It felt like January in the Southwest corner.

It was the beginning of August, August 6th to be correct, and it felt like January, at least some days in January out here. i was wishing i had worn my trousers instead of shorts and brought a light rain jacket or a wind shirt instead of the short-sleeved golf shirt.

Oh, it wasn’t that bad. But it was cool with a stiff breeze off the Pacific. There was some occasional mist, very, very light mist. And the FMG — Have i written those initials long enough for most of you to recognize they stand for Friday Morning Golf? — bunch, including me, are curmudgeons, true curmudgeons like those two old guys, Statler and Waldorf, in the balcony in the Sesame Street Muppets. And we are proud of it. Brag about it. We even use the term (close your eyes if you are politically correct sensitive) “asshole” as a compliment.

So i’m claiming it was cold.

After all, San Diego is a seaport town. Usually, the Southwest corner is tourist bliss: perfectly warm with a gentle breeze and sun, lots of sun. But these past few days, she has been a seaport town. The mist…er, marine layer moved in. The entire ridge of Point Loma was ensnared by fog. The gentle breeze was a two-club wind.

i love it.

And it brings to mind the other seaport towns i’ve loved. Newport, Rhode Island. Athens, Greece. Esquimalt, British Columbia. Sasebo, Japan. Fremantle, Australia. Rota, Spain. i’m sure there are others. Oh, there are a lot of seaports, many with incredible ambience, like Key West and Mayport, Florida;  Monte Carlo; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; St. Thomas,  Virgin Islands; Nha Trang, Vietnam, and many more. But they don’t have that feel of a seaport town where there is a grit, the sea blowing onto land with a taste of actually being out there on a ship.

Yeh. i love seaport towns.

Then, on the thirteenth green, the par three  green that is backed by the Pacific, out on the horizon looms a ghost ship silhouetted in the light gray mist. It was like the past coming back to greet me. The Anchorage seemed to have risen from her watery grave off of Hawaii, where Navy aircraft squadrons sunk her decommissioned soul in a training exercise in 2010 and was coming for me to board her. Alas, it was not my Anchorage. It could have been the new one, USS Anchorage (LPD 23), or one of those new landing ship docks like my Anchorage, only bigger and mightier and computerized.

Standing on that green in the cool wind of a seaport town in August, the specter of that old, steam propelled beautiful ship of the past came to me.

i knew this one one of the reasons the Southwest corner will remain my home: a seaport town that can take me back to another world, another time that was mine.

crow

the morning light sprayed
streams from over Mount Miguel;
all was quiet
except
at the top of the middle juniper
bordering our neighbor’s yard
a crow i wished was a raven
because of Poe,
cawed, thrusting his head up
as if he were praying
to the heavens
but
was listening for a reply,
which came from somewhere,
perhaps a nearby tree;
the conversation continued,
caws back and forth
until after the sun had cleared
the mount to the east
and
the sky, those heavens
to which the crow prayed
had morphed into
a canopy of
the deepest pure blue
without a blemish of cloud
the crow or any creature
had ever seen,
which may have been
to whom the crow prayed.

The anniversary is over. It was a good one. We thought of checking out a new place for dining and did for lunch: Shake and Muddle in downtown Chula Vista, and my croissant benedict sandwich was terrific while Maureen’s “crab and avo,” that’s crab and avocado on sourdough toast with chipotle cream was, in Maureen’s term’s “okay,” and i wonder why that sounds so negative and recognizing Maureen won’t accept “okay” for her repasts probably because she never makes anything that is just “okay,” which i hope says something about me, but i’m never sure about that.

But dinner (supper to the really correct and hip folks from my home) was just right. We passed on experimentation and went to our go-to. The Rose Wine Bar in South Park is one of my favorite places in my history for dining. The ambience is casually wonderful. The clientele are an incredible panoramic mixture of culture, race, politics, philosophies, and you name it, all enjoying the fare with no, no negative vibes. The fare began as appetizers, tapas really, to go along with a rather unique selection of wines. There is a full bar now and the menu has expanded to include entrees, and they know us (see last year’s photo below). i would tell you what we ate, but i can’t pronounce most of them, much less spell them. But boy, was it good. Maureen drank (that’s about four sips, which is a huge amount for this woman with metabolism off the charts) “Don’t Call Me Honey,” which i did off course, although that is not normally a term we use for each other, concocted with rum, prosecco, mint, and honey. i had a very good Greek wine with a name that won’t appear here for the same reason our menu choices are not included.

It was a perfect end to a great day.

