We were on the road most of June. We left on the 14th and got back to St.Pete’s on July 3rd. Traveling is like life, a journey. You’re on the road from one place to another encountering as in life joy, fear, discontent and sometimes wondering if it was all worth the difficulties. You have the discomfort of living out of a bag in quarters not anywhere like home. But then a simple thing happens and it all seems worthwhile. This trip had what we might call ‘bookend treats’. We left Florida and stayed overnight in Georgia and then Virginia. The next day we arrived at Shirley McSorley’s home on the Elk River in Maryland. We had the pleasure of several days there up on the hill overlooking the river. It is a quiet and scenic spot. I like to call it the ‘Elk River Retreat’. The river must be a mile wide where we were looking. Oil barges chug up the river and before, after and around them on occasions people water-skied. Shirley has a collection of bird feeders in the trees above where we sit and so you get a variety of birds to eat and twitter as you sit at watch the world go by. At the other end of the trip we spent several days in Yardley, Pa. at my daughter’s home with her three sons. We had visitors and great meals and celebrated June’s birthday at her favorite restaurant “Olive Garden”. This was a modest get-together compared to the dinner I had for her birthday on June 3 in St. Pete’s. There we had 28 people in a local restaurant wishing her a happy birthday and many more of them. This gathering was composed of some of the many friends June has made while living here in Florida.
After our visit to Shirley’s we drove to Ardsley outside of Philadelphia to the home of Walt and Tracy, June’s daughter. We had a belated Mother’s Day and Father’s day dinner. It was at a new restaurant for them and thought it would be for us. As it turned out the restaurant, “Bonefish” is one we have attended here in St. Pete’s. It was a great meal there as well as those we have had here. We then took off the next morning for Danbury, Connecticut. I don’t think we’ve ever been there before. We stayed as guest of June’s son Joe in a Hilton Garden Hotel. It was a grand hotel, with large suites and had fresh breakfast cooked just off the lobby each morning. We were there to attend the graduation of Joe’s son Joseph from High School. It took place at the Western Connecticut State University just down the road from the hotel. Later we did a bit more celebrating at Joe’s home in New Milford, Conn. a few miles north of Danbury. We left the next morning after a great breakfast with Joe at the Hilton and drove to Mystic, Connecticut. Mystic to me was the place where Mystic Seaport was located. I later learned that Mystic itself had popularity through a movie in which Mystic Pizza Shop was a part. Mystic Seaport is a preserved and reconditioning of a Whaling community. It had houses the Whalers lived in, the tools and equipment they used in their trade. The major item of course was the boat and we toured one. We learned about the boiling of blubber. I learned later that blubber… “was a precious commodity. When boiled, whale blubber produced a highly prized, long-lasting, clean-burning oil, and that oil became one of the New World’s earliest exports and remained a staple of international trade for nearly 250 years.” We saw a video of a whaling ship in action, which could have been an excerpt from “Moby Dick” since I don’t believe movie cameras were in existence before the 1850’s. “It was crude oil that killed the industry—and saved the whales from extinction. Oil was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1859 and it quickly became, as Dolin writes, ‘so plentiful, so versatile and so cheap that it quickly replaced whale oil in many of it s applications.’ By 1862, Pennsylvania was producing three million barrels per year. Whalers managed only 155,000.” (Quotes from a review of book entitled “Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin)
One evening we spent an hour or so at the Hotel Pequot a few miles south of Mystic. Pequots are an Indian tribe and the hotel had a casino. June had a good time playing. On Tuesday we drove down to Groton to the U.S.Submarine Base to tour the Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, only to find it wasn’t tourable on Tuesdays. We visited it the next day as we began our trip south to Yardley, Pa. The sub was impressive with how much was built in such a small space. It is difficult to imagine spending months at a time in such cramped quarters.
Once back at St. Pete’s we were busy getting settled. Then on Monday July 9th I received a back injury from a fall from a device at Gold’s Gym. On my return home the pain was so intense that I became nauseous and June called 911. They took me to the Emergency Ward and no broken bones or head injuries were found. The muscles in my back between my rib cage and my tailbone were bruised and highly inflamed. The most painful incidents occur when I try to rise from the bed. I gave up the bed and have been spending my sleeping time in a lounge chair. All my activities were limited (and as I write still are) and I spent the rest of July sitting, napping, and slowly feeling it was healing.
One occasion I was happy I was able to make was the ordination of Liz Hardman Radtke on July 15. Liz has been a friend and like a daughter for all the years we have been here. She and her mom were members of the church. She was raised in the church .She graduated from college and than decided she wanted to serve as a pastor. She has a beaming personality and meets people with ease. She attended the Wartburg Seminary in Iowa and after some four years of study was now to be ordained. While there she met her husband to be, also a student and they were married. Liz will be a pastor at a Lutheran church in Worthington, Minn. We will miss her but know she is doing what she loves best, i.e., serving the Lord.
My reading while traveling and on my return has oddly been all in the setting of New York City. I was a recipient as a gift from my son-in-law Tom Baker of a book entitled “ Looking for Jimmy”. It was by Peter Quinn. Tom is a friend of Peter and they both had writings published in the “Commonweal: A Review of Religion, Politics & Culture”. The book by Mr. Quinn came autographed to me. I can’t remember anytime before that I received a book autographed by the author. The book is a history of the Irish immigration into New York as a result of the famines in 1847 and later. I wrote a note of thanks to Mr. Quinn and as a result received a copy of his novel entitled; “The Banished Children of Eve” set in New York in the 1860’s. Later I reread the essay on “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon” which is of course is in New York in the Bowery in the 1850”s. Lastly, I decided to read an old classic, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith and found myself in Brooklyn in the early 1900’s. All of the stories were of interest and easy reading, despite the fact that they were all located in New York!
Peter Quinn gained notoriety as a speechwriter for two New York Governors, Carey and Cuomo. He later became Editorial Director for Time Warner. His book “Looking for Jimmy” received a plug from Frank McCourt who wrote, “You don’t have to be Irish or Irish American to love this book”. In a review of the book the reviewer wrote, “…he surely reads more Irish history than most professional scholars and cares passionately about the fate of Irish America.” I learned a great deal about the Irish in reading it, their bigotry as well as their perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds. The information on the famines and what the British government did and did not do was a revelation. He clearly notes that the binding and building trio was ‘Catholic, Democrat, and Irish’.
Recently the front page of the St.Petersburg Times, “Florida’s Best Newspaper” had two thirds of the front page filled with a picture of the pro-football team’s quarterback. The team is in training. It is July. The story was about the tough time he was having getting into shape to play. He had had health problems during the off-season. This was the major news story of the day in the thoughts of the Editors. The test is ‘it sells papers’. So I suppose that makes it legitimate but tells us a great deal about what people in Florida and St. Pete’s think is important. Sports used to be considered as a ‘past time’. Things to do or view when other more important matters are handled. It is in the opposite position now, at least in Florida. Sports are matters that demand front-page attention. It is a clear comment on how are culture has changed. Until next time, Pax Tecum!