Surfing the Second Wave

A week ago my middle daughter came over for some help with Calculus. She’s dangerously walking the line of what I do and don’t remember but if I’m lucky I can brush up on some of it before she gets here and be of assistance. While here she started to run a fever. Ordinarily this is no reason for alarm. But these are no ordinary times.

She works at a retirement home at the front door. One of her responsibilities is to take the temperature of anyone coming in—to make sure they don’t have the dreaded virus*. So now we are all worried she has it. Which in turn means that it was an ineffective way of stopping it but that’s not the point. The next day she got tested. Both the quick and the dead. Wait, that’s the two kinds of bayonet fighters, the two tests were the quick and the 3 day one (or whatever their official names are). When the quick test came back with a positive it also came back with a note that the quick test is 70% inaccurate so wait for the slow test. Sure enough, the other test came back positive, too. Apparently it only has a 37% inaccurate result but I didn’t know that yet.

This meant that the rest of us had to get our medulla oblongata massaged by a q-tip. The whole ordeal was not as bad as it could have been though I swear there was something on that thing they shoved in my nose as the insides burned slightly for several hours.

Truly the worst part of the whole test was that the nurse who did the test told me I couldn’t go to the Chic-Fil-A drive through. We used the app and pulled into the parking lot instead. Next time I’m not asking.

Quarantine, one of the longest four letter words I know. It isn’t as though we weren’t used to isolation, but we were further removed than the removed state we had been in off and on for the last 7 months. While worrying about what would happen. Did we get it? Did we miss it? What was next?

We were told that we could sign up for an online service and possibly get our results on Sunday. They were wrong. It was middle of Monday before we got the word we were negative. A major sigh of relief.

I truly believe that we had it back in January. I also believe that here in the US we rolled our second wave into the first wave because we never stopped having cases reported. I seems that other countries are having their second wave now. Questions still abound. Did we not get it because we had it already? Did we test too early and it just hadn’t shown up? Did the fact that none of us have symptoms mean anything? Did the symptoms that did pop up only because we googled the most googled question of 2020—what are the symptoms? Can I say symptoms one more time in this paragraph? Yes, is that a symptom of something?

Surfing is a weird sport, not that I follow it regularly. It is much more of a sport than poker and more of a sport than corn hole (which had championship games on ESPN this last weekend). Sometimes when watching a surfing event a surfer gets into a pipeline and is swallowed up by a wave that goes over their head. When this happens they almost always wipe out. It’s a real crash and burn scene. But when they manage to shoot out of the end of the pipeline, even if you know nothing about the sport you know that you have witnessed an incredible event.

My family and I surfed the second wave. We shot out of the end of the pipeline and it was a beautiful thing. None of us are back on the beach yet but I pray you either don’t get as close to the breakers as we did or pull off a similar feat.

*Several of my friends and readers have different thoughts on the pandemic. Some of you want me to call it COVID-19. Some want me to call it Wuhan Flu, or even the dreaded Lung Pao Sicken. But I’m not calling it any of those. I’m just going with the Harry Potter he who would not be named. And he is used in the unknown gender sense that English teaches should default to the masculine. And if English teaches differently now I’m not learning any more. Look, I already went to one space after the period, leave me alone with the changes.

Lawn Musings

Wonderful thing about cutting the grass, you can solve all the problems of the world while doing it. The only bad part is that the clarity of you solutions dissipate in inverse proportion to the length of time since the engine has been turned off.* In other words, as quick as summer vacation ends for a 9 year old.

Upon my return from Europe I again had access to my lawn tractor. I’ve always called it a lawn mower but after this story, it can only be a lawn tractor—you don’t do things like this to mowers. It was my first non-borrowed riding mower and I was quite proud of it. Not quite as proud as Lowe’s was of it, but I did get a pretty sweet deal on it. Each time I used it I washed it and put it back in the garage taking good care of it.