Meanwhile major sports was grabbing headlines. The Padres were getting bashed for not trading more. The Dodgers, Yankees and Giants were being lauded for adding great talent (with much money). And Scott Boros did it again to the Dodgers.

In 1998, after the Padres made the World Series for the second time and losing again, they went into the dump mode. But before they did, the owner announced he wanted to retain pitcher Kevin Brown but his limit was an $85 Million dollar contract. The Dodgers offered significantly upward of that. Boras then convinced the Bums that San Diego had topped their offer twice, and Brown ended up being the first player to have a contract exceeding one million ($105 Million). Appropriately (from my biased view), Brown wasn’t worth it.

This month, rumors by the experts abounded about who was going to land the National’s star pitcher, Max Scherzer. As the trade deadline neared, one of Boros’ agents gave Ken Rosenthal a scoop, at least what Ken thought was a scoop. Ken is considered one of the most knowledgeable baseball reporters around, so greatly respected he is the talking head analyst for ESPN. The scoop was the Padres were going to land Scherzer. The Friars had abandoned that chase because the general manager knew he would have to give up too much talent to land the star. Rosenthal blasted his “scoop” across the sports media. He was a genius supposedly. So the Dodgers kicked in a couple of more their star prospects to land Scherzer, essentially bidding against themselves, just as Boros had manipulated them thirteen years earlier.

And the Padre media and fans were ringing their hands. Not me. Oh sure, i would like the Padres to have more consistent starting pitching, but i like the ones they have. i just want them to pitch better, smarter. Same with the other players. You see, i never liked the serf-like conditions before they players had a union, even though it’s a little cockamamie now with the players, the owners, the media all making megabucks off the fans, but i did like rooting for teams where players returned every year. i will offer Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken as examples.

So don’t cry for me, Argentina…er Padre fans.

*    *    *

And then there is the Southeastern Conference adding Texas and Oklahoma to their teams. i think i have a better idea. Why don’t we go old school? Sort of. Oklahoma and Houston could become part of an old/new conference called the Southwest Conference (remember them?). Rice, SMU, Texas A&M, TCU, Baylor, and Arkansas could return to their old group.

Then the SEC could send Missouri back to the Big what used to be Eight and South Carolina back to the ACC. Then they could woo Tulane to return. That would bring the SEC to Vanderbilt, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Ole Miss, LSU, Mississippi State, Tulane, Kentucky, and …oh yeh, them orange folks up on that hill, Tennessee.

And of course, the silly notion of playoffs could go away. The national champion would be mythical based on polls, opinions, or fans banging away at their computers voting for their team. And no one would care.

And maybe, just maybe, we could return to about ten bowl games. And ten regular season games. AND no conference title games. Maybe we could even return to tie games like the game was played before.

Nope:

Too much fan fantacism and too money involved.

The cover to our hymnals, the Cokesbury kind, were brown, not white. More majestic and fewer hymns were sung at the Sunday morning service, and i think we just called them hymns, maybe gospels some times, and i don’t remember singing “Leaning on Everlasting Arms,” but if you hummed a few notes, i’ll bet i would remember.

Sunday night at the First Methodist Church in Lebanon was when those gospels rang out, many and loud in that sanctuary with the balcony in the back. It remains one of my most joyful memories from my past. There was so much energy, so much peace, so much understanding, so much belief. It would be a wonderful thing to go back one more time and sing. “Rock of Ages,” “Amazing Grace,” “Old Rugged Cross,” “Blessed Assurance,” and “How Great Thou Art.” Those hymns were shared with the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and pretty much every church within an arm’s reach of Lebanon, Tennessee back then. And “In the Garden” has a special place and a special meaning for me. i wish i could do more than peck at the piano with my right hand and wish i had learned to play the left hand like my Granny and Aunt Gussie.

Sean brought those memories all out of me when i read his post this morning:

https://seandietrich.com/tried-and-true-hymns/

Thanks, Sean.

i could write a million posts about her. Have already put a crimp in that number.

i could retell legendary stories about how we met, what we have done, etc., etc. Pretty much covered that ground.

i could post about a gazillion photos of her, with or without me and with our daughters and grandson. Those photos too have had a chunk of ’em posted here.

Tomorrow is our three eight, anniversary that is. It remains remarkable to me how we met, how we kept together, how we became a husband and wife, and how, oh, lord, how we match up so well.

Tomorrow morning, we begin our celebration. Typical of Maureen, we will celebrate with our friends: the FMG, that’s Friday Morning Golf curmudgeons, all old male military guys at the Sea ‘n Air Golf Course. Amazingly, she will fit in. The finer, more intimate part of our acknowledgement of each other will be later for just the two of us. Special.

i am a lucky man.