Elder Mobile-ity

Just a quick howjadoo from Mobile. Spanish moss, mistletoe overhead; fireants and armadillo sign underfoot; the smell of salt spray, the faint aroma of papermill and wet marsh mud. Traffic of I-65 just outside our dirty fourth floor window that also has a scenic overlook (and direct acoustic connection) with the busy lobby complete with piped-in bass-enhanced rap music. Makes me miss Musak); a lobby full of so many people my age at this 40th reunion of hers that it is impossible to continue to believe I’m still the kid I feel inside; the feel the morning after a night of motel air; gas pumps that demand you add more to your credit cards or you go someplace else for gas–we went someplace else; the elderly man with a cane spending his disability check for 6 lotto tickets and two cartons of Salem menthols; the unavoidable excess of speed just to keep from being rear-ended at less than 80, the high cost in fuel efficiency from driving so fast that had us stopping every little bit to keep the tank no less than half-empty (an Ann obsession I don’t share.)

Sorry, that is the best I can come up with on short notice. I’m about to get out and see what I can find to occupy 10 hours til she comes home from the brunch with the girls, followed by other unspecified conviviality with folks she hasn’t seen in almost a half century. There will be stories to hear going home–if she’ll tell them. I think I’ll go out and make a few of my own. Left alone to shift for myself for dinner last night, I ended up at Hooters. Yeah, really. I needed to be around some young people–the token codger sitting alone nursing his Killians, making social commentary to himself. I’m blogging this, he muttered, but he never did.