It was to my horror to see that the people who rented my house did not take a similar level of care for it. Having been left out in the rain (a lot) and not being washed down means that there are stains, the seat is separating from its support, and there is a small oil leak in the front. The battery no longer seems to hold a charge, which means you can’t get up after you start it unless you want to push it back into the garage.

When I first used it to cut the grass it was very difficult and strange. Now the grass was quite high so I thought that was it but it did some strange things: bogging down when I reversed, strange metallic noises when I turned, and it didn’t seem to be cutting at its full 48 inch capacity. I have never liked to weed eat so when I got done there were clippings all over and spots that needed weed eating which made the yard look almost as bad as it had before I cut it.

Fast forward a few days, maybe a week. My brother-in-law came over and cut (and weed eat) the yard after which it looked fantastic. He has a mulching blade on his mower and I decided it was time for me to change the blades. There were no mulching conversion kits at Lowe’s though. I also had problems with my grill but there are more things people are low or out of. It’s almost like the whole world quit working for a few months.

Finally, the kit arrived in the mail and I went to change the blades. First two went without a problem but then I noticed the third blade was missing. That explained the weird cut. The next day I went to purchase a new bolt, in typical fashion I got the wrong bolt, but when I took one of the others off to use as a reference I found out that I couldn’t bolt it in. Something was wrong with the threads or the spindle or both. So it was back to the internet. Meanwhile, trying to figure out how to take out the spindle I realized that there was a broken bracket holding the deck on. This explained the backing up problems as well as the noises. Mystery solved meant it was time for a solution.

The bracket as a solution was a pretty good idea but not very restrictive in movement for something so prone to vibration. After all, the deck does contain 3 spinning blades all working in conjunction with one another to eliminate the height of grass while simultaneously allowing a provision for pondering world changing events with a clarity unmatched by any genius or think tank in the known free world. So we added another bracket. But of course, if we only had one to start with we needed to look for what was on hand and use that. This did not turn out to be as big a problem as it could have been because with the arrival of my furniture from Germany came my supply of extra parts, pieces, and dreadfully important things I couldn’t live without. Finding them in the crowded garage would of course be a problem as I hadn’t unpacked most of it yet.

The second bracket was smaller but no less important than the first. It was what I could find because at that point neither one of us wanted to admit defeat by having to go back to the hardware store. The fact that the store was already closed meant little compared to the fact that what it really meant was that we’d have to go a much further distance to reach The Home Depot or Lowe’s.

The problem is that even with the second bracket the piece still was not going to hold. It was sandwiched in between the remaining pieces of broken weld that it didn’t move, but it still really needed another bracket. One we didn’t have. You may notice the pattern below the deck in the pictures. That’s from Ginger’s car, I put the deck in her vehicle so I could find a welder. And that is the point of the story.

I have found in life that the best situation to be in if you don’t know something is to know someone who does. Next best is to find someone who does. Not being a welder, I found one. One that some might have thought a little sketchy. As I pulled into the dirt road and saw a half-built house, Kubota front end loader, and a fire burning with what looked like construction trash I had every reason to doubt I was in the right place. But this is Alabama where this can also be interpreted as the right place for what I needed.

Once the guy looked at what he did his first response was that he would have to charge me extra because of the repair job we had done. Then he said never to use JB Weld on anything structural. Followed in rapid succession by “Are you an engineer?” In my brief defense I had on a t-shirt from the first Corps of Engineers construction job I worked on so it wasn’t a huge mental leap.

After all that, he cut off the old brackets and welded the thing better than it was when I bought it. Then we proceeded to have one of those long, drawn out Southern conversations which rambled (though it was interesting) and included not once but twice hunkering down to draw a sketch in the dirt with a stick. Classic good ol’ boy conversation. I went back home and reattached the deck and cut the grass. This was two weeks before Hurricane Sally.

The Saturday before Sally hit I went out to cut my grass. The first unwritten rule of hurricanes is cut your grass the day before it arrives because you don’t know when you’ll be able to cut it afterwards. But the thing wouldn’t start. I tinkered to no avail then asked three different people who all suggested I needed a new battery. I did, but that still didn’t fix it. The storm came and went before I finally figured out it was the main fuse.

