Kith and Kin Everywhere,
So it's Friday, the 13th in April, 2018, and we've moved from the rim of summer's blast of furnace heat back to chilly spring weather. The two of us love our blistering summer here in the Arizona desert, even when the mercury surpasses the 120° mark. Of course, we then can escape at our will into our air conditioned abode, car or store. Some may recall that we recorded an unofficial 126° last summer.
It's only 71° with 28 mph winds blasting out of the north right now. How strange after the mercury already has been in the high 90°s and flirting with triple digits. But it is spring and this is the desert.
The ripe lemons are being blown off our tree that is confused. There are blossoms, green lemons and ripe ones all at the same time. Kumquats? All picked, dried and in Mason jars, except for one new tree. The fruit is nice and orange, but just not quite ripened as yet, with some green still showing.
Roadrunners! Babe, the newest one, will come down on the patio to get our attention through the glass doors, but doesn't like to stay there, surrounded by rock walls. He/She/It would rather stay atop the wall where he will actually take a meatball from my fingers. He is the first one of several generations who will do that. Evolution at work? Kidding. Hardee, the Elder, shows up only occasionally, now. We do believe that they are tending to a nest.
Plans are all made for our June trip to Portland for Fleet Week where we hope to see some of our readers joining us to pay a visit to the only fully-operational WW2 PT boat in the world. About 750 vessels of the "plywood Navy" were built and I had given up on her when I first espied her years ago. She was a derelict scrap, then The Twelve, my title for a dozen motor torpedo boat veterans living in the Northwest, became dedicated to her restoration and went to work.
They attracted a mass of newer generation men and women who put her back into full operational mode. She is now original down to the electronics and even the toaster and binoculars -- an amazing feat by an amazing crew of volunteers. All this was accomplished without a major sponsor.
Current generations give a blank look when we mention PT (Patrol Torpedo) boats. I usually just simplify an explanation that most of the Navy's iron-ships were sunk at Pearl Harbor so Uncle Sam built 3/4s of a thousand wooden, 80-foot boats, armed them with guns and torpedoes and we sailors went hunting for the Imperial Japanese Navy as well as the German Kriegsmarine.
This seems to satisfy most of the post-WW2 generations.
Anyway, M5 and I will be in Portland during the first full week in June with son Mike doing the driving up and back. That trip starts a flurry of travel for us through June of 2019 and the 75th Anniversary of D-Day in Normandy.
If you can't join us in Portland, just send money -- for a boat is a hole in the water into which disappears money, you may recall.
Over and out.
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