Imagining how it was riding to Gainesville and back every day, working in a busy doctors office, the stress that led to the crash of 2009. Imagining how I could ride a century with Roger or a marathon with Hambone in under three hours, today unable to run a mile without stopping to catch the breath.
Of taking foreign jaunts to Mediterranean islands, lying upon sea shores in bliss, while back home wondering how the lights were going to remain burning. And the coffee was consumed, with sugar and whole milk.
Who shall go to the store and buy the good cream? The hazelnut? Will it be I, or her, or we, as we both have time enough to sit and sip coffee soon?
So yesterday, in a fit of cabin fever, mom sleeping til noon and Melanie lazing, watching the birds hunt for the dwindling seeds, I said, let us go to Huddle House and eat. It was a good plan. By one we were in our corner seat ordering the MVP for 5.99, two bacons, one sausage, grits and toast, waffle, scrambled, bisquits or meme, and so it went down. The pregnant waitress sitting to take our order.
Talked a spell with Mr Sherrod in the booth over of traveling down the Suwannee, of what levels the water is best, and we determined it to be around 53 to 55 feet somehow.
From the HH we were stopped by a slow train on Marion at Railroad and speculated further upon empty lots and how churches would be nice here, amidst the rubble across the street, beside the old Wicks Lumber store, now a derelict club closed. And so the cross rails raised and I said, let us see if the soup kitchen is still open. And it was. So we rode past the cemetery beside the tracks where the boy and his dog rests.
On down past the tobacco barns, past the now non christian Christian Service Center, speculating as to how it all ends when government assistance begins. Turning into Forest Lawn to Gwendolyn and Bascombs well kept graves by Laura Ruth their loving daughter. Down to the two markers of Helena's one and two day old sons, to Mossy Jesus standing guard beside them, hidden behind the lichen in plain sight. O'er to Mrs Hunters, lamenting the lack of lily's upon her site, mamma always picking some for her. I said I will steal some if I see some and was upbraided. O'er to Kimberly Leach in the far corner, murdered at thirteen by Theodore Bundy, his last kill. Out and down toward the kindergarten center where the red caboose now rests in Ft White, o'er to the homes of the VA Chaplin and Steve Stafford and his unkempt blueberries, pointing out here a camellia and there a tulip tree. Down to the station across from Roundtree Toyota for fifty dollars worth of gas. O'er to G&K to see if there were more camellia's, finding few. Onto the neighborhood of Alamo and Judy and other home care patients in the past. Down 47 and way out to find Mrs Margarets house, never finding it, missing the turn, ending up on Christ Central Road and back on another Witt Road to 47 again and heading down to Mason City for more Camellia's, finding one white we think we will like and purchasing it for sixteen dollars in the three gallon size. Back down Gabe road past Arky Rogers wood stick fences, behind Hopeful and to the intersection of Country Club and two fifty two. Seeing Mr Markham in his yard beside the gourd pile. Melanie getting out and asking him if they were for sale. He was going to give them to her but she offered to buy them for a dollar a gourd, so we bought ten. And so we made a new friend, the lonely man on the corner who grows the huge garden, who lost his wife, who has a bad back, but not bad upon the tractor, only bad when hoeing. And so it was agreed I would hoe for a gourd. We shall see. Nearing home, mama wanted to see again the fake oversized animals at the estate of the B&B family, the competition in the county to the S&S family. Content to see the ten foot rooster beside apes, we made it home, where her happiness drained when it was learned they were coming for her later on.
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