I wasn’t able to figure this out until two Saturdays after Sally but finally I was able to cut the grass and with my new mulcher eliminate both the clippings and the nagging storm debris leaves and sticks. When I finished I thought there were more clippings left than I wanted so I decided to go over the front yard again.

People say that things happen in threes. But people are idiots. If you wait long enough something else will happen. I laughed hard than I should have when this happened.

As I rounded the corner the wheel took off and I wondered which would stop first, the wheel or the lawn tractor. Turns out they both stopped at the same time.

Apparently the wisdom you gain while cutting the grass leaves even faster when the job is cut short due to technical problems. No new revelations about what drives or fixes the world, but a whole lot of drama in getting the job done. Just another day in paradise living in the bubble and loving the mundane.

*The analogy only works with powered lawn mowers (gas, electric, or other) as manually powered lawn mowing devices come with their own requirements for thinking. How am I going to not cut my prize daffodils, how will this push mower handle the holes in the back yard, and why didn’t I spring for a powered mower. There is an entire subset of thoughts that go along with a robotic mower but I came up with them while mowing.

Now with Comosline!

At several points along the journey of this blog I have changed the title. This was representative of what was going on and (most importantly) where I was. All along each little tidbit of prose has been a missive from my mind and counts as a little Byrd Dropping.

When I started the journey it was The Hole on the End of the Bible Belt, representative of my life in, around, and all throughout the place I call home but I moved. I deployed to Afghanistan as a civilian where my “uniform” was a different set of clothing. No business casual and no neckties (I love neckties) so it became A Year Without Wearing a Tie. Traveling the world and especially Afghanistan I had an opportunity to see not only the world but the US from outside. And it was eye-opening. Learning about a completely different corner of the world was incredible. I got to see some incredible sights, meet some wonderful people especially Afghan, and grew a special place in my heart for somewhere I may never get to see again. Eventually that ended and I returned to a new position back home in LA (that’s the original LA, Lower Alabama).

For most of that time my blog was messed up and I didn’t post but soon enough I got an opportunity to take my family with me to see the US from outside and we jumped in both feet first. Living in Europe was uncomfortable and yet incredible. It was then that Outside the Comfort Bubble became the name. We traveled, we saw, we learned, we experienced. We were uncomfortable but experienced life as other see it. We ate sausage Berliners in Berlin; waffles in Belgium; a hamburger in Hamburg; a frankenfurter in Frankfurt; fries, toast, and bread in france; Nürnbergers in Nürnberg; cheese in Switzerland; and there were sausages in both Vienna and Poland. It wasn’t just about food but we ate schnitzel, escargot, and all measures of food that are common in places other than North America.

We traveled as much as we could. We saw Paris (like New Orleans without the urine smell), we saw the Alps (they take my breath away every time), we saw Switzerland (where their hospitality outshines the extreme hospitality of the South), and we absolutely fell in love with Budapest. But there was more. And there is still more to see. But family needs brought us back.

So we’re back in LA, in the hidden jewel of the State of Alabama and ready to see things with a newly opened set of eyes. No doubt you will roll your eyes as I sound like “that guy” who talks longingly of things done differently in another world. But the observations continue, the opportunities abound, and like the spice, the observations must flow.

Byrd Droppings for all. Now with Cosmoline.

Back in LA

After the longest time I have ever been in one job position and the longest time I have ever had from accepting a job and starting a job we are finally back in LA—Lower Alabama.

There were a lot of memorable things to write about and share but sometimes things happen at the speed of life and this was one of those times. Traveling during the corona time is challenging so we’ll start with that.

