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Over the weekend, I attended a funeral for an extended family member in southern California.
I hadn't / haven't been back to this part of the country in years. I can't remember when I was last here. We had a house near here many years ago but also sold it many years ago.
Picking up the Enterprise rental car at the airport, I was gobsmacked with emotions. There is just something so different about walking out of a southern California terminal. Fortunately I flew into a regional airport. Small terminal -- the entire terminal I assume was about the size of one terminal at DFW where this flight began. There are two parking garages but both quite small compared to those at DFW.
The first thing I noted driving out of the parking structure were the palm trees, also the first thing I noticed when driving into Los Angeles in 1970 -- that would have been 55+ years ago. Wow, a lot of water under that bridge.
Talking to a close family friend at the memorial service, I said that the geography, the streets, the buildings have not changed all these years. The only thing that has changed is the culture. And, of course, I was "aware" of that only from watching and reading the news. One wouldn't notice that in these upper-middle income, predominantly white neighborhoods. The freeways are still six lanes wide in both directions and the traffic moved slowly.
In the big scheme of thing, southern California is/was probably the most important part of my life: school, coming of age.
I went off the grid during this period, at least as far as blogging or replying to any e-mails. Of course, I continued to lurk / surf in the free moments I had. I know I will get back to blogging, but it may take awhile. I really don't know.
I've lost interest in a lot of mundane things, and most of what I blog / blog about is mundane.
I have no plans to watch the Super Bowl tomorrow. I assume I watched Super Bowl III, back in the year I graduated from high school, but I do not recall, and that was a most historic Super Bowl ever. Interestingly enough, among some "experts," it did not even rank among the top five "best Super Bowls ever."
For the past few days, morning talk shows -- except for sports show like Get Up! and First Take -- the talk is all about the food. In fact, if you had no knowledge of what the Super Bowl is all about, watching television three days prior would lead one to believe the even will be hosted on the "Food Channel," and that the event would somehow center around cooking. Mostly chicken wings.
Number 2 on the list above had the same two teams as are playing tomorrow.
That list also includes the Dallas Cowboys, losing back in 1979. The Cowboys' last appearance (and victory) in the Super Bowl was 1996. I don't recall having watched that. I would have been in my second year in the USAF at which time I incredibly busy. I was very likely working that night. I didn't keep up with my journaling those years.
Our first child was born a month after the 1979 Super Bowl and I was working seven days a week then, at least ten hours a day some months. [Wow, that's hard to believe 7 days x 10 hours / day = 70 hours; there were periods before that I was working 80+ hours a week.] I never considered it work; it was always a journey. I guess the journey pretty much came to an end in 2004 or thereabouts, three years before I retired from the USAF.
Anyway, enough of this. For the time being, I will remain off the grid, not posting blogs, not surfing social media, and avoiding e-mail.
But, wow, now sitting in this relatively empty house in southern California, just a mile or so off the coast, in a walled off plot of land, wow, it's peaceful. I would go nuts living out here.