#and why would william wait so long to come collect his son's spirits and the other kids' remnant?

[and-stir-the-stars]

I've been struck by an idea or two, and I wonder about your thoughts on one of them.

For the Silent Protector AU, do you think William ever goes to get springlocked? Or does that happen in a different Freddy's location.

Since my version has William being afraid of Evan, I'm not sure how that would play out, unless he goes there looking for Michael (since he knows about the ghost of Evan but not the others). My guess is that he'd disassemble the animatronics for their Remnant, but he would also hope Michael is in one, so he can take him home to "fix" him like he wants to do with his two other kids.

Granted, the logistics of this whole thing are failing me, and I feel like he wouldn't even have a chance to start tearing apart the animatronics before Evan intervenes. And if something were to happen, say he manages to capture the spirits' Protector, a different protector would have to step up...

I realize that this is basically just me brainstorming in your ask box, but I'd love to hear your thoughts as well!

okay i'm sorry in advance if my response doesn't really help all that much; it's kinda difficult to reply given that I don't know what all you have changed/will change from my idea of the au and it's hard to give a response accordingly, but I'll do my best!

I haven't been giving William much thought in this au, but the idea that William knows Evan is "possessing" Fredbear is an intriguing one. My first thought upon reading that detail in your ask was that it reminded me of another post by @catwithacupofcoffee about William finding Evan's ghost and killing kids to give his son playmates. My initial response was maybe William does something similar (likely with the ulterior motive of doing experiments on the possessed spirits as well), and that's why the kids are possessing the other animatronics-- only Evan doesn't respond well upon witnessing his father murder other kids. Maybe Evan gets violent from fear and confusion, and William abandons his experiments and his son to save his own life. That could potentially explain William being afraid of Evan, provide more context as to why Evan feels such violent hatred/fear of adults (on top of everything else, Evan ends up getting left to rot in the Fredbear suit by his own father, after witnessing his father kill other kids), and further explain why Evan is so protective of the other kids. He feels it's his fault they died, after all. I still haven't decided for myself whether or not the animatronics were possessed when Evan becomes "active," so to speak, in my version of the au, but maybe that random perspective can inspire something in your version?

Then, William learns about Michael's death, somehow. And suddenly, all three of William's children are possessing animatronics, as though just waiting for him to come and put them all together again into what they're supposed to be. William has spent a lot of time since Evan's death learning about Remnant and ghosts, so after Michael dies, maybe William decides it's time to gather his children in one place. He goes to collect the Remnant and Michael and Evan's souls, but things don't go to plan. I'm kind of hesitant to say that William would "capture" Evan, because that feels like a really permanent change, and like you said-- without Evan to act as a Protector, someone else has to step up, and the original premise of the au kinda... falls apart. But, maybe all the ghost spirits rise up and put an end to William's reign of terror once and for all. Maybe William didn't even realize Evan and the ghost kids could project their forms outside of the suits; maybe when he left Evan, Ev didn't have the strength to project his form and was still stuck inside Fredbear. If the Spring Bonnie suit is still there, maybe the ghosts chase him into it and he gets springlocked like in canon; if not, then these kids have spent years dealing with night guards. They have no shortage of ways to kill. (of course, William "always comes back," so maybe he manages to find a way to weasel out of it...)

William coming into the story could be the "grand finale" so to speak: the kids get their resolution by getting revenge on the man who killed them as well as resolving their emotional trauma through their friendship with Evan (and Michael?), and Ev and Michael face their brotherly issues by working together to save each other and the other ghost kids from their father.

[dangerousdragonflies]

The Harmoninomicon

Book 1 : WATER

Chapter I Cognitive Dissonance

 Part I

The entire world shook, the sky was red. A mighty wash of roiling water struck the boat. Several people were attempting to swim back to the log raft, a second and third raft was just barely visible through the chaos. A man bellowed calling out to the ocean, the words were lost beneath the waves. A wall of water that touched the sky came roaring overhead. Hold on everyone! The man yelled. The massive glowing object in the sky loomed over like a promise, two of the boats had now gone under the waves. No! You can’t! The man screamed at the ocean. Something glowing and red like a wall of liquid fire was bubbling up through the waves, the sound was hideous like a red hot sword slowly cutting though butter. The last of the log rafts splintered apart when the wall of water and the glowing bubbling horror met. A figure woke with a scream, are you ok Hun? A woman said in the dark. It was just a bad dream, go back to sleep I’ll be fine.

 We have an old saying on the island, If the island does not like you it will spit you out. What does that even mean exactly Jules questioned? Well you know its probably all the movies I’ve been watching and I haven’t been getting enough sleep, it just seems like the universe doesn’t want me to feel rested. Well maybe you should try something a little more esoteric man, like a Ouija board (it was pronounced Wee Gee Board) or tarot cards! Jules had his thumbs up in the air like some sort of 80’s car dealership commercial. Dude I had a weird dream and that’s it, there’s no such thing as ghosts or demons and don’t get me started on the whole heaven or hell thing that makes less sense than those flat earth guys. Come on Will we don’t just rot in the ground and that’s it once we die man there’s so much we don’t know but we are proving a lot of the occult things are real! Real? How can we prove anything about that, you said it best yourself we don’t know and there is more evidence that leads us to think this is it. But Science is proving it and Science is fact! No Jules Science is fiction, you are living in a fantasy land and I am sorry to be the one to tell you Santa Clause isn’t real, its time to wake up and see the world for what it is. With a heavy sigh Jules punched will in the shoulder. Fine, I see there’s little I can say to convince you Will. I have to get back to work here in a few minutes I really think you should look in to these things and see if it helps any. I know you don’t believe in any of that but whats the worse that could happen, I’ll send you some links. Laughing and with a smile “Sure, try to have a good day dude ill text you later”.  

The Rain poured like a blanket drenching the land to the bones. Thunder crackled and off in the distance a bright flash of light lit up by its after effects on the human vision. Something in the shape of a Dog was cowering and shaking, trying to hide under the two people. Margret I told you it was just a dream, I am ok! No you aren’t you’ve been up the last week having these nightmares and now im worried for you, Honey if you aren’t sleeping neither am I, You are to heavy to sit there Cassie; The Dog was trying to sit on the woman’s lap. Doctor Sanchez said one session with him and we will be able to tell whats going on with these dreams. Wills Sigh was exasperated, Ok if it means this much to you then ill go do this thing, Jules was trying to convince me to use; and I will use his words “A WEE GEE board” they both laughed. Well his heart is in the right place Will maybe a Ouija board isn’t what we need but I have some old tarot cards, How about we break them out? They guided my life pretty well until we met honey. I don’t know Margret I don’t think those cards will help me. William Edwards! I am sorry you had a few bad experiences with this sort of thing but im only trying to help. Where are those cards at? I think I have them upstairs in one of the closets. Ill go grab ‘em, the Dog nearly tripping the woman as she went up the stairs made a yipe, Fuh! Damn it dog! Go to daddy!

  Sit right there, Margret pointed at the carpet right outside the closet. Right here? Will said grinning. Yes right here! Come on Love lets see what the Spirits have to tell you!! As the rain came down like great buckets from the gods the couple sat pouring over the cards. What do the spirits say for Gemini? The words echoed off the walls. Both people yelled at the same time, Cassie! The dog had walked over the cards laid out on the ground. Picking up one card Will handed it to the young woman sitting across from him. It’s backwards, what does this card mean? Oh Hun, The four of cups in reverse reminds us to see all the good things being offered to us in the present. Thinking too far ahead, or dwelling on things long past can rob you of the now. What are you dwelling on love? Is everything alright? I don’t know Margret, I’ve been stressed due to lack of sleep but I don’t think there’s anything I’m dwelling on I mean I can’t think of anything I might be stuck on.

 Alright Mr. Edwards this is a safe place where no judgement happens just make yourself at home and try to relax. Honestly Doc I’m not sure about all this. Will looked around the room, I don’t know if this is the right thing for my insomnia plus I don’t think i can be hypnotized I mean I have a hard time even convincing myself to go to work some days. The clock was ticking so loud Will thought he would go insane if he had to sit here for too much longer. You would be surprised as to how many of my clients say similar statements, Mr. Edwards I assure you my practice is proven and sound. You are in good hands. Now one of our policies is we collect some information from our clients do you mind if I ask you a few questions pertaining to your physical and mental health? I guess, what kind of questions are we talking about? Our first question is would you say you’re a generally happy man? Happy? Y-yes I suppose, I have a great job a wonderful wife and a Pit-bull. My life has never been better, what does this have to do with my dreams Doc? My list has specially been designed to help for this circumstance Mr. Edwards I assure you, Alright Question two. Do you have any history with psychotropic drugs? Would a Antidepressant count as psychotropic? In most cases yes, don’t worry we don’t report any findings to any authority. Question three. How often would you say you brush your teeth? Will looked puzzled, Excuse me? Please Mr. Edwards these questions are important, Answer them as best you can. Alright I brush before bed every day. An eye brow raised a little bit, Doctor Sanchez adjusted himself in his seat. And how much Fluoride would you say you and your wife…? I assume, are in taking daily? The Doctor peered over his clipboard waiting for a reply. Margret’s allergic to fluoride so we found a place with a well and as for our teeth we use fluoride free toothpaste. The Doctor straightened, I think I’m beginning to have an understanding of the situation Mr. Edwards. These are a sedative for those who have a harder time going under the pendulum so to speak. The Doctor was standing there smiling but to Will it wasn’t a friendly gesture. Um do you think we can do this without the medication first? I’m not a fan of taking pills to be honest. Please Mr. Edwards these are all natural sedatives, they wont fail you on a urine screening and also they are hypoallergenic, anyone can take them even children newly born. Grabbing the little paper cup with the pills in it Will looked at them. I guess its OK, will I be able to drive when I leave here? The Doctor handed Will a glass of water. Here you go please drink the entire glass of water Mr. Edwards and yes you will be fully clear headed and able to drive when you leave from here. Alright Doc Will said with a face as he swallowed the medication, when will this hit me? Just lay back Mr. Edwards you should be feeling the effects almost at once, can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up? As his vision began to blur Will started panicking, Doc whats going on? I-I cant move! At this time two other men entered the room, as the darkness enfolded around Will he heard the Doctor say tie him down.  

 Wake up. My son, Wake up! Class is about to start so wake up! What? Will sat up and looked around, what? Stop saying what young man and get to school! The woman demanded. Whats going on? Who are you? The woman's stance assumed that iconic stance that all woman get when patience is running thin. I am not playing games and neither are you! Get up! The woman yanked the bed covers from the young man. Hey! What are you…looking down Wills legs had tanned quite a lot since he remembered seeing them last and they were quite a bit smaller. What the!? A million thoughts raced through his head. Arawakan! Don’t make me get your older brother to grab you and drag you to class again and you know he cannot be bothered with this, he is going through Melody training today. Huh? What did you call me? Will was yanked from bed by what looked like a seven foot tall bronze god, help!! Oh there is no help for you today remarked the incredibly tall young man holding Will by the arm pits.

