Things I See on an Un-February Day

Word from my brother this morning is that Deb is doing a little better, though she's still in intensive care and has (as he put it) a "deep dark woods" to go through before recovery. I was glad to hear that she's no worse; every time I've seen a family member on caller ID recently, I've worried that it would be very bad news.

Closer to home, today was a warmish, un-February-like day. I got to see it mostly sitting at my desk, which is my worktable for sentence and paragraph assembly, where they are cut and fit into the overall architecture of whatever article I happen to be working on. My long-working Brother printer had its final breakdown early in January and -- I would never have thought this possible -- much of what I do now never sees paper.

For articles more than about 1,000 words, I still prefer a printed copy for line editing and proofreading before I file it, and so have been printing them out at the public library for 8¢ a page. But that isn't something I need to do every day, so I haven't replaced the printer. I've looked around, though, and I see some remarkable wireless printers for not so much money. I'm not sure they were even on the market when I got the old one in 2005.

Also visible from my window today: a parade of dogs and their walkers. There are always some, but the weather seems to have brought out more. The dogs are very fond of peeing on the two large rocks -- small boulders -- next to the sidewalk in the front yard, which have been visible since we had the bushes growing around them removed last fall. This activity counts as canine texting, I suppose, and the rocks are their medium.

Pray for Deb

A message from my brother Jay early this morning, regarding his wife:

Please pray for Deborah Stribling, who, as of Tuesday night, is in the ICU at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, suffering from complications arising out of emergency surgery to relieve an intestinal blockage.

(Deb and my nephew Robert at his college graduation last May.)

Late '60s Postcard Relics

Ahead of our family's move to San Antonio in the summer of 1968, my grandmother took me to her home in Alamo Heights, mostly (I realize now) so I wouldn't be in the way of moving preparations. During that visit, I went with Grandma to the world's fair -- HemisFair '68, it was called. She got this card for me, and we sent it to my mother and brothers back in North Texas. "We had a good time at the Fair," my grandmother wrote. I signed it with my name.

I don't specifically remember going to the fair with Grandma, but I suspect that any memories of that visit have bundled with a later visit with my mother and brothers, after they'd moved to town. I don't remember the September 15 monorail accident at all, but I must have heard about it.

The card isn't dated, but it is postmarked July 12, 1968. The cancellation mark on the stamp mentions HemisFair. The front depicts the Institute of Texan Cultures, a worthwhile museum that's still in operation.

In summer of 1969, so famed for Apollo 11 and Woodstock's crowd control issues and the murderous doings of the Manson family, we headed out on the comparatively new Interstate system for a drive around the South: Texas to Oklahoma to Arkansas to Tennessee to (briefly) Georgia to Alabama to Mississippi to Louisiana and back to Texas. Chattanooga was as far east as we got, and we stayed here.

On that trip, we'd previously stayed only in one- or two-story properties, so a five-story motor lodge was positively enormous. When you're eight. Again, my memories of the place are sparse, though there was the thrill of staying on the fourth floor, and I'm pretty sure a vending machine at the Chattanooga Howard Johnson's cheated me.

Cursory investigation reveals that there's only one Howard Johnson's in metro Chattanooga these days, in Cleveland, Tenn., which isn't the property on the card. If the structure is still there, it's flagged by another brand, and probably renovated beyond recognition. HoJo is a Wyndham Hotel Group brand now, incidentally, and I can't remember the last time I saw one. I never did associate Howard Johnson's with ice cream or food; for whatever reason, we didn't eat at them much when on the road. Mainly, they were the motels with orange roofs where we occasionally stayed.

According to Wiki at least, the brand is a b-school example of how not to deal with an adverse economy, especially if you're in the customer service business. The spikes in the price of gasoline beginning in 1973 cut into U.S. car travel, and so the company "attempted to streamline company operations and cut costs, such as serving cheaper food and having fewer employees. It proved disastrous as guests were finding this new era of Howard Johnson's restaurants and motor lodges unsatisfactory, compared to the services they had come to know for years." Oops.

That Which We Have

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Posting will resume next Monday. Eat meat or a meat substitute, entertain yourself and dwell on what you have, rather than what you don't.

