Drinking from the Saucer

As we pulled into the mall area for lunch, we looked up to see a young couple holding a handwritten sign: In Love, Out of Gas. We probably should have helped them and their dog, perhaps by following their fuel-starved vehicle to a filling station and treating them to a half tank of gas. But we didn’t. On the road again, my wife and I pondered how much we too are in love, even after nearly 42 years of marriage. But we haven´t run out of gas lately, even with the rising price of the precious liquid.

Perhaps our good fortune can be expressed in a song title we heard on the radio about a week later: I´m drinking from my saucer, Lord, because my cup has overflowed. This was after attending my 50 year high school reunion where sixteen of our class of thirty gathered for lunch at a resort in Asheville, NC. Nine spouses joined the grads, and all present wore name tags to aid identification. Special sharing times generally reflected overflowing cup experiences through the years. However, four classmates of the original thirty have died, one a homicide victim. Several of the remaining ten desired to come but couldn’t, and a few had not yet been located.

A highlight of the reunion was a DVD made available with 8mm movies taken by Greg during our senior year of high school at Ben Lippen boarding school. Sports and other activities were filmed and one section featured the class trip to Washington, DC in the spring of 1961. Camelot had just gotten under way and a clip included a scene of Jackie Kennedy dressed in pink, arriving for a ribbon cutting ceremony somewhere in Washington. My roommate, Tom who was happily standing nearby, blurted out, Oh, she´s so beautiful! For which remark he is forever remembered!

Our two-week road journey included other interesting visits, some near where I had grown up in south Alabama. My former Sunday school teacher treated us to pecan pie. A nice overnight visit with an elementary classmate in his lovely home near Mobile. A ride with a former neighbor in a golf cart down to the farm pond. A short visit with an attorney and his dear wife in their nineties who spoke of their church and visit to Brazil many years ago. College friends included a dear lady, now 96, Mom who mothered us all, and one of Vivian´s first cousins and his family near Birmingham.

In south Georgia we spent a night with the retired pastor of the small country church which I attended in Alabama during childhood and youth. Before we retired that evening, Godfrey insisted on phoning a friend in Illinois. Then he handed me the phone and I was pleased to hear the voice of Harold, the evangelist who preached on the occasion of my profession of faith 57 years before! How special to hear this man ask about my life, family and work, ending our chat by saying, Let me pray for you right now! And that´s what he did!

At times during these enjoyable visits, it took extra effort to remember names and events. That’s a problem our radio preacher friend aptly summed up when he said, My memory is running out from under me! But memory was restored for the most part during our enjoyable visits as we journeyed and chatted with many friends in various places throughout the Southeast. Truly we have good reason to be drinking from our saucer, because our cup has indeed overflowed!