Arawakan your late, why don’t you give us the reason why? The man at the head of the class said with hands on his hips. Um…? I don’t think I should be here will stammered. The giant escorting Will pushed him so hard that he fell hitting his shoulder on the podium at the front of the class. I had to drag him down here out of bed because he thinks sleep is more important said the giant. Standing up Will looked around, why is all of this so familiar? Wills shoulder throbbed. Go sit down little Bro and learn something useful said the tall young man. Will walked down the aisles of seats and sat down, looking around his eyes met with a young man a few rows back. His face said a lot but it was as if he didn’t belong here either. The older man at the head of the class Boomed “We have an old saying on the island, if the island does not like you it will spit you out.” But? But? Exclaimed a girl near the back, then why are there so many people I don’t like!? By then the entire class had erupted into laughter and crude remarks. QUIET!!!! Bellowed Wabeno the teacher of the day and today the kids got the head of the fishing fleet. Alright class I suppose I could share the super-secret reason why Penutia seems to not like anyone. Wabeno says with a grin. Oh! Oh! A young man near the back of the class erupted, hand high in the air waving frantically. Its because she was out after curfew with Athabaskan doing naughty things!!! Please just once can you be serious? No class its because…. Both of you, eyes and ears up front! Penutia and another girl were whispering back and forth snickering. Watching this for as long as she could an older woman in the doorway chuckled to herself, stepping out of the warm noonday rain, Kids! Kids! She lowered her head and waves of thought hit the classroom as soundless as a small field mouse breaking wind and as powerful as a blue whale breaching, Wills head suddenly started to buzz. A presence filled his head and even though there were no words he felt a wash of calmness radiate over him. alright class please inform your parents and guardians there is a village gathering tonight and its wet outside so don’t forget your rain covers! Will was hit with a head ache so bad he almost fell out of his seat, Wills head swam with a flood of memories that weren’t his but felt like they fit. I must be going crazy! With a warm smile and open arms some of the girls ran over and embraced the woman. Alright children this is important, don’t forget about the gathering tonight, you are dismissed! The woman had almost yelled over the almost preteen crowds ramblings. Will was astounded. He remembered getting up this morning, this morning in his home with the Tv and his computer but now he also remembered going to bed last night in his home made from grass and bamboo, he had never been hunting in his life but now he remembered two days ago when him and his older brother successfully hunted down and caught and wild boar with their dads lucky bow. What the hell is going on he thought?

  Part 2

 When I woke up this morning I never would have thought I would be saying this, but I believe we have found him. And what makes you think this? The voice on the other end of the line asked. We have had an eye on this one for quite some time Sir, we have him in custody and right now we are doing several tests to verify this. Doctor Sanchez I am not sure you are aware of how important this is, there is a lot riding on this and you have no idea how much I have personally invested in you and your, The voice on the other end of the line cleared his throat. Methods and if you aren’t correct one hundred percent about this one the ceasing of your funding will be the least of your concerns. Do not let me detain you, the phone beeped marking the end of the call.  The man’s posture relaxed a little. Two men who were mumbling outside the door while he was on the phone knocked and came in the door, Sir we have a situation with subject number seven. As the three men rushed down the hallway the sounds of screaming and banging became louder and louder. Noooo!!! The voice of a young man bellowed. The banging intensified, I need 15 ccs of Benzodiazepine now! The two other men were in the process of tightening the tie downs that held the young man. The figure of a nurse came shuffling in from a side room, hold her down! No! No! No! The young man tried to flail, Nooo!!! He bellowed again but this time the voice rasped. The two men jammed a cloth gag in the young man’s mouth. There we are just breathe Daniel everything will be fine. The young man’s movements became sluggish and his eyes drooped. There we are see? Isn’t it easy to relax now? Get him hooked back up the Doctor demanded, why is the machine disconnected? Get this thing going and crack it to sixty five percent! Doctor he was going into cardiac arrest we had to disconnect him and administer an epinephrine injection, Doctor his nervous system can’t handle this level of stress. Breathe, just breathe. See isn’t it easy to relax now? The man’s voice echoed in Daniel’s head.

 A sound like a yak making its last noises before it died trumpeted right outside his window. Daniels eyes sprang open and he bolted upright. With eyes that were full of globs, he had guessed he had he had been drinking the night before and had a few bad dreams. What the fuck? A rather large pinkish courts crystal started to pulse when he looked at it. Am I still drunk? He said out loud. Holy shit! Looking around his eyes started focusing on objects in the room. He was really confused by this point, well whatever I did last night ill try to make it up to whoever lives here and I hope they will forgive me for using some of these clothes till I can find mine. A mirror made from what appeared to be like hammered and polished copper looked back at him, what did I drink last night?? He almost screamed. The face looking back at him was so young maybe twelve or so with a tan that almost matched the copper mirror, what the hell!! What is going on? The level of panic was at a whole new level and Daniel stopped cold. His head was starting to clear now. Walking over to the crystal he reached out and the pulsing intensified. The urge to touch the crystal was demanding him forward. The crystal flashed, the light was blinding. A second set of memories faded in to his thoughts. Sitting down on the bed he rested his head in his hands, his thoughts revolved around getting another drink or at least a drink if those weren’t dreams. It felt to Daniel like he was receiving a data download to his memories. I was born here he said to himself with tears in his eyes, this is my room. Well, I had better get to class I guess Daniel said with a grunt getting up. I miss pizza already.

[teacherintransition]

Sometimes, the phone call is to be dreaded...

Last week, I wrote a piece on a “dreaded call” to my wife and myself being a piece of cake on the drama meter. Irony made an appearance this Sunday

“The problem is you think you have time.”

Buddha

I was very pleased with my article written last week which dealt with chasing dreams and sometimes conflicting with family obligations. The piece felt like it was balanced and didn’t advocate one choice over another; putting the reader in a comfortable frame of mind to allow ample time to consider all possibilities. The author felt that sufficient time would be there to consider all options. ... then Sunday morning came and the literary allusion of a phone call I used to encourage readers to weigh choices carefully took on a more tragic literal impact. My brother called me at 9:15 Sunday in a state of emotional despair that I have never associated with him. Through sobs of deep anguish, I learned his son, my nephew, my son’s cousin, the father of his grandkids had been tragically, stolen from them and the device used to tell of the tragedy had been the phone. My title of last weeks blog was, “The Phone Call no Parent wants to Receive....Spoiler Alert: Everything was ok.” This time, in that moment ... irony spread like a shadow ... this time it was not ok.

My nephew, Matthew Paul Rich, was a 24 year old electrician married to a lovely woman with two angelic children. He was his brother’s best friend, his father’s pride and joy and his uncle’s ego builder because he laughed at ever joke I made. His children were so aware of his presence as they could feel the love and devotion he exuded toward them from every ounce of his being... how could children not be drawn like a magnet to such a charismatic man whose heart beat was his children. He was his younger sister’s “big bro” as she, like her uncle, thinks and acts like an artist and Matt got her. Matthew got everyone because he’d rather have friends than a heartache... why not, more to enjoy. He was about joy. Matthew is gone now and the joy has been absent many days. He left us early Sunday morning while all those who loved him slept peacefully...confident that he would be there in the morning, we would have all the time in the world to share with him ... until we didn’t.

An opportunity would be lost if the focus of this piece was just about tragic circumstances and details and the river of tears, though it’s been five days later, still unrelentingly flows. This story is all of those things on a scale beyond imagining. “Life will go on,’ “people will adapt,’ “remember when” will be an all to often a conversation starter; but the loss of Matthew raises us to a much higher plane of thought and realization. The plane is not uncommon, for sadly such tragedies happen daily thousands of times, but it offers an exchange to make us better by losing such a person. It’s a forced introspection... a forced lesson, a dreadful exchange, one that we are reluctant to take at such a high price. I often refer to this concept in my writings, but beware, fate will bring to our doorsteps events that will give the lesson an immediacy that we ignore to our peril. What is this lesson that carries such grave importance? It is this: everything, every love, every object, every person ... will pass. There is nothing that will last, you will lose everyone you love either by their passing or yours. The power, the magic, the love, the bond exists only now. Now...

We all know this intellectually, but it’s too unpleasant to contemplate; so we put consideration of this truth for later.... and we grasp not a life line but a thread of hope, based on cliche : “I got time, life is long, life is short, l have plenty of time” .... all perilous mindsets that will rob our emotional treasure like a thief in the night. During this week, for whatever reason, I was reading bits from “The Tibetan Book on Living and Dying,” to try to enlighten my oft times dense self. I came across a quote from Siddhārtha Gautama, the enlightened one, the Buddha. The Buddha said while trying to grasp the causes of man’s suffering simply said, “the problem is we think we have time.” It’s such a simple but thorough, all encompassing statement on why we suffer so often. We have no time....we have now... only this instant and it too is fleeting. The great teacher also wisely tells us (I paraphrase): focusing on the past brings regret focusing on the future brings worry, focusing on the now brings contentment. Remember, this is a lesson born of tragedy... the tragedy happened, Matthew is gone, there is only learning from it now. Matthew wants us to learn to love his loved ones and each other with an intensity of heart that he possessed . You must be thinking, “hey man, you said that Matthew was gone, how can he want us to do anything?” You can step up to the buffet line and select the theology of your choice that speaks of an eternal energy, or soul or spirit where our loved one exists. Matt exists as certainly as the breeze blows and birds sing, and if he sees we learn from this, he will smile with his toothy grin and say at a slightly elevated decibel level, “hell yeah bro!” I will reluctantly accept the exchange and make sure that the passion and energy that Matthew gave to all of us will be present in my every now....but I wouldn’t mind just one more time letting him give me a thumbs up followed by his, “my man ... my uncle Brent!”

"If you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it, for I love you so

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,

If thinking on me then should make you woe."*

*William Shakespeare: “Sonnet 71;” Collected Works of Shakespeare

For you dearest Rachel:

I know I have but few claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me, perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, nor that, when my last breath escapes me on the battle-field, it will whisper your name.

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have oftentimes been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears, every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot, I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.

But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth, and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you in the garish day, and the darkest night amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours always, always, and, if the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air cools your throbbing temples, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dear; think I am gone, and wait for me, for we shall meet again.

As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father's love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue-eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care, and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers, I call God's blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.

- Sullivan**

**"My Very Dear Wife;” - The Last Letter of Major Sullivan Ballou;

Manassas Battlefield State Park; U.S. National Park Service

[nominalbutler]

modern bar au pt. 2

Here it is, the second installment of the modern bar AU, which I am tentatively titling The Windup. The first part began as a drabble for a prompt request thing that I did, and it can be read here. Thanks to everyone who read the first part and voiced their interest in a continuation; I hope you enjoy. 

...

It was another week and a half before Sebastian was actually able to talk to Ciel. The night the young man came in from the cold, face ruddy and fingers frozen, the three-man staff had suddenly found themselves swamped with work; a crowd of students celebrating someone’s 21st birthday with a pub crawl had stumbled their way over the threshold as soon as Ciel hung up Sebastian’s coat and finished washing his hands.

Bard was busy working the fryers in the back, cooking buffalo wings and loaded waffle fries and potato skins, and Sebastian was slammed with clambering kids at the bar, all pushing one another to order the most expensive or risque drinks. When he wasn’t helping Bard with the dishes, Ciel was scurrying back and forth from the kitchen to the tables, delivering plates of steaming, greasy food and refilling water glasses and iced teas for the ones that needed to take a small reprieve from drinking. One of the boys in the group ended up calling Ciel a faggot when he accidentally gave him a plate of nachos that the person across from him had ordered, and Ciel was sorely tempted to hit him upside the head with his serving tray. It took everything in him not to; he would never hear the end of it from his father. He brushed it off, shooting the frat boy a cold glance and a snarky comment in response, but it was plain to see the derogatory comment landed Ciel in a sour mood the rest of the night. He couldn’t even enjoy the large tip the rude boy’s girlfriend had insisted he leave as a means of recompense for his shitty attitude. It was uncomfortably quiet as the small staff cleaned up the bar after last call, and Sebastian did not think it was the best time to strike up a conversation.

The rest was just bad timing. When Sebastian was scheduled to work, Ciel had the night off. When it was Sebastian’s day off, Ciel had to work. If he had bothered to check, the debonair bartender would not have been so disheartened when he clocked in and found only Mey-Rin or Bard or someone else behind the counter the next few days. So he waited patiently and expectantly for Thursday to come around again, the day that his and Ciel’s name both appeared on the schedule.