The itinerary changed more times than I care to remember, too. My normal München/Atlanta/Mobile flights were not running. There was a choice to fly from Nürnberg to Frankfurt (a flight that begins the descent before it finishes the ascent) to Houston to Mobile. Another option was Frankfurt to Atlanta to Mobile (which later changed to Houston vice Atlanta). Oddly, I would have had to leave earlier to drive the one hour to Nürnberg for the flight than if I were to drive the three hours to Frankfurt for the flight.

There were options to travel through Boston and San Francisco but the oddest option was to travel through Doha. Most of these included an overnight stay and had 30 hour travel times. I avoided all of those though. The best way ended up being to fly into Pensacola rather than Mobile, not because of price but time.

Even still, it was over twenty hours in airports and airplanes. Twenty plus hours in a mask stinks. Doubly so if you chew rather than eschew the chicken curry for the cheese and onion tortellini.

Eventually we arrived and the first thing I discovered is that despite the fact that I had thought it out, my estimate of the time needed to get things set up was off by at least a month. The guy who set up all my flight arrangements thought landing on Tuesday and starting work on Monday was a good idea. And as a point of reference, I’m wearing that guy’s underwear.

But this is where Serendipity rears her head again. The District here is in maximum telework still. But it isn’t mandatory. Maximum non-mandatory. I can say it all day long but I can’t really grasp how that oxymoron works. So day one I went in to fill out some paperwork and get my new mobile phone (my Mobile mobile). After calling to set it up I discovered that I cannot set up my email without getting an email. More oxymorons, right? I can’t get an email at all until I can log into my new laptop. So on to step two.

My new laptop was not ready until Tuesday. So I went in to pick it up, but I cannot log into it until I get a new CAC. That sounds easy, so I went downstairs to the CAC Office where I discovered that I can’t get a new CAC until I have a user ID. Guess how I find out about getting a user ID? Yep, an email.

For those keeping track, I need an email to be able to do some training to get a CAC to be able to log into my laptop to set up email so I can get an email that will allow me to be able to set up my Mobile mobile. After which time I’ll be able to telework.

All of which needs to be done during a time of maximum telework.

But not mandatory.

The saga continues. More to follow soon (I hope).

Gender

Earlier today my oldest daughter had a Facebook Live post where she had planned a gender-reveal party, a relatively recent sign of the times, for her friend. It was mostly properly social distant, a more recently added sign of the times. But the whole thing reminded me of my first (non-party) gender reveal—her.

Even before we were married we had agreed that while we might be able to find out the gender we wanted it to be a surprise. It was a very mutual agreement. Fast forward a few years and we were walking into the hospital for the ultrasound where we might be able to find out the baby’s sex. While Madigan Army Medical Center was a modern, then state of the art, facility the doors were not automatic and as I pulled one open Ginger said, “I want to know the sex.”

Now ordinarily posting a story like this could be taken as me trying to make her seem indecisive or less “smart” than me. But this was during pregnancy. Her ability to change her mind was an innate, indisputable prerogative that she and any woman in a similar state has. No representation is made that this was anything beside that. If a pregnant woman decides she wants something she has never before or since has wanted it is her right even if you do have to drive all the way to the other side of town to get it.

Side note, do not even think about not going to the other side of town to get it for her or you WILL regret it for the rest of your life.

Back on point, through the whole walk to the appointment we went back and forth with me (stupidly) reminding her of our previous agreement. This discussion continued as we went in for the procedure. At the point of the ultrasound where we could find out the technician asked us if we were discussing if we wanted to know. When I told her the whole story—because that’s what I do—she commented that it didn’t matter because the baby had its legs crossed.

To this I replied, “We’re Southern Baptists, it’s a girl!” And the rest is accurate history.

Faith and the Last Snow Day

What follows is the text of a story written by my youngest daughter. It is unedited and is just the way she wrote it. For context, we have been stuck in the house for two weeks already due to the coronavirus. Bavaria instituted controls before the rest of the country, and then began a (well-enforced) lockdown procedure also before the rest of Germany. In addition to me starting telework, Faith’s school went into online version and one of her assignments was to start a journal. She also has typing practice and writing prompts but neither this piece nor the history of Toy Country (which may later be featured here, too) were a result of her school work. This was just her passing time.

