8/8/93:
We left in rain and it never stopped. We, June and I, were heading to Arlington and a suprise party for Mary’s 30th year. Down 95 South we drudged -the vision was as into a tunnel, to keep the lights of the car ahead in view. The mists and waves of water spewed by the passing trailers made the ride intense. The culmination was a massive traffic jam on the Wash¬ington Beltway where it took one hour to move 4 miles. The lasagna in the cooler and its drivers arrived at the motel after 5 hours in time to see Tom McSorley just getting ready to return to Mary’s condo. He said he’d be back for us at 7:30. The happy hour was at 8 p.m. We were assembled in the one bedroom apartment (condo) as the door opened with Mary in shock as the room ex-ploded with “Suprise” and then a rendition of Happy Birthday Mary!
It was a fitting end to a long trek. The lasagna was a big hit and we got a bonus in seeing the grandchildren, Tom, Linda, Matthew, Sharon, Kate and Meg. Only Andy and Dan were not present. Andy was expected later but when we left at 9:30 p.m. he still had not checked in.
I later learned that Andy never made it. His flight was cancelled, but he was there in spirit as was Dan who was celebrating a birthday of some 31 years on 8/7/93. It was a great party and I’m looking forward to the video, but it’ll never match being there.
8/14/93:
We are on the eve of our 12th anniversary. The old adages all apply-“Time flies”, “It seems like only yesterday”, etc. They all apply because the journey, though occasionally bumpy, has been a happy one.
It has been pleasing to be able to spend a few days this week alone. No grandchildren, neighbors, in-laws, children, or strays to ruffle the scene-“Just you and me, babe!” Tomorrow we may spend breakfast and supp.er out -with a visit to the slots (they’re June’s, I just do crossword puzzles, read and compose these notes). But then again, we may not. The “freedom from schedules” is one of the Four Freedoms (I think).
I’m reading a biography of Harry Truman. I think of the parallels wi.th Dad. Both were born about the same time. HST, 1884 and RTMcS 1886. Both lived through the same eras of America’s growth and participated in the politics of that growing. They had a moral code of life that was sometimes too rigid, but served them well, if not others. They were two lovers of people and Democrats with a capital “D”. Both were to see the “Ds” come out and into their own on the national scene with FDR. Both were members of a party controlled by “machine” politics -what¬ever that is. I often marvel how it is only Democratic party organizations that become “machines”. The Republicans, who have controlled counties around here and states around the country, s.ince Lincoln ran, are only “organizations”, never machines.
8/15/93:
I was pleased to receive a call from Dan to learn that he passed his P.E. licensing exam for the State of New York. He worked long and hard. It gives him more options in the future. Andy is studying these days for his operator’s license in Nuclear Energy – or something akin to that. But he still has a long way to go. They make a father proud!
I was also suprised to learn that Dan and I were read¬ing the same book -the biography of Harry Truman, which I mentioned above. I was not aware of Dan’s interest in history and it is pleasing to learn.
Well, we spent the anniversary day doing exactly what we wanted-a walk to breakfast at “Brian’s”, and, of course, a walk home. The rest of the day was spent in reading, resting, playing a little piano, June doing her needlepoint and then out to Marabella’s for dinner. Just like the marriage, a rip snorting, roaring, raucous time from morning to night. It couldn’t have been nicer here by the breeze of Avalon overlooking the pool. Tomorrow, Monday, we head back to Philly and prepare for a trip to Myrtle Beach commencing on Friday. So the restful, lazy day will be a good start.
8/22/93:
It’s Sunday. The next to last in August, 1993. I’m sitting on a small porch three floors up looking out at the At.lantic Ocean being whipped by a Northeast wind. I drove up and down the main streets of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, looking for a book store, paper store, etc. to purchase New York Times, but after 10 miles and 30 minutes – no luck. I settled for a “Charlotte Observer” The news is the same, the puzzle just easier.
I am enjoying doing almost nothing. I’m still reading Truman’s biography and find it stimulating. Do get exercise swimming with the grandchildren and walking with their grandmom (June}. I went later in the day to a golf driving range to hit some golf balls. I couldn’t help thinking of my father ¬maybe because while reading Truman’s bio all the names keep coming up that were household words in the late 40s, Stalin, Stimson, Leahy, Byrnes and on and on. In any event, I realized he, my Dad, never did have an exercise routine in the nature of games, etc. He did walk a great deal, as long as he could, and he had his de¬votions -the daily Mass, early rising, etc. Sure enough, as I walked away from the driving range, I could hear him say “Don’t waste time!” and I still feel the impact of his admonitions-like the son in “Da” – guilty that he might not approve. I remember his seeming indifference, but interest, in my marathon running. Not with much enthusiasm, more like acceptance of the quirks of the “younger generation”.
It is, I suppose, not surprising that even 40 years has not completely dimmed the compulsion to please one’s parents, and guilt for doing “nothing”. We had to fill even our vacation time with sensible tasks along with the “doing nothing”, memorize a poem, take Latin, learn something new -just don’t “fritter away” time. The feeling continues. It reminds me though of the former President of Chicago University, founder of the great Books Curriculum, who, when asked what he did about physical exercise said “Whenever that feeling (.compulsion) hits me, I lay down until it passes”. So, with me, I continue to do nothing until the feeling passes, i.e., that what I’m doing is somehow not right.
We left Friday, 6:20 a.m. We had breakfast at the Maryland House on I-95, just 25 miles from Baltimore. we left there at 8:30 a.m. We had lunch at the North Carolina Welcome Center, just inside the State line. A picnic in the Pine Grove. “We” , was the twins, Sean and David and June and I. We arrived at the Hampton Inn, Fayetteville, at 4 p.m.• , giving the guys some time to swim before dinner.