He found himself checking his hair and his teeth in the rear-view mirror of his car before he clocked in on the prescribed date, and had to mentally chide himself for being so vain. To try and impress Ciel now was pointless. He had seen Sebastian in all manner of states before; clean-scrubbed and freshly dressed, creases sharp and hair styled, as well as disheveled, hungover, and craving the sweet release of death at three in the afternoon. It really wasn’t important how he dressed. When he turned the charm on, there wasn’t anybody Sebastian couldn’t snag. There was only an hour overlap between their shifts, with Ciel opening and Sebastian closing, but it was all the time he needed. He guided his hand through his hair once for good measure and headed towards the bar.

“Hey, Sebastian.” Bard grumbled a perfunctory greeting as Sebastian strolled through the back door, dumping an order of wings into the fryer and carefully dropping it into the crackling oil. Sebastian greeted him with a nod and went to hang his coat up on the hook, taking one deep inhale before sliding it off his shoulders; the lingering smell of Ciel’s cigarette smoke had faded quicker than he had liked.

“How’d your daughter’s birthday party go?”

“Great,” Bard said, suddenly breaking into a wide smile. His daughter, recently turned six, was the light of his life, and his favorite subject of conversation. It was so endearing to listen to him, and Sebastian was perfectly happy wasting the last few minutes before the start of his shift hearing about Bard’s techniques for wrangling small children hopped up on birthday party jitters and cookie cake. There was no reason to rush up front; Sebastian knew Ciel would still be there when he clocked in.

Except that he wasn’t. Instead of a pair of brooding azure eyes and pale lithe limbs, Sebastian was met with an uneven smile and a head of long, unnaturally red hair.

“Sebastian!” Grell sang a melodic, yet terribly off-key greeting. “Great, now that you’re here, I can leave.”

“Hold up,” Sebastian held up a hand, blocking Grell from escaping from behind the bar. “What are you doing here? Isn’t Ciel supposed to be working right now?”

“Yeah, supposed to be. But he’s not, so I have to cover for him. But since you’re here,” she chirped affectionately, “I can leave now.”

“Technically, that opening shift lasts another hour. And since when do you cover for people?” Sebastian asked indignantly. “If I had known that, I would’ve called you in last month when Bard was out of town and it felt like I had the fucking plague.” Grell’s nominal position as a manager had her in only a couple of times a week to collect the deposits, evaluate the stock, place orders for more alcohol and bar food, and make sure they were keeping up with their bills.

“I got a call from Vincent this morning,” the redhead explained, “asking me to cover his son’s shift! Can you believe that shit?”

“What?” Sebastian blanched. “Why?”

Grell waved a hand and shrugged, “I don’t know.” Gathering her purse from under the bar, the manager tried once again to sidle past Sebastian and head towards the exit. And once again, she found herself trapped by the bartender’s tall, agile frame.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said. “You’re the nosiest woman I know. Come on,” Sebastian coaxed, “sit for an hour, have a drink with me and let’s gossip. It’s been too long since you and I talked, hasn’t it?” He slyly reached out and grabbed the strap of Grell’s purse, sliding it seductively off her shoulder and setting it on the bar.

The excitable manager squealed, “Oh, alright. You know I can’t say no to you.”

It was a slow Thursday evening, and Sebastian gave Mey-Rin the nod that told her to hold down the bar while he talked with Grell. Mey-Rin, friendly as could be, nodded happily and pranced behind the counter, wiping down the polished surface with a fresh rag. Sebastian poured himself a drink, a diluted whiskey and Coke since he would have to return to work after this, and whipped up some strong fruity mixer for Grell to sip on. They settled in at the corner end of the bar, underneath a TV that was rolling a muted reel of highlights from earlier in the week, athletes running and jumping to the silent cheers from the crowds. Technically the bar didn’t allow smoking inside, but Grell lit up anyway, offering her pack to Sebastian in a polite but superficial gesture. He surprised her by taking one of the proffered American Spirits and lighting it with a Bic from his pocket.

“Since when did you start smoking again? Don’t tell me it’s ‘cause of that Ciel kid. Boy smokes like a fucking chimney I hear…”

Sebastian scoffed, “Don’t be ridiculous,” and exhaled a weak trail of smoke. “Some habits are just harder to kick than others.”

Grell smirked and took a drag. “Whatever you say, Sebby.”

Rinsing his mouth of the first few drags with his drink, Sebastian cleared his throat and began pushing the conversation towards what he wanted to hear. He was eager to learn what had happened to Ciel. Even if it was nothing serious, he couldn’t just let it go. Not after he had spent the past week nearly obsessing over him, patiently waiting for a chance to see him again. “So, tell me about earlier. Vincent called you?”

“He did!” Grell said as she practically swallowed her drink in one gulp. “At the house, too, the nerve of him… Woke William up from his nap – he’s been working so hard lately, the graveyard shift really takes it out of him. Two whole years he’s been working for that museum and they still treat him like some replaceable rent-a-cop or some shit. He should be head of security by now, I tell you what…” It took some work, lots of redirecting and steering Grell back towards the relevant topic, but eventually Sebastian was able to piece together almost the whole story. As he did, the weight in his stomach grew, like someone had dumped a metric ton of gravel in his gut; cold, heavy, grating.

Ciel had been in a car crash. Whether he spun out on a patch of black ice, or somebody else had was unclear; all Sebastian knew was that the cute little server ended up getting T-boned by a Chevy Tahoe and rushed to the emergency room late last night. He knew that Ciel was alive and breathing on his own, though he wasn’t sure if he was fully conscious or in need of any surgery. Sebastian also knew that he couldn’t just hop in his car and drive to the hospital to see him like he suddenly found himself wanting to do. How weird would that be? He’d probably freak Ciel out if he showed up right now.

So he finished his drink, smoked another cigarette with Grell, pretended to engage in friendly banter and gossip until he could no longer play along. He didn’t quite care what the manager did now that he had gotten what he wanted from her, and he had become so clearly preoccupied with what he heard that the redhead took the opportunity to slither out of the bar with a waggle of her fingers and a comical, exaggerated “Toodleoo!”

The rest of the night was a literal blur, a dissociated haze. Sebastian found himself daydreaming, passing the hours behind the bar fantasizing about what it would be like to curl up beside the young man’s banged up body in the hospital bed, hard plastic railings along the sides of the mattress confining them together in a warm embrace. He glossed over the tangle of IV tubes and wires he would inevitably get caught up in; ignored the bag of piss that was likely attached to the edge of the bedframe and connected to Ciel by the long thin tube shoved up his urethra. He didn’t think about Ciel’s dad, his boss, sitting in a corner, one leg crossed over the other, reading a magazine as his son’s monitors beeped steadily.

He thought about holding Ciel’s small hand, thumb stroking back and forth along the boy’s parched skin, sucked dry by the warm recycled hospital air being blasted through the vents. He thought about running his fingers through that cute little bobbed mop of hair, dyed blue like the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean. He thought about draping an arm over Ciel’s waist, curling up beside him, face tucked in the crook of his neck, listening to the breath draw in and out of his lungs. He didn’t think about fucking him; he just wanted to hold him.

The cold, bitter breeze outside rattled Sebastian’s bones when he stepped outside at the end of the night and realized he had forgotten his coat. The last few hours of his shift had been completely lost to him in his distracted state. Sebastian supposed he did what he always did: made drinks, chatted with the regulars, counted the drawer, cleaned up and closed with Mey-Rin and Finny, who had replaced Bard not long after Grell’s departure. He just couldn’t stop thinking, couldn’t stop worrying about Ciel.

Again, he had to scold himself for being so silly. There was nothing he could do for the young man. He was already taken care of, safely nestled in the care of those who actually knew how to help him. Sebastian clicked his tongue against his teeth, shook his head at his own foolishness as he headed back inside and discovered that he had completely forgotten to lock the front door of the bar. Retrieving his coat from the back, Sebastian realized the acrid tobacco smoke smell was coming from him, his own fingertips and his hair; it was not the meager essence of Ciel clinging to the fabric of his jacket, lingering around to keep him company as he pulled the collar up to his chin to deter the cold from sneaking down the front of his shirt.

Driving home on autopilot, Sebastian tried to piece together what he knew about Ciel. It wasn’t much. Aside from physical characteristics and some idiosyncratic mannerisms, he knew next to nothing about his boss’s son. Quiet, thin, and short, Sebastian could barely hazard a guess at how old Ciel really was – he barely looked legal, but he had to be if he worked at the bar. Sebastian knew he was a part-time student at the local university, but he couldn’t say what he was studying. He knew the Phantomhives were a wealthy family, but Sebastian could not parse out the nature of Ciel’s relationship with them, whether it was good or bad, whether or not there was a mother or other siblings in the picture.

Small talk and conversation were not the young man’s strong suits, but it did not dissuade Sebastian in the slightest. He found himself infinitely infatuated with the kid. It twisted his stomach up into knots to think about him lying in a hospital bed somewhere, not knowing whether or not he was okay, not knowing if or when he would get to see him again. For all he knew, the opportunity to talk to Ciel, to get to know him, to be more than a coworker to him, could have slipped right through his fingers, and Sebastian would never be able to forgive himself.

[palussomninovel]

Canto IV

In the Misty Hills Lies a Forgotten Tale by Dwalin

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-

[A letter from William Montagu, an accountant and cambist, to his husband Jonathan Vesey, dated 10th October 1724. A note is attached: Harriet, look at this. I think this letter was never sent? The seal was intact (Never fear, I opened it with utmost care), and it was tucked into a daybook from the old collection. Nothing interesting other than this, just accounts and payments. -Hazel x]

My Dearest Jonathan,

Lord Mallory is such a scrawny and odious man who boasts the most tremendous Hapsburg jaw, one might think they were in the presence of the Emperor himself. At first glance I thought him squat, but upon standing he unfolds himself like a spider and I realised it was his posture, the twisted grimace of a burdened man, that made him seem to metamorphosize before my eyes. His macilent frame towers over me, and as you know I am not a small man. Overall my first impression was one I would not like to repeat again, and so I have taken to eating meals in my salon. Presumably, this also suits my Lord, for he has not once complained about the arrangement.

His son, Oscar, is a scraggy boy of twelve and by all accounts a much more likable fellow than his father, but I worry that the expectations of his family weigh heavily upon him. He is dour for his age. Where other boys might be spirited and playful, he is sullen and withdrawn. His father has him reading all day about tombs. Tombs! Really, what kind of man could even suck all the youthful joy out of a book about crypts and treasures, and yet the boy reads it as though it were the strictest punishment, presenting what he has learned every night to his father in a voice as cool as slate. I worry for his future and hope for his sake that he takes more after his mother.

The mansion itself is a grand and foreboding place, I cannot stress enough just how much of it there is. Every time I think I have reached the end of a corridor, two more branch off from it like some sort of daemonic junction. Even the corners have corners! I tried once to count the windows from the outside, and could not. Even counting the windows of a single floor got me all confused, as my bedroom is on a corner, and yet I could not see the lamp I left in the window from any outside angle! The word mansion barely does justice to this vast and looming palace, it is more like a castle than a mere country house, what with these turreted towers and thick, basalt walls.

The Mallory's are the best in their line of work. The cryptography of Mallory the elder, Gods rest his soul, was renowned. Not a single noble of note was buried without a Mallory contraption in his final place of rest. I must admit, I was surprised to hear that the current Lord Mallory was not of the same level of accomplishment, but having now met him I can understand why. Something has taken root in this man's mind, his worldview has narrowed and he has time only for his marsh, his mines and his growing religious fervour. He is training his son, however, and the boy does at least show a shining potential. I think it would help him to get away from the manor, and study in some other part of the world, where he can enjoy the fame his name grants him and forget about the building and maintaining of catacombs for a while.

My work here is fairly straightforward, though by the gods there is enough of it. I feel like these accounts have never been looked at, there is work here that will last me for months. But luckily, Mallory is willing to pay. What he could be needing with all this equipment however, I haven't the faintest idea. The mansion is sprawling enough, and I cannot see any sign of new construction nor indeed any workers who might carry it out. Apart from myself, the Lord, the young master and a few servants the place is empty. And yet, day after day carts of metal and mortar are delivered and deposited somewhere, I do not know where. I just tally the books, and count my money.

