Photographs were allowed to be taken.

i did not. To do so, would have put something between me and the event. It was not for capturing the moment. It was the moment.

i wished for so many folks to be with me to share. Maureen, Blythe, Sarah, Sam, you too Jason, and many others. But this one was mine, all mine.

Tonight, at 7:54 P.M. PDT, or as mariners are inclined, 0254 GMT, the sun set. i was up at the top of our hill overlooking the Naval Station with its ships moored to the piers and the city of San Diego to the west.

i was there to lower the flag at sunset. The wind had finally tattered the ends. Tomorrow morning, i will raise the new flag. This was something i did every night for quite a while quite a while ago. That’s when i had this lab. His name was Cass, with a registered name of Ike McCaslin, like the young man in Faulkner’s The Bear. Each night at sunset, Cass and i would climb that hill and lower the flag. We would descend and i would fold the flag according to the flag code. The next morning, we would retrace our path for me to raise the flag at 0800, according to military tradition. Cass and i would then walk down the hiking/horse riding trail through some steep hills where he would chase coyotes, jump rattlesnakes, roll possums while i enjoyed my morning workout.

But times changed. Folks in the neighborhood spoke of how they liked seeing my flag in the morning. So i configured some lighting that would allow me to keep the flag up all night according to the flag code. The praise from neighbors made it a good choice. Cass was gone. i no longer trekked up the hill at sunset nor ascended in the morning.

But tonight, i saw a green flash. No kidding. i’ve seen about a half dozen. The first was in 1979, when i was running the flight deck before the evening mess on the USS Tripoli (LHA 7), aboard as a member of the amphibious squadron staff. It was in the doldrums of the South China Sea. i paused my running at the sunset and saw it. i had read a James Jones novel  about such an occurrence, but thought it was imagined. It wasn’t.

I have seen several, about a half dozen, since. There was one in the Pacific, one in the Indian Ocean, one in the Caribbean, and one in the Mediterranean. and a couple right in the place i was tonight. But not like the one tonight. No. Not like the one tonight.

i stood in silence for almost five minutes. It took me away from all that ails us. i saw beauty. i saw nature in her glory. i saw peace.

As with all things, it did not last. The sun set.

But you know what? i shared it. Cass’ ashes are buried beneath that flagpole. There is an inscription on a plaque attached to the base: “To Cass, a good dog gone. 1984-1999. To your and our freedom.”

Yeah, i’m corny. But i felt him. He was there.

And unlike my time in Market Time across from the  Army  piers  Qui Nhon, South  Vietnam, i didn’t  take  a picture.

To be honest, my shortfall in writing posts since we returned from our Tennessee, Atlantat, Asheville trip back to the Southwest corner is not according to Hoyle.

i was going put a super Herculean effort into finishing my book edit to send to my editor. i have at least a half-dozen posts unfinished that i hope to still put here.

Then chaos visited the Southwest corner. The developer who built our home thirty-one years ago chose to put in “quest” piping (PVC) rather than copper to increase his profit margin with no regard for the new homeowners, aka us. In discussing a renovation of one of our bathrooms, Maureen was advised by an expert to change out the quest with copper.

We were lucky. Several places in the piping could have burst at any moment, and since we are on a slab with the piping in the attic and crawl spaces, many not crawlable (and yes, i know “crawlable” is not a word but it works for me), such a burst or leak would have caused some devastating damage and cost…well, a bundle.

It is over, but for more than two weeks, living at our home has been akin to living on a Navy ship during a major overhaul, which i can tell you is not a fun experience having experienced it four times. Back then, i found it interesting and sometimes laughable. This time at my age, i found it depressing.

So i spent my time on home tasks, not writing. After all, the most impacted room in the house was my office and my normal escape space in the garage was the set up area for the re-pipers.

Now, we have the painters coming to paint all the holes in the walls, covered and textured by the re-pipers, not painted. But i turned my focus back to the book. It feels good, But i haven’t posted anything much here.

However, something happened Saturday that gained my attention.

As you should know, i have turned my wife into a baseball fan, specifically a San Diego Padre baseball fan. We watched the Saturday game the Padres played in Washington, D.C. against the Nationals. In between the top and bottom halves of the sixth inning, the world stopped acting normally in Nationals Park. As the Padre manager, Jayce Tingler, was talking to the umpire while our Padres positioned themselves on the field, gun shots were heard throughout the stadium.

Those shots came from outside the stadium in a gunfight between people in two cars (maybe people: i’m not sure what you call people who are that small and stupid), but the shots sounded as if they were inside the stadiums.

Panic ensued. Fans began stampeding toward the exits only to be told by the stadium announcer to remain inside the stadium. The Padres were directed to go to the dugout except for the relievers in the bullpen who were ordered to stay in place.

Then heroes of a different kind stepped up, even though they were baseball heroes, superstars with mega salaries. i’m going from the reports i have from the San Diego media and today’s excellent article in the San Diego Union-Tribune sports section. Therefore, i have no comment about the Nationals players but am sure they reacted admirably.

But the Padre superstars? Fernando Tatis, Jr., the new poster boy of major league baseball who this spring signed an absurd $330 Million contract for 14 years was one of the many young men who stepped up to a next level. After he got to the dugout, not knowing where the shots were being fired, ran down the left field line, grabbed two children and sprinted back to the dugout. After depositing them in the safer confines of the dugout, he repeated the run and brought two more children back to safety. His efforts were duplicated by Jurickson Profar, Wil Myers, and Manny Machado who were also making rescue efforts. The team opened gates from the stands onto the field and ushered as many fans as would fit into the dugout.