And remember those pious puritans at the near-mythic First Thanksgiving, who ate freshly killed animals; sang and danced and played games with Indians; and got good and drunk. They'd had a hard couple of years, after all, and probably were just glad to be alive and able to celebrate an English harvest festival (with new native elements) on these new shores.

Since I live at some distance from the rest of my family, it's been difficult for all of us to join together over the years. But we did so for Thanksgiving 2001, in Dallas.

Left to right: Yuriko, me, Lilly, my nephew Robert, brother Jay, mother Jo Ann, nephew Dees, brother Jim, Eleanor (Deb's mother) and sister-in-law Deb. My nephew Sam isn't in the picture because he took it, and Ann isn't in it because she hadn't been born yet, making her appearance about 14 months later.

Brookfield Pics

I took my camera to the zoo last week, but didn't have much luck capturing any decent images of any animals. I didn't even get a good shot of the zoo's relatively inanimate Roosevelt Fountain. The fountain, according to the zoo web site, "honors one of the country’s most enthusiastic conservationists: President Theodore Roosevelt. Alfred Hamill, founding trustee, was the guiding spirit behind the creation of Roosevelt Fountain, which was dedicated on May 14, 1954, in the presence of some 700 dignitaries.

"Prior to the celebration, Sylvia Shaw Judson, noted sculptress and wife of then Chicago Zoological Society president Clay Judson, created four statues that still stand today as symbols of the President’s character: statesman, naturalist, hunter, and soldier."

I need to give those statues a closer look sometime, since I think they're the ones ringing the plaza whose focus is the fountain itself. They aren't statues of the president himself -- I would remember that -- but I can't remember exactly what symbols Judson used.

A riot of gorgeous flowers surrounds the fountain this time of year. Lilly was able to capture it.

I think those are coneflowers. The fountain is barely visible in the background, but who cares. The original image reminds me of a picture for some glossy, photo-heavy calendar.

Lilly also hand her hand at some animal pics, and came away with some good shots. Such as a small tower of giraffes.

And a feeding zebra.

I took at least one pic that I like, if only for sentimental reasons. My family in front of the penguins.

I took that pose because I remembered another photo I took, similar in background, but when my family was a little smaller than it is now.

Yuriko and Lilly and the Brookfield Zoo penguins, circa 1999.

Item From the Past: The Eclipse of July 20, 1963

I found this picture in a box of mostly '50s and early '60s black-and-white images at my mother's house last year.

I'm the one sitting on the stairs to the left, the smallest boy in the picture, wearing only shorts. It gets pretty hot in North Texas during the summer, after all. I was a little younger then, just two years old, because according to the information on the back of the print, the photo was taken by my father on July 20, 1963.

The date is significant because there was a solar eclipse visible from much of North America that day -- a partial eclipse from our vantage. According to my brother Jay, 11 at the time and holding a camera in the picture, it was a highly publicized event. Naturally I have no memory of it.

This NASA map shows that totality was visible mostly in Canada, but also in parts of Alaska and Maine. Curiously, the eclipse figures in "Seven Twenty Three," a third-season episode of Mad Men. When Don Draper's daughter and some other school kids are out looking at the eclipse through camera obscuras that a teacher, the fetching Miss Farrell, helps them make, it's a chance for Don to eye Miss Farrell more closely than the eclipse.

Fictional characters weren't the only ones using camera obscuras that day, it seems.

I've experienced a couple of partial solar eclipses that I do remember: one on March 7, 1970 and another on May 30, 1984. In 1970, I made my own camera obscura, which worked well enough even though the day was partly cloudy in San Antonio. Before I went inside, I had to see the thing with my own eyes, despite being warned ad nauseam against it. I glanced upward for an instant and my timing was perfect. I saw the bright disk of the Sun, the dark disk of the Moon, and clouds rolling past them, all in a fraction of a second. No harm done.

In 1984, North America experienced an annular eclipse. I worked part time as a proofreader for a publisher in Nashville in those days, and all of us in the proofreading ghetto noticed a distinct dimming of the daylight. We were in a single-story office building, so we spilled out into the parking lot for a few minutes. The sky was clear and this time I didn't look at the solar or lunar disks. But I didn't need to for the full experience. It was the strangest daylight I've ever seen, as if a dimmer switch had been turning down the Sun.