Off again at 7:20 a.m. with a false start due to a left item and after a great “free breakfast”.
8/23/93:
We arrived in Myrtle Beach at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday. We had to wait until 11 a.m. to pile into our room. Just as we were doing so, Mike, Cindy, Kelly and Matthew arrived along with Tracy, Paul and Mary Lou.
8/24/93:
6:20 a.m. The light is coming, red rose hues, or orange mixed with gray.
The air is cool, no humidity to speak of, or the temperature is so low it has little effect.
Still no ball, just brighter. The red is gone. Gray sits on the horizon.
Lots of .people waking or just sitting watching the morning come. I suppose we’ll see no ball because of the clouds on the horizon.
The ocean seems so much louder bouncing off the building where I’m sitting.
At 6:47 a.m. the ball came just as I went in to get breakfast. Now the whole ball is 2 feet over the horizon and going fast. It is surrounded by gray clouds and puts orange on the water.
Golfed today with Mike Golden at “Black Moor”, an old plantation, called “Longwood”. The club house was a Georgian Palace. The fairways are separated by hugh pines. You cannot see another fairway or green while pursuing your ball down one. Some of the rides from one hol,e to the other were as long as 5 minutes. In fact, Mike and I, going from the 8th to the 9th, took so long we thought we were lost. While sightseeing in the woods, and inci¬dentally looking to see where the ball went, we saw ancient grave markers. Small pieces of stone whose engraving was almost all gone, so they were nearly smooth. We could not read the inscriptions, but due to their age and location, far out on the course, we felt they were probably slaves’ graves.
I also spotted what appeared to be an alligator sitting on the side of a pond. I told Mike and we approached it. It was so real looking we thought it was fake! It was so still we even moved closer. We saw a leg move, then a grunt or a blowing of air like a whoosh, which convinced us both quickly it was no fake. It was only about 18 inches to 2 feet long, but we decided it was big enough for us to get quickly back to our game. Besides, Mike left his alligator measuring tape back at the motel.
Earlier in the day, as we drove off the fairway onto the macadam path, a black snake slithered just ahead of us into the grass on the other side of the path. We now agree that golf in South Carolina is a sure way to commune with Mother Nature.
8/25/93:
Ran into the sun as it rose over the Atlantic. It burst forth from its cloud cover in its orange-red splendor at 6:47 a.m. I was on the beach and the world was slowly turning towards me. The day had dawned and I was there to greet it. Carpe diem! It has occurred to me often these days as I watch grandson Paul, now ap¬proaching two, go through the day with gusto. To be here to en-j.oy it with him is a great joy and it is a moment to be “seized” since it will never be again, as it is with so many moments along the way of life.
The day was a quiet one – reading, coming down the stretch with Truman (the book is 997 pages in length, but so far at 600 it is still absorbing to me). It brings back so many memories of my first days in college – Oblate Prep -realizing that life is more than going to school, etc., etc.
Swimming with June, Paulie and Tracy.
8/26/93:
Played Waterway Course. Gondolas from parking lot to Club House. Course like Avalon -wide open and short. Still had trouble with woods off the tee. Played with Jack Kennedy. His wife drove the cart. He works for PE and lives in Phoenixville, PA. Big guy, was a lineman and now in maintenance. Played well.
Nap with Paulie, then absorbed by the book, since now into Korean War, the one I was drafted to attend, but got deferred to end college and then law school. Remember the McCarthy hearings, the MacArthur firing and his old soldier’s speech. Watched McCarthy on black and white television at Houston Hall at Penn.
Another great day of weather, warm but not humid with a breeze.
8/27/93:
Finished the book today. I can’t remember when I’ve read as long a book as Truman, a biography, with so much joy. It was like reading a LeCarre spy thriller, in that I couldn’t put it down. I was remembering the events recorded that I witnessed, and even took part in, like the draft of 1950 for Korea, which almost made me a member of the armed forces in 1951. I was deferred to graduate in June, but then in December, 1950 a modification of the S.S. Act permitted a further deferment, if admitted to graduate school. This made law school look even better.
I remember the Eisenhower-Stevenson campaign and “I will go back to Korea” speech. How empty it sounds, now that I read what transpired before, and even after, he went. How little difference it made.
I learned much about Truman I would never have garnered from the press. His love of people, music, history and his penchant for writing. His cool farmer demeanor served him so well in the crises, the A-bomb, Marshall Plan, saving Greece & Turkey, the airlift to Berlin, Korea, Potsdam, his campaign in 1948, which proved all the pollsters wrong , or as Fred Allen said “He lost in a Gallup but won in walk”. I remember not being able to go into central Europe because of the airlift, and the food shortage in London in 1948 when I went to Europe with brother Frank on his return to the Philippines via Rome.
9/1/93:
The trip home was uneventful. We left Sunday morning at 7:30 a.m. and stopped for breakfast en route around 10 a.m. We had only Dave with us since Sean had gone home with his Mom and Paul on Saturday morning. We planned on stopping at Fredericksburg, Virginia, but did so well we kept at it until 4 p.m. when we stopped at Laurel, Maryland -off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, about 25 miles north of DC.
We arrived in Philly on Monday at 9:15 a.m. with Emily chasing everyone away from the Carolina coast. Last year we left ahead of Andrew. Emily was a kinder lady, she turned and is running northeast out to sea as we write.
In re-reading the notes, it seems like a travelogue. Please excuse, but in any event, I write to let you know what your brother, father, etc. is doing, just so you are assured I’m not “wasting my time”.