The Romans called this place Palus Sulis, the swamp-land of Sulis, goddess of the water, as many of the streams and rivers which nourished the local villages came down from the peaks of this rocky haven. There was even a small temple, the ruins of which you can see in the north garden. In modern times, this has been corrupted into Palus Somni, for reasons unknown but when I mentioned it to Lord Mallory he just gave me a rasping laugh and said "Even goddesses need to sleep, Montagu."

The water here is thermal, naturally heated from deep beneath the stone which has led to many a pleasant hot bath, despite being accompanied by the pungent smell of brimstone. I was told by one of the servants that the spring waters, when meeting the porous earth of the marshland, creates a rather beneficial epsom salt, pinkish in colour from the iron deposits and very good for sore muscles and as a medicinal base. I have enclosed some for your satisfaction, as I know how much your knees pain you.

Everything here smells of rust and sulphur and peat, and I miss you and your good company. I miss your smiles, and your strong arms around my shoulders. I know you would have something insightful to say about all this, and I await your response with excessive eagerness, as one might who is cursed to stay in the middle of nowhere with no decent conversation in sight in the long months ahead.

Ever yours, my love,

William

----

[Harriet – I found another letter! It was in the same book. I know, I know – I’m not the most observant cat in the closet but at least I found it before it got filed away forever. Poor William though, it looks like none of them ever got sent. I’ll have another look through the daybooks and send any more correspondence your way for cataloguing. H x]

19th October 1724.

The strangest thing, my love. The most curious incident happened this morning, and I need to get my thoughts down on paper because if I leave them buzzing around my head I fear I shall go mad.

Forgive me for writing again so soon but I couldn’t wait another moment, I had to share with you my thoughts. Hopefully you will receive this alongside the other letter, as the postal service here is scarce. Lord Mallory’s assistant took my letter for posting but said that it may be a week or two before the postwoman comes (she is a shepherdess, you know – she takes letters between the villages as she moves her flock for grazing, how peculiar!)

I had skipped dinner last night, and sorely regretted it later. I thought I knew my way to the kitchens by now, but I must have taken a wrong turn in this damnable maze. Surely, all stairs should lead to the ground floor, I thought, but it was impossible to tell without windows where the earth began and the sky ended. The air grew increasingly stuffier as I made the trek down staircase after staircase, each step narrower than the last before realising that this was a fool’s errand. I should have been content with the fruit plate up in my room. I turned to go back up the way I came and – oh! – when I put my fingers upon the wall it was damp, and there was a strong smell of rust. Where I had touched the wall - now, please suspend your disbelief for a moment my dearest - it had started bleeding! Fresh clots of bright red blood oozed out from the mortar and painted my hand a brilliant crimson. I raised my torch to see only red. The hall behind me, and in front, was a sickly mess of bloody sinew where there should have been mortar. I am ashamed now to admit that I ran like the devil and went to bed, for what remained of the night, hungry and sleepless. I don’t know how my feet found their way up, some instinct to avoid the visceral and seek the safety of the familiar was at work in my brain.

Jonathan, I think this building is haunted.

By what, I cannot say. Perhaps it is merely channelling the restless spirit of Mallory and his mad obsession. He has found some kind of new material, he claims. A new species of metal that he calls ‘pearl iron’. It doesn’t act like any normal metal that you might be familiar with, more like quicksilver when warmed and mother of pearl when cool. Its metallic radiance is corroded with speckles of opalescent shimmer, and overall it is a bright and vivid crimson.

“Listen closely, Montagu.” Mallory said to me over dinner today, as he slid a chunk of the substance over the table towards me. “Listen tight and listen fast, for you understand nothing – Nothing! – you hear, Montagu? Nothing!”

I could only nod my head at this, for it was true – I knew nothing of his ramblings. I was tired from the previous night abroad and wanted only to finish my meal in peace.

“Touch it.”

“Touch it, my lord?”

“Touch the damn stone, Montagu, or I shall throw it.”

(Such charm you would never find in the city!)

I put my hand upon the chunk of ore, expecting it to be cool and smooth beneath my palm. But to my surprise, it was warm! Warm and vibrating, like the heart of some quivering, noble creature. When I took my hand away, it left streaks of red upon it, just like in the basement.

I saw his laugh before I heard it, his face splitting in half with a wolfish grin. Too many teeth and too little empathy.

“See now? This house is as alive as this rock, and no more.”

I felt my face burning with realisation as I watched a rusty droplet trickle down and stain my cuff. The workers were hollowing out this very same ore from beneath the mansion itself. It was pearl iron I had seen between the cracks in the walls. I have no idea how Mallory found out about my night-time jaunt but I suppose in a place like this, even the walls have eyes.

I stand by what I said however. This place, if not haunted, is cursed.

Ever yours,

William

---

[A note is tacked on to the back of the letter, in a clear and spidery hand:

Pearl iron - golem coagulate. Can find it in the undercroft?]

---

[The next note is written on modern paper in the same handwriting.]

I checked the catacombs, it took me a while to find any but it was there. None in the undercroft, William Montagu’s night-time wanderings must have taken him deeper than he realised. It’s stubborn stuff, I had to bathe twice before my skin returned to normal, and even then the smell still lingers. I shall have to take some to the engineer and see what she makes of it, what properties it could have. To think that I of all people could stumble into such a mess! I’ll have to be more careful. From now on, I’m going to start keeping a more detailed log of this discovery. I already have a good place I can hide it. Rookery.

I want to stop and put these letters down. Forget I ever saw anything. But here I stand, feet planted firmly on the mossy earth, and wonder; might the secrets we have been pining for be so very near us, so close beneath us that I could touch them, if only I reached out?

-

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[stevekarma-blog]

John 4:1-26 A Samaritan Woman Meets Her Messiah

You're Not a Good Samritan - Your This One

C - This section is preceded by the conversation with Nicodemus and the Pharisees about baptism and the spirit and is proceeded by the Samaritan revival. Historically the Samaritans and the Jews were religious and ethnic enemies who hated one another and this discussion takes place at the Jacob’s well.

A - Look at the significance of wells and divorce in the first century.

p - Most people see her as the adulterer and not the abused.

T - Chrst gives to us that which sustains us and quenches the thirst from our souls. Main image is water. 

O - Come to Christ for the life giving Spirit.

R - FCF Inner thirst an only be satisfied in Christ RHF Brings an end to the endless search for that which will never satisfy. For her it was a relationship and maybe kids.

Therefore, when the Lord knew 

   that the Pharisees had heard 

      that Jesus made 

         and baptized more disciples than John 

             2 (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, 

              but His disciples), 

                   3 He left Judea 

                  and departed again to Galilee. 

Jesus did not want to give the Pharisees the satisfaction of undermining His or John’s ministry by setting them up as rivals in the same way that two churches in the same city setting up an Alpha course on the same night and the same time may negatively effect both and undermine both in the eyes of others. The fact that Jesus ‘did not baptise,’ Paul will later say that he ‘did not come to baptise,’ was probably so that people would not place too much importance upon it and believe that spiritual rebirth (the biblical term that is often used is ‘regeneration’) came about through baptism.  It is an outward sign of public repentance, faith and entrance into the Church.

4 But He needed to go through Samaria.

Practically He did not need to ‘go through Samaria’ in fact, most law-abiding Jews would have noothing to do with the ethnic half-breeds and heretics that were the Samaritans. Nontheless, ‘He needed to go through Samaria’ as this would be the place of His encounter with the women at the well and would be the place of a religious revival.  

5 So He came to a city of Samaria 

   which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground 

      that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 

          6 Now Jacob’s well was there. 

The well belongs to Jacob or Israel and was an ancestor that was claimed by both the Jews and the Samaritans the fact that it takes places near a watering hole is not biblical warrant to drop by the bar to pick up girls in the name of evangelism though (and I have heard this text used in this way).

           Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

Here we are reminded of Jesus’ full humanity. Jesus did not appear to be human, He did not pretend to be human and He was not half human.  He was fully God and fully man in one person, this is like a glass that is full of oil and water.  The components are seperate but contained within the one container.  In the noon day sun Jesus, who was halfway through a 120 mile journey from the region of Judea in the South and the region of Galilee in the North, was exhausted. 

7A woman of Samaria came 

   to draw water. 

The reader is supposed to wonder why this woman was drawing water alone, since the women would draw water together and why this women was drawing water in the noon day sun, the hottest part of the day. 

Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.”

      8 For His disciples had gone away into the city 

        to buy food.

Jesus not only humbly served others but He humbly allowed Himself to be served by others.  In the missionary world this is sometimes called reverse hospitality which is when the missionary is not the one providing all of the food and health care and education but also a recipient.  This elevates the person providing hospitality like: Zaacheus, Mary/Marhta/Lazarus, Simon the Leper, Matthew Levi etc in the same way when the believer not only welcomes people to their home but allows them to bring something or help out with the dishes or will come to their home.  This can be difficult for proud people, like me, who like to give but do not like to feel indebted to anyone for anything.

9 Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” 

   For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Relgious Jews had nothing to do with women or Samaritans in fact Jews and Samaritans hated one another in the same way that Sunni and Shia Muslims or Catholics and Protestants in NIRE in the 70s and 80s or Jews and Nazis in the 30s and 40s might.

      10 Jesus answered and said to her, 

         “If you knew the gift of God, 

Jesus was not only God’s gift to the Jews but to the whole world.  That is that He was the long awaited Jewish Messiah but He was also the long awaited Samaritan Messiah and is the long awaited Messiah of all peoples.  He is the Oliver Cromwell, the William Wallace, the Che Guerra, the Nelson Mandela, the George Washington, the Christian Ronaldo, the Ussain Bolt, the Gandhi that we have all been waiting for.  In fact, the reason why their stories fascinate us is because they are mere shadows of something more significant that came through Him.

            and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, 

              and He would have given you living water.”

John does something interesting here he uses the idea of dead water (meaning water from a stagnant source, the spring from this well had probably ceased or this well had always been a well that collected the rain from the rainy season) and living water (which is water from a spring or flowing water from a river).  He says that Jesus was comparing the dead water of life with the living water that comes from Him.

11 The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, 

   and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? 12 Are You greater than our father Jacob, 

     who gave us the well, 

        and drank from it himself, as well as his sons 

           and his livestock?”

Yet again we see that Jesus is misunderstood by those who are overly literalisitic with His words.  What if there were 2 ways to percieve the world, maybe that is too simplisitc too, but what if there was one way which was overly literlaisitic and one that was equally true but was more the langage of the poet or song writer and contained within it metaphor and word picture and symbol?  Well in Chrit these two ways or lens need to be alligned so that we might read His word not in a literalisitic sense but in a literal sense recognising shades of meaning and not dismiss it as ‘arty farty.’  Ultimately to understand the things that are revealed, revelation, we need the illuminating light of the Spirit - illumination.

13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again,

   14 but whoever drinks of the water 

      that I shall give him will never thirst. 

        But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

‘We are all baptised by the one Spirit’ which means that Christ fills us with the same Holy Spirit that filled Him and the apostles which mean that the power that dwells in the youngest and weakest believer is unfathomable.  And that power is not just pragmatic, for the healing of the sick or so that one may be able to interpret dreams etc that power bubbles up in someone and becomes the source, or ‘fountain’ that leads to the life that is promised by Christ.  Abundant life in the here-and-now and everlasting life in the bye-and-bye.

15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, 

   that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

This woman longs for this water as her shame and her string of failed relationships have never been able to satsify the inner thirst she has had she is like the gambler who thinks that the one big win or the drunk who will just have one more binge before giving up but no matter how much the one wins and loses and wins again and the other drinks and drinks and drinks nothing can satisfy the craving of their innermost being. Intectually, relationally, spiritually the thirst in our souls can only be fulfilled in Christ, when He and He alone is our single delight when if everything if stripped away would be nothing in comparison with His good pleasure.

