7.7.99, Wednesday

    Yesterday, T. and I spent the day together. We went to Pensacola, Florida, and the Naval Air and Space Museum. I was but a wee thing last time I was there but a few of the planes looked familiar. It's a free museum and, for that, a pretty good exhibit.

    They had a neat display of the Blue Angels planes and one of the new models that I took a picture of. When we went through the gift shop there was a book on the Angels and I looked up my cousin's name. He was a Blue Angel from around '88 - '93 though I'm not sure how much of that was active flying. He worked mostly as the PR guy in the beginning, giving tours of planes to dignitaries and acting as spokesperson. He did some of the stunt flying but I don't remember when. He got burnt out pretty quickly since he was away from home and his family something like 340 days a year.

    My favorite memory of him in the Angels was when he called us up, maybe it was 1990, and asked what we were doing for lunch. My mom didn't have much planned so he said he'd be there in fifteen minutes. At the time, we lived in Columbus, Mississippi, on the Air Force Base. It was a training base and had constant air traffic but nothing too big or too loud. (Call me strange but to this day I find the sound of jets in the air to be soothing.)

    We showed up on the flightline just in time to catch him buzzing the tower with a sonic boom. Oh, yeah.

    Mom put together grilled-cheese sandwiches and after catching up we headed back to the flightline. Everyone was out to watch him take off. We got a tour of the plane and then he taxied out. As soon as his wheels left the ground he spiralled straight up into the clouds. All the flightline workers cheered and clapped.

    For lunch we went to The Original Oyster Bar for lunch. It was recommended to us so we asked the guys at the museum information desk and they had no problem giving us directions.

    Our lunches were good, I had a dozen shrimp and T. had shrimp stuffed with lobster and crab. The decor was kind of hilarious. It looked like they had gone through a few "looks." The tables were your typical seaside tables: varnished wood with plastic, acetate fill overlay containing shells, sand-dollars and nautical rope knots. The walls looked like someone's "country home on a budget" with florals and dried flower arrangements and various cliche'd and boring images in frames. Recessed, red neon lighting encircled the room as a ceiling border.

    After doing another stint at The Riviera with T. we had spaghetti dinner at the big Condo and then took Steph and their cousin Phil (now my cousin, I suppose) over to our place for daiquiris and cards. We stayed up late, trading stories and filling in the gaps with Indian Poker.