First Weekend of Football Season

Well, it is now Sunday and every team I cared about lost this weekend, some by a great deal, others by not much. So now it is Sunday and all the people at Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church were happy with themselves, with the slight exception of the pastor, who seemed to be suffering from the messages he was receiving from the Bible passages he was reading. That was basically the message of his sermon and he was concerned that he couldn't get past the message of Christ in John 15.

At any rate, it was good to get my mind off football and the problems of daily living and think on things of a more spiritual and eternal bent. I can't say I'm there, but it was a good time to get my mind off the usual matters of life. I came back home to the Sicard's house and put on the public radio station which plays traditional music and listen to Cumberland Sunday Morning. I even got to sleep a bit.

This afternoon, everyone has gone to see a movie and I am home with the dogs. Sean Connery is teaching some Highland Scotsman how to fight in a movie, and I would dearly like to go hike up in the mountains nearby, but everyone will be coming home soon and we will be grilling hamburgers and chicken and trying to enjoy the afternoon, despite the overcast and the drizzle.

They expect rain for the next week up here and I am glad I am returning to Georgia tomorrow, although I don't know what the weather will be like down there. Warmer, I assume. But it does feel more like Fall and with the football, I really feel like I am in the season, even though I know it can get hotter and more sunny and feel more like Summer within a day or a few hours.

Oh well, I don't think this is going anywhere. I'll try later.

Labor Day Weekend in Knox-town

Here I am in orange-land. We were driving up earlier and the UT flags were flying on a lot of cars, but not nearly as much as the magnetic UT's and the magnetic Vol helmets. The traffic was crazy. I began to wonder if everyone on I-75 north was heading toward Knox-town for the game. What will they do on Sunday? Will they stay for the rest of Labor Day Weekend?

And of course, the ultimate issue is whether or not they will win this weekend. Since my cousin Jeff, employee of Western Kentucky University is here in Knoxville, I will pull for the Hilltoppers. I assume the game will not be shown on television. I hope the UGA/OSU game will be shown. Everyone seems to be playing a patsy except Alabama and Georgia. Florida is playing Charleston Southern? Someone else is playing Florida Atlantic? What is that? I call that digging low down in the barrel for a win.

We should all pray the players on those teams that have to play Florida and Ohio State. I can imagine that they will be bruised and sore on Sunday. I remember how that was lo, so long ago. Whether you won or lost, you were still so sore on Sunday morning. I was surprised that Kenny could get up and dress for church and attend services. The rest of us were laying in bed, then laying on the couch in front of the NFL game of the week. That was Sunday afternoon in Lexington.

I suppose it might be different with women on campus. Probably is.

Autumn's coming

The weather has turned cool, a bit, and you can feel the onset of Autumn, travelling down from Alaska, across the prairies. It will still get hot during the days here in September and there will even be those days in October, November and December, when the sky will get clear and the temperature will rise so that you know why you still want to live in Georgia. But for now, I am thinking about the coming of apples and honey and the day's light dying earlier in the day, when you can go home or drive up in the mountains on a weekend and feel the coolness and enjoy a sweater or jacket in the evening and catch the peace of the dying of the day and the end of the year.

As much as I enjoy the coming of Spring, when the cold grey days of Winter, short as they are in Georgia, begin to dissipate into the flowers and sunny days of April and May, I also enjoy the coming of Fall and the colors on the leaves and a Saturday afternoon resting on a bench as the light dies and the coolness of the evening descends upon us.

Alaska

It is 1:21 and Cindy and Kate and I are sitting here watching Anthony Bourdain ride a horse (or a jeep) around Livingston, Montana and he is eating good food and catching trout and throwing them back (by mistake) and talking to artists and writers and old railroad men. I watched this last night and wished I was there.

I have already got tourist vacation pamphlets and maps and something about Yellowstone, which is in Montana and Idaho and Wyoming, so I am ready when I get the time and the money to get out there and rent a car and drive from Billings to Livingston and find a place to stay for a few days and drink and eat and walk around and maybe ride a horse or go fishing and enjoy the big sky and the the open land, which is somewhat of a laugh, since so many outside people who have moved into the area have fenced it off and built big houses with big glass windows to see the country in such a way that you don't have to get out into it, which is ridiculous, since the whole reason to go to some place like Montana and Livingston and Yellowstone should be to get out into it, and get wet and sun-burned and tired and be able to go into some place at the end of the day and drink a beer or two and eat a good, simple meal and feel like you were going to sleep soundly during the night, without a care or a thought of the world you left behind that you will ultimately return to anyway, so why worry about it now.