  16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, 

      and come here.”

17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ 

   18 for you have had five husbands, 

      and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

Although many preachers and commentaries would see this womn, in the words of Alister Begg as having had ‘5 husbands and a live in lover,’ I don’t think this is the case.  I say that because in this day a woman caught in adultery would be stoned to death and it was only men who were able to iniaite divorce I think we have a woman who was always a good looking girl the stunner from Sychar.  And not only was she physically attractive but she had a personality that made men like putty in her hands.  Maybe she married her childhood sweetheart and then he died, she is till young and still has her looks and her charm and maybe her second husband leaves her for another woman and the fourth because of the hard time his friends and family give him and the fith because she can bare him no children.  Until the final guy is happy to sleep with her or live with her but he is not marryng her. This is the young girl who served you at Boots, this is the one in your English lit lecturers, this is your cousin this could be you.  Not so much immoral, though that is maybe a art of it and Christ saves the immoral, but the lost and oppressed who have tried to fill the Christless void with actual or imaginary romantic relationships.

If I can only find me a Justin Bieber or Scarlett Johanson.

If only if I had a little girl who I could take to pilates or a little boy who I could take to the football.

If only I had genuine friends and a Church that loves me.

Look! It is not that I grudge you this, I want you to have this but you ask the people who wanted the same things and who got what they wanted and they will tell you honestly that although it was awesome, though for some the dream became a nightmare, it was unable quench the inner thirst within them.

19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, 

   and you Jews say 

     that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”

This woman does what we often do when the spotlight of conviction comes upon us by the Spirit she makes excuses.  What she says here is the context of the conversation is stupid.  This is the I would follow Jesus but I need to first figure out if I should be a Pentecostal or a Preysbetarian or if I perfer Gospel choirs or worship bands.  

 Some of you know enough by now to repent of your sins, place your faith in Christ, be baptised.  Some of you know that you should make covenant and serving in leadership.  And some of you should be training for the ministry, be setting up a Christian business, adopting or fostering or be on the mission field but you wont because you have excuses.

I heard of the American General Paton who was taking his men across a bridge while they being pursued by the enemy.  Something was holding up the men so the general got to the front of the bridge and found out that it was a donkey that was not allowing people to pass.  He took out his 9mm and blow the donkey’s brains out.  That’s what you do with excuses you destory them before they destroy you or God’s plan for you.

21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, 

   nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship,

      for salvation is of the Jews. 

          23 But the hour is coming, 

           and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit 

             and truth; 

                for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 

God cares nothing about beautiful and ornate and well functioning buildings - these are good things but not when they become more important than people.  So in some churches the philsophy is guard the church from young people and the local community or where the asethtics and the architecture becomes more important than the function.  This why the Puritans smashed the stained glass windows and tore out the statues because the good things had become god things.

But your car and your desk at work or the weight section of Lancaster House Hotel gym is just as sacred as this building.  Worship is nothing to do with the form but the person that you worship (God), the way that you worship (the spirit - one that is set ablaze by the Holy Spirit not bored and indifferent or mechanical) and the way that you worship (its true: it’s biblical, it is as revealed, it is the kind of worship that God delights in).

Not only are there some who do not worship God as the all-powerful all-loving God of the Bible but there are those that do not worship Him with their hearts abalze and their Bibles open.

You might be someone with a limited emotional spectrum.  Your steady Eddie, your cool, your controlled or your Spock your analytical and rational.  Well do the things that stir your affections.  Listen to the preachers, get the CDs of the songs be around the people who strangely warm your heart for the things of God.  Sit at the front so you do not have to put off by others, remember God looks on the outward appearance and God judges the heart and that Church is a place for people in all places in their spiritual journey and none.  In fact, let me deal with the flag waving issue.  Personally it is not my thing.  Unless we could make them look like they belong to an underground resistance movement or military unit but can I tell you something it moves the very heart of God so you wave those bad boys.

Or you might be someone who is content to have a shallow and superficial faith.  For goodness sake open your bible.  Learn, develop, grow, take notes, ask questions, read, watch listen, study.  The more you get to know of God the more your heart stretches and burns for Him.  Theology is not the enemy of passion but the enemy of ignorance, immaturity and ineffectiveness.  The more you love Him the more you will want to know Him.

24 God is Spirit, 

   and those who worship Him must worship in spirit 

      and truth.”

25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”

26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” 

Not only where the Jews waiting for the Messiah but so where the Samaritans in the same way that Buddhists are searching from freedom from suffering (well Jesus gives life and life in its abundance), in the same way the philosophy student is looking for truth (He is the way, the truth and the life) and in the same way that the work-a-holic financial investor is looking for peace (He is the Prince of Peace) and He comes not only to her but to you but what will you do with His offer.  Will you tear it up and throw it in His face or will you sign on the dotted line?

[newstfionline]

From Africa to tea with the Queen

By Melissa Twigg, BBC, 19 July 2018

Eighty-year-old women are supposed to stay at home. The neatly dressed grandmother of our collective imagination derives her pleasure from indoor pursuits--cooking, reading, knitting. One thing octogenarian women aren’t supposed to do is embark on a solo five-month journey through Africa, driving from Cape Town to Cairo in a battered Toyota Conquest.

Julia Albu never set out to be exceptional. Her daily routine slotted neatly into what the world expects from an older woman living in a leafy village near Cape Town. Every morning she would listen to the radio, and one day the discussion turned to then-President Jacob Zuma and his extravagant taste in cars.

“I was incensed,” Albu said. “I phoned in immediately to say I was going to be 80, and my car, Tracy, was a 20-year-old Toyota and she ran beautifully. We could happily drive to London together, so why Zuma needed all these new cars was beyond me.”

Buoyed by the enthusiastic response she received, Albu pledged on air to drive to Buckingham Palace to have tea with the Queen--and before long, the seeds of what had begun as a joke started germinating.

“My partner had recently died, you see,” Albu said. “It was an exhausting process, and after all that I thought, ‘My goodness, there really isn’t much of life left’. I feel like I’m 36 from the shoulders up and 146 from the shoulders down, and I wanted the younger me to win for once.”

Six months later, on the dawn of her 80th birthday, Albu’s youthful half triumphed. With Tracy’s grey, squat exterior emblazoned with the rainbow-coloured stickers of her sponsors, Albu set off on a frosty morning from her house in Jakkalsfontein, hurtling up a gum tree-lined road pointing north.

“I was raring to go,” she said. “I had been inoculated against every known virus, although the doctor said he didn’t think I’d need any STD precautions, which was insulting. And Tracy was looking beautiful, upholstered from the seats to the sun visors in pink florals.”

A cavalcade of Harley Davidsons bid her farewell outside Johannesburg, but other than that, South Africa passed in a blur of Karoo pepper trees and cold winter nights. And so it was left to Botswana to give Albu her first taste of African adventure.

“We were pottering along the road when an elephant nearly came to blows with poor Tracy. And the potholes, oh they were too awful. But it all felt magical, from the heat drifting through my windows to the baobab trees. I knew I was going to be alright because everyone I met was so kind. They called me ‘Gogo’, which means grandmother.”

In those early weeks, Albu often slept in a tent on the side of the road. But while her spirit was indomitable, her body was not, and sleeping on the ground soon took its toll. Her family rallied around to help--one daughter eventually drove with her to Zimbabwe, while her son accompanied her through Malawi.

But interspersed with moments of hardship was Albu’s utter exhilaration at seeing the continent she was born in finally blossoming into focus. Her eyes lit up when she talked about the majesty of Lake Malawi or Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls, but also when she described the details of life on the road. There was the man selling wicker furniture under a dusty Malawian tree, and the Zambian schoolgirls who read to her. She talked about vendors frying mice, truck drivers sharing food with her, and ripe tomatoes she plucked off the vine.

“I never felt lonely, even when I was alone,” she said. “I loved the times my children visited, and the intimate moments I spent with each of them. But you must remember Tracy is also an older lady just like me, and this was something we were doing together.”

Albu’s age was clearly a mixed blessing. African border posts can be notoriously difficult to negotiate, but she breezed through most of them. The truck drivers she had been sharing the road with began to recognise her and ushered her to the front of the queue.

“The belief in the wisdom of your elders is ingrained in a lot of African cultures--though often they just found me hilarious,” she said. “One Ugandan customs official asked why I was driving to London. ‘To have tea with the Queen’ I replied. His eyes were like marbles, and my passport was stamped in a jiffy.”

Nonetheless, I sensed Albu’s profound frustration at being physically unable explore the nooks and crannies of the continent unfolding around her. “Oh to be 40 years younger,” she said. “The mountains I would have climbed; the lakes I would have swum in.”

Instead, Albu quenched her boundless thirst for Africa through its people. Her travel diary is filled with page upon page of names, numbers and business cards, including the addresses of hundreds of teachers she sent schoolbooks to through a charity she is affiliated with.

In Tanzania, she stumbled upon a small village and began talking to one of the elders, named William. They spent hours together that day and the next, sitting on a bench while putting the world to rights. Months later, a letter from him plopped through her door in Cape Town. “Your radiant and full-of-life personality is amazing,” he wrote. “Your willingness to share the good moments of others taught me what life can mean. I, in my own way, promise to give you company.”

During the trip, Albu learned to shake off age with a flick of her hair. In Tanzania, at a honeymooner resort, she peeled off her dress for a midnight swim. In Ethiopia, she camped with eager 20-somethings in the Danakil Depression, a neon-hued moonscape of lava and salt plains that is often described as the ‘gateway to hell’.

Her enthusiasm for Ethiopia is particularly infectious--for the dramatic landscapes and for the profound spirituality that imbues the place. Sudan, too, she describes with a sense of awe that I suspect is reserved for an Africa with which she no longer feels familiar.

“I think I got my moment of purest joy when I was driving alone through the Sudanese desert on the long road to Khartoum,” she said. “My tape of hymns was playing at full blast and I was singing ‘Jerusalem’, thinking about England’s green and pleasant land while a shepherd shuffled through the sand in the distance.”

Albu’s African odyssey ended in Egypt, the country where her luck in namedropping the Queen finally ran out. Held at border control for several days while Tracy was fitted with Arabic number plates, her only option was to sleep in a cafe. “I’m not sure if you’ve ever spent the night alone in a room with seven Egyptian men, but it certainly was an experience,” she said. “They were kind though, and if they were surprised I was a woman on my own, they didn’t show it.”

Up through Egypt she went, stopping off in Aswan and The Valley of the Kings and finishing in the polluted streets of Cairo. On her last day, she parked on the banks of the Nile to collect some murky river water, which was destined to sit on her mantelpiece next to bottles filled up at the source of the White Nile in Tanzania and the Blue Nile in Ethiopia.

From Cairo, Albu flew back to Cape Town, watching the continent unfold below her and pitying her fellow passengers for their sky-high perspective. After recuperating in Jakkalsfontein for a few months, Albu boarded a plane to Europe and was reunited with Tracy--who had languished for weeks in a container in Greece after crossing the Mediterranean by ferry. From Greece, she drove through Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany and Holland, and arrived in London for the summer season.

“Oh, I was dying to have tea with the Queen--particularly after telling the world and his wife that I was going to,” Albu says. “But it was the week of Royal Ascot and apparently she was otherwise engaged. The English are a strange breed--I’m not sure they appreciated quite how long my journey to Buckingham Palace was.”

Although astoundingly, London was not the final stop in Albu’s odyssey. Last week, she crossed the Channel again and is currently heading for the heel of Italy, from where she will sail for Tunisia and begin her drive to Cape Town--crossing Africa overland for the second time in as many years.

“Well, why not? What do you want me to do, sit on this sofa and wait to die?” she asks, with a laugh. “There is a freedom that comes with old age that so many people don’t realise. I didn’t know it before my adventure, but at my age you’re actually freer than you’ve ever been--you lose a husband and the children are grown, and you worry less about the consequences of everything.”

