Independence Weekend

Independence Day weekend was something of a marathon for me.  This, primarily because the wife and thepacked up and headed to Arkansas to visit her relatives on Thursday morning.  I had determined to keep busy so as not to miss them as much.  

Wednesday night, my grandparents and two of my dad’s sisters came into town, staying at my uncle’s house near Athens.  We visited for a good while, and got home at about 11:30; at which time my wife told me that she had an appointment on her way out of town to get the truck serviced at 8:30 Thursday morning.  This of course, necessitated her getting packed that night, and leaving not later than 7:45 the next morning to make it to Decatur on time.  She finished, and got in bed by 1:30 and was out again by 5:30.  I never can understand how she functions on so little sleep.

Thursday night was designated as “camp-out” night at my uncle’s.  After work, I stopped by the local sporting goods store, and got a small air-mattress.  After going home to load my tent and a few extra sleeping bags, I was off to Christopher’s to feed a very grateful Harley the Cat, then straight to my uncle’s.  I had a nice, quick supper of fresh catfish, and headed down to the camp site.  I got everything hauled-in and set-up in about half an hour.  It was by that time, about 7:30, and darkness would be coming soon.  Not soon enough, because it just didn’t seem to want to cool down.  Indeed, this would continue to be the case until about 5:30 the next morning.

We had a good time, sitting around the camp fire, and doing the family thing.  Stories were exchanged, some of them scary, some of them had their scariness augmented by an unnamed camper leaping out from behind a tent and screaming at an unexpected interval.  At one point, I feared our little group would loose cohesion when a certain aunt was terrorized by an unapologetic amphibian croaking in a near-by pond.

At about 10:00, we’d all said good night, and zipped up our tents.  I was alone in mine (save my immensely powerful Beretta Neos in caliber .22 LR), but my cousin, David, slept in a hammock between my tent and the others.  We were all-assembled, quite a crew; some dozen in number with our youngest being around 10 years of age and my grandfather being precisely that eight-times over.  

It was uncomfortable like a camp-out is supposed to be, but not the worst I’ve attended.  Even though it was just a bit too hot, the bugs weren’t a-bugging, it wasn’t raining, and the fire was in no way inhospitable.  At 11:45, my phone rang and I awoke just in time to catch the voice-mail telling me that Ms. Maggie Elizabeth Bailey had arrived in Seattle not thirty minutes earlier, at 7lbs 14oz!  Good news, indeed!

I slept for some time, a bit restlessly at first because I had no pillow and had propped up my head on my lumpy back-pack.  Then, I head a bit of commotion about, pulled on my glasses, and looked out of the tent.  There, I saw everyone milling about, and my 80-year-old grandfather packing it up for the house.  After 80 years, he’d apparently exceeded the lifetime maximum for camp-outs.  I didn’t wish to argue, as he’d earned his rest.  Speaking a testament to his former days as a drill instructor in the USMC; about half the troops followed him up the hill to the house.  They didn’t need any coaxing.  For my part, I was curious to know what was going on, but not so curious to be worth putting on my boots to go investigate.

The next morning, I woke up at 7:00, 7:30, and 8:00.  By that time I’d gotten comfortable, but I could tell it was warming up fast.  At about that time, my uncle Greg was coming out of his tent.  When I asked how many made it, I knew the answer before he gave it: “Just us two.”

As we put the kettle on for some rough camp-coffee (again, NOT the worst I’ve had), he told me that the girls (my cousins Kim, Emily, and Lydia) had been troopers and held-out until about 0530.  They couldn’t take any more after that.  Apparently the cause of the commotion the night before had come at about 0130 when David, Greg, and Kathy were awoken by a pair of foxes playing in the creek-bed just behind my tent.  I asked if he was sure it wasn’t just my snoring, and he assured me that it wasn’t.  If I heard any foxes, I surely wasn’t bothered by them, but David was a bit moved.  By this, I mean he packed his kit and moved it up to the house with all speed.  Had we been in darkest Africa, I surely would have been gobbled-up by a lion, and David safe.

Had cousin David awoken me, I would have like to have taken my flash light and chased the little buggers down.  He suggested the next morning upon discovering that I had the little Beretta that we could have simply exterminated the fox.  I would have done so such thing.  I like foxes, and it would have been nice to catch a glimpse of them in their own environment and earning their living.  David had gotten a fairly good video of him a week or so before, standing out in the open bold as the face on a clock.  In any case, David would be wise in recounting the story to introduce the faintest trace of flair into his narrative.  Something along the lines of him chasing off the mutant fox who was in the process of nobbling poor old grand-dad’s leg off and killing poor cousin Emily TO DEATH should suffice.

After coffee, we had a bit of breakfast, then broke camp.  It was a fine little adventure, and I’ll probably not see the like for many a year.  I let David take a crack with the .22, and I’m here to tell you that CCI “Stingers” are HOT.  High velocity .22s come in the 1100 FPS range, and the CCI Stinger is rated at 1640 FPS.  1640 is much too high for tin-can duty, and standard High Velocity rounds do cycle the Beretta’s slide.

Later on Friday, we re-assembled the crew for lunch at my favorite closed-on-Sunday-chicken-sandwich establishment.  I swear they put an addictive ingredient in their chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly.  After lunch, we headed over to the theater to see Wall-E, which was brilliant.

Friday night, I slept the sleep of the righteous.  

Saturday, I got up and drove to Arab, about an hour away for an IDPA match.  I did terribly, but it was fun.  Saturday night, Greg took us to dinner for his birthday.  That doesn’t make any sense unless you know how generous my family all are, then it makes perfect sense.