Young(er) Robert

Today I went back to my photo box, where some prints are still in the photo developers' envelopes, while others are in albums of various appearances and vintages, and yet others are in stacks. If I did a census of all the photos by subject, my nephew Robert would probably be in fewer than Dees, who would be in fewer than Sam. Call it the birth-order effect, as it applies to childhood pictures.

Some years ago I read a comic strip in which the father of the family described the photos of his three children: the oldest had a large album of baby pictures; the next oldest had some stacks of unorganized prints somewhere; and the third child's photos were still undeveloped in the camera. That was still in the age of film, of course, but I don't expect digital photography to change the dynamic.

Anyway, I found the infant Robert -- a late '80s shot with his father, in the back yard in San Antonio. (His oldest brother Sam is lurking in the background.)

And one made about nine and a half years ago, in Dallas.

Not sure what's in his hand. Somewhere else I have one of him, also during our Thanksgiving-time visit to Dallas, brandishing a toy sword.

Graduation in the Park

Heavy rains with some thunder last night, though not an especially violent storm. The real violence yesterday was being directed at Joplin, Mo.

On Saturday morning in downtown Chicago under threatening spring skies, we attended the graduation ceremony of the School of the Art Institute Class of '11. Patti Smith, godmother of punk, gave the commencement speech. Or rather, a speech and a couple of songs. Mainly it was a "don't worry, follow your art" pep talk, and the songs were more the poetic Patti than the punk Patti. After all, the '70s were a long time ago.

Any outdoor event risks being rained on, and at one point fairly late in the event, sprinkles came down. Remarkable how fast the audience whipped out umbrellas at the first hint of water.

Pictured here is the stage of the Pritzker Pavilion, with an alphabetical-by-last-name line of undergraduates waiting to receive their diplomas. A lot of master's candidates had proceeded them. I was able to spot my nephew Robert as he moved forward.

Almost no one in line was wearing a cap or gown, which was optional for the ceremony, according to the school. All kinds of clothing were on view, including a woman who appeared on stage in her belly dancing costume -- or maybe it was, as graduate seminar participants might put it, a distinctive Middle Eastern style of dress, paying homage to a dance by and for women that serves as an expression of women’s empowerment -- and another woman in rollerskates, or maybe rollerblades.

After all that was done, I took a picture of Robert with his SAIC diploma-holder.

The actual diploma, as a note inside the diploma-holder said, would be mailed to him shortly. Meaning that the entire alphabetical line-up was unnecessary, strictly speaking, since everyone got the same empty holder with a note. It would have been more fun, and certainly less traditional, to pile up the diploma-holders and have the students rush the stage to get them. Prevailing paradigms can be smashed in so many creative ways.

Early Dees

Since I posted an image of my nephew yesterday as a college-educated, grown man, I rooted around my poorly organized stores of physical prints this morning to find some earlier versions of him, taken by his father. Very early versions, in fact. This is him at about two months old, with Babar the Elephant King.

This photo is dated a little later, but also during his first summer back in the mid-80s.

Somewhere or other I've got a picture of young nephew Dees (and his brother Sam) jumping up and down on a hotel bed, but I couldn't find it, so that will have to wait.

Another Friday the 13th Graduation

Last Friday I attended a graduation ceremony at Strahan Coliseum of Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. As the mass of graduates started to leave after it was over, they looked something like this down on the coliseum floor.

My nephew Dees, TSU Class of '11, is in there somewhere. But he's a lot easier to see in the pic I took outside of the coliseum a few minutes later.

As I pointed out to Dees, and will say here again, I'm happy that he graduated not only on a Friday the 13th, but 28 years to the day after I graduated from VU, which was on a Friday the 13th. The last time I went to a graduation was in St. Louis, when my nephew Sam graduated from Wash U., Class of '05. (My prediction then about Richard Gephardt is so far still true.)

The TSU event was pretty much what you'd expect, minus a long-winded commencement speech, though the president of the university did say a few words. There was no special guest, maybe because Kinky Friedman was unavailable.