We have a tendency to treat older people with kid gloves, but excitement and adventure are not prerogatives of the young. And if the inhabitants of Buckingham Palace one day read about Albu’s story and send an embossed invitation down to South Africa, she and Queen will undoubtedly have a lot to say on the subject.

[therantingtales]

We arrived in New Orleans on Friday, March 16th as a belated birthday present to my apprentice traveler. While I’d only briefly visited the city years before, it clung to me like the swamp moss that surrounds the Crescent City, the Big Easy, Nawlins.

In the hustle and bustle of the airport, we picked up an unexpected additional fare going in the complete opposite direction from us. The cab driver assured me it would cost no more than the $37 flat rate from the airport, so we settled in for an impromptu sightseeing tour as the other passengers were dropped off. Naturally, once they were dropped off the fare agreement suddenly changed, that is, until he learned I would have none of that with a gentle “Sure, we’ll pay what you charge, but I’ll be contacting the cab company and the airport afterward.” His tune quickly changed.

Once we turned down one of the cross streets of Bourbon Street, my apprentice’s eyes finally lit up. Here was the New Orleans she was excited to see. Revelers wandering the streets with oddly shaped and oversized containers of a red drink, beads around their necks, hooting and hollering at partiers on the balconies for more beads. We checked into Hotel St Helene, just two blocks south of Bourbon Street, changed and headed out for dinner. The walk to supper took us out of the Quarter to the revamped warehouse district with the promise of fresh Louisiana oysters. Seaworthy delivered. We ordered two each of the Lousiana Gulf Coast selections (six in total), and I found a local IPA to try, the Wayward Owl Clean Slate IPA. The main course consisted of the Seaworthy Roll, a take on a crawfish po’boy, for me and a burger for my companion.

We walked the hearty meal off by heading back toward Bourbon Street. There we stopped for two frozen Hurricanes. My travel companion pointed to a fridge behind the counter where little sauce cups with lids held a red liquid and asked: “What are those?” I responded, gleefully, those are jello shots! So, of course, we ordered them. We continued on down Bourbon Street with our hurricanes in our hands and a buzz from the jello shots. Finally, sometime after midnight we headed back to the hotel and crashed hard on a very, very comfortable bed.

Saturday; the day of 20,000 steps

Although we barely got five hours of sleep, we woke up ready to explore the old city. Fueled by the second most famous coffee brand of New Orleans, Community Coffee, we headed east. Jackson Square was just two blocks east of the hotel, and home to St. Louis Cathedral. The square was alive with street performers and vendors peddling voodoo dolls and paintings of the city. We tried to go into the cathedral, but they were just starting a private event, so we agreed to come back. On the south-east side of the square is the world famous Cafe Du Monde, but the line was already well out of the door and down the block, so we trudged on. We were heading in the direction of St Roch Market, a 20-minute walk when we stumbled across the French Market and outdoor bizarre. Tummies growling we decided to get a “snack” before heading on to St Roch. The snack ended up being gumbo for my companion, and a gator burger for me. We then perused about half of the outdoor bizarre before making our way to St Roch Market. I was a little disappointed at how small the market was, but we found a lovely spot in the back of the market, with a bar, to enjoy a couple drinks. The bloody mary I had was exceptionally spicy (in a very delicious way) and garnished with green olives, pickled green beans, and okra. I decided to give okra another try and then was reminded I really do not like it. I don’t mind it in gumbo, but by itself, it has a slimy aftertaste I just can’t get over. My companion enjoyed an iced coffee drink or two, and then we headed on to our next stop.

Aart Accent Tattoos & Piercings “Yeah! It Hurts”

My companion researched this spot for a couple permanent mementos of our trip. What we did not know was the cultural significance of this place. We were informed while waiting for our turn, that we were in the oldest tattoo shop in New Orleans AND the first tattoo shop opened by a black woman. An interesting tidbit from this article says “When Gresham opened her shop, there were a total of five female tattoo artists in the U.S.”

Wow, just wow. So, when I sat down to get my ink, I asked the gentleman “How long have you been working here?” and he responded wryly “oh, only a short time… about 22 years”. I looked at him, there was no way he was old enough to have been here for 22 years. But he says Jacci is his mother, not by blood, but because she took care of him when he needed it most. So, not only was I getting ink in such a historic place, but her son was doing the work. I was blown away. We swapped stories, and I begged him to come to DC because my next piece has to be done in DC (because it’s an homage to my hometown, and it just wouldn’t be right to get it anywhere else), but I want him to do it. I told him he would always have a home in DC, as a kindred spirit. I also asked him, as a local;

“What is one thing you recommend we do?” 

His first response was, listen to Jazz, and his second was “Get a Hand Grenade from Tropical Isle, but only get one.”

So, as we walked back to Bourbon Street, freshly inked, we decided first to drop off my camera bag (I’d taken no pictures with my camera, but a lot with my camera phone), and then come back out. Except instead of heading to Tropical Isle on Bourbon, we headed to the waterfront. But first, we had to eat. Our last meal was the “snack” at the French Market, and we had already clocked over 10,000 steps. I picked the Chartreuse House, just on the corner from our hotel, and an old haunt of Tennessee Williams. We ordered an obscene amount of food, including my travel companion’s first muffaletta which was the size of her head (the second half of it made a great breakfast in the morning). After dropping the leftovers off at the hotel, we headed down to the waterfront to walk off the food. We admired the big paddlewheel steamboats with their loud horns and meandered along the waterfront until we got to The Outlet Collection at Riverwalk where we did some old-fashioned shopping. After we were done, we hit a vendor in the food court to get ourselves some Hurricanes to go (when in Rome) and headed back to our hotel. We decided to take a brief rest on some benches in front of the water when somehow I managed to puncture a hole in my styrofoam cup still nearly full of Hurricane. We sat there while I “beer bonged” the cup for a little while, then figured out we could wrap the cup in one of our plastic bags, so I didn’t drip it all over myself while we walked. As we made our way back, we stumbled across a Saint Patrick’s Day parade coming down Decatur street. So, of course, we stopped, danced, cheered, and got ourselves some beads (without any of that flashing you hear so much about.) Once again we fell into bed after midnight and slept soundly for a whole five hours.

The Lord’s Day

I am not a religious person. However, I have respect for the beliefs of others, so as my Catholic traveling companion timidly asked me if I would be okay going to Mass at St Louis Cathedral, I said of course! We arrived about 20 minutes before the 11 am Mass giving me an opportunity to take some pictures without being disrespectful. The service was beautiful, and my companion got a real treat as the homily was given by a retired archbishop. After the ceremony, she spent some time in the gift shop, and I spent that time photographing the cathedral from Jackson Square.

We then made our way down to the waterfront for our own paddlewheel steamboat tour on the Creole Queen. For an extra fee, we added the lunch buffet to the trip, since we were going off a quarter of the muffaletta each. Oooo-e was the meal good. Jumbalya, Gumbo, Rice & Beans. We stuffed ourselves silly while listening to an excellent guide named Wendell tell stories about New Orleans and the Battle of New Orleans. Oh, and the Hurricanes at the bar were delicious. They add a little extra to the top. A thirty-minute ride down the Mississippi takes you to the Chalmette Battlefield, where you get off the boat and learn about the battle from a National Park Ranger. When the horn blows, everyone gets back on the boat to head back to port by the Spanish Plaza.

After the tour, we walked up Canal Street with the intent of visiting Lafayette Cemetery, just like I had years before. I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I was to find out the only way to tour the cemetery these days was with a guide and a fee. Although, I do completely understand. Tourists, and drunk ones at that, don’t have much respect for the dead, and this is the only way to keep the oldest cemetery in New Orleans protected. So, we headed back to the hotel to relax for a couple hours and take a load off our throbbing feet. And… sadly… pack for our departure the next day.

Then it was time for one last jaunt on Bourbon Street. We started at Tropical Isle, to get our Hand Grenades, on the rocks, as I’d had enough of frozen-drink-brain-freeze. They were delicious and potent. When I looked up the ingredients after taking my first sip, I understood why our friend at Aart told us to only have one. Ingredients included gin and grain alcohol. But, not one to go down without a fight, I had two. It was a Sunday night, and Bourbon Street was still full of people in St Paddy’s day green and beads. We found a fun bar, apparently called Famous Door, where we posted up to enjoy a band, and people watch. Sometime during the evening, a woman came in with a digital camera on a “selfie-stick” followed by a guy with a video camera. She pretended to have fun, dancing around and whatnot, and then picked up a random Hand Grenade cup off a table as if it was hers and acted like she was drunk while recording. I’m guessing she’s one of those Instagram influencers, or whatever they call themselves. After about five minutes of this, they left. What a shame to pretend to enjoy life, instead of actually enjoying it.  Speaking of enjoying life, the bartender was selling something in a big novelty syringe, so my companion went to find out what it was. It was more jello shots, three in one syringe, so of course, she bought one and we shared it. We then found ourselves at Reverend Zombie’s House of Voodoo, where warning signs told you that if you took pictures inside your soul would be cursed. With trinkets in hand, I noticed above our heads was an original fence from the movie set of Interview with A Vampire, but getting my soul cursed was not worth the picture. Somehow, I was hungry again, so after a couple miscues with closing restaurants, we found a carryout and got too much food for a reasonable price. Once again, well after midnight, we limped back to the hotel, scarfed down what we could of our food, and got another five hours of sleep.

Monday, Sad Day, Fly Back Home Day

Monday we woke up with the intention of finally getting ourselves some Cafe Du Monde and finishing the second half of the French Market Bizarre. Surprisingly (maybe not?) the line for the cafe was again down the block, but this time we found the carryout counter and got two iced Au Lattes and beignets. While perusing the bizarre I saw a booth where a man had set up his books, and a tv playing his video of train hoppers. I was intrigued, so began talking to him about his adventures. Brian Paul Brightdawn traveled with train hoppers and hobos and turned it into a documentary called “The CURE for the CRASH,” and then later a book titled “Book Safe Glacier – How The Rails Became My Rehab.” So of course, I had to pick his brain about publishing, traveling, and anything else he wanted to share. I could have talked to him for hours, but we had a plane to catch. So I picked up the book and the DVD (my traveling companion insisted I put my wallet away, as this purchase was an investment she wanted to make) and we made our way back to the hotel to pick up our luggage.

On our way to the airport, I received a text from Southwest informing me that the first leg of our return trip, from New Orleans to Nashville, had been canceled due to what I would later find out were numerous tornados in Alabama and Tennessee. Understand that my rookie traveler and I had previously shared some hairy travel experiences, and I was starting to believe we might be cursed. But I kept a level head and followed the prompts to select a new itinerary. This one gave us a direct flight back home. Relieved that we’d seen such fortune, but still wary until we were actually on the plane, it was time for bloody marys at the airport bar. I kept checking our new itinerary and got the notice the plane was to be two hours delayed. With an attempt to stay positive, I reminded both of us, that would still get us back home two hours before our original flight plan.

Finally, after a quick nap near our gate, we boarded our plane and blissfully made it back home safely.

With so much left to explore of New Orleans, I’m eager to go back. Crawfish season is starting soon, but after that, it gets disgustingly hot and humid. So I may just have to wait until Fall.

New Orleans – I Miss You Already We arrived in New Orleans on Friday, March 16th as a belated birthday present to my apprentice traveler.

[ahmerjohnny-blog]

Adventure Quotes

https://latestquoteswala.com/adventure-quotes/

Adventure Quotes

I scoured the earth searching out famous and not so famous adventure quotes. However, The outcomes: this curated list of inspirational adventure quotes with a purpose to inspire you to stand up off the sofa, strive new things, do outstanding matters and tour to see new places. However, Let them encourage you, allow them to pass you, allow them to touch your soul.

