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.