The Rock Wall

As Kimball drove us home from church Sunday evening, I asked if she had sent Wanda Baldwin a picture of Van. Wanda was with us for the early days of Adrian and Davis. Kimball said she had not. So I got into my cell phone and sent Wanda my screen saver which is the latest photo I have.

Overnight, Wanda had replied with the obligatory precious baby title and said, “I have a new screen saver.” I replied, “I do, too.”

When I told Kimball, who was in the next room at home, she said, “It’s mine, too.”

That got me to thinking about how much and how fast things are changing.

We have a studio photo of me at probably a year old. Now nobody has to wait that long to take a photo of their precious baby.

I used to wear a wrist watch. Now I just look at my cell phone.

When we lived in Slidell and I carpooled to work in New Orleans with Harry Brannon, we both had a CB radio and we ran on Channel 2 with the Slidell Convoy. CB Channel 19 was the common channel for truckers and people traveling. Two base stations in New Orleans monitored Channel 2 and relayed messages.

It occurred to me that Adrian and Davis came along just as interest in CBs switched over to cell phones. I don’t know what travelers do now days for road information.

When I’m looking for some piece of equipment in my shop, I occasionally run across my old Cobra 29 CB radio and I see the K-40 CB antenna that graced my car’s trunk for years. I had the CB radio tuned to maximum output internally and added a power mike to get top performance.

It’s amazing how we go through phases in our lives. When I was a tournament bass fisherman, I knew every bait I had in four or five tackle boxes. Now I don’t know where they all are. They were organized in neat hanging rows. Now they are a mass of tangled hooks. I still intend to reorganize my tackle but never find the time. I used to make the time to do that.

Turkey hunting replaced bass fishing on the front burner. Crappie fishing edged out bass fishing. They taste better. I’ve managed to catch a few walleye, mostly by accident. The ones that I caught were better than crappie. I see Babe Winkerman’s fishing show every couple of weeks or so. He’s so far ahead of me on catching walleye that I’m not sure we speak the same language.

So this is the world that little Van has entered. Adrian is getting introduced to calls from Day Care saying Van is sick. She had one of those last week, her first, and when she got there he wasn’t as sick as they thought. Just a stuffy nose. But that is comforting to her, knowing the Day Care folks are that concerned about Van’s well being.

Here I sit 800 miles away with his picture on my phone’s screensaver. Adrian told me that Davis and I will have to teach Van to hunt because that doesn’t run in Cain’s family. Can do. KL