Slip Slidin' Away

A Beautiful Afternoon

After my melancholy of this morning I got a nice reply from LimesNow that bouyed my spirits. I ended up taking my dog Sammy for a good walk in the early afternoon sunshine. When I got back I was treated to the most delightful display. My neighbor Dean saw me taking the trash out to the curb and asked me If I would take a look at his computer. So I did. I've never been in Dean and Polly's house before today. Usually we sit on the porch and shoot the breeze. Dean surprised me. He is a lover of old cars. In his bedroom all laid out in display cases is a collection of metal model cars from the Danbury mint. He has over 300 vehicles of all makes and models from the 20's to the oughts on display. The first car to catch my Eye wasa  57 Studebaker Golden Hawk in my opinion the most beautiful car ever made. Above the Studebakeer were a Cord, an Old Tucker and an Auburn. Cars I've only seen in pictures. He has Hudsons and Packards and Oldsmobiles and Caddy's. It is an amazing collection and he has given me permission to come over and photograph them. I am in awe and amazement.  Then to come home after getting his computer working to find a beautiful blog post by LimesNow with the picture of the flowers on the dune she saw last weekend. Please visit her blog  Ramblings from yet another Stranger On the Bus and Digital Existence by Once Known as the Badger. Spectacular photography and beatuiful prose to go with it. Here is a photo of the Golden Hawk                                                  
                                                                          This Morning

Almost Thanksgiving here in the states. I'ts coming too quickly, faster than a speeding bullet. Soon the solstice and the winter holidays abrubtly followed by 2010. When I think of it; the time going by like the leaves scattered on the ground out my window. And another leaf falls drifting to the ground slowly as I watch, soon followed by another. I'm reminded I have to do something about those leaves. I think they're pretty, scattered across the lawns of my neighborhood. Though some neighbors in search of that perfect lawn have already had their hated leaf blowers out making piles in the street for the city to clean.  Was it really almost 50 years ago when when we would burn the leaves in the backyard, but not not before jumping in and out of the piles and reraking all day long til Gramma.got tired of waiting.

   City ordinances; that's a funny word ordinance. On my last ship we would park of the coast at Colts Neck NJ and onload or off load tons of ordinance for the aircraft, funny that the same word means regulations enforced by the power of the gun. I digress. City ordinances prevent us from burning the leaves. Firehazard of course. There are  twice as many people in the US as there was then. Twice as many houses, like John Mellencamp's Little Pink Houses or like a song I used to sing while learning the guitar "little houses made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same". I'ts funny that so much of my life has music associated with it, like the Beatles and the Boss and the Carlos Santana retrospective I've done on these pages.

  Easy to see I'm a bit melancholy today. Not unhappy. In many ways happier than I've ever been. Today I feel time winding down, as if whatever I'm here in this life to do, if anything,  is nearly complete. But not yet and not for awhile, I have things to do, places to go and friends I haven't yet met.
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