A number of graduates had decorated the tops of their mortarboards, mostly with glittery designs, but a few with feathers or other 3D decorations, possibly inspired by Princess Beatrice's headgear at the recent royal wedding. I'd never seen the likes of decorated mortarboards before. Also, at the beginning of the event, the audience was asked not to use air horns celebrate. That was a new one on me as well.

RIP, Marie Estes Stribling

My Aunt Marie passed away earlier this week in Philadelphia, Miss. This is from her obituary in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger:

Mrs. Stribling, 98, died Monday, January 17, 2011 at Neshoba County Nursing Home.

She was a native of the Deemer community of Neshoba County and a longtime resident of Philadelphia. She was a retired beautician. Mrs. Stribling was a member of First United Methodist Church, where she taught kindergarten age Sunday School for several years. She volunteered at Neshoba County Nursing Home for a number of years. She loved playing bridge and other card games.

Mrs. Stribling was preceded in death by her husband, Bruce Stribling; and a brother, Frank Estes.

Survivors include her son, Jay Stribling of Jackson; grandchildren, Bruce James Stribling and Jessie Marie Stribling both of Flowood; sister, Cecil Wyatt of Philadelphia; and brother, Everett Estes and his wife, Mildred of Philadelphia.

Marie's husband, Bruce, was my father's brother, older than he was by more than 20 years, since Dad was a late-life baby. By the time I was born, Bruce had died, but as a child I met Marie. As an adult in the 1990s, I went to Philadelphia twice to visit her and my cousin Florence. Marie lived with her brother Frank and her sister Cecil in those days, and they were most hospitable each time, providing me a place to sleep in their guest room and some delicious bran muffins for breakfast the next day.

Along with my cousin Jay, I visited Marie at the Neshoba County Nursing Home in the summer of 2009. She wasn't conscious during our visit, but I'm glad I went.

Our Furniture Anniversary

September 26, 1993

Riding the Miniature Rails

Brackenridge Park is a jewel of San Antonio Parks and Recreation for a number of reasons. It has one of the finest zoos in the nation, built on the site of a 19th-century quarry. The nearby Japanese Tea Gardens, locally known as the Sunken Gardens, charms with its walkways, stone arch bridges, pagoda-like pavilion, waterfall, islands among the lily pads, flowers, koi and tadpoles. Other park amenities include athletic fields, a municipal golf course, picnic tables and barbecue pits. The San Antonio River cuts through the park picturesquely.

The obscure sculptor Dionicio Rodriguez added a distinctive flavor to Brackenridge more than 60 years ago. Here and there in the park he created cement structures that look remarkably like aged wood -- which he called el trabajo rústico -- such as the torii gate for the Sunken Gardens and a "log" bridge across the river (photos here, and more on Rodriguez here).

Narrow roads and walking trails also wind their way through the park. Despite being home to all those attractions, much of the park in fact looks like this.

August, unfortunately, isn't the best time to visit Brackenridge, but there was one thing I wanted to do there despite the heat, and Lilly and Ann readily agreed. Namely, ride the 3.5-mile miniature railroad that snakes through the park. So last Monday we rode it as early in the morning as we could, to avoid the full blast of the noonday sun. I call the train the Brackenridge Eagle, because that's what it was called when I rode it during the late '60s (when my grandmother took me) and early '70s (when my mother did), but that name doesn't seem to be in use any more.

Ah well, time flies, things change. The train is affiliated with the zoo these days, but its essential features are pretty much the same: a faux steam engine pulls shaded passenger cars along a track that crosses the San Antonio River a few times, cuts through undeveloped parkland, goes through a small tunnel, and makes some stops for passengers to get on or off. These days the stops are at the Witte Museum and the Sunken Gardens, though I vaguely remember that there used to be a few other small station stops besides. Price, still reasonable: $3 for adults, $2.50 for kids 3-11, tiny kids free.