On Sunday afternoon, I managed to make it to another IDPA match in Manchester, TN, about an hour and a half away.  I didn’t do too bad here, but I suspect most of the people I was shooting with are all classified better than MM.

On Monday morning, I made it to work just in time; I needed the rest!

Tough breaks

It’s been a really tough year for the conservative movement first with the loss of William F. Buckley Jr., and now with the loss of Tony Snow.  I’ve talked about Tony in these pages once or twice before, and described him as an overgrown boy scout, and possibly the nicest guy in media.  Tony was down-to-earth and as confident as you’d need to be as an adult man playing a flute in a rock band.  Tony was always optimistic and polite.  We’ll miss that.  There aren’t enough like him to go around, and our prayers go out to his family.  His death is a detriment to the nation.

Of Wedding Bells and Close Shaves…

We at the Daft Musings Hall have had a flurry of activity disrupt our normally sedate and sedentary lives of quiet contemplation.  On the Friday after Liberty Day, we drove to Pell City to participate in the matrimonial proceedings of our brother Robb.  This being the second such arrangement for each of the principals, we were amused by the bride’s suggestion that she complete the ceremony with her three-year-old daughter on her hip.  Fortunately for all concerned, she didn’t go through with that amusing plan.  The service was simple and short.  Indeed the pictures drug on significantly longer that the ceremony.  

Both bride and groom managed to get through it without any significant gaffes (such as failing to remember to kiss the bride).

We gifted Robb with an excellent Weber One-Touch grill and the admonition that neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night should ever keep him from using it.  Also, we threw in a nice Vulfix shaving brush and the most excellent Taylor of Old Bond Street Lavender shaving cream so that the groom could fail at being scruffy on his wedding day.

As best-man, the heavy responsibility of the bachelor party was to me.  Again, this was a simple affair replete with the absence of debauchery.  We arrived at one of Robb’s formerly frequent haunts at about 10:15.  Robb had a couple of Newcastle Brown Ales, and because I didn’t notice the beer list, I had a single Amber Bock (which is neither and amber nor a bock) while we enjoyed our Rocky Patel Vintage 1990 Churchills.  We were back at the hotel by 12:30.  We had a great time despite being menaced by a very tall and excessively drunk man who insisted on standing between me and the exit.  I don’t know what he wanted and he probably didn’t either.  I think that was as close to condition red I’ve ever been.  Fortunately, being sober I was able to outrun and outsmart him by walking around a table.  Mitch Hedberg was wrong.  This dude had legs and was flammable, and he was blocking a fire escape…  Total cost of the bachelor party: $37.

After the reception, we headed for home, and the ToS slept the whole way.

On Sunday after church, we headed out to the Huntsville International Airport for the 2008 Air Show.  The plan was to enjoy the excitement of the Blue Angels.  We got a good deal more excitement than we could enjoy, but the Blue Angels stayed on the ground.  

There was a thunderstorm headed toward us as we got out of the truck.  We talked about it, and Amy ran back about 50 yards to the truck and grabbed her umbrella.  While she was coming back toward us, I heard the air boss on the radio, lining up the next airplane.  He told the pilot that the storm was about 10 miles wide and moving fast, but that the worst part of it had pushed up to the north.  He also said that there was clear weather behind this storm.  The air boss didn’t expect it to last long, so the pilot should hold his position while air show operations were suspended for a few minutes while it passed.

We walked on into the gate, paid our $10, and tried to move on to the exhibits and vendor booths.  As we crossed in front of the six F/A-18 blue and yellow planes, nature betrayed us.  The rain that had been light sprinkles a moment before was now peppering us.  We turned the ToS’s stroller perpendicular to the wind, pulled down her canopy tight, and put the umbrella out to block the wind and rain.  I put my left shoulder into the stroller to keep it from blowing over, and Amy held on to her umbrella like Mary Poppins in a tornado.  

And the wind did blow, and the wind did howl, and all we could do was hold on and laugh.  Yes, we laughed.  The world was coming apart around us, and we laughed.  The ToS didn’t cry, scream, or even look concerned.  People were screaming, but there was nowhere to run.  My guess is that there were over 50,000 people there., caught out in the open  while the storm intensified over our heads.  There was nothing anyone could have done.  The wind and rain were so intense that you couldn’t have seen to run even if you’d have had a place to run.

There wasn’t much lightning, and that which was there seemed to have developed on the east side of the storm after that part of it had passed over our heads.  I remember that during my scouting days we were taught never to sit under a tree during a lightning storm.  Regardless, our first instinct during a storm like this is to seek any kind of shelter.  In this case, that turned out to be the exact wrong thing to do.

Amy swears it lasted ten minutes.  I’d be shocked to learn that it lasted as much as four.  After an eternity huddled behind our umbrella, the horizontal wall of rain gave way to a light vertical sprinkling.  Then the rain stopped, and the sun appeared.  Then the ambulances and fire trucks appeared.  Then the announcer told everyone that the air show was cancelled.  What we would later find out had been a microburst had turned over at least a dozen of the VIP tents.  It was apparent immediately that people had been hurt.  What we didn’t know until the next day was that a 5-year-old boy had been killed when a generator fell on him.  The only available shelter in sight was that row of tents, and ironically they were the least safe place to be.

Again, we are given a somber reminder of how fragile we are, and no matter how much the hippies like to pretend otherwise nature is not the green mother.  She is unkind, unfeeling, unpredictable, and extremely dangerous.  We hope that given the history Huntsville has with the aerospace industry, we get another air show soon.  I worry that with the litigious culture we’re cursed with, it will be many years before we see another.