While John was attending a shooting event in Odessa Florida, I was left to my own devices, so I took more than a few rides in and around Port Richey, Tarpon Springs and New Port Richey, which by the way didn't look any newer than regular Port Richey. But I did see some interesting signs in front of the many churches that dot the area. Here's a sampling:
1. If God seems far away, guess who moved.
This was in front of a temple. I imagined it being said with a Yiddish accent. Then I looked again. It was Bethany Temple, an uber-Christian church, one of many that abound here in the South. Not that their God was any different, or the message any less apt. But the accent was definitely not Brooklyn Jewish.
2. All Saints. It’s All about you.
Now here’s a marketing strategy. I thought church was about God and you were to deny yourself before him. Suddenly the strategy has changed. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but if it brings them in, who am I to argue?
3. Don’t be a Sunday saint and a Monday ain’t.
Obviously in these parts people speak proper English on Sunday. Hey, it’s a start.
4. And finally, my favorite: God’s Tag Sale. Saturday 10-4.
The economy must really be in bad shape if God himself has to sell off stuff. Of course, the next thing that comes to mind is the stuff that He’s selling. If it’s not the Grand Canyon, and since he built it, I would assume he feels some sense of ownership, then what could it be? Feathers saved from old angel moltings? White robes, unused inventory? Used organ, some pedals not working, needs TLC? Lot, religious badges from all those who believed at one point that they were the only ones allowed inside the pearly gates? Seems to me we ought to be dumping a little more change in the basket on Sunday. Not because I feel sorry for God, but because there isn’t a heck of a market for his cast-offs. Even Lucifer wouldn’t bring that much of a price these days. Not unique enough.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
The Rally Experience
Music & Memories Rally
Beaver Motor Coach Convention
Moultrie, GA
Here’s what you do at a motor coach rally.
Arrive. Find the coach with “Rally Master” displayed across its front. Get assigned a parking space. Set up. Be told you’re late for the meeting. Rush to the meeting. Enter a roomful of strangers and be told you’re late. Be told to wear your badge or you’ll be fined.
This sounds like fun!
Stand in the back of the meeting and be told you’ve missed all the important things, but not to worry. Worry.
Go back to your camper and swipe a washcloth across your sweaty face and rush off for social hour. Meet people there whose names you immediately forget. Get free drinks. Okay, things are looking up.
Sit down to dinner at 6:00. Good thing we passed on lunch. Stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Sit down and wait until your table is called for dinner, then cheer like you did in high school because you get to the buffet line before other people and will therefore have more to eat than they will. Watch as the free drinks are stowed and the iced tea is offered. Shucks. So that’s why that lady whispered that I should order drinks two at a time.
Meet your tablemates and swap bus and hometown information. I actually met someone who went to my high school. Since the majority of the people in campers are not from my neck of the woods, this was something of a miracle. She wasn’t that interested in swapping stories about old times. Mustn’t have been one of the cool kids. Then again, neither was I.
After dinner, listen politely to the announcements, then to the two-songs-too-long concert by the local high school’s jazz band. These kids were pretty good, if you want to know the truth.
The next day, pass up the opportunity to make “sleeve pins” and/or attend a Red Hat Luncheon. Sleeve pins, for your edification, are pins you put beads on and then use to hold your sleeves up. Since I don’t anticipate long sleeves any time soon, I didn’t go, preferring to stay home and write about Lamar Keck. You can read about him in the blog I did yesterday.
I didn’t go to the Red Hat Luncheon out of respect to my Ladies’ Night Out friends, with whom I have made a blood pact to never ever admit to being over 50, which automatically precludes wearing a red hat to any gathering of any kind. I found out later that nobody wore a red hat, so I could have gone, but I didn’t.
I will attend the Texas Hold ‘Em Lessons this afternoon and the Prime Rib Dinner afterward. I may be a snob, but I’m no fool. The entertainment following dinner is by the “Nawlin’s Po Boy’z.” I’ll stay for that, if only to see who would deliberately misspell three words in a row if they’re not related to Toys “R” Us.
So there you have it. Rallies are mostly about meeting like-minded people and enjoying talking about this life we have chosen. They’re also about rules, of course, and being typically middle-American, they are about loyalty to god and country too, and patriotism, which if you think it’s lost its glow, it hasn’t. They’re about fun activities you can take advantage of, walking the thousands of dogs that seem to be traveling so much more these days, getting your rig washed, dumped-out and tuned up, line-dancing, karaoke, making sleeve pins and learning about motor maintenance.
