I have written and spoken often of the gremlins that inhabited the evaps (distilling plants) when i was the CHENG (Chief Engineer) of the USS Hollister (DD 788). i fervently believe they leapt onto my shoulders when i was relieved and been with me ever since 1975.

These past few days, they were in the mood for financial pranks. Several weeks ago, my debit card for our primary financial instrument, a credit union, mysteriously turned up missing. i have no idea of how it got out of my wallet. i think the gremlins might have had something to do with it.

So i ordered a new debit card. It came about a week ago. i used it at the ATM when i chose to withdraw some cash, choosing one of two of our checking accounts. Then, i went through the same drill this weekend, only to have no option on which checking account to effect the transaction. Puzzled, i went to the institution’s office today to inquire.

Two of the four stations were manned by very pretty young women dressed to the nines. The one who invited me to her station, smiled and was very efficient. i explained the option of choosing the check account for the withdrawal had not been available. She smiled and explained that was not an option, that each card was for one checking and one savings account. When i pointed out i had been given the option to choose between accounts for, oh since i got a debit account over 15 years ago, she politely insisted that wasn’t possible, she consulted the other teller who agreed with her: one checking account, one savings account for each card.

i then wondered how i had that option since forever and said it must be because i’m old (i’ve been a member since 1968). She laughingly agreed that might be the reason. I told her she didn’t have to agree. She said, “The customer is always right.” We laughed.

Then she told me she could give me a debit card for the account i normally use for withdrawals. i agreed. She created the card, effected it, and instructed me to go outside and withdraw some money from the ATM, adding to come back and let her know if it didn’t work.

i went outside, started the process. The ATM asked me which account i wanted to use. i laughed, withdrew the money. i went back inside around the waiting lines and motioned to the young woman. When she acknowledged, i told her i just wanted her to know the ATM gave me both accounts for options. We both laughed. As i left, i told her that i think it’s because i’m old.

Those damn gremlins are laughing.

i am alone.

Maureen is not here. Yeah, yeah, i know, it’s only five days. But the last couple of nights i felt alone.

i cooked my own meals, i did that for about six years a long time and am…er, capable, but i can’t find anything in the kitchen. The kitchen is hers now. i am a stranger.

i took care of her cats. They like me when she’s not here. After all, i feed them. They like me to give them a little attention, but it pales to their affection for Maureen.

Last night, i was sitting in the family room with only my reading light on. i put down the computer and just sat there thinking, reflecting, something i am not accustomed to doing although it has become more frequent in short moments as i age. As i reflected on life, i caught a movement across the room. It was likely just a reflection from outside. i started to talk to her. She was not there.

i make the bed in the morning, something she does as i am always up much earlier. The first morning, i started making her coffee before realizing she wasn’t there. We talk and text several times each day. i’m glad she’s having fun but it’s not the same here.

Finally, i fixed the hiccup in my get-a-long. She’s coming back Sunday. i conjured up a memory, when i was single again in College Station, Texas. As my former wife and i were struggling to cut the ties while minimizing the negatives for our young daughter. i had bought a small home. After my day at the NROTC unit at Texas A&M, i would change into my running gear, put the potatoes to bake in the oven, and then go on a five-mile run. When complete, i would feed the three-legged cat and the Old English Sheepdog. Then, i would pull out the cast iron hibachi, prep it with charcoal, light it, and close it for the funnel effect to get the coals roaring. i would take a shower, clean up, put the steak on the hibachi and make a salad. Toast with butter and a glass of wine completed the meal. i was in a good place and didn’t know it.

So tonight, i did some modifications from about seven years of bachelorhood before Maureen and i were wed. i cut corners by buying a grocery deli potato salad rather than baking a potato. i was tired of beef, so i grilled a pork chop, with the jim jewell marinade, which will never be duplicated since i won’t remember what sounded good to me tonight. A salad, sautéed mushrooms and onions for the pork chops, Maureen’s incredible bread, toasted with butter completed the serving with a delightful zinfandel.

i still got it.

But i still miss her.

There aren’t many around today. Phones with cameras and the almighty web and cloud have. pretty much wiped them out except for marketing.

My paternal grandmother, Carrie Myrtle Orrand Jewell, had book of postcards, which surprisingly contained mostly postcards. Somehow, i ended up with it. Several years after my grandfather passed away, Mama Jewell moved out of the family on on East Spring Street and moved into my aunt and her family’s home across the street from our home on Castle Heights Avenue. After my grandmother had passed and my Aunt Naomi Martin was in her nineties, the latter gave Mama Jewell’s boxes of memorabilia to her son, Maxwell Martin, my cousin. Maxwell, in turn, gave the boxes to my father, who in his mid-nineties gave the boxes to me.