Perhaps I should have expected an output such as this from her simply from seeing the title of her journal “The Day the World Went Home” but this story really grabbed me. I fear she may beat me to publication.

On 31 Mar 2020 it began to snow, It is probably the last time we’ll see snow this year. In our backyard are a swings, a treehouse, and a koi pond with a bridge over it. Most of our meals during lockdown are eaten in the living room where we try to watch a movie or show as a family and for the most part she sits with her plate on the hearth of the fireplace rather than her lap.

The snowflakes fall heavily in the afternoon, as I glance outside of my window, smiling at the sight of snow. The snow falls on the trees, and everything else that remains motionless. The trees start to shake with the wind blowing between their branches. They shake as if they do not like the snow. I sit in the swing, looking up at the sky. A snowflake lands on the lense [sic] of my glasses. It melts and makes a splotch. I frown. But, then, I remember one thing. The treehouse. I run on the cold, snowy grass and climb the ladder, swiftly. I go through the passageway in the treehouse, glancing outside. I pretend I am an eskimo, trying to stay warm in a small, elevated, shaggy, run-down house. I lay Mister Stork and Lamby down as I walk, barefooted, in my thin hoodie, to the tiny hallway, exposed to the open. I stare at the sky once more. I then hear my mother’s voice, “Dinner, dear!” She calls. I grab Lamby and the stork and jump down my ladder. I dash over not-so-green grass in my barefooted toes. I run across the brid[g]e and nearly fall in the koi pond. I run inside and slam the door, realizing I still have the splotch on my glasses sense [sic]. “Honey bun?” My mother asks. “Coming,” I reply, cooly. My mother and father sit on the couch. I sit at the fireplace hearth with mashed potatoes and roast beef. “Wait!” I exclaim. “What about the blessing?” So all the family (including the stork and lamb) say the blessing and get in on our delicious meal.

Tinfoil Hat 2

As I’ve mentioned before, if you’re going to wear a tinfoil hat, wear a big tinfoil hat. In that vein I offer the following potential situation:

My latest theory is that within the next 6 to 8 weeks a report will be leaked that reveals quaternary ammonia production is bad for the environment, increases greenhouse gas emissions, and has lost its innate ability to serve as an anti-microbial solution. In layman’s terms: hand sanitizing gel is bad for the climate and doesn’t kill germs.

In advance of this leaked report, at the end of last year the hand-sanitizing gel industry created the Coronavius Inert Deception 2019 or COVID-19. This was done in an effort to create mass panic and thereby cause a run on their products cleaning out the shelves of stores and increasing the street market value as currently being witnessed. Once they have eliminated the warehouses of stored product, the report will be “leaked” and the industry will collapse on itself. Then we can go back to worrying about the little things, like the flu.

There is a similar theory to this about facemarks but it’s just too whacko to mention.

Serendipitous Day

Serendipity takes me everywhere, and when I say everywhere I mean sometimes I want to check the lottery tickets kind of lucky. Today has been one of those days.

It started when I went to look for info about plane tickets that may or may not change due to coronavirus restrictions. While waiting I got an email that said I need a copy of my Dad’s death certificate to go with my request for reimbursement for my plane ticket home. I left the travel agency and went to the post office where the letter with the death certificate had arrived. Also a letter from my Aunt Maggie but more on that in a minute.

Then I traveled to the food court at the Exchange. Usually I pick my food choice on the shortest line but today (Serendipity) the lunch I wanted was the shortest line. I headed for the line and right before I got there two people walked up and got there before me. No problem, just took a little longer to order. But when I did order, the number they would call for me to pick up my food was my favorite single digit number, nine (I have favorite multi-digit numbers all the way up to 8 because who needs a favorite 9 digit number?). Kind of a weak point, but still a point.

