Blackberry Cobbler

YUM!

Sunday morning

Silent Saturday

Blackberries

Dorcas and I are like children, riding our bicycles after supper to pick blackberries in Tommy Martin’s field.  There was rain last week and the berries have grown fat and sweet as they ripened.  It’s tempting to put more in our mouths than in the bucket, but cobblers don’t get made that way.  So we pick, reaching far into the overgrown patch to get the fattest berries.  Brambles tug at our clothes and scratch our bare legs.  Occasionally an old, dead cane will snag, tearing flesh, and we are reminded to be more careful. We pick until it becomes too dark to tell ripe berries from the red ones, and then start home. 

We ride down a dirt lane past barns filled with rusting equipment, no longer used but still precious in someone’s memory.  Blossoms of trumpet vine reach out along the lane, calling louder than Gabriel, but we must get home before the feral hogs come out to root along the verge and in the lawns.  We ride through the village, now closed for the day and dark.  The last customer has left the café and the cook has gone home to his wife, home from her job in the city.  No one stirs along the road, and no one sees two small children grown old, riding their bicycles in the twilight, trying to reach home before their mothers begin calling for them. 

A nice, rainy day

Sometimes there are storms that bring destruction or flooding. Sometimes there is simply rain that brings a special beauty. Today we had the latter.

Best in Show

Actually, there was no official "best" in Saturday's Rugby Car Show. This example was outstanding, however.  It's a 1929 Ford Model A that has been beautifully restored. It looks as if it might have just rolled off the assembly line. Here it is displayed in front of the 1884 Ingleside, originally the vacation home of Russell Sturgis, first U.S. Counsel to Canton, China.

I was able to catch this fine Ford Model T just as it was leaving for home. There was a generous representation of pre-WWII cars, mostly Model Ts and Model As.

Post-WWII American cars and trucks were well represented, by both restored and customized versions.

My personal favorites were the British cars. I still miss my old MGB, although my current Mazda Miata is much more reliable. I get to drive it to places other than the repair shop.

There was this classic Austin Healy, several MGBs, a Triumph TR-6, and a Jaguar.

There was this fine 1960 MGA. My friend Russ had a baby-blue one when we were in college.

And there was one example of the car that introduced Americans to the British sports car, the MG-TD. American GIs brought them back at the end of WWII and it wasn't long until dealerships were established across the country. Every boy child in the country dreamed of one day having his own.

Sunday Morning