Georgia-Florida Weekend

Several years ago, we started the tradition of staying in St. Simons Island, Ga. for the Georgia-Florida football weekend. Having stayed in several places, we decided this year to rent a house with 3 bedrooms and a large kitchen and den. Our accommodations were great!

The game was the best college football game I have ever seen ... or even heard of! It thrills the soul of every Georgia fan to see the Florida gators get the crap kicked out of them and Saturday afternoon in Jacksonville, we witnessed an old fashioned ass-kicking. 42 to 30! Georgia has bragging rights for the next year.

The seafood was phenomenal: Sapelo Station in Eulonia on Thursday night, Dressner's for breakfast on Friday morning, Barbara Jean's for lunch Friday, Chelsea's for dinner Friday night and The Crab Trap for supper after the game Saturday night.

Jaye (my wife) and I have several friends who have either retired to St. Simons or who have built second homes there. This year, because the golf got rained out, we had the opportunity to visit a couple of our friends and see their new homes. We thoroughly enjoyed spending time with our old friends Steve and Anneliese Maddox. We haven't seen them in a while but whenever we get together ... it's just like we saw each other yesterday. True friends are just that. Next we went to see my childhood pal and my fellow Reynolds, Georgia native, Charlie Crawley and his lovely wife Susan. Charlie and I grew up together and his mother was my kindergarten teacher (I think) and for sure she taught Charlie's and my brothers when they were young (none of them were ever little). I could write forever about the exploits of his twin brothers,Will and Mike, but that is another story for another day. Charlie spend a career in the U. S. Army after graduating from UGA (where he met Susan) and they finally retired and built a beautiful home in St. Simons. Susan told us that during Charlie's career, they lived in 27 places. I am glad to see them finally settle down in such a beautiful place in their custom home. Being around Charlie causes my mind to take me down memory lane. It was simply fantastic to see him.

The Gang: Tom and Jan, George and Jaye, Scott and Tori



THE ASS WHIPPIN'
















STEVE AND ANNELIESE MADDOX






CHARLIE AND SUSAN CRAWLEY

The War

Ken Burns has done it again!

He has made documentaries about Jazz, Baseball and The War Between the States, but THE WAR is his crowning achievement!

There are literally thousands of stories that could be told about the events and the people of WWII, but Burns had to limit THE WAR's perspective to 4 towns and their people with their heartbreaks and celebrations.

This film expertly displays the timeline of events that were taking place all over the world with a war that was fought simultaneously in the Pacific and in Europe.

My father was in the South Pacific and served in the U.S. Navy and he often told his family about his experiences. He drove landing crafts during the invasion of Okinawa but he never stated much more than that fact. What I learned from THE WAR is that the invasion of Okinawa was the largest invasion of the war and that thousands of Americans died there. Okinawa was to be the last bastion for the Japanese because the next step was the invasion of Japan itself. In fact, the entire invasion force went ashore without a single shot being fired, BUT, they were told that military intelligence informed that Okinawa was heavily fortified and that less than 20% of our soldiers would make it off the beach. My father heard this warning and he drove the landing craft anyway. Big Ed was never afraid of anything and now I understand why! A few days after the landing all hell broke loose on this island.

If you have a relative who is a member of this Greatest Generation, you owe it to yourself to watch this documentary. I can promise that you will get a much greater understanding of what took place and why it had to happen.

It was shown in seven episodes and the total time is about 15 hours. Check it out at www.pbs.org.