In operation since 1956, the train used to be billed as the "world's longest miniature train," though I see that slogan has also fallen by the wayside. Maybe it was never actually true or maybe some little train in Guangdong Province is now longer. No matter. I'm still reminded of grandma (born Edna Henderson), gone nearly 40 years now, when I ride the Brackenridge Eagle. She'd probably be glad that her oldest daughter's youngest son is able to take two of her great-grandchildren on the train here in early 21st century.

Person From the Past: My Great-Grandfather

When visiting my cousin Jay in Jackson, Mississippi, last summer, he showed me this portrait, which hangs on a wall at his home.

It's Samuel Henderson Stribling, his great-grandfather and mine, who died in 1934. The painting had once hung in one of the banks that SHS helped found, but corporate memory is short, and apparently one of the successor financial entities was going to toss the painting when it was rescued by a friend of Jay's.

I'm in possession of some notes my brother Jay wrote about SHS in the 1970s. The following is extracted from those notes, posted here to mark the man's 162nd birthday this week.

Samuel Henderson Stribling, my great-grandfather (my father's father's father) was born on May 6, 1848, either in Mississippi or Alabama. The uncertainty is because the family moved from South Carolina about the time of his birth.

Before the end of the War Between the States, he enlisted in the Confederate Army. At the close of the war, perhaps six months after his enlistment, he was a 1st sargeant of Cavalry, with Williams' Co., unattached regiment. He was with the army of Gen. Richard Taylor when it surrendered on May 4, 1865, at Citronelle, Alabama, a few miles north of Mobile. He was paroled at Jackson, Mississippi, on May 17, 1865, and went home.

He said that he lost his horse by betting it on a horserace and had to walk home from Jackson. I don't know if he was a resident of Philadelphia then or not.

In any case, he was considered a pioneer in Philadelphia because he arrived in town before the railroad came through in 1906. At his arrival, the town was a small village with red dirt (or red mud) streets and a log-cabin courthouse. There were only a few families, and no more than 100 people all together.

He married Delia Jay in 1874. From 1877, when my grandfather was born, until 1890, they had eight children (or 10?).

SHS seemingly began his career as a schoolteacher. He was later superintendent of education for Neshoba County. Later he got into money lending, which then developed into banking proper, and he was co-founder of one Philadelphia bank and later, another. He also served as chancery clerk for Neshoba County, though I don't know when.

[In the early 1980s, I saw microfilmed documents at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City that had his signature as chancery clerk in the 1890s.]

Item From the Past: Men on the Moon, Me in Ardmore

Usually I only post my own pictures here, but today I have to make an exception. It's a public domain photo, of course, borrowed from NASA's web site, and probably the most famous photo of a footprint ever made. Or more exactly, a bootprint. But it speaks volumes.

On July 20, 1969, the summer I turned eight, I arrived in Ardmore, Oklahoma, having accompanied my Uncle Ken, Aunt Sue and Cousin Ralph in their car from San Antonio. I was to stay with them for a week or so before my family picked me up and we took our own trip around the South. Last month, I visited some of those same places, including my Aunt Sue's home, where I'd watched the Apollo XI lunar landing unfold 40 years earlier.

I'm sure we heard about the descent of Armstrong and Aldrin to the lunar surface on the car radio as we drove north. I remember my Uncle Ken (RIP, uncle) doubting that we would make it to their house in time for the actual landing. But we did make it. I've heard the words so many times since then that I can't remember the first experience, but I know I heard them then: "Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed."

That's the phrase that clinched it; there was still uncertainty about the landing before that. "One small step" was a good enough line, but it was only icing on the cake.

Anniversaries are times to remember, and Apollo XI's 40th is getting a lot of play. Maybe the unspoken, melancholy fact is that Armstrong and Aldrin, or many of the other seven surviving Moon walkers, may not be with us when the 50th anniversary rolls around. Interestingly, every jack man of them except for Alan Shepard was born in the 1930s.

Never mind that now. I'll always be glad I am old enough to remember Apollo XI and all the others.

T.S. Stribling

I had to sit down and figure this out: author T.S. Stribling is my second cousin, twice removed -- by one reckoning, since there's a spot in our ancestry at which two first cousins marry. But for now, it's enough to know that a common ancestor of ours was John Birdsong Stribling (ca. 1790-1875). One of John Birdsong Stribling's grandsons was Christopher Columbus Alvarado Thomas Stribling, who was T.S. (Thomas Sigismund) Stribling's father, and who served the Union; and another grandson was Samuel Henderson Stribling, who was my great-grandfather, and who served the Confederacy. If your family goes back long enough on this continent, you're bound to find such circumstances.