The album itself has a spot on family room table. It has a padded cloth cover and is about 14 inches tall, 10 inches wide, and over two inches thick with thick, black pages holding the post cards. There a couple of pressed flowers inside. It looks like an antique. It is.

Scuffling around, i found four postcards that had fallen out of the album and ended up in one of my office piles. Unlike most of the postcards, these were not sent Mama by someone else. She apparently acquired them because she liked how they represented her home town, my home town.

Ahh, memories:

There were a lot of good things about those old days.

Tomorrow, i will take Maureen to Et Violà for a pre fixe Mother’s Day brunch. i will give her a small gift thanking her for what a wonderful mother she has been for our two daughters.

i am thinking of pinning one of her white roses on my jacket. It was a lovely tradition at the First Methodist Church in Lebanon, Tennessee when i was growing up, as well as elsewhere i’m sure. On Mother’s Day back then, everyone wore a rose to honor their mother, a red one for mothers who were still alive and a white one for mother’s who had crossed that rainbow bridge. It is a tradition i wish we still observed.

Thinking about it, in addition to my own Mother (capitalized because we always called her “Mother,” not “Mom”), i have had a number of mothers in my life. i wish to honor them by shutting up and posting some photos:

Mama Jewell: i was six years old when she passed away, but i can still remember her love. When in the first grade, i got in a fight with another first grader on my front lawn. Mama Jewell lived across the street and and saw the fight from her front window. She called my other grandmother who was keeping me while Mother was at work. She made sure Granny knew the other boy started the fight (i won).

Granny Prichard. She had five children, 13 grandchildren, and was the “house mother” for an untold number of boarding cadets at Castle Heights Junior School. She loved them all and cared for them all. She was the attending nurse that helped Dr. Charles Lowe deliver me. And there was a special bond between her and this great granddaughter.

My Aunt Bettye Kate Hall. She never had children but she was a second mother to every child in our family. She is with her nephews, Bill and Tim Prichard, in Florida.

Blythe Jewell Gander. My daughter who is the best possible mother in the world for my grandson Sam.

Kathie Lynch Jewell. The mother of Blythe whose love for Blythe, our grandson Sam, and son-in-law Jason was wonderful to see.

Maureen Boggs Jewell. She has been unbelievable in her unconditional love for Blythe, Sarah, Jason, and Sam. i take joy in watching her being a mother to all of them.

Estelle Jewell. She was an incredible woman even if it’s her eldest son describing her as such. i don’t think i’ve ever known a woman who worked as hard as she did. She was strict, demanding, and always loving. She was also one of my best friends. And there are not many people in this world who have a smile like that.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you out there who deserve so much because you have given so much to us.

i’m back on this patio. It seems to generate memories for me.

In the past two weeks, while i was writing posts, working on my project, generally messing around, and playing some golf, i ran across three items from the past. My find generated a thorough search for one or two photos that went with one of those items. The search did not yield the photos. i’ll keep looking.

Regardless, the two items i did have gave me reflection on a sport that has lasted literally a lifetime, an eighty-year lifetime…so far. Baseball.

The photo of the “pony” league team in 1954 has generated numerous comments about the boys in the photo. Soon, i will collect all the input and put out a follow-up with a more complete list of those players. Before that league, i had been playing backyard baseball by myself since i had conscious thought, or after about four, with friends until that pony league team assembled on the dirt diamond and coarse grass and dirt of what was primarily the recess playground for McClain students during the school year — There was a maple tree behind the backstop where someone had carved on the front, “D. Boone killed a bar here,” which i believed to be true until at least the sixth grade.

My love for the game at that time is a part of family lore. One afternoon, i was riding my bike down the West Main sidewalk, headed for a game. There was an elm tree limb hanging about a foot or two over the sidewalk from the yard of one of those grand homes that proliferated on West Main during that time all the way out until around the end of the Castle Heights campus. Being ten and a complete idiot with my glove in my bike basket, i reached up with my right hand to grab a low hanging leaf, dreaming of capturing the golden ring on the merry-go-round at the Wilson County Fair out on Coles Ferry Pike in about two months.

