Mags
After Joe died I must have some form of grief induced a.d.d. Anyway, I couldn’t read anything longer than a short magazine or newspaper article. A novel? Forget it. So I started subscribing to magazines–usually they had to be a dollar an issue or less. Also Joe had frequent flyer miles that he did not use, and they could not transfer to me, but I could use them up as magazine subscriptions (some of the magazines I ordered this way were really strange). Most of the magazines were “women’s” or decorating or landscaping. Then once you start subscribing, you get on mailing lists, and they send you junk mail asking you to try just one issue and if you don’t like it you can mark cancel on the bill and owe nothing. Usually you peel off a little sticky circle and stick it on a postcard and mail it free of charge. Some of these are premiere issues of magazines that are not yet in existence.
So yesterday I got one of these in the mail directed to the unique southern personality interested in–are you ready–GARDENS and GUNS. I kid you not. That was the name of the magazine. I looked at it over and over to assure myself that I hadn’t read it wrong. I laughingly took it to Jerome and said, “Can you believe this magazine?!?!” He didn’t find it odd. He started naming off friends and family members that could possibly fall into the “gardens and guns” group.
So today is my dad’s birthday, and I miss him like crazy, and he could have been the editor in chief of GARDENS and GUNS magazine. I just didn’t spend enough time with you, Daddy. I wanted to learn so much more. I wish I could send a subscription of G and G to heaven. Yeah, I peeled the sticky circle off and sent in the postcard for the free premiere issue. I’ve got plenty of G and G guys to pass it on to (no, Joe would have been GARDENS and FISH, and Wayne would have been GARDENS and CARS). Happy Birthday, Dadbo. I love you. You live on.