on a hill in Lemon Grove. It was a nice and actually fitting place for us. Maureen wished it to be in line with our romance. That is, food. Our time together was spent mostly dining. A good meal with good service in a place with good atmosphere was where we spent most of our time. So she dedicated all of our wedding costs to a superb caterer.

It was a hot day. It was also probably the only time i saw my mother tipsy. Champagne. Lots of it. For everyone. Oldies but goodies from my reel to reel. Our daughter Blythe was there for Maureen, her other mother, and me. Navy folks. Maureen’s work. Family. Brother Joe performed the ceremony. Blessed. Aunt Fran still blamed Hileman for something JD did. There are many stories, but working on thirty-six years, we still are foodies together.

It started well.

851 miles. 70 hours, 30 minutes. A road trip. An old man.

One of the better road trips in the last half dozen years or so, especially for an old man.

Friday, an hour before daybreak. The rain was abating, creating a sense of eerie beauty in the lights of the freeways early morning traffic, which was slowly beginning to build headed west as i headed east out of town.

i settled in for the drive. It would be five-and-a half hours with one stop, a bit shy of 400 miles. i have taken this road many, many times. Sometimes when on the way to see someone east of San Diego proper, i have felt the urge to just keep on going east, heading home on the long, lonesome highway. But i have reigned it in. On this trip, the reigning will have to occur in the middle of southern Arizona.

It would be a while before i got out of the county. One of the biggest differences to me between back home, back East actually, and the Southwest corner is the size of the counties. Back home, Wilson County is 580 square miles and roughly 44 miles across. San Diego County is  4,526 square miles and approximately 90 miles across.  To get to Arizona, i cross two counties, San Diego and Imperial, slightly over 100 miles.

Interstate 8 rises slowly from the Pacific out of the Southwest Corner. The mist on the mountains is eerie. Triple blades of one wine vane for creating electricity looms above me on the mountain to the left, a white silhouette in the gray smoky mist. Symbolic? i don’t know but beautiful, unique somehow making a statement to the old man in the car. The rain had cleared and dawn was singing as i hit Pine Valley at the peak of the drive through the Laguna Mountains, now mostly tribal lands of the Kumeyaay, and the vista of Imperial Valley shone through pink hue of the clouds of morning. “Red at night, sailor’s delight; red in the morning, sailors take warning” was not applicable in this desert. The sun had hit its full chariot ride swinging low over Mexico as i descended the S-curves into the wind vane farms. Alabaster tri-wings of vanes rotate in the beams of sunrise. Later, the next source of power, solar panels, possibly a thousand acres of them in their geometric solidarity, gleaming in their collection of power. Then the valley gave way to its old habits, fields and fields and fields of agriculture people with those who make a living with their backs and hands and amongst them cattle upon cattle pens and i wondering what will jump to next to save our planets and how those cows don’t have a good future either way for as my friend Marty Linville explained to one tree-hugger who was begging to save the cows by not eating beef or buying dairy products or leather goods that they will be killing all the cows for there are not any farmers or ranchers around who are going to keep those cows as pets.

And past El Centro into the sand dunes, lovely folds of the shifting whispering sand as Johnny Cash intoned, and they are mysterious as they loom with shadows from their shifting but sullied by more RV’s and sand dunes one can count, motorized adventure (?). Hmm. Not for me, no, not for me but obviously a big deal and a big investment for some folks who come out here in unbearable heat and rock and roll around in the buggies to collect sand on their skin to only be washed off with a trickle shower of an RV. Not knocking it if you like it, just don’t understand why you don’t just admire the beauty of a true sand desert or find your adventure trekking across the dunes.

And then Yuma, another destination i don’t quite understand.  A metropolis in the desert. Where oh where is the water i beg. And then there is Arizona, the southern part, a different kind of desert. Agriculture, the big kind, so far as the eye can see. Hamlets, small homes in the desert, damn near self sufficient except for the water, i think. Shacks, out buildings. No shade. Fields and fields and then there’s Gila Bend (a collection of stories for me later). And i wonder again why those folks in those wagons pulled by mules had the thought of stopping here and settling. On and on through cacti and mesa, and rising rocks, all magnificent in their strange, lonesome way.

i pull in the expansive, winding, sign confusing maze of the Phoenix airport. Trip out over. i see Jim Hicks outside in Terminal Four.

The adventure begins. We find a place for lunch, which is pretty close to just right. Small table outside and Jim and i catch up. Alan is picked up at the maze later and we do about six loops trying to get out of the maze. Make it. And then on to our purpose for being in this megalopolis in such a strange place for one. Snowbirds they call the folks who thrive here in the winter to escape the meat of winter back home up north. We are going to a ballgame, not one but three.

Vanderbilt is here to play baseball. Our glue…or least a reason to be glued. Alan and i started this tradition a decade ago. The ‘Dores baseball team swings out west each February or March to play in a more hospitable clime than Nashville this time of year. We have had as many as eight join the tradition, Jim and Cy Fraser being the most frequent additions to the weekend. This year the Commodores, rated the tops, win two of three against some of the best programs in the country, losing to TCU on Sunday to avoid the streak.

These gatherings are all special to me. This one was one of the best. Three old men go back a half-century and go on just as they used to except the jokes are about old men now. We laugh, we enjoy the games. We are us.

Then it’s over. Jim heads out early, headed back east. Alan and i close it out and i drop him off in the maze. Head home, the strange beauty of the strange land traversed once more. i arrive home early afternoon Monday and nap for a half hour. i sleep that night for nine, an almost never event. i nap for two today. i think i’m back to normal except rejuvenated. Old.

This post was going to be an in-depth spiel about the trio and our antics. In writing, it took another turn. Then, i decided i would keep most of the experience to the three of us among us. Old men, young boys together having fun like it ain’t ever going to stop. In the middle of the last game Sunday, the other guy who was supposed to join us but couldn’t due to family matters called me. i told Cy we were at the game and i was critiquing Alan’s score keeping. Cy laughed and said, “You guys sound like you are old men.” He’s right, of course. He is too.

But i don’t think there are a bunch of old men who keep doing crazy things quite the way we do. Perhaps i’m wrong. Don’t care. This is us.

i have mixed emotions about fraternities in college. As with damn near every organization, there are good things and there are bad things. But at this advanced stage of my life, Kappa Sigma fraternity brought me together with a bunch of guys who i know almost as well as myself, and no life-changing events, no political or religious beliefs keep us from being brothers. My Vanderbilt time cannot be considered successful. The end was one of the most devastating moments in my life, almost as bad as losing my daughter through a divorce. But Vanderbilt gave me these friends for life, these brothers.

Thanks, Alan and Jim for the weekend. Thanks, Vanderbilt Commodores for the impetus to make it happen. And thanks to all my other brothers for being you. AEKDB.

Go ‘Dores.