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Warm Fades
Today was one of those October days that seemed ordered from a catalog, ticking off the options: electric blue sky…flaming riot of leaves falling and swirling in the wind….mild, warm breeze…long stretches of silence split only by birdsong. We ate brunch at a new place one town over, recently opened by a retired firefighter and his family. Just after they opened, one of their sons died tragically, and they had to close up for a while. Since they have reopened, we decided to give them a try today. It’s a little cafe’, clean and nicely decorated in a firehouse motif. Nothing fancy. We heard our waitress talking to a patron…
- Bluebelle, Daily Life, Dixee, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Jinx, Lectio Divina, Mrs. Orr, Photographs, Reflections
The Delta
This past weekend was a time of animal intrusion. The dogs were all quite obnoxious. No matter how I tried to command them or cajole them, they were on the rampage. By Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Orr and I were looking at each other with weariness in our faces, and our whispered conversations contained words like giveaway, shelter, dogcather, euthanasia, pistols, and shovel/mattock. They calmed down at some point, but we were not perky dog owners by Sunday night. Sunday afternoon, I dressed for the rain and went for a walk. I made my way up into the woods and finally climbed over the fence separating my neighbor’s pasture from our…
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Twinkling Of An Eye
Yesterday morning, I did something I rarely do. I stopped for breakfast on the way to work. I’ve been feeling less-than-stellar lately, mostly because of work-related stress. I try to heed my body’s promptings, and yesterday was one of the times I sensed a clear prompting. I usually don’t eat breakfast during the week, and then I enjoy my wife’s breakfast-brunch feasts on the weekends — I just function better this way. But when I awake feeling puny, I do eat a bite in the mornings in order to fuel myself for the day. So I went through the drive-thru at a locally-owned joint that serves first-rate sausage biscuits. Got…
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Once Was Open
At the foot of our mountain sits an abandoned auto repair garage. I pass it twice daily on my commute. Gary owned and ran the place. He was a lean, friendly fellow with an open face and direct manner. Shortly after we bought our place years ago, I had need of a mechanic and decided to give Gary’s place a try. It was a good decision. He was honest right down to the ground, a master mechanic, and remarkably fair. He once kept my old pickup truck an entire day, ran it up and down the mountain roads, crawled all over and under it, in an attempt to locate the…