Then, while eating, I got an email from someone about a meeting tomorrow. I try to avoid meetings whenever possible but this one in particular would involve two people I know will have difficulty communicating. Both will think they know what the other is trying to tell them and both will be wrong, so I’m particularly not looking forward to this. The only way to make this meeting worse would be if it were telephonic. The email said the party that has to travel would not be able to make it and asked if it were possible to make it a telephonic meeting. But here’s the silver lining, no matter if I try hard or not it might not happen, not trying too hard to make it work is an option. In a rare confluence of events I have the ability to answer with the Corps of Engineers motto: Essayons! Which is french for We Can Try! Ordinarily I would say that we can do sans french but in this case it just feels right.

Now a brief departure from today’s events as a way of explanation. Last week I had a passing thought that was one of those questions I would have normally asked my Dad. He isn’t here to answer, which makes me the keeper of useless knowledge, however, I can’t keep what I don’t know. The question I pondered was where his middle name, Douglas, came from? It isn’t a family name so where did it come from? This brings me back to Aunt Maggie’s letter.

I haven’t gotten a chance to read correspondence from Aunt Maggie since she got back from sailing around the world (approximately 1982-2003 and mostly just to Europe but that was ‘around the world’ to us Mississippi Coast residents). Excited I opened it up, it included a picture of her holding my Dad when he was just a few months old. She shared a few anecdotes of his younger years but then I flipped over to page two. There on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side (OK, not really but how often do I get to quote Alice’s Restaurant?) There she asked me if I knew where Dad’s middle name came from.

As much as I’m used to Serendipity taking me everywhere there are times She still floors me.

Post Script to the Blog:

It’s almost anti-climactic to say that Mama Byrd was a big fan of Douglas MacArthur and that’s where Dad’s middle name came from. And never mind the fact that it seems my luck ran out because I can’t find where I put Dad’s Lottery Ticket numbers when I got home to try and check them.

And just as anti-climatic but ever so important, the caveat explanation of redundant repetition: to me Serendipity, Coincidence, Luck, and Karma are all synonyms for Providence.

Tinfoil Hat

For most of my time with the Corps of Engineers I have missed the Chief Engineer’s visit. Either he arrived the week I was traveling or moved to a new location, any number of things. At times it felt like the Chief Engineer was avoiding me. But finally this past year I had an occasion to be in the same place as him.

There was a “Meet and Greet” followed by a brief speech in the lobby of our District Headquarters. I was able to meet the Chief, more on that in a minute, but later in the day the Chief was talking with my supervisor who mentioned being over Grafenwöhr. To which the Chief Engineer responded, in a carefully measured tone, “Oh. I met your Grafenwöhr Resident Engineer.”

As I walked into the lobby of the building, the first person I saw was LTG Semonite. Walking up to him I introduced myself and reminded him we had met before. He was the South Atlantic Division Commander at the time and I had been with the Corps about three weeks. When I told him I was sure he remembered me he laughed but he did actually remember the trip because we spoke about one of the projects he visited on that trip.

He asked me where I was and if we had any big projects coming up. I told him Grafenwöhr and about two of our big military construction projects that would be awarded soon. His followup question was a bit strange because he asked if I had heard anyone say that there were some MILCON projects that were serving as places to “park” money to shift quickly to Poland if those jobs materialized. “Well, sir,” I said, “If you’re going to wear a tinfoil hat, wear a big one.” Then proceeded to launch into my spiel.

In addition to hearing a rumor that there would be a parking of funds as he described I was also aware of the money that Poland had committed to the building of infrastructure in their country. For the purposes of this conversation I left out the tactical stupidity of such an investment but went on about funding. With the ability of the President to shift MILCON funding, I surmised that the projects were parking funds in Germany to shift to Poland where the Polish money would then be used as the projects were shifted to construct the border wall with Mexico. Which would mean that we would get a wall and POLAND would pay for it.

Now, I’m not saying I hit the nail on the head but the man would not look me in the eyes after that.

