The below was written last year, the day before the big eve. We are not “home” this year but home for Christmas. We’ve been in this home for Christmas almost every year since 1992. Mr. Mean COVID kept us away for two years. it is good to be back. My sister Martha and her husband Todd Duff’s home looks like a Currier, and Ive’s scene for the big day, and the big eve like today.

There is even a skiff of snow on the ground. It’s colder than any Christmas we’ve experienced here. Yeh it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

i just finished reading today’s lead story in The Wall Street’s Journal (of all things) Art section about “The Annunciation.” It is an extremely wonderful piece of journalism about the meaning of Christmas, a meaning i can buy into…lock, stock, and barrel.

And what i wrote last year back in the Southwest corner seems so appropriate:

The fire in the hearth was really not needed. It was in the low 50’s outside, high 60’s inside. A rain storm was moving in for the weekend. The rain, the fire, the decorated and lighted tree in the corner evinced the feeling of Christmas.

Handel’s “Messiah” was playing. We read. No television. No movies. The heat was off and the interior temperature was moving lower. The fire was good.

i felt still. Quiet. The beautiful and amazing work of Handel filled the sir. The fire’s heat warmed me. i looked at the tree and thought about how this holiday thing has morphed over the years. With all the lights, commercials, decorations to the hilt, Hallmark tear jerker movies, movies upon movies, this idea of Christmas seems to be hidden behind the decorations on the tree.

Lots of folks don’t believe, don’t care about the meaning. Some question the veracity of Jesus’ birth. Some, especially the older ones, don’t believe in Santa in spite of what Francis Church wrote to Virginia.

You know what. i don’t care.

Not true.

i don’t care if people spend too much, emphasize the giving , the meals, the church services, or the decorations too much, or even the plethora of sports around and even on Christmas Day.

Sitting in my chair, that quiet, still feeling gave me hope, hope that even with all that distracting stuff, all of us would stop for just a second and hope along with me that there would be:

“…on earth peace, good will toward men.”

That is what i care about. i think that covers it.

Merry Christmas.

…and i add once more: Peace on Earth.

Below is this year’s edition of my NOEL sign story with additions from years past. The sign is unchanged from last year. Next year, i plan to rearrange the lights to more closely align with the letters.

Christmas decorations are going up a bit early again. It seems to me back home growing up, we cut down our tree on Wynn “Papa” Prichard’s farm about a week before the big day, decorated it that evening, hung the stockings, hung a wreath on the door, put some lights around the door, and took it all down the day after Christmas. In our neighborhood today, about one-quarter of the houses have blow-up dolls, reindeer statues, lights enough to provide electricity for a small city among other amusements. The decorations here went up a week ago and many will likely remain well after the New Year.

Considering all that because i wanted to get it out of the way. And so begins the Christmas season. And with that, i offer my traditional repeat of a column i wrote for the Lebanon Democrat about a gazillion years ago. Merry Christmas with this year’s version of Noel:

Have you ever had one of those days when everything turned into an embarrassment? I had a champion day like that several years ago.

It started innocently while I hung our outdoor decoration, a home-made “NOEL” sign from the eave of our garage, hoping to get it up before my wife’s friends arrived for their Christmas dinner.

Maureen and her six friends have been meeting monthly for dinners for 15-plus years. They had this December dinner catered, did it up right. It was Maureen’s turn to be hostess.

It was dark when I began. I was at the top of my step ladder attaching the second of two wires from the sign to a hook secured to the eave when the ladder lurched and toppled. I grabbed a metal ornamental grating above the garage door.

There I hung, my arm intertwined with the “O” of the sign. If I tried to drop, the sign could catch my arm and do some pretty bad stuff.

I yelled, but Maureen had Christmas carols at top volume and didn’t hear. I tried to think of what to do while simultaneously wondering how long I could hold on. The dog wandered underneath, occasionally looking up as if I was a very strange person hanging there.

After several minutes, a neighbor’s son and friend pulled into the driveway several houses away. As they emerged, I swallowed my pride and yelled “Help.”