I haven’t discussed plays, books, movies, concerts, music, the Times Crossword puzzle, or even the Internet with anyone. We don’t have any of that here and even the phone service leaves much to be desired. Still, it’s fun of a sort I haven’t had before. I’ve met some nice people, and even remember a couple of names.
Which will serve us in good stead tonight at dinner, when we announce we’ve lost our heating system and can anybody give us the name of a good mechanic.
Betty
Beaver Motor Coach Convention
Moultrie, GA
Here’s what you do at a motor coach rally.
Arrive. Find the coach with “Rally Master” displayed across its front. Get assigned a parking space. Set up. Be told you’re late for the meeting. Rush to the meeting. Enter a roomful of strangers and be told you’re late. Be told to wear your badge or you’ll be fined.
This sounds like fun!
Stand in the back of the meeting and be told you’ve missed all the important things, but not to worry. Worry.
Go back to your camper and swipe a washcloth across your sweaty face and rush off for social hour. Meet people there whose names you immediately forget. Get free drinks. Okay, things are looking up.
Sit down to dinner at 6:00. Good thing we passed on lunch. Stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Sit down and wait until your table is called for dinner, then cheer like you did in high school because you get to the buffet line before other people and will therefore have more to eat than they will. Watch as the free drinks are stowed and the iced tea is offered. Shucks. So that’s why that lady whispered that I should order drinks two at a time.
Meet your tablemates and swap bus and hometown information. I actually met someone who went to my high school. Since the majority of the people in campers are not from my neck of the woods, this was something of a miracle. She wasn’t that interested in swapping stories about old times. Mustn’t have been one of the cool kids. Then again, neither was I.
After dinner, listen politely to the announcements, then to the two-songs-too-long concert by the local high school’s jazz band. These kids were pretty good, if you want to know the truth.
The next day, pass up the opportunity to make “sleeve pins” and/or attend a Red Hat Luncheon. Sleeve pins, for your edification, are pins you put beads on and then use to hold your sleeves up. Since I don’t anticipate long sleeves any time soon, I didn’t go, preferring to stay home and write about Lamar Keck. You can read about him in the blog I did yesterday.
I didn’t go to the Red Hat Luncheon out of respect to my Ladies’ Night Out friends, with whom I have made a blood pact to never ever admit to being over 50, which automatically precludes wearing a red hat to any gathering of any kind. I found out later that nobody wore a red hat, so I could have gone, but I didn’t.
I will attend the Texas Hold ‘Em Lessons this afternoon and the Prime Rib Dinner afterward. I may be a snob, but I’m no fool. The entertainment following dinner is by the “Nawlin’s Po Boy’z.” I’ll stay for that, if only to see who would deliberately misspell three words in a row if they’re not related to Toys “R” Us.
So there you have it. Rallies are mostly about meeting like-minded people and enjoying talking about this life we have chosen. They’re also about rules, of course, and being typically middle-American, they are about loyalty to god and country too, and patriotism, which if you think it’s lost its glow, it hasn’t. They’re about fun activities you can take advantage of, walking the thousands of dogs that seem to be traveling so much more these days, getting your rig washed, dumped-out and tuned up, line-dancing, karaoke, making sleeve pins and learning about motor maintenance.
I haven’t discussed plays, books, movies, concerts, music, the Times Crossword puzzle, or even the Internet with anyone. We don’t have any of that here and even the phone service leaves much to be desired. Still, it’s fun of a sort I haven’t had before. I’ve met some nice people, and even remember a couple of names.
Which will serve us in good stead tonight at dinner, when we announce we’ve lost our heating system and can anybody give us the name of a good mechanic.
Betty
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Lamar Keck
Beaver Motor Coach Annual Convention
Moultrie, Georgia
Lamar Keck.
This is my favorite name ever. I keep saying it over and over in my mind. Lamar Keck. Mr. Lamar Keck. Mr. Keck. Lamar. La Mar. Keck.
Lamar Keck owns a Beaver Motor Coach, the same as I do, and he is presently attending the Beaver Rally here in Moultrie Georgia, as I am. I was familiar with Lamar from his writing for the Beaver Journal. While I am a newbie, Lamar is a long-time member and past President of the Beaver Ambassadors Club, which is holding this rally.
I have a bolo tie with my leather Beaver name tag, a First-Timer Ribbon and one little leather extension for this "Music & Memories 2009" Rally, while Lamar has so many rallies attached to his name tag, he has tied them up with string so as not to trip over them. I'm not kidding.