What I Thought I'd Be Doing

The month of February started out with a bang. At the end of January, I took a quick trip back to LA (that’s Lower Alabama) to work on my house and get it on the market, arriving back home on my 28th wedding anniversary. Then, the next day was the Super Bowl. I haven’t missed watching a Super Bowl since XV (though I had to tape one or two to watch later). This devotion to the game made getting baptized on Super Bowl Sunday hard (it was one of the taped games) except of course that was during the Bills years—and the same week I got married.

In the airport on the way home I worked on a post for a friend and author who has a monthly Guest Author Spotlight. I rushed to get it in on 31 Jan since it was a short month albeit one extra day this year. So what I thought I’d be posting on this month was this. In honor of Carnival season on the Gulf Coast, or Fasching as it’s known in Germany where I’ve been living, I used for a profile picture my Mardi Gras shot from Kandahar Airfield. You may not be able to see them but I have my Snidely Whiplash handlebars waxed and curled while wearing my Whiskey Tango Foxtrot t-shirt and a float-load of first thrown in Fairhope beads. I had intended to get a slightly more on point shrimp boat or schooner picture before the excerpt from my Prohibition Era piece The Seafood Capital of the World.

Monica, the author of the website, is also the author of The Highland Spirits series. The first two books have been published with the third being worked on. I highly recommend them even though they aren’t my normal genre to read. The books mix Scottish legend with modern love, loss and intrigue. There are ghosts and kilts galore woven beautifully together into a page turning book experience.

The 3rd of February sent my world into a bit of a tailspin, as you can see from my previous two posts this month. It has also resulted in my jet-lag awakening at 2 am but since my world is going to get back on track, so should my life. So with no further ado, here is what I thought I’d be doing this month. Proudly showing my Author Spotlight and plugging my author friend’s work. Check them both out, you won’t be disappointed.

https://mmackinnonwriter.com/guest-author-spotlight-2/

And of course if you’re interested in The Seafood Capital of the World, there is a link below to both the current draft and to subscribe to my blog.

Dad Gets One More

My father had a weekly lunch with two of his brothers on Fridays. I’m not sure when they started doing this but it was some time after their other two brothers passed. If I was in town when they did it I attended and more than once they shifted the date so I could attend. I’ve even blogged about attending before, in particular I recall a time that my Dad sat just listening to his older brother talk. Yet another moment to learn from him.

Dad talked about their lunches often. They rotated paying for each other, but were notoriously bad about leaving wallets or forgetting whose turn it was. Dad especially loved to share how one of the brothers complained when someone else bought Dad always got a more expensive meal. More than once they tricked one another into being the one that paid. All good-natured ribbing from the brothers of the same mother.

The last day before leaving town after my father’s service was a Friday, a Byrd Boy Lunch day. I called Uncle Pat and got myself invited. Uncle Laurence picked him up then swung by to get me. Quite a few years ago I saw a shirt in a catalog Dad had (which my wife purchased for me) that said “Dangerously Overeducated.” I was wearing this shirt when they picked me up. They both laughed and for the third time since the services someone said, “I thought we lost Johnny but he’s still here.” I take all three comments as a compliment.

When I called to invite myself I contemplated making a joke about how Dad would be upset if I missed an opportunity for his brothers to buy his lunch one more time but instead I waited. Sometimes a joke, like a story, needs a little work to get just right. There would be time at the restaurant so I let it marinate for the short ride down the road. Once we arrived we waited our turn to order and continued the expected reminiscing and discussing that had been going on in the car. They nodded for me to go first so I order my (expensive) oyster po-boy, then noticed that the guy wrote their (less expensive) orders on the same pad. So my uncles had out-maneuvered me. As I took the slip to the cashier to pay I was told, “Oh, by the way, it was your Daddy’s turn to pick up the tab.”

As I pulled out my wallet I smiled and showed them Dad’s debit card as I told them both, “I know, and he is.”

They laughed, I laughed, we laughed, we ate. And in Heaven, I imagine, a soul stopped declaring the glory and enjoyed once more getting one over on his brothers.