At first, they could not discern who was calling. Then they spotted me and came to help. The dog decided to protect me and began barking threateningly. The boys hesitated. I assured them the only danger was being licked to death. They finally righted the ladder and helped me down.

I thanked them profusely and then studied whether I should tell Maureen or not. Now that I was back on solid ground, I decided it was too funny not to tell her. She was incredulous and not particularly amused.

I did not realize my embarrassment for the night was just beginning.

While Maureen made final arrangements for her dinner, our daughter, Sarah, and I went to a local spot for supper. The little place was an oasis of sorts in Bonita, where there were only Mexican, Italian, and fast food restaurants. The attraction was different, having a wide-range of ales and beers for golfers finishing a round across the street.

When we arrived, two couples were at tables and three guys sat at the bar. As we neared the end of our meal, the largest of the guys at the bar walked to the door and then turned back. I noticed his eyes seemed glazed. Then he walked back to the bar.

Suddenly, this guy and the one on the other side grabbed the guy in the middle off his stool, slammed him into the wall and started pummeling him with their fists. The three male diners, me (instinctively) included, approached from one side and two cooks approached from the back. Sarah had retreated to the door with the two lady diners. I grabbed the big guy. He spun and fell backward, slamming us into our table, knocking it over with shattering glass. It gave me some leverage, and we spun to the floor with me on top and knocking the wind out of the big guy. The other two diners helped me hold him until he calmed down. The cooks had quelled the other assailant. The two left quietly.

Even though the waitress wanted us to not pay our bill, we paid and left for home. On the way, I talked to my daughter about what I should have done (directed her outside before joining the fray) and what she should do the next time if she were ever in a place where a fight broke out (get out and away and not come back until she was sure it was over). i admonished not to spoil her mother’s dinner party, adding i would tell her mother after the guests had departed. Sarah nodded.

I was feeling pretty good as we arrived home. Then Sarah dashed out of the car, ran into the house and yelled to her mother in front of the caterer and her six friends dressed to the nines amidst fine china, Christmas decorations, and haut cuisine, “Mom, Dad got in a fight in a bar.”

Some days, I just can’t get a break.

May your holiday season be embarrassment free.

Later this week, we will head back for a beautiful, albeit cold, Christmas tradition on Signal Mountain. i’ll think of all my friends as we fly east, sit by the fire, enjoy the children enjoying Christmas, having a scrumptious Christmas dinner, opening gifts of course, and being hopeful for peace on earth. As i have done in the past several years, i send you my Christmas greetings. May all of you have a most wonderful and amazing Christmas Season, and “Please, Please, Please (as James Brown once sang remember the reason for the season,

i saw several waterspouts in my time at sea, at least a dozen, maybe more. The one i wrote about here was when i was as officer of the deck (OOD) on the USS LUCE (DLG 7). The beginning occurred about a half hour into my watch off the port bow, and as i mention, about two leagues away, or about half way to the horizon (Luce’s horizon was roughly seven miles from the bridge) in the Navy Operation Areas (OP AREAS) a couple hundred miles off the Virginia Coast. It was on the first dog watch before i was relieved for the evening mess…and yes, it was eerily beautiful.

first dog watch
gray day at sea
gray sky
gray sea
gray horizon
gray ship
different hues of gray
beauty not expected
the calm before the storm
to the horizon
where the earth
disappears to nothingness;
‘bout two leagues from
that horizon
a disturbance begins
in the nimbostratus clouds
rainclouds;
a small nodule nudges its way
beneath a long swath
of cloud, darker
continuing to extend
toward the sea,
extending more
it appears as a funnel;
then another node forms
directly beneath
on the black-gray surface of the sea
extending upward;
the nodule from the sea
grows upward into a small funnel;
as the two move and sway
extending
now more like fingers
narrow, scrawny fingers
growing upward and downward
reaching, reaching
until they touch:
a water spout
eerie
strangely beautiful:
the sea and the sky
gray
touching each other.