That is what Alaska was like when we went out there with dad several years ago. You would fly to Seattle, then fly to Ketchikan, then fly over to Craig on planes which were gradually getting smaller as you went. The flat rolling hills of the Piedmont of Central Georgia and the soft foothills of North Georgia and all the urban sprawl of Atlanta were so far behind you and it was just a big series of island-mountains covered with trees and bears and moose and elk and little cabins with tin roofs and rough, dented old pickup trucks parked next to them and the sun peeking through the clouds would catch the tin of the roof and make it glow like silver and then you would drop down on the other side of the mountain and come down onto the surface of the water like you were diving into a lake and just as smooth and some rough-looking woman would come out and grab the rope attached to the float plane and pull it over to the dock and you would step gingerly down to the dock and pick up your bag and walk over to the lodge where the fishing guides were located and get settled, then go eat supper before you went to bed in the twilight of seven o'clock in Alaska, which was eleven o'clock our time, but you closed the drapes and opened the window and slept until early in the morning rolled around.

Then you were shuffling down the hallway to eat a little something and watch the fathers drinking their coffee and talking softly as you stepped out of the room and walked down the metal gangway to the dock and greeted your guide as he readied your boat for the day and it was still pretty dark for five o'clock and by the light of the one streetlight out on one of the little islands in the bay you could see the boats and the abandoned old houseboats and the detrius left behind by some former occupants who probably went back home to the lower forty eight or found another place to sleep and work because the salmon cannery was gone and the salmon fishing commercially was not that good but there are still enough fish out in the water.

Finally the engine caught, and we were all inside the boat, facing each other and the lines were released from the cleats and you were backing out of the dock and swinging around and heading out over the glass surface of the water, with just the touch of light blue on the eastern ridge of the mountains on the island, and sliding out toward the rougher water and the bald eagles in the trees, waiting for a supper of salmon innards thrown off the side of your boat by your guide, while you ran those herrings up and down and tried to get some good action off that bait until the guide saw some shadows on the depth finder and you were doing everything you could to get that silver fish up in the boat and you might find yourself with four fishermen, all with fish on the line and the guide scrambling between the fish box and your legs gaffing the fish and popping them in the box and attaching a herring on your hooks so you could get them back in the water and take advantage of such a run.

By the time you were finished you had caught your limit and you were heading out in to deeper water to find some halibut, which is dumb fishing, dropping a big old circle hook with the lungs of a salmon attached to that surgical steel and you were letting the big old ball of guts ride about three feet off the bottom of the ocean, three or four hundred feet down, until you were lucky to feel something heavy pull on it and you pulled back up on the stubby little rod and felt a quick, heavy second tug on the line and then it was pull, wind, pull, wind, pull, wind for anywhere from ten to thirty minutes until that big ugly grey piece of piscine predator showed himself in the water and you were amazed at how big they could get and your guide was popping him on the head with the gaff, hoping to stun him and not wake him up to set him diving back down toward the bottom where he lived, back into the brier patch, so to speak, and then cause you to have to pull, wind, pull, wind, pull, wind until he showed himself again and you could allow the guide to secure him and slip a line through his gills up into and out of his mouth, and pull him back up onto the back of the boat where he would lay hog-tied until you got back home to have your picture taken with one hundred plus pounds of big, ugly, grey fish, which of course, didn't reveal the beautiful white fish steak beneath that ugly grey surface, but it still made a pretty picture on the mantle in your office.

All along while you fished, you got to catch a brief glimpse of the majesty of the place, tree-bedecked mountain-islands sitting in the cold blue water, the sun glinting off the waves and unbelievable blue skies with soft fleecy white clouds floating on the air ocean above us and every so often the white head of a bald eagle sitting in a dying tree somewhere off shore on one of those islands to give you something to focus on and remark that you hadn't really seen anything like that other than in a zoo or aviary, but here they might be just sitting on a telephone pole in town, like a pigeon, looking for scraps, but this is the symbol of our country and so large and powerful there in the tree or on the pole, or you might catch a large grey whale jumping up into the air from below, like it was trying to catch a breeze and fly into the ocean of air above and become a creature of sky, rather than sea, crashing back to the surface of the ocean, causing a large splash of water to pop up above the surface like a young boy doing a giant cannonball, jumping and diving with pleasure and glee like that same young boy, and finally returning to the sea beneath us.