Unplanned Adventure Quotes

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson-(American Poet, Lecturer, and Essayist, 1803-1882)

“A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind” -Eugene Ionesco-(French dramatist inspired a revolution in dramatic techniques, 1909-1994)-” A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short. “

” A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short. ” -English Proverb-

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” -St. Augustine-(Bishop of Hippo, Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province. B.430)

“We love because it’s the only true adventure.” –William Gladstone-(British Prime Minister and the most prominent man in politics of his time, 1809-1898)

Read: Sad Quotes About Love That Make You Cry

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”

-Winston Churchill–(British Orator, Author and Prime Minister during World War II. 1874-1965)

“One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.” -William Feather-(American publisher & author b. 1889-1991)

“A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints.” -Wilfred Peterson-(American author who wrote for This Week magazine b. 1900-1995)

Shakespeare Adventure Quotes

Wert thou as far As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea, I would adventure for such merchandise.

The day shall not be up so soon as I, To try the fair adventure of tomorrow.

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it is morrow.

Check: Awesome Quotes About Losing Friends That Make You Cry

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.

Funny Adventure Quotes

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” -W.M. Lewis-

“I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.” -Vincent van Gogh–(Dutch Painter, one of the greatest of the Post-Impressionists, 1853-1890)

“…adventures don’t come calling like unexpected cousins calling from out of town. You have to go looking for them.” –unknown–

” Life is a fatal adventure. It can only have one end. So why not make it as far-ranging and free as possible. ” -Thornton Wilder-(American writer of innovative plays and novels, 1897-1975)

“If we all did the things we are capable of doing, however, we would literally astound ourselves.” –Thomas Alva Edison-(Most famous American Inventor who, singly or jointly, held a world record 1.093 patents.1847-1931)

Read: Im Sorry Quotes Beautiful Collection For Your Loved Ones

“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes” -Thomas Alva Edison-(Most famous American Inventor who, singly or jointly, held a world record 1.093 patents.1847-1931)

“Security is a kind of death.” -Tennessee Williams-(American playwright. 1911-1983)

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” -T.S Eliot-(American born English Editor, Playwright, Poet and Critic, 1888-1965)

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.”

“Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your life is meant to be.” –Steve Pavlina–(American self-help author, motivational speaker, entrepreneur & blogger b. 1971-)

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” –Steve Jobs–(American Entrepreneur Apple co-Founder, 1955-2011)

Adventure Quotes Tumblr

” It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest as if it were the only one we had. ” -St. Augustine-

“Always remember, it’s simply not an adventure worth telling if there aren’t any dragons.” -Sarah Ban Breathnach–(Best selling American author)

“If we must lose wife or husband when we live to our highest right, we lose an unhappy marriage as well, and we gain ourselves. But if a marriage is born between two already self-discovered, however, what a lovely adventure begins, hurricanes and all.” -Richard Bach-(American Writer, author of ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’, b.1936)

“The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except for the part you carry with you.” –Rebecca West-(English Writer, 1892-1983)

“Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.”

Check: Beautiful Collection of Love Quotes For Husband

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” -Rabindranath Tagore-(Indian Poet, Playwright, and Essayist, Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, 1861-1941)

“Nothing adventured, nothing attained” –Peter Mcwilliams-

“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.” -Pearl S. Buck–(American author, 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1892-1973)

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” –Oprah Winfrey–(American television personality, Actress, and Producer, b.1954- )

“It is confidence in our bodies, minds, and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures, new directions to grow in, and new lessons to learn – which is what life is all about.”

” I doubt whether the world holds for anyone a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice cream.”

Quotes About Adventure And Travel

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And venture belongs to the adventurous.” –Navjot Singh Sidhu–(Former Indian cricket star, a television commentator. b.. 1963)

“Look, I really don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive, you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you’ve got to jump around a lot, you’ve got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death.” –Mel Brooks-(American Actor, Writer, Producer and Film Director. b.1926 )

” Everything a human being wants can be divided into four components: love, adventure, power, and fame. ” -Matthew Heywood-

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. However, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain–(American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer. 1835-1910)

Read: Hurt Quotes And Hurt Sayings Updated Collection

”I decided that adventure was the best way to learn.” -Lloyd Alexander-(American writer b. 1924-2007)

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.” -Leonardo Di Vinci-(Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect and Engineer, inventor and genius. 1452-1519)

“A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything.” -Laurence Sterne-(Irish born English Writer, 1713-1768)

”Chance is the providence of adventurers.”

”Who dares nothing, need hope for nothing.”

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step” -Lao Tzu-

“I don’t want to not live because of my fear of what could happen.” -Laird Hamilton-(American Surfer)

“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” –Katharine Hepburn–(American actress)

“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.” –Joseph Campbell-(American Author, Editor, Philosopher and Teacher, 1904-1987)

Unique Adventure Quotes

”Life is a dangerous adventure, says the American, and he is half right: life is dangerous, but it’s not an adventure.” –José Bergamín–(Spanish Writer b. 1895-1983)

”The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer… ” –Jose Bergamin–(Spanish Writer b. 1895-1983)

”It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves, in finding themselves.” -John Wayne–(American Actor who embodied the image of the strong, cowboy or soldier. 1907-1979)

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for.”-John G. Shedd-

“Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. However, Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life.” -John Amatt-(American Professional speaker)

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive. ” -Johan Wolfgang von Goethe-(German Playwright, Poet, Novelist and Dramatist. 1749-1832)

Read This: Beautiful Collection of Cousin Quotes And Sayings

“I like someone who embraces life; who wants to be on a long journey but has no particular plan or destination in mind. An adventurous man, open to the concept of living life at the moment.”-Jill Hennessy–(Canadian actress and musician knew for her television roles on Law & Order b. 1968-)

”Adventure: the pursuit of life.“-Jenny Radcliffe-

“There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”- Jawaharlal Nehru-(Indian Prime Minister. 1889-1964)

“I have found adventure in flying, in world travel, in business, and even close at hand… Adventure is a state of mind – and spirit.” -Jacqueline Cochran-(Pioneer American aviator, considered to be one of the most gifted racing pilots of her generation 1906-1980)

Craving Adventure Quotes

” We live in a world full of beauty, charm, and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open. “-Irving Wallace-(American screenwriter and best selling author b. 1916-1990)

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” -J. K. Rowling-(English Writer, author of Harry Potter, b.1965- )

“Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty” -Jacob Bronowski-Polish-(Jewish British mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor b. 1908-1974)

“New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure” -Herbert Hoover-(American President, 1874-1964)

”Adventure, without it, why live?” -Hortense Odlum–(American, 1st female president of Bonwit Teller department store in NY city. B.1881- 1970)

Check:Happy Blessed Sunday Quotes Collection With Images

“We are all functioning at a small fraction of our capacity to live life fully in its total meaning of loving, caring, creating, and adventuring. Consequently, the actualizing of our potential can become the most exciting adventure of our lifetime.” -Herbert A. Otto-(American Author, leader of the human potential movement)

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” -Henry David Thoreau–(American Essayist, Poet, and Philosopher, 1817-1862)

“If one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

”We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.”

”It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.”

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” -Helen Keller-(American Author and Educator who was blind and deaf. 1880-196

”Gullibility is the key to all adventures. The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he who gets the most out of life.”

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[itsworn]

Bonneville Record-Setting 1929 Ford Model A Roadster and Olds-Powered Streamliner Remain Frozen in Time

Timeless.

Standing on the cracked, hard-packed surface of El Mirage, it’s easy to get the vibe. The spirits of past racers seem like they’re right there, if only you could relax your gaze enough to see them, shimmering through the decades like heat rising off the hardpan. Turn your head fast enough and you just might catch a glimpse of the dust trail left in a lakester’s wake.

That weird time vortex is only heightened when these two icons of speed are parked on the lakebed. It could be 1954 all over again. The lake doesn’t know the difference. Neither do the surrounding mountains, ever present in photos then and now.

The telltale as to which decade you’re experiencing—for those of us too young to have been there in person, anyway—is the fact that these racing veterans appear before us in vivid color, not the muted gray tones of old magazine stories, scrapbook photos, or digital black-and-white scans. The Williams Bros. roadster is coated in Titian Red nitrocellulose, the Tommy Thompson streamliner in Wheatland Yellow, standing in for Thompson’s original Goldenrod Yellow.

“It was always yellow,” says Tom McIntyre, “and the number was always 990,” chosen by Thompson because that’s how much money he had invested in the car when it first went to Bonneville in 1953.

McIntyre owns both cars, though he doesn’t think of them that way. His role is more as a guardian, tending to these machines while they’re in his hands. “We need to be careful to preserve the car exactly the way it is,” he told us as we gingerly moved the roadster around for our photo shoot. “The car will be around long after I’m gone, and the next conservator would want it that way.”

In the decade that the roadster has been with McIntyre, it has been outside of his garage just three times, our photo shoot being the third.

We have paired these cars for several reasons. As part of McIntyre’s remarkable collection, they’re kept with several other significant race cars, including the Penske Racing/Sunoco ’68 Camaro that Mark Donohue drove to the 1968 Trans-Am championship, and Mickey Thompson’s ’63 Z06 Corvette, which was prepped for racing by Smokey Yunick, powered by one of the first “Mystery Motor” 427s, and raced by Junior Johnson at Daytona (see HOT ROD April 2015).

The roadster and ’liner are both Bonneville record holders, though they achieved those marks decades apart. They also spent time in hibernation, tucked away for years in the garages of the men who drove them to fame.

They are salt-flat brothers in another way, too. They both participated in the Sixth Annual Bonneville National Speed Trials in 1954, the roadster for its one and only Bonneville race, the streamliner for the second time in a Bonneville appearance record that would span decades. We wish we had found a photo of the two of them together on the salt in 1954. Short of that, we felt pairing them on this hallowed ground in the Mojave Desert would be the next best thing.

The Roadster

Ron, Gerald, and Herb Williams lived in Oak View, California, north and a bit inland of the central-coast town of Ventura. Like so many other young men their age, they dove feet-first into the post-WWII hot rodding boom, first with a ’30 Model A roadster with a two-port Riley banger, and then this ’29 roadster. At first it sported a 21-stud flathead; the Dodge Red Ram would come shortly before their 1954 Bonneville trip.

McIntyre has compiled a record of some of the roadster’s runs at El Mirage between 1949 and 1953. The brothers were obviously on the learning curve, as their 119.68-mph run in 1949 evolved into a 140.62-mph pass by 1953—within 6 mph of the B/Roadster record on the much faster racing surface at Bonneville.

With their proximity to the Santa Barbara area, it’s no surprise that the brothers turned out for the very first drag races at Goleta. Don Montgomery’s book, Hot Rods as They Were, shows the Williams Bros. roadster on Goleta’s converted WWII airstrip racing against Ed Martinez’s ’29 Model A roadster in 1951.

The Williams brothers were Whistlers car club members, while Martinez belonged to the other Ventura-area club, the Motor Monarchs. The rivalry between the clubs would repeat itself on the dragstrip over and over, and was even captured in the July 1956 HRM, which featured another Motor Monarchs car on the cover, Dave Marquez’s Ardun-powered ’32 roadster. The final page of the cover story shows Marquez and Williams racing each other in Santa Maria in 1955, a race that Ron Williams won, according to Ken Gross’s excellent article on the Williams Bros. car in The Rodder’s Journal.

Ron Williams was a competitor, and not just in a straight line. McIntyre told us a story about some local sports car owners who came to Ron’s machine shop in 1953 wanting him to make them some parts. They were getting ready for the local MG club’s annual hillclimb. Ron was interested in the race, but he was told the event “was not for your kind of car,” McIntyre says. That’s all Williams needed to hear. After practicing on the hill over several nights, he showed up with his roadster among all those spindly little British cars and won the event.

As successful as they were with their roadster, the Williams boys must have realized it would take more than their flathead to make a dent in the competition at Bonneville. Fresh motivation came in the form of a brand new Red Ram Hemi, still in the box, from the local Dodge dealer.

