Saturday, August 31, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Good long day in Waco
From heaven the Lord looks down and sees us all.
Driving home we talked all about the ten hours we had just spent together. We were eating chocolate ice cream and I couldn’t get enough water to drink.
Margaret took Miles and Jasper on the Texas Eagle Amtrak train from Austin to Taylor, 51 minutes northwest. I picked them up there, after stopping for a moment on the highway to investigate yet another flapping piece of plastic underneath the car (third time in three weeks). But now we have fancy new 65,000 mile tires and a new alignment, so I take the loose plastic personally.
We need to find an expert on securing flappy plastic once and for all.
Jasper fell asleep while he was telling a train story. Miles took over, and then he fell asleep. Margaret took over and Jasper woke up. We listened to The Wind and the Willows, Kenneth Grahame’s tale of the journey of Rat and Mole, accompanied at times by Toad, while we dreamed of our own adventures.
While Miles was sleeping we crossed over a long bridge across Lake Waco to get to a swimming beach in Twin Bridges Park. We had two swim trunks but not enough, and one swim shirt but not three. We made do. The water was perfect, and our feet sank into the sinking sand. An undulating yellow hose kept us in the swimming area, and the boats out.
For the many-eth time I remembered how much I love swimming and playing in a lake. Miles and Jasper? They couldn’t stop smiling and laughing and pushing each other around and falling down in the water and spraying us all with water guns. The water felt like heaven. We stayed much longer than we’d planned. I lost my goggles. Oh, well.
Miles and Jasper shared a cheeseburger on the train but now we were starving, so we found the Cotton Patch CafĂ©, where two $7 kids meals could have fed the family. Fried green tomatoes fed me – perfect green tomato slices perfectly fried in perfect batter, and almost more than I could eat.
Waco’s Baylor University fields great football and basketball teams, all nicknamed the Bears, both men and women. In the middle of campus we found the Baylor Bear Habitat, where two young black bears have been living, one pair after another, since 1917. A beautiful pickup and trailer to carry the bears here and there sat outside with the “Sic-em!” Baylor battle cry painted on the tailgate.
The bears, now a little over one year old, played in the water and ate a little grass, waiting for their second meal of the day. A new Baylor freshman from Houston we thought for a minute was actually our granddaughter Aly Grace in Springfield, told us a little about the black bears. She lives in a dorm across the street and comes by to see them every day.
“It’s my goal to tell them apart (they are from the same 2023 litter) and be able to show you how to do that too.
“Well, I have homework, so I’d better get going. It was so nice meeting you.”
And even more with every word, we thought we were talking with Aly.
Almost everyone fell asleep for part of the trip back south to Temple and Buc ee’s, which was swarming with people and packed with cars. I guess we were there on Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend. Blue Bell Ice Cream, popsicles, rock candy, cotton candy, fudge and a chocolate bar? The list of sugar(s) gets longer and longer.
At the rest area not far from Austin, where we retreated during one of the several I35 plumbing problems (Miles’ new name for traffic back-ups), we added to the verboten-list … Cheeto pops and Skittles.
And then we were home, talking about the day, and about every restaurant we passed. Been there? Been there? Been there?
I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you.
We felt like a family yesterday. Felt pretty good, too!
Alleluia!
(1 Corinthians 1, Psalm 33, John 13, Matthew 25)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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