Mornings with Jimmy and Andy

Snoozing on the back of the sofa

Dogs love routines: daily rituals instigated by their owners, as well as ones they've made up themselves.  Rituals give them a sense of security and stability, structure and consistency.

Andy assumes it's part of his job to be Jimmy's alarm clock.  (This particular ritual applies only to Jimmy, never to me.)  Jimmy needs an excessive amount of sleep, but Andy makes certain he stays on a schedule.

The Wake Up Ritual starts at 9:50 AM with Andy sitting on the bed, about a foot away from Jimmy's face, staring intently, like he's pointing a quail. At 10 o'clock sharp, he licks Jimmy's ear, then steps back and waits 5 more minutes, then paws Jimmy's shoulder.

If Jimmy still won't get up, Andy jumps off the bed, finds a toy and drops it on Jimmy's head; Jimmy usually reacts to this by pushing Andy onto the floor.  By now it's 10:15, and Andy means business:  he scrambles back, grabs the covers in his teeth and pulls them completely off of Jimmy.  Jimmy surrenders at this point, and staggers off to the kitchen for coffee, plus toast for him and Andy, and so begins the Ritual of the Toast...

Frittering away the day at the Omni

After taking Andy for a nice long walk this morning, Jimmy and I decided to check out the new $85M+ renovation at the Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort, up the street from our condo.  It opened last month, and we heard that last week, during spring break, they were 100% booked.

After the financial crash of 2008, the owners of Amelia Island Plantation went into bankruptcy, and the property was purchased by an equity club formed by the existing members and Omni Properties.  Part of Omni Properties' purchase included the hotel.

Our waitress at lunch was telling us about how hectic things were last week.  She said several days they served over 1000 lunches in a 4 hour period. With children back in school now, things were calmer today.

One of the three pools

You walk from the lobby onto a terrace looking toward a fountain (I think) then the adults only infinity pool  then the ocean

The word is that all 600 lounge chairs were occupied last week

The lobby

Great day at the beach

Adjusting the dosages of his medications has helped Jimmy a lot, so we came to Amelia Saturday afternoon. Rosey and Pat and the children had been here for spring break, and left this afternoon, giving us a 24 hour overlap. What fun! At 8, 6 and 4 years old, the kids are at such a great age.

Jake wanted to spend the whole time drawing, which made me happy

We had an art show.  Jake said we had 26 drawings, but I think there were more

 

Papa's girl

At lunch yesterday, while sitting by the pool at the Ocean Club, I borrowed Pat's phone to take some pictures of Caroline: I loved the way she was backlit by the sun. She wouldn't cooperate, but the pictures I got are as cute as can be.

William was away playing miniature golf with a friend Saturday afternoon, and we hardly got to spend any time with him this trip.  Later, he wasn't much interested in our art extravaganza, and watched television in another room.  I'll make it up to him next time.

"Sister's" and my brothers

 Mac picked me up in his truck today, to meet William for lunch .

 "Where are we going?" I asked.

"Sister's."

"In Quitman?" There's a great family buffet in Quitman called Sister's.

"No, on West Hill Avenue.  Sister's Pizza and Mussels.  Susan and I go there all the time."

I'd never even heard of it, but, man, was the food good.  I cannot wait to go back and take Jimmy. He will love it. It's kind of a dive, near where the old bait shop is/was. Mac got the baked ziti and William and I got mussels with home

baked bread to sop up the juice. 

It was fun watching the guy behind the counter making pizza crusts.

he'd pummel it around

then spin it high into the air, just like they do in the movies

When I turned around to snap their picture, William took it like a man, but Mac obstinately ( he's been known to be obstinate- and obstreperous) refused to look at the camera.  "Oh, good," I said. "I've got a great shot of that thinning spot on the back of your head."  Mac retaliated by confiscating my phone and putting it in his pocket.  He wouldn't give it back until we left the restaurant.

I love my brothers.

My earliest memory is of when Mac was born.  I was 20 months old and have questioned whether I really remember it, but it is so vivid that I know I do, which is weird because my short-term memory has gotten so bad.

Mac was born on Thanksgiving, and this had to have been a few days after that.  In those days, mothers stayed in the hospital for two weeks after giving birth, unlike now, when they chuck you out the door before you can hardly catch your breath.

I remember Daddy holding me in his arms out on the sidewalk, and Mama waving to me from a second story window of the Little-Griffin hospital.  It was a bright clear cold day and it must have been mid-afternoon because the sun was in my eyes.

