At this point, the smartest thing she can do is to quit the race and throw her support behind Trump.  But she won't do that because her ego is too big.  She's on a quest to prove that she's just as good as any man, but all she's doing is proving that she's nothing more than a liar ("I won't run if Trump is running") and a typical egotistical politician. I'd cut my hand off before I'd vote for her.

Deo Vindice

IHC

Memories of Happier Times

 Yeah, I'm feeling sorry for myself right now, but considering all that has happened to me in the past 3 months, I think I'm entitled.  (The spiced rum and coke I'm drinking also has a lot to do with it.)

But you have to admit that the past 3 months have been pretty crappy for me.  I unexpectedly lost one of my dogs, Mason, to liver cancer on December 10th; I lost my mom to old age on January 25th, and I unexpectedly lost my last remaining dog, Cage, to lung cancer this past Monday on February 19th.  So yeah, the past 3 months have been kinda crappy all the way around.

So I'm sitting here feeling sorry for myself and drinking my spiced rum and coke, and I start thinking about some of the pleasant memories I have of the dogs I've lost and of my Mom, and I find that there's a lot of them.  I mean, a shitload of them.  We had Mason for 9 years and Cage for 11, so yeah, there's a ton of pleasant memories in my head as far as they go.

But the most pleasant memories I have are of my mom.  Two of them come to mind right away, and those are the two I'm going to talk about now.  They both took place at around the same time, in the mid to late sixties when my family lived in Highland Springs, Virginia.

When I was a kid (as in ten years old) I absolutely LOVED schlocky old horror movies, especially the Republic movies from the 1950's where the creature was always the result of radiation left over from all of the atomic bomb testing.  ("THEM!" is still my favorite horror movie to this day.)  As far as I know, all of the major cities in the early sixties had a locally produced program that aired every Saturday night, and they'd all show horror movies from the fifties and sixties, some of the old Hammer Studios movies being the best of them.  Richmond was no different, and at 11:30PM every Saturday night they would air "Shock Theater," hosted by "The Bowman Body."  The host would always make his entrance by popping up out of his coffin, sometimes sticking just his leg out and rocking it back and forth before he's sit up and look at the camera, grinning from ear to ear.  Yeah, it was schlocky as hell, and even to an eight-year-old it wasn't funny, but he tried.

Since the program came on so late at night and because I was so young, my mom was afraid that the movies would scare the crap out of me so she always stayed up with me while I watched them.  But with as many old horror movies as I watched on that show, I don't think I ever saw one from beginning to end - I always fell asleep halfway through, and my mom would pick me up, carry me to my room, and put me to bed.  

The other memory is my favorite memory of my mom, hands down.  This one took place in the summer of 1969 when I was on a Little League baseball team, the Cardinals.  I played catcher, and to be brutally honest about it, I wasn't all that good a player.  Truth be told, I kinda sucked.  I was a good catcher, sure, but as far as hitting goes - nah.  And the only reason I played at all is because we had a pitcher named Timmy that no one could catch but me, so every time he pitched I was behind the plate.  And because he was six inches taller than the average little leaguer and had a fastball that travelled at the speed of sound, he pitched a lot - which means that I caught a lot.

And struck out a lot when it was my turn at bat.

Except for this one game against the Braves, the team that the kind of obnoxious fat redheaded guy across the street, Rusty, played for.  (What did you think a redheaded kid was gonna be called, anyway?)  To this day I don't know how I did it, but I got just the right pitch and landed a solid hit, sending the ball waaaaaay out into right field.  I managed to get a triple out of it, the only triple I ever got in my entire life, and when I stopped at third base and dusted myself off from where I had just slid into the base, I looked up into the stands looking for my folks who were at the game.

And there was my mom, a huge grin on her face, her hands clenched into fists high above her head, jumping up and down in the stands and pumping her fists in the air, yelling to beat the band.  

I don't think I'd ever seen my mom that happy, before or since.

So whenever I'm down and need a smile, I think of my mom and that Saturday afternoon on the Little League baseball diamond behind the old Highland Springs Elementary School in the summer of 1969, when I got the only triple of my entire life and made my mom happy and proud.

Thanks, Mom.  You're the best.

I love you, and I miss you.

Deo Vindice

IHC

Run free, my three little angels. Daddy loves you so very much.

 

 

The End of an Era

 

It's the end of an era.

When I joined the Air Force in 1975 I was lucky enough to be stationed at Seymour Johnson AFB which was only 62 miles away from where I lived in Raleigh, so for the next 3 1/2 years I spent every three day break and every leave at home visiting my parents, family and friends. I went to Korea for a year in '79 but came right back to SJAFB, doing it all over again until 1982 when I went to Lackland AFB for MTI duty. My parents moved to Memphis, Tennessee shortly after that, and for the 4 years I was in Texas they visited me twice and I went to visit them once.

In 1986 I got stationed at Whiteman AFB, Missouri and was pretty thrilled about it because I would be closer to my folks in Tennessee and could visit them more often; but then my father got transferred back to North Carolina, specifically to Cary, so there was only one visit during the 3 years I was at Whiteman, that being when my parents came to visit us the winter I was first stationed there. Then it was off to Korea again for a year, then to Virginia and Langley AFB.

For the next 8 years I made the 3 1/2 hour drive down to Cary to visit my parents and my sisters, both of whom had settled in North Carolina. When I retired from the Air Force and moved to New Jersey to be with Gina, I made three trips down to see them and they made two trips up to NJ to see me. When Gina and I relocated to Lexington, South Carolina in 2006 I found myself once more only 3 1/2 hours away, so from 2006 until 2021 I made the trip up to see them and my sisters once a month.

To say my life revolved around my parents wouldn't be completely incorrect. They were a huge part of my life, and I was lucky enough to enjoy this for two thirds of my life.

All of that changed when my father passed away in 2021. I still went up to North Carolina to visit my mom and my sister Dorothy once a month, but as good as it was to see my mom it just wasn't the same without Pop being there. When my mom sold the house she and my father had bought in 1986 when they moved to Cary from Memphis and went into an assisted living facility in 2021 that cut my visits down considerably, and near the end my mom's health was bad enough to where I wasn't able to visit her as much as I would have liked.

And then on January 25th, 2024 all of this came to an end when my mom passed away at the age of 92. I went up to see her one last time in the hospital three days before she passed, and even though she was sleeping during my visit I know she knew I was there. She had been unresponsive for the past several days, but when I reached under the covers and held her hand she moved her hand, and when I kissed her on the forehead she moved her head. So yeah, she knew I was there.

But when I drove home that afternoon I did so know that I had just seen my mother alive for the last time.

So now it's over. My visits to North Carolina to see my parents, something I've done continually for the past 49 years, have come to an end.

It is truly the end of an era.

And I'm not quite sure how to handle it. I'll figure it out, I'm sure, but right now I just feel kind of lost.

I love you, Mom and Pop, and I miss you.

Deo Vindice

IHC