So I am back in SB, but Carol is not. She stopped in Mobile, Alabama, to attend a conference of the National Dance Education Organization. She will have a good time visiting with old colleagues she has come to know over the years. She is staying she says in a terrific hotel, with a view overlooking a river. I didn’t know a river ran through Mobile, thought now I do, but I don’t know the name of it.
I woke up at 430 AM CA time and try as I might couldn’t get back to sleep. My interior clock is now set for SC time and thinks 430 is 630. It will take a while for the interior clock to reset. I remember this happened last year when we went back to bury WB; it took a week or so to reset but also started for some reason an unfortunate trend of my waking up at 530 AM that I could not shake for quite a while. Of course, I have had a lot on my mind this last couple of years.
And now I have a bit more. Brother Dan wrote to say that he will have the procedure for his stroke this coming Wednesday. It’s called an Carotid Endarterectomy and involves cutting in, pulling out the carotid artery, opening it, cleaning it, putting it back together, and sticking it back in. He will be in the hospital from Wednesday to Friday and for the month after he will have to limit what he does because he cannot put any strain on the sutures. He is taking a very positive attitude towards the whole thing; the doc says there’s only a two percent chance or so that some really bad could happen. He does hundreds of these procedures a year.
Still….I am anxiety prone and will be feeling that till the procedure is over. He has been feeling anxiety too I think, and said he really wants to get it all over with. He also sent along an email detailing his first few hours back in Ora. He makes writing errors that he does not usually make, but over all his writing has improved immensely over a month ago… He wrote the email, I think, partly as mental exercise to help work on the stroke. I don’ think he would mind my passing it along as follows:
Ora was a trip.
We set out from the SB Airport at 4:30 AM and got the direct fight to Dallas, and then another direct fight to Columbia SC.
We made it there in 8 hours (5:36 PM). Got a car at the Avis place and set off on the road to Clinton where we were going to meet brother in law Nick and Carol, David and Tree, and nephew Brian. Steve and I set off down the road. And were met in Clinton by our brothers and nephew across the street from the Hardeys, the Wendys, and a gas station and a Waffle House.
It was green there. Green Green Green.
We made our way over to Hickories BBQ for and all you can eat a taste of the south. The table were rough pine and they but on a decent BBQ : oven hash, BBQ ribs, BBQ Chicken, Fried Chicken, Pulled Pork, Green Beans, Corn, White Gravy, Rice, Bread, Onion Rings, Chitins’, Corn Bread, Cole Slaw and Patoate Salad and Chocolate Ice Cream for dessert.
It was a time there, used to recalled times spend with the Tingles.
From there we went to rest for a spell.
Later I wound up in Nick and Carols and then later I wound up in Dave and Tree’s.
Both Nick and Dave had some thing to say.
Nick saw this as a path through to another room.
Dave saw it as a pass through Ora again after another year
I slept like the dead.
Woke up to my black pants and shirt on the table and wandering off in them to the Days Inn breakfast.
Every body else was up.
We all spent time in, or around are rooms. Nick was spent with Coffee and Cig’s.
Dave rolled around a Cigar, and lit it once, kept it going for a time.
Around 10AM we all got down to Ora.
I rode out with Dave and Tree.
We passed farms.
We passed nothing at all but trees.
And then we came to the Ora Church.
We drove up and parked.
It was not hot at all, just a breeze blowing buy.
All at once I came to feel it was time to rest the body of Joan K. Tingle.
By her side was the Infant Baby of W.B. and J.K Tingle.
Ann.
Maybe I remember her as Ann, but there had to be a name there.
Back in the Church the Reverend went over how we could remember Joan.
All spoken in words of the Bible.
So be it.
And then we passed out of the Church and came to a grouping around her tomb.
Some more words of the Bible.
So it goes.
The Church Women put on a show for us.
Tasty Chicken, Mac and Cheese, Devil Eggs, another cheese pie, green beans, tuna salad on white bread, a peach set in jello, some biscuits and a cake made out of 6 slices of wrapped in thin chocolate, and oat meal cookies.
I got to hand it to the Church Women.
The End
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If you go through LAX to SB, you ride the last leg on a small plane that flies at about 60
00 feet. We are lower than that in the pic above. Up towards the top the point of land jutting furthest out into the Pacific is campus point where the University is. Carol and I live just a mile or two beyond that.
