Thurber, White, A Lake, Good Company and a Corkscrew

I had one of those unexpectedly delightful evenings today, thanks to the thought of my good friends, Chris, Barb and Jeanne, to include me into a rainy day picnic. It's not that I wasn't looking forward to the day - there's something to be said for hearing the rain on the roof as I go about my desultory Sunday routine. But it was nice to get a nearly spur of the moment call for a picnic. There's no such thing as a bad day for a picnic, especially with this trio, so I didn't even have to think. Jeanne apologized for the "last minute" invite, but I assured her that I'm pretty much of a last minute fellow, so I attended to the business of the day (Sunday is kitty litter changing, garbage gathering, and bill paying day), took a quick shower, grabbed my new digicam, and headed out into the mist to Baylor's Lake, which I had never seen, it being more or less in the middle of nowhere.

Running a bit earlier than I intended, I stopped in a crazily delightful antique (and whatnot) shop in the middle of Fleetville. Actually "the middle of Fleetville" is somewhat deceiving, because there isn't much to Fleetville other than the middle. Well the store went on forever, and I arrived later, rather than earlier at Jeanne's delightful lakeside home (and I know something about lakeside homes) and found her struggling with a recalcitrant space-age corkscrew. Seems she had removed the cork from a bottle of wine, but the implement froze up upon removing the cork from the screw. I suggested that it was a guy thing and took over, but to no avail. This thing had to have been designed by NASA in consultation with the Museum of Modern Art. It had retractable wings reminiscent of the space shuttle, and was constructed of a black unknown element and stainless steel. When you squeezed the wings, the gears engaged the pulling mechanism, deftly withdrawing the cork. But the gears were jammed and, despite my best efforts (albeit without proper tools) they remained so for the rest of the evening.

It WAS a true picnic, after all - burgers & dogs on the grille, corn au cob, potato salad, et al - around the kitchen table. We are a rather literary bunch, and a number of books were passed around, and I was pressed (lightly) into reading aloud an E. B. White poem on the subject of catnaps which caught my eye. (I know something about catnaps as well as lakeside abodes.)


After the main do, Chris & I took a bit of a walk while the ladies miraculously whipped up some coffee, ice cream and apple crisp. The rain had stopped and the light was nice, so I retrieved my camera from the car and took advantage of the outdoors to have a pipe. Jeanne's gardens are magnificent and unpretentious and her Baylor's Lake (it has retained the apostophe, unlike Harveys Lake which was separated from its owner by the U.S. Postal Service, which does not like apostropes), is not at all like mine, which is rather busy and noisy at times.


Dessert was served on the porch overlooking all this, and Chris took his turn with the book, with some more White and a little Thurber, and I followed with one of their recommendations, and before long, we were sort of breath from laughing. We took our leave at a respectable hour, and Jeanne kindly sent me home with the leftover shrimp, which I had not quite managed to vanquish during the happy hour. It was, as I said, a delightful evening, even moreso than one spent alone listening to the rain on the roof, and that is saying something!