the beach was wide and long,
a perfect place for the beach goers
to gambol in the surf and white sand,
sunny, warm, romantic
but
not today,
no, not today.
today is bleak, not cold like
east coast cold,
overcast, cool, misty,
bleak;
the older couple walk next to the surf,
holding hands;
the man, older than his woman,
has begun to show a bit of a shuffle;
life has begun to look like the beach,
not the sunny, gamboling place for frolic
but
bleak, harsh winds,
overcast, cool, misty;
even in his sea time years before,
he always thought this type of sea day
was beautiful,
enchanting in its own way
and
he had coaxed her into their walk today;
their love no longer held the passion
of earlier days,
replaced by something more permanent:
togetherness, eternal togetherness,
the strongest love of all
and
walking in the bleak overcast, cool, misty,
they remembered,
yes, they remembered
and
they would not forget.

In the early morning of Thanksgiving roughly thirty years ago, we were ensconced in our new home with a 19-year old daughter and another that had just turned two. A Santa Ana wind, often and also appropriately called “devil winds” had set in the night before, just like the conditions today. Winds weren’t as heavy as predicted. But it was/is warm for a Thanksgiving, even in the Southwest corner, maybe even reaching the 80’s.

My shipmate, roommate, fellow funster, and a legend, JD Waits and his wife Mary Lou were coming for Thanksgiving dinner. Smoked turkey (that post from about that time will appear here again after this one).

Yesterday, i went to the golf driving range at Bonita in the afternoon. This is primarily because my current golf game stinks and i am once again futilely trying to get better. On the south side of the range, about ten or fifteen yards or so forward of the range is a tall but very dead eucalyptus tree. It’s been that way for years and was a favorite perch for two red-tailed hawks (and occasionally one of their offspring). The hawks are gone now. Don’t know where. Don’t know exactly when they left. Don’t know why. But i can surmise.

Yesterday, a falcon , a bird of prey, sat atop the dead, whitish gray trunk, stolid, looking out over his realm as if he owned it. He does. They are beautiful birds. A falcon would be my bird of choice to own and train. Almost religious.

He stood there unmoving. i would glance at him after every miserable shot. He was the lord and master of his world. Must be nice. Probably not as perfect as i idolize him. But a good omen i thought, for a good Thanksgiving.

And the big day that wasn’t really that big a day came. It was only Maureen, her sister Patsy, and me. George Winston’s “December” and the new age “Winter Solstice” playing in the background. Not quite us riding our one horse sleigh over the rivers and through the woods to Grandma’s house, but close enough. There was only one thing missing, but not missed that much.

You see, last year, my magic almost-an-egg grill died from rust. We went cheap, cutting corners. The smoker was long gone cause the knock-off allowed for smoking a turkey. The new grill doesn’t. So no smoking the turkey, no working the day before, marinating the turkey preparing the grill, soaking the hickory chips; no dark thirty rise to start the slow charcoal burn, putting the soaked chips on the charcoal, putting the turkey in the smoker, watching tenderly to ensure the process was working.

But i carved. Maureen had made her own version of non-smoked turkey. It was good, traditional. Quiet. Often needed, this quiet thing.

Other loved ones were far away.

Sarah was with her friends in Las Vegas, sharing her pear pies like her Aunt Patsy taught her to make. She is superb baker.

Blythe, Jason, and Sam were in Paris, Texas, the site of some of my most enjoyed Thanksgivings with Kathie’s parents. My family there was there with a more somber mission. They were placing Kathie’s ashes beside her mother’s, Nanny Betty, as Kathie wished. i longed be there, to celebrate my former wife and her love for her daughter and grandson. i drank my glass of Thanksgiving wine from the Sasaki crystal, my former wife and i bought in Sasebo, Japan during our wedding preparations.

i drank to those who aren’t spending their Thanksgiving with their family. i had my share of those and know how sad that can be in spite of wonderful holidays in far away places.

Now, Maureen is taking Patsy home, stopping by our nephew Mike’s home with a service of our Thanksgiving meal.

The temperatures have dropped. The fire is in the hearth. There is no television, no music. Just me and the quiet of the close to another day.

i find i am at peace, thankful for all of you being in my life.

i hope you have had a joyous Thanksgiving and will have peace and joy through the New Year.