McIntyre marvels at the ingenuity the brothers applied to their hop-up. The fuel-injection system on the motor is one of the first made by Stu Hilborn. Likewise the camshaft is among the first roller cams made by Chet Herbert. The individual exhaust pipes were joined to collectors made from conveyor-belt rollers Ron saw at a local fruit packing plant. They were cut to fit and exit on either side of the Halibrand quick-change. Bored to 250 ci and fitted with JE pistons, the Chet Herbert roller cam, and a Scintilla Vertex magneto, the Red Ram was “a very progressive engine,” McIntyre says.

HRM’s Dec. 1954 feature on the roadster described the brothers’ sojourn to Bonneville as “Pow—double jackpot!” With Ron at the wheel, “the car not only stormed over 6 mph beyond the old B/Roadster two-way average…but stepped clear out of their class to run over 2 mph faster than the one-way B/Modified mark for ’54 when their Dodge-powered roadster sailed 159.57 mph.”

Their two-way average for the new B/Roadster record, as reported in HRM’s Bonneville coverage, was 150.90 mph. Why the nearly 10-mph difference between the top speed and the record? According to Ken Gross, the return run was just 142 mph, likely the result of the Hemi running on seven cylinders. Post-race teardown turned up a bent rod (verified by McIntyre going through old parts he got with the car), likely caused by fuel filling the cylinder accidentally when Ron was pressurizing the injection system for the return run.

Ron Williams only drove the roadster a few more times—including the Santa Maria race against Marquez—before parking the car in his machine shop, where it would sit for 50 years.

McIntyre heard about the car from “a friend of a friend of a friend” in February 2006, a tantalizing lead about a Bonneville record-holding roadster that had been found. It took a few months for him to connect with Ron Williams’s widow Katy and his son, Dennis. They had a lot of questions of him, to make sure their beloved family roadster was going to a good home.

“The next morning, on May 1, the little roadster rolled outside for the first time in decades,” McIntyre says of the fateful day. “It was an amazing sight. It was ready to go, again.”

The Golden Rod

Wait a minute, you’re thinking. Isn’t that the name of the Summers Brothers car? Yes it is. Tommy Thompson named his streamliner after his Colorado hometown before taking it to Bonneville for the first time in 1953. The Summers came to him in 1965 asking if they could use the name. So this ’liner is the “original” Golden Rod.

Thompson built the car in his home garage in 1952. At the time he was an engineer for the Coors Brewing Company, working on the development of the aluminum beer can. Alcoa, eager to supply the raw materials for the new packaging, gave Thompson aluminum sheets to use for the ’liner. He fabricated its complex curves by hammering the aluminum over ’40 Ford fenders, using the castoff sheetmetal as a buck. Look closely and you can see how Thompson shaped the streamliner’s front fenders around the ’40’s rear fenders, and how the rear of the ’liner was formed around the ’40’s front fenders.

The handformed body was placed on a Model A frame, which was modified with a subframe to cradle the engine and driveline. Thompson powered the streamliner with an Oldsmobile V8 that had at one time been in a Pikes Peak race car. Local engine builder John Bandimere sleeved the 303-inch Rocket block down to 265 inches, allowing Thompson to compete in the C engine class. Thompson mated the engine to a ’38 Ford transmission, and then joined the transmission directly to a quick-change rearend.

On its first trip to the salt in 1953, the Golden Rod ran 142.40 mph and earned Thompson a photo in HRM’s “Bonneville Pictorial” in the December 1953 issue. The next time the Golden Rod appeared in HRM was 1956. “Tommy increases speed each year,” read the caption in “Flat Out for ’56,” the November 1956 Bonneville coverage. “This year turned 189 mph.”

The 1959 Bonneville program listed the 990 car in both B/Streamliner and C/Streamliner. In addition to his 265-inch Olds, Thompson came to the salt with a second Olds mill, a 394-inch experimental engine donated by General Motors. The smaller motor propelled him to his fastest run ever, 198.12 mph; but with the big engine he finally broke the 200-mph barrier with a 205.01-mph run. You wouldn’t know it from HRM’s Bonneville coverage that year, though, as another guy named Thompson was hogging all the attention in his quest for 400 mph.

That 205-mph mark would be the fastest Thompson would go driving the Golden Rod. He was a perennial contestant at Bonneville, even after almost completely destroying the ’liner during an exhibition run in Denver in 1964. Thompson rebuilt the Golden Rod but finally retired the car in the early 1970s, recognizing that streamliner technology had passed his homebuilt car by.

The Golden Rod began a second racing life just a few years later, as a trio of men from Nebraska, Dave Thomssen, Don Walling, and Rich Venza, updated the ’liner with new safety equipment and installed an Ardun motor where Olds Rockets had lived before. For 10 years the men, with Thompson as part of the team, campaigned the Golden Rod at the salt. While it was no faster than when Thompson drove it in the 1950s, they were able to set class records with several flathead motors, the last a 179.299-mph record in the Vintage class in 1979.

The Golden Rod may not have been the fastest competitor on the salt, but it earned a different kind of distinction: When it was finally parked back in the Thompson garage in 1987, it had “probably made more passes at Bonneville than any other car,” McIntyre said.

Thompson passed away in 1995, and just before she passed in 1999, Thompson’s widow Dorothy gave the Golden Rod to a longtime friend of Thompson’s, Dennis Brackeen. He and engine builder Warren Longwell teamed up to restore 990 back to its 1959 configuration, with help (and vintage race parts) from many Denver-area racers. Fifty years after Thompson made his inaugural Bonneville appearance, Brackeen and Longwell had the Golden Rod back on the salt, a tale well told by Longwell in The Rodder’s Journal.

About a year after the Golden Rod’s return to Bonneville, McIntyre was walking through the Grove at the 2004 California Hot Rod Reunion talking with a friend about historic streamliners. Mid-conversation they looked up, and the bright yellow ’liner was parked not 50 yards away. While they headed over to have a look, a man stepped up and put a For Sale sign on the car. Too good to be true, McIntyre thought. A classic streamliner out of the 1950s?

After a brief discussion and what McIntyre calls a “miracle horse trade,” the deal was done. He headed home with the Golden Rod on his trailer, and Dennis Brackeen drove back to Colorado in a “really neat” ’32 Ford five-window coupe. “Everybody was happy,” McIntyre recalls.

Since the Golden Rod’s 2003 restoration was back to 1959 trim, it included the full enclosed canopy Thompson added to the streamliner that year. McIntyre brought the canopy to our photo shoot, but we elected to leave it off, to keep the ’liner truer to how it would have looked in 1954, when it and the Williams Bros. roadster shared time on the salt flats.

That both cars have survived, unlike so many race cars, is testament to the craftsmanship that went into them all those years ago. It also speaks to the attention paid to them, even through periods of benign neglect, in the years since. In Tom McIntyre’s hands, their future is certain: They will remain frozen in time, monuments to the mid-century quest for all-out speed, a direct link to those El Mirage spirits almost visible through the shimmering heat.

Kindred spirits on the salt flats in 1954, the Williams Bros. ’29 Model A roadster and Tommy Thompson’s Golden Rod streamliner live on under the watchful eye of Tom McIntyre.

Ron Williams (in the car) and his brothers Gerald and Herb soak in the fact that they’ve set a new B/Roadster record in their first (and, it turned out, only) year at Bonneville. The effort was the culmination of five years of racing the roadster on the lakes, at the drags, and even against British sports cars in a hill climb.

The Williams Bros. raced their roadster here at El Mirage from 1949 until 1953. In those years it was powered by a 21-stud, 244-inch flathead burning alcohol through four Stromberg 97s. Their dry-lake speed peaked in 1953 at 140.62 mph.

The Williams boys scored a brand-new Dodge Red Ram Hemi—still in the box—from their local Dodge dealer for their trip to Bonneville. They bored the 241ci engine to 250 inches and filled the cylinders with JE pistons.

The Hemi drank alcohol through Hilborn fuel injection. Tony Baker, in his book Hot Rodding in Ventura County, said Herb Williams was the brother entrusted with the induction system’s tuning.

HRM’s caption for this photo said, “Dodge V8 engine has been relocated a foot back from original location. In the process, a new firewall was built from aluminum and [Model] A fuel tank was cut out.”

The large, rectangular tank in the roadster’s trunk was not for fuel, but held 20 gallons of water as ballast to improve traction. The alcohol rode shotgun next to Ron Williams in a cylindrical-shaped surplus tank.

The water tank, fuel tank, and hand fuel pump are still there, just like they were in 1954. So is the wiring, neatly curled behind the driver’s seat, that was used to illuminate the roadster’s taillights while under tow.

Stories portray Ron Williams as a gutsy driver. He was known to tuck his head under the right side of the roadster’s tonneau to cut down on wind resistance.

The Williams Bros. not only built a fast roadster, they had a good eye for detail. Note that the cushions in the surplus seat frame match the color of the car. The large S-W tach was mounted to the ’34 column just below the Bell three-spoke steering wheel.

While the Model A sits on its original frame, the brothers mounted a dropped and filled Deuce front axle with the 1932 spring and split radius arms. Juice 1940 Ford brakes are at each corner.

These are 1951-vintage Firestone Indianapolis racing tires, a little fragile now but still holding “60-year-old air,” says McIntyre. Legend has it Ron Williams was in the shop of 1951 Indy 500 winner Lee Wallard, who realized Williams would be going as fast at Bonneville as he did on the bricks. “You’ll need some tires,” he told Williams, and pulled these off his race car.

In back, the Model A transverse springs and radius rods hold ’36 Ford axle tubes on either side of a Halibrand quick-change. Cogs inside the q-c provided a 3.05:1 final drive ratio.

No one is exactly sure why the Williams Bros. stopped racing the roadster so soon after their Bonneville trip. Given their ability to go faster year after year at El Mirage, who knows where some sorting of the Hemi could have taken them on the salt?

Tommy Thompson gets a push at Bonneville in 1955. His first visit to the salt in 1953 netted him a 140.42-mph speed; by 1955 that number had increased to 165.00.

Friends of Thompson, including much of the hot rodding and land-speed-racing community around the Denver area, contributed to an early 2000’s restoration of the Golden Rod to its 1959 configuration. The body wore the scars of decades of Bonneville appearances, and its Oldsmobile engines had been swapped for several flatheads.

Thanks to his job with the Coors Brewing Company, Thompson obtained aluminum sheets from Alcoa to build the streamliner. Without patterns to follow, he shaped its curves using 1940 Ford fenders as a buck.

This photo from 1966 shows Thompson back on the salt with the rebuilt Golden Rod. Comparing this photo to the one from 1953 shows off some subtle differences in the body’s shape, notably the deeper creases in front of the rear-wheel arches, and a shorter blister behind Thompson’s head to accommodate the full canopy he added in 1959.

We don’t have a date for this shot of 990, but it must be post-1959, as the full canopy is in place—and open here. Mario Baffico Collection.

There’s an Oldsmobile Rocket back in the Golden Rod’s engine compartment, just like it had for most of its Bonneville career. Period speed equipment includes a Vertex magneto and six Stromberg 97s on an Edelbrock intake. Thompson built a subframe within the ’liner’s Model A chassis to hold the engine and driveline.

With the engine’s position in the frame relative to the rear axle, there wasn’t room for a driveshaft. So Thompson joined the ’38 Ford transmission directly to the quick-change using an adaptor.

Behind the four-spoke Cragar wheel is a simple aluminum instrument panel with Stewart-Warner oil pressure and water temperature gauges flanking a Sun tach. The surplus seat was originally used by a B-24 tail-gunner.

The delicate spoon accelerator is in sharp contrast to the burly but symmetrical, home-built brake and clutch pedals. They fit the space perfectly.

This is what passed for adequate driver protection in the 1950s.

With a racing career that spanned from the 1950s to the 1980s, the Golden Rod has likely run more miles on the salt than any other Bonneville competitor.

The post Bonneville Record-Setting 1929 Ford Model A Roadster and Olds-Powered Streamliner Remain Frozen in Time appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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