Tatis’ quotes in the U-T story, are worth repeating:

“There were little kids…I felt like somebody had to go get them. I felt the safest place was the clubhouse. I was just trying to get the families and get to a safe place.

“…The situation changed immediately.” There was no longer player and fans. I feel like everyone was people, just human beings out there.”

There are other stories of players and their reaction to the crisis, but you can find them, and i won’t repeat them here.

But i gotta tell you, Tatis and the other Padre players have moved up a notch or two in my appreciation of them. Baseball is a game with the media pushing statistical heroes. But Saturday, the Padres had some real heroes on the field.

Note: i told Maureen this morning i wondered what the reaction would have been thirty years ago before mass shootings became a constant in our lives. i don’t know but i suspect it would have been significantly different.

No, not my Aunt Fran, Maureen’s maternal aunt. She was a pistol. And you didn’t want to cross her. But her legends are for a future tale.

About two weeks ago — i’m not sure exactly how the chain of information evolved between my wife and my daughter — i think my daughter told my wife about this Fran. They watched one of streaming series featuring this Fran.

The series is on Netflix. It’s called “Pretend It’s a City.” It is a collaborated project of Fran and Martin Scorsese.

We are halfway through the series. i remain amazed. Her name is Fran Lebowitz. She is New York, and in many ways, she captures my thoughts. More importantly, she makes me laugh.

You don’t have to be from the city to identify.

i’m not writing this to add some of my thoughts to her comments. i’m just recommending you watch someone who is wonderful in a different way.

Thanks, Fran and Martin.

Well, i posted the gate post before i was finished: fat fingers, thin brain. i have removed it to finish and will repost later. Sorry.

This was once the beginning of a long diatribe where fat fingers hit “send” rather than “save.” i pulled it and started again with the intent to describe a complete plumbing repiping, but i got ahead of myself and posted the repiping whine  as an introduction to thoughts on the Padres and the shooting in Washington at the baseball game.

So the gate is now finished; the painters have completed their work; and we are back into putting our home back in order and cleaning. Did i mention cleaning?

Rather than delaying this again, i will post now, today, in an instant, so i might, just might get along with the rest of my life.

Perhaps it is symbolic. i’m not sure. You see, i think “symbolism” in literature is often overblown. Critics; English professors, at least those who try to impress everyone that they know more about literature and poetry than anyone else on earth (and yeh, sometimes they actually know more, at least more than i do); and really off the wall folks who see symbolism in everything have sort of lost it.

When i was in my second semester class of freshman English at Vanderbilt, our professor was a graduate student, a seemingly nice person but not very attractive, and she wore pads on her armpits underneath her blouse — i’m sorry, but that is what i remember about her the most, that and in her class having a contest with some fraternity brothers to see if we could chew leaf tobacco through a class without spitting. She assigned us about a gazillion poems to analyze out of Robert Penn Warren’s and Cleanth Brooks state of the art book on poetry, Understanding Poetry. Her entry questions nearly always demanded we cite certain lines to be symbolic of…something.

We read something by…oh, i don’t know, Emily Dickinson or maybe one of the Romantics, who some later became some of my favorites. i loved the poem. It was beautiful. i liked it the way it was. i didn’t think it needed an interpretation outside of what it said. Foolishly, i wrote to that effect in my paper.

i received a “D.” i still have reservations about symbolism. i also have reservations about armpit pads.

But this gate…well maybe.

You see. i made that gate. Our gardener, landscaper par excellence, Paul Shipley, helped me with squaring the two halves and did the hard work of mounting the two parts to be even, level, and matching. The process almost took a month. i’m still not finished. There are some tweaks and touch up painting. It should be completely finished around the first of next week.

Now, i’m not anywhere close to a handyman. My male relatives from the previous generation, highlighted by my father, were more than handymen. They were craftsmen, knowledgeable  artists in all things around a home: woodworking, plumbing, electricity, motors, cars, boats. Well, pretty much everything that could be fixed. It seems my brother acquired some of those skills from our father. Nearly all of my golfing friends are more handy. They have done projects in their homes that blew me away. Compared to Pete Toennies, Rod Stark, Marty Linville, and Jim Hileman, i am a tinkerer.

But then, that gate has been a problem pretty much since we bought this house near thirty-one years ago, breaking every rule about buying a house in the process. The original gate was pretty ugly, but we kept it until we couldn’t stand it anymore. And, oh by the way, it had rotted and was full of termites. Then, a really nice guy named Dan who was doing some other handiwork in our house built a gate. It was solid. It was heavy. It worked. Eventually, Maureen decided it was too massive to suit her, and i recognized it also was beginning to rot.

We began looking for another gate. We saw many and couldn’t decide, but when this one guy who was doing some other yard work for us. He showed Maureen a gate design. She liked it. His gang built it. Nice looking for just shy of two months when it began to sag to the point we just barely open it without a Herculean effort.

So we started looking again. After a fruitless month or so when i stumbled across a metal frame for gates, i thought to myself that i could make us a gate. i showed Maureen a design from some home website, described how i could adapt it to a metal frame, and damn near fell on the floor when she told me she liked it and thought i should try. That was a little over a month ago. i claimed a part of the garage where we usually park one of our cars (mine, of course). i set up tables and put the first half together. Then the second half — ah yes, there are stories of mistakes here. Paul, with a tad of help from me, mounted the gate. i finished up adding hardware and retouching the whole. Some parts probably have six coats.

i think it, with proper maintenance be here for quite a while, at least as long as we need it.