The Gate

Today's riveting topic has to do with lanes.

Or driveways.

Specifically, the entrance to a driveway or lane.

Which my friend from high school

always called the gate.

(She'd call the entrance to this driveway a gate, even though it's not gated
and you can barely see the driveway--or the deserted house.)

It was a gate whether or not an actual gate existed.

My high school basketball teammate LaRue (aka Smith, real name Tammy LaRue Smith) lived down the way from me and occasionally needed a ride home from practice.  She lived along Route 198 just around the bend in the road between Mathews Chapel United Methodist Church and Ebenezer Baptist Church.  (She now lives in Richmond, but every time I go by her house--which is between five and fifteen times a week--I think of her.)

Her driveway had no gate or fence; in fact, there was barely a driveway.  There was just enough space to pull in and back out onto Route 198.

No matter.

Each and every time I took her home, she said, "Vogel.  Drop me off at the gate."

Well, she meant drop her off at the end of the driveway and keep on going, but I had to pull completely into her driveway to turn around and go back in the other direction. Every time.  So there was no dropping off except into her front yard--after pulling well past what she would consider "the gate."

No matter.

She still insisted I drop her off at the gate.

These pictures were taken in the Mobjack/Bohannon/North area of the county, where there are many long driveways with very pretty gates.  I tell this story because I don't know anyone in my midst these days who equates the end of a driveway with a gate, whether it has one or not.  I find it all fascinating.

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In unrelated news, the Mathews boys are all done with their season after losing to Surry Friday night at Lancaster.  Although it was a tough loss, they had a tremendous season.  I had fun at the game even if we didn't walk away victorious.  On Saturday, Daughter and I spent several hours at the Intermediate School (aka Thomas Hunter) watching rec league basketball.  Daughter kept stats for my friend Alda's daughter's game, which was great fun to watch.

In still more unrelated news, yesterday's temperatures reached the 70s, but today we're under a winter storm warning.

North River

These are a few more shots of the North River taken Saturday evening from the front yard back yard lovely grounds at Kingston Plantation. 

The weekend was a flurry of activity, starting with Daughter's soccer game Friday night. (They lost.  We don't want to discuss it.) Saturday's fundraiser was great fun.  Mother's Day involved a lot of work for me but also a lot of seafood fun.  If I get around to it, I'll post a few pictures from that Food Fest.

For now, there's not a whole lot to report other than surviving the work week and traveling to King William Wednesday night for Daughter's soccer game.  There are only a couple more games left in the season.

It's difficult to believe we're midway through May already.  If time goes by any faster, I'll be reporting directly from the Mathews Convalescent Center, which hopefully has really good food and top-notch entertainment.

I am counting on it.

Fall Fields

The formerly lush, green soybean fields are now yellow, soon to be brown, soon to be harvested.

These soybean fields are located near North.

North is a place, a location, a spot on the map, a post office (and at one point a store).  North is also the name of a river that runs through here.

The fact that it's also a direction makes things interesting, particularly when conversing to outsiders--such as an editor sitting in South Carolina, for example, who asked me to confirm or correct the location of a place once known as Club 14.  I said it was located on Route 14 at North.  She thought for sure that was a typo.  But Club 14 was located on Route 14 at North. At the spot on the map called North.

No, not a typo, just another little Mathews County quirk.

We do quirky right.