And at the end, you sat down on a picnic table and watched the teenaged girls filleting the fish and popping them in plastic tubs for freezing for your journey back home and you drank a cold beer or maybe ate a left-over cookie or sandwich and laughed with everyone else there and enjoyed sixty degree weather in August and wondered how it could get any better.

The last, best sight was set in my mind when we were all working our lines, trying to catch the attention of some pink and silver demi-god of the ocean, when suddenly, a coho was spinning and jumping and diving and flipping across the water, like a young colt, across the blue surface of the water and it just looked like joy personified and it seemed a shame that one of us had caught him by the mouth and we looked at each other to see who among us had hooked him but obviously no one had because no one was reeling anything in at all and so the last image of Alaska had to be that happy silver salmon, jumping and flipping joyfully across the cold water, laughing at us, or so it seemed, as we watched his play.

At play, at rest, at ease in my mind, forever.

The message in brown eyes

Late at night, when I reach out to touch you under the sheets and you are still, I can't help it but I have to go back to that time when your dark mahogany hair was long, framing your face and your smile was quick and your dark eyes were flashing with a message that I didn't quite read, but maybe a part of me did read it and stashed it away in my mind for later work, like garden tools placed in the workshed to be pulled out on a bright, sunny day when the air was so cool and fragrant of Spring flowers, like hyacinth, blue and pink and purple, and I would think about you in your light blue dress standing in the hallway at Dunwoody with Sue Mitchell and Ronnie and I couldn't help but stop and talk and flirt in the dark hallway, because outside it was Spring and the sap was rising, rising indeed, and another brick was laid in the walkway which would lead us to dances in the cafeteria on a Saturday night where we played around and I dont' think we actually danced at all, until it was the dead of Winter and you were gone with your family to California and I would be left behind to matriculate to Virginia and go on with life and attend classes and try to earn a spot on the football team and study geology and philosophy and english and then walking down Nelson Street from the movie theater, one night, glancing in a window into a women's clothing store and seeing a coat, just a brown coat, and remembering, and finding a fountain, springing forth from the cold rocks of Winter, and the water running, splashing down the rocks and so cold, so cold, but alive and living and breathing like something inanimate was made alive and you were there in your blue dress and your sweet smile and your flashing brown eyes which spoke to me in their expression and gave me words to speak and write down and remember and memorialize the moment on the written page.

In the beginning, was the word, and the word was hidden in the arch of those dark brown eyes, but perceived and etched on the page and carved in the cortex, here to see. Laid out on the page for all to see. And remember and cause me to reach out again and touch.

Wating for the morning

I haven't written for several days and much has happened while I worked my way through Cindy's birthday on Saturday, a bout of gout on Saturday and Sunday, and the usual trying to make a living. In the meantime, I have been able to drive around west central Georgia for several days and watched the fishermen on the Chattahoochee and workers at the U. S. Naval Museum in Columbus and talked to John about his travels, including his trip to Dublin. I suppose he is getting ready to start Thursday morning and will be able to see the sites in Ireland and travel to County Wicklow. I am trying to control my jealousy, but it is hard.

Meanwhile, I got to talk to Graham this morning, while I drove to Columbus. The only thing that terminated our conversation was the loss of my connection to Verizon Wireless soon after I headed south from Woodbury towards Manchester. We never got hooked up again, and my trip to Columbus ended listening to NPR from Warm Springs.

Now life returns in earnest in the morning and I really need to get back to bed to see if I can sleep. I need to sleep. I also need for this economy to return to life and jumpstart my business. It seems that a lot of people I know are suffering from the downturn. I would love to see a return to a little economic health. I would rather conduct some closings rather than foreclosures and evictions. It will come. It just may take some time. Interest rates are low and inflation is low. But the value of assets needs to rise a bit back to earlier levels and the lenders need to have confidence enough to start making commercial loans and fund the return of growth.

I don't know how I became such an economist. Not that I have a handle on it all. But I can see somethings. And my business does seem to presage growth or shrinking. Health and illness, economically. I guess it would have made more sense if I had taken some Economics classes in college.

I also need to lose some weight, but that is a completely different topic.

The limits of technology

Sometimes the advantages of the evolution of technology don't get you any closer to the twentyfirst century. On Friday afternoon, I took a call from a company that arranges for my services for closings and was asked if I did e-closings. I hadn't but didn't really feel like it was something we couldn't do. So I spent the next two hours on line watching information about the process, signing up for the program, and arranging for the closing on Monday. After two hours of preparation for the closing.

