Back in the mid-1970s, I had an after-school job driving a delivery van for a small furniture store in my hometown. One of my co-workers was a man named Cliff, a conservative Christian. Since I was not yet one myself, I found Cliff to be a really, nice guy with some odd ideas.
We’ve all heard of the two certainties in life, death and taxes. You only die once, but April 15 comes around every year! I don’t know anyone who enjoys paying income taxes. We do whatever we can to pay as little as possible. Humorist, Will Rogers, quipped, “The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.” The Jews in Jesus’ day cared even less for taxes; they were paid to Rome and were a bitter reminder of their subjugation.
Last Monday was April Fools’ Day. The origin of this odd observance is disputed, but I’d like to thank whoever invented it. I celebrated April Fools’ Day religiously as a kid. What other day of the year could you get away with playing a prank on somebody simply by shouting, “April Fools’!” April 1, 1971, the year Canada began switching over to the metric system, a call-in show on a local AM radio station reported, in compliance with the new system of measure, they would now be giving the time in metric. They said something like, “The current time is 10.25 metric.” The phone lines lit up with angry Canadians! At the end of the three metric-hour show, the hosts shouted, “April Fools’!” and explained that it was all a prank.
I’m a Canadian. Yes, I say “eh?” at the end of sentences, well, at least I used to. Growing up in Canada, I’d always thought that it was you Americans who had the accent. It wasn’t until I moved to Florida that I learned that it was me. People would stop me mid-sentence, ask me to repeat myself, then laugh at my accent. I quickly realized that life in Florida would go much easier for me if I lost the accent and the “eh?” with it.
I’m beginning to learn the driving “culture” on Highway 98. From what I’ve observed, though the speed limits range from 55 mph down to 35 mph, few keep to the posted limit. But driver’s beware! A friend giving me a ride to the airport warned me as we entered a 35 mph stretch, “Watch your speed through here or you’ll get a ticket.”
I’m Irish on my father’s side, British on my mother’s side, but we don’t talk about that. My paternal grandfather was fiercely proud of his Irish roots. We had ordered a family crest from an ad in the back of magazine; it came back saying that we were British. “Look again!” my grandfather growled. Pursuing a more reputable source, we learned that our family name was originally O’Bannon and, thankfully that our roots are in Ireland. My Irish roots validated, I once chided a workmate, who was from Ireland, for not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day. “I’m Protestant,” he growled (must be an Irish trait), “we wear orange!” I may be half Irish, but I realized that I was totally ignorant about St. Patrick Day.
Newly elected Florida governor Ron DeSantis is keeping his campaign promise to appoint conservative justices to fill the newly created vacancies in the Florida Supreme Court. As a Christian, I am hopeful for the future of our state.
Last Saturday thousands lined Gulf Boulevard on Navarre Beach for the annual Mardi Gras parade, a family friendly version of the more hedonistic event in New Orleans. Mardi Gras, French for “Fat Tuesday,” refers to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday and marks the end of a month of festivities before the forty-day season of Lent.
High school memories are not always the best. In my “less-than-best” category are English class reading assignments: read some literary classic and be prepared to discuss it in class or, worse yet, write a paper on it. Many of the assigned books failed to interest me, so I often relied on another literary classic – Cliff’s Notes. However, one book ignited my imagination – James Hilton’s Lost Horizons, with its fictional lamasery Shangri-la secreted high in the mountains of Tibet. Hilton introduced me to the idea of a utopia, the dream of a perfect life in a perfect place. Haven’t we all yearned for such an idyllic existence, a perfect life with no sickness or sadness or loss, in a place where hatred and violence don’t exist?
Recently, after three long months apart, I moved my wife, our dog, Brewster, and all our worldly possessions from Naples to Navarre. To save money, I rented a large truck in Naples and hired a company to do the work of loading it. They sent over three men: two to carry our stuff to the truck, and a third, whom I called The Puzzle Man, to figured out how to fit it all on the truck. I’d like to say that they were careful, but I would be lying.