When Mama and Mac came home from the hospital, there was a lot of discussion about what to call the baby.  Of course, his name was Berkley Moreland Mackey III, but they couldn't decide whether to call him Chip or Bubba or Mac.  I was dead set on Bubba and adamantly called him that for the longest time, before finally capitulating and addressing him as Mac like the rest of the world.

My name was supposed to be Berkley III, according to Mama.  Daddy was so convinced of his firstborn being a boy, they didn't have a girl's name picked out, and I went nameless for about two weeks.  They settled on Dorothy, after Mama, and mulled over Ann for a while, as a middle name.  Daddy finally came up with Ellen, because he liked Scarlett O'Hara's mother, Ellen O'Hara, in Gone With The Wind. By the time he'd recovered from my not being a boy (Mama said he had a bad case of the "dry-grins"), he liked me a lot, too.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.  For now. I have some good stuff about William, but I'll save it for later.

Living the dream

I got a nice surprise this afternoon: Ed Hanahan saw the pictures I've been posting, and called from halfway around the world to say hello.  He's doing well, and we had a long, lovely visit. It was 2AM his time.

In case anyone doesn't know it, Ed and I have been best friends since the summer after the first grade, when our family moved across the street from his. I've been trying to boss him around for about that long, too, but usually to no avail.

Ed was a rolling stone, probably before Mick Jagger was.  He loves to travel.  He retired from American Airlines after 30 years, then tried settling down for a while, but got restless again, and is now living in Malaysia.

Everybody loved reading his blog, until he abandoned it last October.  He claims it's because of poor internet service, but my question is, if he can read my blog, why can't he write his??  His phone number is (229) 469-8355.  Please call him to say hello, and to voice your displeasure over the demise of  "How I See It."  I'm tired of pulling it up and seeing "Chinese Medicine" every time.

You can call him at this number without cost to either party.  Just remember that there's about a 12 hour time difference.

SOMEBODY STOP ME!

I know, I know: enough already with the old pictures. Good ones keep cropping up.

Allen: his chariot awaits (I LOVE this picture)

This picture was on the "Teen Page" in the 'Society" section of the Valdosta Daily Times, 1963.  It read:  "Susan Shingler, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Shingler, Ellen Mackey, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Berkley Mackey, Josie Eager, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William G. Eager, Jr., Cindy Wade, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. V.C. Wade, and Mary Young Smotherman, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Fred Smotherman, are attending Camp Ton-A-Wandah in Hendersonville, N.C.

Ed Hanahan, Ellen, Riley Howard, Henry Sherman, c.1961.  On our way to Mrs. Bright's ballroon dance Christmas party?

Ed - early 70's?

Ellen's 6th birthday party

Mama has written the names of the attendees on the back of the birthday photo

The Big Chill:  Bill Martin, Rosemary Lindauer Brannen, Ed Hanahan, Mary Young Smotherman Manning, Ellen, Louis Polonsky, Bill Brannen (starring as William Hurt).  c.1988

Mary Young and Ida Little

Allen Scott, Bill Martin, Ellen , Burt Tillman   c.1970

1203 N. Patterson Street

I hadn't planned on posting this, and was just going to e-mail the draft to family, but so many people remember and loved this wonderful old place, and I've decided to share it.

"1203" as the family called it, was built by my great-grandfather J.N. Bray sometime around the turn of the century. My widowed grandmother lived there for most of her life, my father grew up there, and we children spent so much time there, we could have called it home, too.

Somehow these pictures were misplaced in boxes and boxes of memorabilia, and my brother Mac has been encouraging me to locate them, in his oh-so-subtle Mac-ish way, for over a year.

Well, I found them. Finally.  I think they were taken shortly before the house was torn down, when everybody had moved out, the furniture left strewn about haphazardly.
  "Are you disappointed?" I asked Mac.  He'd sounded disappointed.  "Well, yeah," he admitted. "I remember that hall looking big as a football field. I guess things just look bigger when you're little."

 We also probably had it looking like Downton Abbey in our mind's eye.

But it's more than that  We remember it full of people and life.  It was home to generations, and had witnessed births and marriages and deaths, parties and funerals, and countless holiday gatherings. In these pictures, it looks so sad, so empty, so forlorn.

looking down from the front staircase

North hall, taken from stairs; opens on to the porte cochere 

Dining room

Front stairs

Parlor

Front hall

Living room

1203 a few years after it was built.  See the little magnolia in the right foreground?  It grew into our favorite climbing tree!