That’s a long post title, but I forgot to put one on the last one, so it will even out.  It, the last one, is listed as 5327; it’s a sign, I just know it. My birthday is August 27 and 5+3=8 and 27 = 27. Der Bingle would be groaning now because my memory tricks drive him  – I was going to say crazy –  and I’m sticking to it.  We are the generation of the “wild and crazy guy” – Steve Martin.

I popped open the computer to share my regret that Troy Landry of Pierre Part is going to be covered with water from the Morganza Spillway. I believe his family lived there since way before the spillway was built in 1937. He piqued my interest and I do what I always do – I researched. Turns out they say the same thing about him that they do about Regis Philbin: He’s a genuine nice person. Philbin was the subject of a New Yorker article some years past and the author remarked several times how he did all he could to help her. The writer of a piece on Landry said the same thing.

There are people all over the country like this, but until the advent of reality shows almost none of them were recognized by a cross-section of the populace. Oh, maybe a newspaper article here and there, but you never got to appreciate the day-to-day kindness and decency.

Once when we lived in Cincinnati, I ventured into Southern Indiana for the heck of it and got lost. There was an angular, older man in overalls walking down a deserted road. I pulled up to him and asked how to reach the main highway. He softly gave me some directions and then gave a slow smile and said, “Well, that will get you near there anyways.” He reminded my of my grandfather who would sit every night with a neighbor who was dying of cancer. I wasn’t alive then, but I heard that story told more than once . . . and always out of his earshot.

My husband’s grandfather –  W. A. to folks of his generation – was like that too. We have in our house a little chair that came from the Sunday School room in a small church in Harmony Twp, Hamilton County, Illinois. W. A. and Great-Grandma Lydia painted it for Robert William when he was a wee boy. I remember the day they brought it over.

I also remember one time I was there for lunch and he came in and hung his straw hat up next to Grandma’s, grinned and asked if I thought they’d fight. Ah, here’s a picture of the Old Timers’ Game – he’s in the back row, far right. I’ll have to have Der Bingle or LZP date this.

Well, I started talking about a flood and I fell into a flood of memories.

I woke up this morning thinking about what a counselor had said some years ago about a college in the area: “They had the first peace program.”  In addition,  a whole lot of colleges were giving military recruiters  grief for having booths on campus. Along with that, I remembered reading about graduates from some colleges announcing that they would not work for businesses  that they considered exploitive and other negative adjectives.

I talked with Quentin and remarked that some jobs required tough decisions; did these people with an alleged conscience and top-college intellectual prowess expect second-raters to make the best decisions in a non-Pollyanna world. Sort of an ‘I’m too moral to associate myself with reality’ so we’ll just let the weasels really take advantage’ mindset?

Seriously, I’m not just grumbling around here. Think about it.