Tour de Mathews: Part III

Field down Redart

After getting caught trespassing a lovely visit at Beachland, my friend Brooks and I drove down to Redart.

High on my list of things to show him were boats, workboats in particular.

Brooks has a deep interest in workboats and found my blog googling workboat images. Over the course of many months we became friends.

BTW, some of my very best friends have come from this insane inane little blog, which is probably one of the main reasons I keep doing it.

CB Mother and Brooks discussing quantum physics.
No, really. They were.
Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

Anyway, on the last night of The Tour, Brooks came over for dinner with my parents.  He was eager to meet my mother because he's a fan of her blog.

Although my  mother just as easily could have been striking a pose,
in fact she was holding her hair because of the strong winds.

After standing over a charcoal grill for a couple of days hours, I served up some hickory-infused chicken at a table with a grand view of Queens Creek.

My personal philosophy as of the past five or so years is that every day is a special occasion, so every night that the Chesapeake Bay Children and I sit down to dinner together, I light candles.

Even if it is just the three of us (and it almost always is), the candles are lit come supper time. Just ask them, they'll tell you so.

Why wait for a special occasion when that special occasion is now?

Anyway, the two candles I normally light every night were a little raggedy, so I took two votives and stuck them in lovely little seascape-decorated holders. Because they were votives (i.e. doomed to die out after an hour or two), I didn't bother blowing them out after dinner was over because, why?

I'll tell you why.

We all adjourned to the back deck. My parents sat facing the creek.  I sat to their side drinking wine .  Much to my dismay, Brooks sat facing my parents which meant he was facing the house, the kitchen and the table.

I say much to my dismay because in the bizarre little world I live in, everyone should be facing the water, absorbing its magical healing properties.  Facing my dirty, cluttered house is anything but relaxing, in my opinion.

But never mind my little world, which happens to be filled not only with special occasions every evening at supper but  also catastrophes mishaps. One or two, anyway.

No, it was a good thing Brooks was facing the table, because one minute we my mother and he were discussing quantum physics; the next minute he says, casually, "Wait.  Is something on fire?"

Indeed something was.

One of those votives somehow or another (and how this happened will never be known) not only caught the holder on fire, but the holder seemed very content and amenable to going up in flames to the point of providing a pyrotechnics show for the neighbors across the creek catching the table on fire.

When I heard the word fire, I did not panic.  These things happen.  Believe it or not, I actually tried to blow the fire out.  It should come as no surprise that the fire laughed at me to the point of hysterics.

Someone grabbed a tea towel and smacked it down.

The tea towel is scorched.

A layer of wood is seared from my table.

One cute votive holder with a seascape motif is disintegrated.

And a good time was had by all.

The End.

Taken from New Point Campground, where my friend stayed this weekend.
This was before the fire, as a point of reference.
The calm before the fire, if you will.