Once In A Blue Moon :: Now or 2015

Donald :: Believe it or not, I am a full-fledged architect. Build you anything from a cathedral to a bomb shelter.::

Patty :: How much would a cathedral cost these days? A small one.:: 

- The Moon Is Blue (1953)

When I was a girl, my grandparents packed the three grandchildren into their station wagon once a month and drove to our fishing camp in Waveland, Mississippi. The cabin was gallery style, which simply means that the screened porch went around the entire cabin, with entry points from all four sides of the cabin but only two exterior exits, one door in the center of each of the shorter sides of the cabin that lead to paths of spilled azaleas.  One side of the porch held six cots, and a couple of card tables for ice tea, a game of Parcheesi, an Ouija board, or jigsaw puzzles.  The dried red paper coiled dartboard, original to the cabin which was built in the late 1940’s, two porch swings and a place for fishing gear, all occupied the cabin’s opposite porch.  

When I was remodeling the cabin at the Double Blind, on my land in Texas, I thought a lot about the fishing camp.  I envisioned my own family spending our winter holidays at the Double Blind, aka Rockett Ranch, wrapping the oak tree branches with white lights, spraying them down with a water hose, thus creating icicles the same way stalagmites are created in a cave.  In the spring months, with a Don Ho LP playing on our phonograph, we would host a Hawaiian Night, roasting a wild pig for all our ranch neighbors.  In the summer, we would set-up Mexican hammocks between the oaks, read books, take morning walks or ride our bikes along the creek road, and sip sweet tea or mint juleps on our own sleeping porch.  By fall, all the wood would have been chopped and stacked for our winter fires affording us time to drink cups of steaming hot cocoa, roast marshmallows around the liar’s pit, strumming their guitars and me, playing my mandolin.    

Or maybe, in the dark of night, we would gaze up the at the curved sky and a Blue Moon, like from the inside of a huge glass ball, very dark blue with the sprinkles of bright stars, and we would allow ourselves, just for a moment, to revolve around the beauty of one another. 

Do, or say, or think something new today (and tomorrow).

The Broad

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, p 119

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