Personal Narrative

Across the Great Divide

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Peter Watson, The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New (New York: Harper Perennial, 2013)

As my reviews tend to do, this one will highlight some negatives, but which I will get out of the way early on. Peter Watson is a highly successful author and journalist who has rather more than dabbled in archaeology along the way. I am … somewhat less of an authority. Nonetheless, The Great Divide is kind of a mess, but one that ends up being sufficiently thought-provoking to be worth the effort.

Fun stuff first—shout-out to Jim Bennett for recommending the book; and here are my ideas for relevant musical interludes while reading the following:

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Road Trip

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The Daughter Unit and I did a moderately-lengthy road trip this past week. Probably the last until she is delivered by C-section of the Grandson Unit, which momentous event is likely to be scheduled for the last week of this month or the first in June after the neighborhood baby shower, and before the Memorial Day weekend of the Texas Book Festival in Seguin, at which I have a table. (The festival was cancelled last year, all of us who had bought a place at it were carried over to this year, when hopefully, all festival events will return to something resembling pre-Commie Crud normality.)

We drove the trusty Montero Sport to suburban Austin, to the Daiso store; Daiso might be described as the Japanese version of the Dollar Tree, Family Dollar or 99 Cent Store; all kinds of relatively inexpensive Japanese tchotchkes for hobby, household, and kitchen. We both have rather a soft spot for Japanese items of this kind, since both of us served military tours at US bases in Japan. There are no Daiso stores anywhere closer than Austin, although there are a number of them in Los Angeles. So Austin it was, and after Daiso, to Pflugerville for the Aldi grocery store. We both rather like Aldi, home of the quarter-to-get-a-grocery-cart and pack-your-own-bags. They offer a reasonable selection of quality goods at very reasonable prices. It’s just that there is no Aldi closer to San Antonio than Pflugerville, and another in Victoria; a mite too far to go, unless we were in the area for another purpose.

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The Finished Product

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The finished Victorian-style christening dress for the prospective grandchild, who will be delivered early in June. The original family heirloom christening dress was one of those items lost in the fire which burned my parents’ Southern California retirement home in 2003. It was made of very fine cotton lawn, with yards and yards of elaborate embroidered eyelet lace. I found a pattern here, which closely resembled the original dress and promised Mom that I would try and replicate the dress … and   that was as far as I got until this year. I bought some very fine Pima lawn, and several lots of vintage eyelet lace on eBay, and had a go at pattern-bashing, with the above results. All the seams are encased or flat-filled, and while the long seams were done on a machine, all the rest was hand-sewing, including feather-stitching around the front panel, bodice and hem.   There is a drawstring fastening at waist and around the neckline, as there was on the original dress. When we talked about this on the   last Chicagoboyz zoom meet-up, Ginny said that I should definitely post a picture when I had it done.   So here it is, although I am still waiting on the last lengths of lace to finish the matching petticoat, and baby bonnet. My grandson’s godfather will be standing at the font with a bale of lace and fabric in his arms and a small baby somewhere in the center …

Father and Jack: Conversation as Life Preserver

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My grandsons wonder about life in the fifties, life in their mother’s mother’s village, state. So here’s a personal narrative. Each family was unique, but this does describe another time & place.

Jack was one of my father’s friends, indeed his best and closest. And I’m pretty sure my father was Jack’s. A bit of a narcissist, still, he would sob about my father’s loss if we ran into him for years after my father died. I doubt the depth of sentimental drunks, but he thought the affection was real for all I know it was. My father was moody; I suspect he always saw himself (as did those around him) as unfulfilled and unproductive. I brought home a boyfriend well on the way to being an expert in Italian medieval history; he was surprised my father wanted to talk about meta-history what was true and what wasn’t about the great arcs. I wasn’t surprised my father wanted to talk about that that was the kind of thing he liked. If your life is unmoored, you want to make sense of it. I suspect he spent some time wondering about those arcs what was real and what wasn’t, what they meant. He had plenty of time to speculate and Jack was his companion. Conversation went late into the night, beginning when Jack showed up at our door.

Neither Father nor Jack had much self-discipline, though a lack of self-discipline for those maturing in the dustbowl and enlisting in World War II, husbands and fathers in the fifties was not the immaturity of pajama boys living in their parents’ basements. My father felt some duty: to friends, town. And to tradition in a broad sense it drove him and the Missouri Synod minster to start the Kenesaw Great Books Club, it made the Legion a social focus, kept him Presbyterian and Republican.

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One Thing Government Does Right

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Today was a long day. We finally had a couple of funerals that were delayed by the Chinese commie crud. One was for my wife’s grandfather who made it to the ripe old age of 95 and the second was for one of his sons, who lived to his early seventies.

The service for both of them was at Camp Butler National Cemetery. While there was a lot of paperwork involved, the services went off very well. Camp Butler is extremely well maintained.

Grandpa was in WW2 in India (I hope to someday offer his letters back home on this blog), and his son was in Korea. Both were cremated a few months ago. The government allows free plots for their ashes since they were vets, along with space for spouses later to join them. Also present today were two fine men from the DoD. From the uniforms they appeared to be active Army. They gave salutes to grandma (the son had no wife) and also presented the flags to her after folding them. After the services, one of them stood watch until the last of the guests drove away.

Some locals from the Sangamon County Veterans were there. These gentlemen were volunteers and show up at Camp Butler for military funerals. They gave the gun salute (three shots from three rifles, after which they presented the shells to grandma) and had a man play taps. They also did a very short ceremony before the preacher did his deal. After they were done, these gentlemen beat feet quickly, and I wasn’t able to give them the tip – I will make a charitable donation to them later this week. It was very nice.

As I mentioned previously, there was ample paperwork involved to get all of this arranged with the department of Veterans Affairs, but it did get done, and in a nice and proper way.