One of these days, I need to post about Adm. C.K. Stribling of the U.S. Navy, whose son John served in the Confederate Navy. I also need to visit the Naval Academy in Annapolis, so I can walk down the Stribling Walk.

T.S. Stribling (1881-1965), man of letters, lived part of his life in Clifton, Tennessee. I'll say at this point that I've never read any of his books, though somewhere at my mother's house is an aged copy of The Store (1932), which earned him his Pulitzer. Some time ago, I noticed that Clifton has a small museum in his honor, though I didn't investigate further until I was planning to visit Shiloh.

Then I noticed that Clifton wasn't far downriver from Shiloh. So I dropped in to visit Tom Stribling's visible legacy early in the afternoon of June 19, en route to Land Between the Lakes. I missed his '20s-vintage Craftsman Bungalow house the first time I drove by, turned around, then found it to be not only a museum, but Clifton's library. I told the librarian on duty that I too was a Stribling, though I'd have to sit down and figure out exactly what sort of cousin I was (see above). She invited me to take the tour, refreshing in its informality -- take down the ropes and go into the rooms and look around at my leisure.

So I did, examining T.S. Stribling's sturdy desk and manual typewriter, the collection of books and other items in his office, his wife's piano, and even more books in their large personal library upstairs. (Other downstairs rooms had the municipal collection, along with computers, where I checked my e-mail.) It's a Stribling house all right. It has many, many books. It's also probably the only Stribling house that will ever be on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Solo Southern Loop of 2009

The price of gasoline, which has been upsliding since its mid-winter, post-bubble lows of much less than $2/gal., makes me want to mutter gripes like Muttley. Especially during the last two weeks, when I was a more frequent buyer of gas than usual, along a route of roughly 3,000 miles.

During the spring, we planned two June trips. One for Yuriko, Lilly and Ann -- a visit to Japan, which began on June 4 and which will end the day after tomorrow. For me, a drive to Texas and back that began June 5 and which ended yesterday, though that description is a little too spare to capture the route I took, which was outbound from Illinois to Missouri, Oklahoma and the parts of Texas along I-35; and then a return by way of East Texas, Louisiana (Acadiana), Mississippi, West Tennessee, Jackson Purchase Kentucky and a long drive just yesterday from the southern tip of Illinois. All together, the loop beginning at metro Chicago ranged as far west as San Antonio, touched the Gulf coast in Louisiana, and proceeded northward by more-or-less paralleling the Mississippi.

Along the way, I wanted to visit as many people as I could. I saw my mother, both my brothers and my sister-in-law, two of my three nephews, both of my aunts, some relatives of one of my aunts, both of my first cousins, two first cousins once removed, and six old friends from high school, some of whom I've seen in recent decades, but others I hadn't seen in nearly 30 years. I met two of the children of two of these old friends for the first time, one a high school-aged girl, the other a baby girl only six months old. I even had a pleasant lunch with an editor of mine, one of the few not based in New York, but rather metro Dallas.

The other component of the trip, which should be no surprise, was to drive roads I've never driven, visit cities and towns I've never visited, and tour museums, historic sites, parks, churches, cemeteries, factories, and oddball attractions. I wanted to hear the dialects of the South and listen to the intense noise of the bugs at night. I wanted to find a store that sold Moon Pies and eat one.

I succeeded in these ambitions, though when planning the trip I naturally found more places to visit than I possibly could. Along the way, I shaved off destinations because I was tired, or wanted to spend more time with some of the people mentioned above. But I'm not complaining. I managed to pack in good variety, which is all I ask from the road.

I also planned it to be an inexpensive trip. Gasoline ended up being far and away the largest single expense, though I haven't tallied it up just yet. Everywhere south of Illinois, prices were around $2.50/gal. (add 30 cents in Illinois). I ate at few restaurants by myself, and on long drives especially, meals tended to be a sandwiches and grocery-store items at roadside picnic tables.