Early Monday morning, Kate and I got in her car and drove down to the borrower's home in Upatoi, north and east of Columbus. We arrived on time and worked our way through the closing, despite losing the telephone signal at least four times during the process. After almost an hour, we were back in the car, on our way to the office. When we arrived at the office, Kate took the paper part of the closing package and placed it all in a fedex envelope and later deposited it in the fedex box in town. Everything seemed taken care of satisfactorily.

Meanwhile, we were waiting for the cryouts for foreclosure day for Tuesday. As the day headed into the early evening, we finally received some of the cryouts with information of a large number of others that might go the next morning. Meanwhile, they promised we would have the rest of the cryouts the next morning by 9:30.

At the same time, Kate had developed a fever and didn't look like she could participate the next day. We scrambled to try to find a substitute, because it appeared that we could need at least three people crying out on the next day. At the same time, we knew that we had at least one cryout in Whitfield County, near the Tennessee border. So at that time, I knew that I would have to leave early the next morning to start the cryouts in North Georgia in Dalton.

The next morning, I awoke early and showered and dressed to drive to Dalton. I gassed the car up and headed up towards Dalton. I got there around 10:30 and spoke with Patti. I was informed that we still didn't have the totality of cryouts and wouldn't have them until 10:30. I completed my cryout at the courthouse in Dalton and headed south toward Cartersville, which was the next one I knew I had to complete. At this point, I didn't have the faxed cryout for Bartow County, but suggested to Patti to tell the folks who sent them to email it to my laptop and I would read it off the computer. Meanwhile, she informed me that she had one more in Whitfield County, but that would mean back-tracking to Dalton and returning to Cartersville afterward. It would also mean two more hours which I didn't have.

So I drove into Cartersville and pulled my laptop out. I walked over to the front of the courthouse and opened it up, attached the wifi card and pulled up the email which contained the foreclosure cryout. At that point, I was crying out a foreclosure from off the screen of my computer. Again, I was dipping my toe into the twentyfirst century.

The rest of the day, I cryed out in different counties. I got to cry one more out off my computer in Dawsonville. By the end of the day, I was in Cleveland, trying to work my way back to Griffin. I made it by 4:30.

At this point, I found out that some of the paper documents from my closing on Monday had not been received by the lender. So they wanted me to return to Columbus (Upatoi) and get the borrowers to sign the new documents.

So I was resolved to return to Muscogee County; however, I still couldn't figure out how we left anything out of the package. I spoke with Kate, who had prepared the package. I spoke with Patti, who couldn't find anything left in the file folder from the closing. This morning, I opened the email with the documents they wanted to have signed. At this point, I realized that the new documents had never been sent to us. So they were sending me back to Columbus because they forgot to send the documents the first time.

At this point, a little frustration set in. I was driving back to Columbus and they weren't expecting to pay me for the extra trip, even though they were the cause of my second trip. I met with the husband at 1:00 and couldn't meet with the wife until 3:00. I ate lunch at a local restaurant and wasted some time driving and walking around Columbus. I took some pictures with the phone on my camera. I now have several pictures of houses which had once been the residence of J. C. Pemberton, the inventor of Coca Cola. I also got a picture of a house owned by the Woodruff family, who later owned Coca Cola.

I drove down to the Riverwalk and watched a couple of guys in a fishing boat trying to catch fish. I saw several people fishing from the bank on the Alabama side of the Chattahoochee. I watched some people repainting the metal handrails. I even looked over the shoulder of the statue of an artist drawing the falls and area upriver from where the statute peered out from the top of the riverwalk.

The sky was overcast, but there was an early Fall breeze and it wasn't too hot. One of the city workers suggested that it was a good day to be out fishing on the river. I had to agree. If I wasn't in need of being in my office, trying to send out bills and taking care of the business which was waiting for me while I walked indolently around the river banks above the Chattahoochee in Columbus.

Finally time arose for me to go out to meet with the wife borrower and I followed the husband out to her place of business. I made it back to Griffin by 5:00 and picked up Cindy and went to my office again to prepare the package for mailing to Kansas, but soon found that the information on the borrower's driver's licenses was missing. So I had to wait to get that information.

So, now it is after 12:00 midnight on Thursdayand I will have to send the package back to the lender by fax and by overnight mail. I will also need to negotiate with the lender to see if they will pay me for the extra trip. We shall see. They were saying that the extra trip was my fault. But I know we didn't get the extra pages until early this morning. So no matter how evolved you get with technology, the eternal verities remain. The ultimate lesson remains: When something goes wrong, everyone will look for someone to blame.