From The Storyteller
|
Love
It's Free-day Friday, and Elaine and I have a destination in mind. It’s an independent bookstore, near a coffee shop we found in downtown Brenham, TX. The bookstore we found was typical of the ones owned by true book-lovers - great old reads, interesting new tales, and something of interest for almost everyone. We loved it, gave it a 10-star rating, and purchased 4 books. The bookstore that afternoon, however, was not the high point of our free-day outing. As we did our walking tour of the downtown square, I noticed a 12ft’ beautifully crafted, wooden sailboat on its trailer attached to a parked pickup truck. What made this particularly noticeable was the frail, elderly man attempting to crawl into the boat. Attempting is a kind way to describe his efforts and, if it wasn’t for a hefty push on his rear end by an equally frail woman, he wouldn’t have made it. Once in, the man was in his element. Sitting in the back of his small skiff, holding the tiller, he waved his arm. She got in the pickup, and the truck with the sailboat attached drove off. The woman drove slowly around the town square, pulling the boat as the man “sailed” by waving at the world. We had no clue why this “stunt” was happening but, being sailors ourselves, we smiled thinking - why not. Later, as we drove out of the square, we passed the man and woman leaning against the once again parked boat. Stopping, I rolled down the window, gave them a thumbs up and yelled, “sailors”. Their response said it all. They smiled like they had won the lottery, then she shrugged and yelled, “He wanted to go for a ‘sail’ one last time”. The one last “sail” we witnessed is a real love story books can only hope to capture. Moral: Love is making one last “sail” possible. |