Of the 15 nights I spent away from home, I spent ten with relatives and a friend. I'd say that I sponged off them, but no. Reciprocity was at work. Anyone I stayed with would be more than welcome to stay with me and raid my refrigerator, as well. I camped four nights, with the most expensive site coming in at $13/night.

I paid for only one room. I got a late start leaving home on the first day, which always seems to happen, and packing for only myself didn't change that. So I was too tired by the time I got to mid-Missouri to want to find a campsite and pitch my tent in the gathering darkness. Exiting I-44 in Lebanon, Missouri, I saw a sign for an oddly named motel, and went to take a look.

The Munger Moss Motel lives off of Route 66 nostalgia. I can take that or leave it, but the desk clerk (and motel co-owner) was so personable and well-informed about the history of the motel -- vintage 1946, with an addition in the early '60s -- that I decided to stay. It was a good choice. I got one of the 1946 rooms, which had a TV but otherwise had a pleasant '40s sort of look. Small, but nicely appointed. And at just over $40 a night including tax, not too high a price to support Americana.

Item From the Past: My Own Mississippi

I have to like a place with a street sign like this:

The sign was at the corner of Stribling Street and the more blandly named Forest Park Circle in Philadelphia, Miss., when I photographed it in February 1990. According to Google Maps, the street's still there -- it's a short stretch between Pecan Ave. and Columbus Ave.

Philadelphia was my father's hometown, though like many Southerners in the last century and a half, he Gone To Texas as a young man. It was also the home of members of the Dees family, at least one of whom married a Stribling, eventually becoming my paternal grandparents.

Fairly distant cousins whom I do not know clearly established a drug store and a small department store in Philadelphia. This is how they appeared in 1990:

Again, Google Maps tells me they are still around, though it's hard to believe that Wal-Mart hasn't eaten their lunch (and there is a Wal-Mart in the 39350 Zip code, which puts it close by). Back in 1990, I didn't wander into the drug store or the department store to see if I shared a name with anyone inside, though I probably should have. If they're still around the next time I visit, I will do just that.

Item From the Past: Comment on Richard Nixon

Yellow with age and slightly brittle, a handful of lined papers now reside in plastic sheet protectors in one of my closets. The paper was made for grade school kids to practice handwriting, so the lines are widely spaced, with dotted lines down the center. The paper came in a tablet, I remember that, and you could easily tear out the individual sheets.

Forty years ago I was in the second grade. I wrote this on one of those sheets. I have no memory of doing so.

Dees

Feb 11, 1969

Today we learned about President Richard M. Nixon. Mrs. Gates said he was a basturd whatever that is.

Mrs. Gates was my homeroom teacher that year, and I forget what subjects she taught us, though we moved to other classrooms for English and math. I feel very certain that however Mrs. Gates felt about the newly inaugurated president, she didn't share it with us kids. I'm also certain I wasn't dumb enough to share the paper with her. That might have created an unpleasant situation that I would, in fact, remember now.

I do remember that at one point Mrs. Vest, whom I think taught me English that year, told the class that it would be "President Nixon" from now on instead of "President Johnson," and that she seemed a little unhappy about that. Just an impression. Maybe she'd been hoping for a "President Humphrey," but she never did say that out loud.

A few years ago, my mother found this paper and some others like it at her house and brought them to me during a visit. Both of us got a laugh out of them. She posited that my brother Jay, who was a junior in high school at the time, put me up to it.

Orange Blossoms in GR

I can't remember the last time I attended a wedding before this Saturday. It might have been as long ago as September 2, 1995, when my old college roommate Rich married Lisa. Since then, my cohort has been busy doing other things, and I myself have been to many more children's birthday parties than weddings in recent years.

There was a time, though, when weddings were many for those around my age; in 1986, in particular, I remember attending four. The bride was already pregnant at least one of those weddings, and so the child must be a grown man by now. Time flies. Not exactly when you're having fun, just generally speaking.

My nephew Sam and his fiancée Emily became husband and wife on March 29 at a church just north of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Here they are after the ceremony, outside the church. (Lilly took this picture.)