August 27 – “Evac Day 2”

Once we arrived at Josh’s house we got all set up in our evacuation room.  Chris and I were blessed with the grandparents suite.  Well, us and Freddy.  She slept in her kennel near the bed.  The LaMarque crew took over the big family room with an air mattress and sleeping bags. 

 

Breakfast was clean out the two refrigerators of the evacuees day.  Coffee and bacon and eggs and cinnamon rolls.  Nice.  The kids took off outside – and inside – and back outside – playing all sorts of games and exploring the woods.  Freddy found a best friend.  No, Not Kel’s dog Leia.  She and Luke were inseparable.  Noa and AnnaGrace played dolls a lot.  Ezra occasionally joined them.  He was allocated the guy doll.  Not a problem.  See, he was “that guy” who wanted to jump off the roof of the doll house.  Yep.  His name is Vaughan.  We even took a walk.  All 15 of us.  We went the few blocks over to the stream park and hung out for a while.  It got too hot to stay very long, though. 

 

All the guys except Ezra went on a field trip.  Seems Waco has a sports memorabilia/comic book store that Kel found online.  As luck would have it, they had a box of individual singles of the baseball card set I have been working on.  1961-62 Fleer greats of the game.  I told the shopkeeper that I would have to get my list and come back.  Then on a whim I texted Chris and told her about my find.  Amazingly, she just happened to have a copy of my list, and she texted it to me.  I thumbed through what they had and bought a few.  Then we went next door to a gaming store.  The kids knew a lot of the paraphernalia in there.  So did Kel.  Then they headed for the Dollar Store a little further down.  And that’s where I decided to head the opposite direction – back to the baseball card shop.

 

I ended up buying some more cards.  I started to tell the shop owner my story about the Lefty Gomez card I have in that set.  When I was a kid, just nine or ten years old, my Mom heard that Lefty was going to be in town making an appearance at one of the local sporting goods stores.  She asked if I wanted to go, and of course I did.  By age nine I had already read just about every book on baseball that the Rosenberg library had in stock.  I was as much of an expert as a child can be on the great players of the game throughout its history.  I remember when we walked in that we were the only ones there.  Lefty looked … sad.  He just looked like a tired old man.  Strange that I would remember that.  Guess I expected him to be the vibrant, athletic jokester I had read about in books.  I cautiously approached him, with the encouragement of my Mom.  Slowly I held out the baseball card I had with his image on the front, from that 1961-2 set.  His eyes brightened when he saw it.  His whole demeanor seemed to change, in fact.  He took the card from me and said, “Well, hi there.  What’s your name?”  Then he signed the card, smiled, and handed it back to me.  Good ol’ Lefty became a prominent member of every all-time greats team I concocted from that point on.

 

But back to my other story.  I figured the shopkeeper didn’t have time to listen to my prattling about childhood memories.  Other customers and all.  So I just dug in and pulled the cards I still needed.  I got all they had of the ones I still need.  In fact I could have bought the whole set.  Just $900.  A real steal.  But that would have been difficult to explain to Chris.  All this action must have taken me a … bit.  Josh joined me at some point, but he didn’t say anything.  Then Chris started texting him and telling him to drag me out of there.  I told him she was the one who sent me the list.  That made all this her fault.  Josh identified it as a classic case of codependency.  After I paid for the cards, we returned to the van where I found an amazing surprise.  Micah had bought me a frozen lemonade cup.  My favorite.  Best friend for the day, to be sure. 

 

The rest of the afternoon was spent swimming (for the Littles) and video gaming for the Olders.  The Most Seasoned of us all tried to work a little on his sermon, but he was too tired from previous days’ exertions.  It didn’t work out so well, productivity wise.  Too much dozing and not enough grammaring.

 

We went to their church for supper.  The Littles played on the church playground.  The three teenagers stayed for their youth group, which is meeting outside.  Josh told us they are planning to have their first monthly Sunday night drive in worship this Sunday.  Everyone stays in the car, and Josh and their praise team project from an outdoor platform.  That would have been interesting to see. 

 

We stopped on the way home for some pizza.  I know.  I said we went to the church to eat.  And a few of us did.  But not every was particularly excited about the vegetable alfredo lasagna the church chef had prepared. 

 

Last night I was given the honor of reading family worship from their children’s Bible.  And I may or may not have added a little drama to my vocalization.  As I read AnnaGrace crawled up in my lap.  As I turned the page one time she whispered, “This is so exciting.”  Made my whole trip …

 

And now it is time to return home.  Back to taking down window coverings and cleaning up whatever branches might be littering the yard.  Further updates tomorrow … from Galveston.

 

Lamentations 3:22-23 says, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

 

Father, thank you for giving us a comfortable and safe place to be for this.  Please ride with us back home.  Amen.