Monday

Awake with the light of day just brightening the morn and the wind chimes on the front porch are having one hell of a conversation. Our little bit of winter has backed of for just one day with a almost fall like morning… for just a day!

The prognosticators are foretelling that the rest of this week will be bringing highs about as high as last nights low… Uncommon weather for SE Texas prior to Thanksgiving. Not that I’m complaining, I have a bunch of long-sleeved shirts I seldom get the chance to wear.

I suppose I’ve become accustomed to living somewhere where layering is something you only do with a dip you make for tortilla chips. Though I remember the winter of ’72 (remember how your grandfather would start stories like that?) when it snowed 3 times in Houston and I worked the graveyard shift at the lumbermill in New Waverley. Boy, that winter I learned all about layering… and unlayering as you worked thru the shift. Until at lunch time you would pull everything back on and start the process all over again till quitting time.

Another thing about that winter… I learned to love the drive home at 3am on dark, gravel country roads… A whole lot of the time with just the running lights on so I could really see the nighttime countryside. We were living just across the county line in the next county so a quarter mile from our gate the road turned to blacktop and the farmland turned to piney woods. Simpler times.