Oh yes, we are a social little group, we Beaver owners are. Seventy-nine of us, parked in an airfield in Southern Georgia, side by side, from every part of the country. And with the exception of yours truly and our next-door neighbor from Los Angeles, no one here is from the big city.
Which kind of explains Lamar Keck. What an interesting name. What is its provenance, I wonder? Was there a Lamar Keck Senior. And a grandpa Lamar? And before him, great grandpappy Lamar? There had to be, don’t you think? You just don’t get to be Lamar Keck without some sort of bloodline originating back in the way-back of time.
Lamar Keck. Why do I love this name so? I love the L of it. The M and R of it. The way it rolls off your tongue and slides right into that stone wall of a last name.
Keck. When it’s over, it’s over. Don’t let’s even discuss it. That name finishes your sentence. Maybe your whole paragraph. Nothing left to be said, no sirree. Once you’ve closed that last K, you’ve finished and let’s get on with business.
Lamar Keck doesn’t come from Brooklyn either, that much you may have intuited. He’s from Branson, Missouri. A handsome gent of a certain age, his most striking feature is his head full of that Keck wavy white hair. Lamar will take that mop to his grave and look damn fine in his casket, that’s for sure.
He is not a musician, he assures me, but he is one heck of a soundman, and did a fine job the other night when the high school jazz band entertained, despite a tricky microphone that threatened to turn the evening into an acoustic nightmare.
Similarly, when the Four Aces, the pre-rock and roll group from the 50’s (Three Coins in the Fountain) whose collective age is somewhere around 300 years old, performed, Lamar was right there giving them the sound and the power to belt it out like they did 50 years ago. Amazing.
So here’s to my new friend and latest name-crush. You can keep your Mistys, your Latoyas and your Kanye’s. As fun as they are to pronounce, they do not come close to the joy of Lamar Keck.
I defy you to say it just once.
-
Moultrie, Georgia
Lamar Keck.
This is my favorite name ever. I keep saying it over and over in my mind. Lamar Keck. Mr. Lamar Keck. Mr. Keck. Lamar. La Mar. Keck.
Lamar Keck owns a Beaver Motor Coach, the same as I do, and he is presently attending the Beaver Rally here in Moultrie Georgia, as I am. I was familiar with Lamar from his writing for the Beaver Journal. While I am a newbie, Lamar is a long-time member and past President of the Beaver Ambassadors Club, which is holding this rally.
I have a bolo tie with my leather Beaver name tag, a First-Timer Ribbon and one little leather extension for this "Music & Memories 2009" Rally, while Lamar has so many rallies attached to his name tag, he has tied them up with string so as not to trip over them. I'm not kidding.
Oh yes, we are a social little group, we Beaver owners are. Seventy-nine of us, parked in an airfield in Southern Georgia, side by side, from every part of the country. And with the exception of yours truly and our next-door neighbor from Los Angeles, no one here is from the big city.
Which kind of explains Lamar Keck. What an interesting name. What is its provenance, I wonder? Was there a Lamar Keck Senior. And a grandpa Lamar? And before him, great grandpappy Lamar? There had to be, don’t you think? You just don’t get to be Lamar Keck without some sort of bloodline originating back in the way-back of time.
Lamar Keck. Why do I love this name so? I love the L of it. The M and R of it. The way it rolls off your tongue and slides right into that stone wall of a last name.
Keck. When it’s over, it’s over. Don’t let’s even discuss it. That name finishes your sentence. Maybe your whole paragraph. Nothing left to be said, no sirree. Once you’ve closed that last K, you’ve finished and let’s get on with business.
Lamar Keck doesn’t come from Brooklyn either, that much you may have intuited. He’s from Branson, Missouri. A handsome gent of a certain age, his most striking feature is his head full of that Keck wavy white hair. Lamar will take that mop to his grave and look damn fine in his casket, that’s for sure.
He is not a musician, he assures me, but he is one heck of a soundman, and did a fine job the other night when the high school jazz band entertained, despite a tricky microphone that threatened to turn the evening into an acoustic nightmare.
Similarly, when the Four Aces, the pre-rock and roll group from the 50’s (Three Coins in the Fountain) whose collective age is somewhere around 300 years old, performed, Lamar was right there giving them the sound and the power to belt it out like they did 50 years ago. Amazing.
So here’s to my new friend and latest name-crush. You can keep your Mistys, your Latoyas and your Kanye’s. As fun as they are to pronounce, they do not come close to the joy of Lamar Keck.
I defy you to say it just once.
-
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