The leaf disagreed and stubbornly remained on the limb. My bike slid right and the front wheel caught the small ditch along the sidewalk from the immaculate grooming of the home’s front yard. The bike fell carrying me head first into the sidewalk. It hurt. i felt the blood and my mouth was aching. i began a slightly less than manly cry.

Heading down to the square was Mrs. Thompson, who later would be my seventh grade home room teacher at Lebanon Junior High. Seeing the disaster, she pulled over. She guided me to the passenger seat and placed the crooked bike and my glove in her trunk. i used that glove until my senior year season at Castle Heights when, at third base in the middle innings, it fell off of my hand.

She drove to our home and rang the front door. My mother answered. Mrs. Thompson told her she thought of taking me to McFarland Hospital but decided she should take me home first. She added she thought i must be hurt badly because of the amount of squalling i was emitting.

Estelle Jewell (i imagine she began with “Phsaw”) was unconcerned and explained, “He’s not hurt that bad. He just upset he’s not at the game.”

i suspect she was pretty accurate.

Doc Gallagher put a cap on the broken front tooth. Back then, available caps were not of the caliber they are today. i got a silver front tooth and had to live with it for about six years (another story).

i continued to play baseball and in high school its variant fast pitch softball.

i played Little League and Babe Ruth League. i was a pretty decent ballplayer, a singles and doubles hitter, fielded well except for high fly balls straight at me when i was in the outfield, had a decent arm and was versatile: catcher, third base, shortstop, and outfield, the latter mostly in left field, certainly not major league talent, but decent. Great memories. One of my favorite stories comes from Jim Leftwich, my cousin sort of since we haven’t found the Prichard connection…yet.

On the Babe Ruth League Lea’s Butane Gas and the Castle Heights Military Academy team , i was often Mike Gannaway’s catcher. Jim was at bat when Mike threw a fastball over 90 mph and Jim couldn’t catch up. When Mike had two strikes on him, i called for a curve ball. Jim jumped away to watch the ball break over the plate for strike three. He told me he still remembers looking back to see me laughing.

Then came my really, no kidding baseball softball thaumaturgical years, i was Gannaway’s catcher at Castle Heights again. We had good teams, but my senior year was something special. i played on the “Pigmy infield.” Mack Brown was about six feet at first base. He didn’t count, but the other three infields were not giants. Tommy Vassar played second. Tommy and i at third were 5′ 6.” Jimmy Gamble at short was 5’7″. With Gannaway’s pitching leading the way and a superb outfield, we won the prep school “Mid-South Conference” crown.

Which brings me to the second photo, the one that produced my search for team photos of Lebanon’s American Legion teams. It was the best baseball team on which i played. In a follow-up to this post, i will try to locate and include the photos and provide the complete lineup and will narrate several of the memorable moments of that season. In my first year, i was a sub. We won the Tennessee mid-region tournament in an epic battle with Columbia. Then we went to the state tournament with four teams, and the Memphis team drubbed us and won the state for about the sixth straight time. The Memphis team had won the national title a number of times.

That’s me over there to the right, the singles hitter with my 33″ Nellie Fox Louisville Slugger bat.

During the two summers of American Legion ball, i was in heaven. i also played fast pitch softball in the county league and in county Sunday baseball league. So while i dug graves (and mowed along with other cemetery maintenance) as my summer job (Thanks, Jessie Coe), i played softball on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, Legion Ball on Wednesday and Saturday, and in the Sunday baseball league. i had Friday nights off. What a fabulous summer.

Texas Boot Company had an incredible bunch of players assembled by Danny Evins, the creator of Cracker Barrel. i caught Cheatham Russell. Cheatham was amazing. He threw a 95-mile fast ball with movement, a wicked curve, and a floater that was impossible to hit. As his catcher, i wore a first baseman’s mitt rather than the catcher’s mitt because Cheatham’s pitches moved so much. i put a round kitchen sponge in the palm of my catching hand (left), i would then put a cotton garden glove over that. Then i would put another sponge, this one rectangular cut out roughly in the shape of an hour glass. Then i would put on the large first baseman’s mitt.

When the game was over, i would take off all of those glove hand trappings. My left hand looked about the twice the size of my right due to catching Russell’s fastball.

i kept playing, as i have noted until i was 46. But dreams of being the next Bill Mazeroski, Don Hoak, Rod Carew faded long ago. Still baseball (and softball) is in my blood. i will write more of this worship later.

I would write more now, but i have to stop and watch a Padre game on television with Maureen. She is now a fan…and she is a saint to put up with me.