gas station beef sticks
best before 2031 …
Well, I will save one …

My son who lives with us here in the beautiful low country of South Carolina is recovering from a terrible bout of pancreatitis.

Since the onset of this malady he has lost 50 pounds and we struggle with him to balance out a diet that is both diabetic friendly as well gastro-enterology friendly.

A lot of the recommendations are contradictory.

Can’t eat that.

Don’t eat this.

Avoid anything with these.

On top of that, he just doesn’t feel hungry and has a heightened sense of smell.

So what to do?

We have more or less boiled all the options down to the effort to get weight back on the boy and if he will eat it and he can keep it down, it’s all good.

Just this week he has been out and about in his car for the first time in months and rediscovering all his old drive-thru friends.

All good.

Even though it was this diet that most likely caused all this off in the first place, it’s all good.

Get the boy to eat.

Today he came home with a bag of gas station food.

Looking over his purchases, I took out one of his ‘beef sticks’ and noted that the expiration or best-if-used by date was in 2031.

“Well”, he said, “I will save one.”

we still check the mail
everyday and there are times
the mail is for us

They call it the sloooow country.

Everything seems to run at a different pace down here.

Even the mail.

You can tell we are old.

We walk to our mail box and check it every day.

But if we mail something to one of our kids, we have learned to give them a heads up to ‘check their mailbox’, because if we didn’t, they wouldn’t.

We often get mail.

I should say we often get mail in our mail box.

I remember the times when mail came everyday and there was a lot of it.

Even in college we got a lot of mail.

One of my roommates subscribed to Sports Illustrated.

We all looked forward to the day it got delivered though I have to say, with that time honored tradition, my roommate wanted to be the one who read it first.

When the magazine was nice and fresh and unread.

Something I could relate to and really understood.

Especially on those odd days I was home and got the mail and got to read it first.

We all knew that the edition of Sports Illustrated that came out AFTER the Super Bowl edition would be the famous swimsuit edition.

My roommate was determined to be the first one to read it that magazine so when he left for the day that day, he took the mailbox key with him.

I noticed the mail box key was missing from its hook that morning and as we all knew what day Sports Illustrated was delivered, I put it all together.

My first thought was that it had been well played and I silent applauded my roommate’s aforethought.

Then I accepted the challenge.

I would be the first one to read that magazine.

I knew that from the window in my room I could see up the street.

I got my books and parked on the window seat and after a bit I caught sight of our mail person working his way towards our apartment building.

Timing it just right I got down the steps with a another key in my fist and got to the mailbox at just as the mail person unlocked the boxes.

“Anything for 811?,” I asked, all innocence, just being helpful.

The guy looks at his cart, grabs a pile of envelopes and Sports Illustrated and handed it over without a question.

The look on my roommate’s face when he came in to see the magazine open on the coffee table was worth the price of tuition that semester.

With the magic of the low country, sometimes that mail in our mail box is for us.

More often than not, if there is more than one piece of mail in the mailbox, one of those pieces of mail will be for someone else in the complex, the neighborhood or at least, the same state.

I once ordered something from Amazon and got a text message that it had been delivered.

The email I got said, ‘Package left in mail box.’

There was no package in our mail box and I knew what happened.

Someone else got my package.

I wanted to post a note at the mailbox box that said, WHO EVER GOT MY MAIL, PLEASE GIVE IT BACK and sign it with my name and address.

I have to say that in an age when you can count on everyone owning a gun, my desire to leave such a note, with my name and address on it, takes more courage than I got right now.

I just got mad.

But it turned out that someone didn’t take my package.

They just put it back in the outbox.

It did arrive.

And it only took three months.

We still check the mail everyday.

And there are times, the mail is for us.

you have to be there …
to be there when the bread comes
out of the oven

Interesting that the feller who is supposed to have said this, you have to be there when the bread comes out of the oven, film maker Rene Clair, also said, “The film is ready, the shooting is all that remains to be done.“

Maybe you have to be there when the bread comes out of the oven because all that remains to be done is to eat the bread.

Good to keep in mind as well that the bread only comes out of the oven once.

A microwave is quick and cheap but it isn’t fresh baked bread.

Maybe it was the clouds yesterday that put me in mind of bread out of the oven.

And you had to be there on Port Royal sound to see them.

You also had to look up.

satiny dark complete
curdly clouds striped moon silent
could hear my eyes blink

That was all the instruction I ever received: two announcements and a vision of a baseball field.

I sat on the verandah until the satiny dark was complete.

A few curdly clouds striped the moon, and it became so silent I could hear my eyes blink.

From Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella, 1983, Ballantine Books.

Summer time and humidity so thick you could be under water.

Dark so deep you can feel it.

Quiet so loud, you can hear.

Life in the low country on South Carolina in June, 2023.

standing up for good?
an under-handed attempt!
need no stinkin bridges

I live in the low country of South Carolina.

I work on Hilton Head Island.

To get to work I have to cross bridges connecting the island to the mainland.

The amount of traffic to the island is growing exponentially dayly.

Like any resort community after covid, the cost of land and housing in the resort area has skyrocketed and the people who live and work and make the resort community a resort community can no longer afford to live in the resort community.

Which adds to the traffic.

The bridges are two lanes in each direction.

Along with being unable to handle the volume of traffic, the bridges are past there recommend safe to use age as well as damaged by hurricane Matthew.

As I like to say there is no truth that the bridges have been condemned.

There is no truth that the Corps of Engineers has issued UNSAFE TO USE ratings for the bridges.

It is TRUE that the Corps of Engineers have refused to to issues a SAFE TO USE rating for the bridges.

Plans are being developed to build new three lane bridges.

They have been in development since we moved here three years ago.

Once the plans are accepted, the estimate is that it will take 3 to 4 years to build the bridges.

At a recent town meeting on the subject, a local citizen’s interest group has the town council to adopt a resolution that the town recognizes a “sense of urgency” on the project.

The group, The Greater Island Council, a private group of volunteer Lowcountry residents who advance initiatives from education to parks and rec on the Island, instead of seeing action on their request, found themselves under attack.

The town council questioned the group’s IRS status.

One resident who spoke at the meeting, said the GIC’s resolution was an “under-handed” attempt by a private group to influence town policy.

All the group wants is to show that there is some sense of action in moving forward on this bridge.

I guess, in short, the group wants to show there is some sense.

But sense, common sense, is pretty uncommon on this Island.

The resolution was voted down.

“This town council is showing backbone,” said another resident.

“(It is) standing up for the greater good of the island.”

What did the town council do instead?

At Tuesday’s meeting, the town approved a request for qualifications document crafted by a citizen’s advisory committee on the U.S. 278 project. The RFQ will be used to recruit engineering firms interested in conducting a broader study of the impacts the 278 project will have on traffic, safety, and the environment on Hilton Head that extends beyond the scope of the current county-town joint study.

The approved a request for a document that will be used to recruit a firm that will then conduct a study of the impact of the new bridge.

The study is not underway.

The group conducting the study has not been hired.

But the qualifications for the group have been identified for such a time as when the recruitment of this unknown group gets underway.

I am reminded of the movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Humphrey Bogart demands to see badges when he is attacked by bandits who say there are police.

The bandit chief replies, “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”

Bridges?

We ain’t got no bridges.

We don’t need no bridges.

I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ bridges!”

It is for the greater good of the island!