Summer is a good time to think. Life is busy. As the Nationwide Insurance commercial said, “life comes at you fast.” And at that speed, it tees up challenges to address quicker than you can dispense with them. Fortunately, after you retire, you have more time to think about things.
I do. And the lazy summer months help. Here are some things I’m thinking about.
Things to Write
It’s convenient for me to think about things to write because I do so throughout the week. When I write these missives each week, I try to think of interesting things. I’ve been thinking a lot about the country lately. It’s hard not to. So many things are topsy-turvy. Good is bad. Bad is good. I think of the words Lewis Carroll put in the mouth of his Mad Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, are appropriate for America in 2024.
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”
Does this ring true for you in a world where you’re told inflation is under control while you mortgage your home to shop for groceries? Or that men can become women and vice versa? What about a world where university presidents won’t openly condemn antisemitism for fear that they will make antisemites angry? Or school boards who tell you it’s acceptable for boys to use the girl’s bathroom or insist that children can pick the pronouns they call themselves, while schools are prohibited from telling the parents of their kid’s “choices?” Yep, the Mad Hatter has it about right. And thanks to the lunacy of our times, there’s no shortage of writing topics for me to consider.
Boats
When I think about boats these days, it’s usually accompanied with the happy thought that I don’t own one. You know the humorous definition that a boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money. Boating is fun. But it’s not cheap. Even when I had a 22-foot Catalina sailboat, the wind was free, but the upkeep wasn’t. Neither was my 20-foot Sea Ray motorboat easily maintained. Both are gone now, and I am free of those burdens.
Yet I have a fondness for watercraft. Especially older ones. If you travel to the Reedville Fisherman’s Museum, you can see a restored Chesapeake Deadrise. The Deadrise was a popular boat with watermen used by them year-round for various tasks including crabbing, oystering, and fishing. These wooden craft have sharp bows and “V” bottoms that get progressively flatter toward the stern and were powered either by a single V-8 gasoline engine and later by four- or six-cylinder General Motors diesels. Many have a small cabin forward and a large open cockpit for the workman. I’ve always loved these and often thought what fun it would be to restore one as a pleasure craft for family outings on warm summer evenings. By the way, the deadrise workboat is the official boat of the Commonwealth of Virginia. I’m thinking it would be fun to have one, maybe even to restore it.
Grandkids
Yep, grandkids are the dessert of life. We have five now and they have all successfully captured our hearts. It’s fun to watch them grow and also to observe our kids raising them. They are doing so very well. Recently I shared with our kids that parenting and grandparenting are quite different. Parents tell their kids that they need to pick up the mess in their bedrooms. However, grandparents have the luxury of telling grandkids why it’s good to pick up the mess in their bedrooms. In other words, grandparents have more fun without enforcement duties.
Smoking
What’s summer without grilling favorite foods over a fire? I love cookouts and recently I’ve been experimenting with smoking pork shoulders and making pulled pork barbeque. We have a small Traeger smoker that uses wood pellets and is a marvelous device for smoking pork, chicken, beef, or fish. But what I like best about smoking food is it takes a while to get it done, often several hours. It slows you down so that you can do other things while your meal is being cooked. And the aroma is just wonderful.
I’m surprised it took so many years for me to take up this sort of smoking. Occasionally, I will have a fine cigar as I supervise the meat smoker doing its work. The government says cigar smoke is dangerous. Given all that is wrong in the country today, I’m sure they’ll soon find a reason to tell me why smoking pork is also a danger to my health. The Mad Hatter was right.
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