Into the New Year
Enjoy the letter below, or listen to it on YouTube:
Wednesday, December 30, 2009 7:25 a.m.
Dear Louis and Patty,
We wish you well this coming New Year.
We wish you happiness and healing and patience and tolerance as we continue to fit into our increasingly nonfunctioning bodies.
The warranties have long expired, and retrofitting of the old is impossible. So, we are left with model years 1926 to 1930, and at this time, "It ain't good enough, but it's as good as it will be."
I bought an auto in 2008, a Saab nonetheless, and it squeaks each morning as I back out of the garage. After a few hundred feet, it is quiet, responsive, and a joy to drive.
I get up in the morning, squeak, and stammer for a few hundred feet, but I am not quiet, responsive, or a joy to be around. But I will make the best of the remainder.
The drive to the South is looming as a greater deterrent to travel
each and every month as time passes. I believe we will wait until the
roads are predictably clear, daylight is longer, and the warmth of
March is present in Mississippi; Gulfport is where my sister lives.
I bought a cord of oak wood the other day and find the family room in
the lower level, one time called the walk-out basement, to be warm,
sunny, and pleasant. Consequently, we are content to stay here until it
warms in the South, and the drive is more predictable.
And so, have a tolerable, pleasant New Year.
Keep the Faith, and smile as much as possible; as bad as it might get, we have been blessed.
Jim & Dorothy
Dear Dorothy and Jim,
We appreciate your kind thoughts and the kind expression of them.
You have written of your not going to Florida until after Christmas. Christmas is over on January 5. When and where are you going, leaving us behind to shiver and shudder and swear? But for our various disabilities, we here would be heading for Sanibel Island.
The reply to assertions that we could still do that is that we would be doing it on so low a scale that it would be more painful than the cold - no walks on the beach, no bicycling out for the morning paper, no stroll to the bar.
We have learned that Bob & Dotty Troller are moving into an apartment on Capitol Square.
It sounds to me absolutely wonderful.
Let us know when you get there.
Louis
On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 6:18 PM, James Algiers <james.algiers@gmail.com> wrote:
Louie,
Well into the New Year, and I feel a need to reconnect with you.
Do hope you are doing well. Here, except for the cold and snow, all is well.
I heard from Gene W. in Florida, and he is somewhat disappointed.
Seems that being in the house is no different in FL or in WI if one is confined in either place.
Was out only to plow 8 inches of light snow today.
I find no thrill in doing that; I never enjoyed the winter, and my disdain for the cold was only increased when I spent 9 months on the Island of Attu in 45/46.
That was a sorry day or time in my life, but at the age of 18 or 19, one had a duck's back, and many things ran off.
The one episode that has remained in my mind of those months was a tsunami that originated on the Aleutian chain, sent us up the mountains to the army town, from the bay, and then waves ran to the Hawaiian islands, where they killed 50 or 60 people.
I had eight friends in Dutch Harbor, and they all died when the wave rushed into the entrance harbor, swept up the channel, and rose to 100 feet, wiping out the Coast Guard compound and killing my friends.
That and the discomfort of winter in the Bering Straits have left me with a disdain for cold and snow.
So hang in there, Louie; if we are fortunate, the pipes will not freeze, and we will get where we are going.
Jim
P.S. Hi to Patty, I always wanted to be Irish.
Sometime, I will send you my story on "We Buried Tommy.” Buckley, that is.
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Louis Frey <clouisfrey@gmail.com>
Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 10:08 AM
To: James Algiers <james.algiers@gmail.com>
Do send it.
I like stories, even when they are true.
