CLAM CHOWDER AND A FLOWER

We went to our son's house for dinner tonight--the best clam chowder. Thank you, Taylor.

After dinner we checked out the garden and a poor sunflower had fallen over so I took one of the blooms home. What could be better for a summer evening: good food, a beautiful bloom and then home to sit on the lawn swings with a neighbor.

But it's freezing here tonight. Not real freezing, not the ice-forming kind, but really cold for August 15th. The low tonight is going to be about 50 degrees. That's 10 Celsius. I'm going to go put a hot brick in my bed now.

Not much of a post, is this? Not funny or even very interesting. So, imagine you open your door and find a sunflower like this greeting you. Mother Nature saying, "Here, I made this just for you. You are loved. Really, really loved." And you are.

Feel better, now?

I RODE ONE OF THESE EVERY DAY FROM 2ND GRADE THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL

Even the year it was -40 degrees everyone in town went to school on the bus. There was a layer of ice on the inside of every window. It never occurred to our mothers to drove us to school in a heated car.

That is the year I bough a winter coat with an inside lining of knitted fabric. It was built for the Arctic. I still have that coat. It weighs ten pounds and is an attractive Army green.

Carl Spafford--a grandfather--was our bus driver. When we got too noisy he pulled over to the side of the road and waited.

Once I was sitting with my feet on the top of the wheel-well when Carl ran over a boulder. It hit my wheel-well and punched the sheet metal up about two inches. My feet stung for a long time but I didn't even bother telling Mom about it. After all, if she didn't drive us to school in -40 degree weather why would she worry about my arches being driven through the top of my feet?

These buses look very lonely. What is their destiny? If they are lucky they will be purchased by an interesting man like my Dad and be used to drive the grandkids around. Who knows?