A bitter sweet good bye to another successful ship reunion

Me and her at the Bellingrath Gardens

So, when we last left off I was writing a blog post at 5 a.m. after a middle of the night false fire alarm brought the entire USS Cogswell reunion to the lobby while hotel management worked out how to reset the alarm and restart the elevators.

(Note to self: When staying in an older hotel always ask to be housed on the lowest possible floor).

After the short night we headed back downstairs to catch an 8 a.m. bus to Bellingrath Gardens.

As I boarded the bus I shook my head and pronounced loudly, “you guys will never believe the weird dream I had last night.” Almost in unison, they responded that I was not dreaming.

Joan stopping to smell the roses

As it turned out we accidentally left two couples behind at the hotel as they accidentally slept in and had to catch up with us at the gardens in their personal car.

The gardens were beautiful, but the weather was a little on the unpleasantly warm side with plenty of humidity. Joan’s knee was bothering her a lot, but she declined my offer to borrow one of the garden’s wheelchairs to help her around. She’s a trouper.

It took about 15 minutes to walk the paths to the Bellingrath home, which is a beautiful home that was one the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Bellingrath. He made his fortune in the early part of the 1900s by purchasing the first Coca-Cola franchise in the Mobile, Alabama area.

At the beginning he did his own bottling, driving and delivering and built the business into a multi-million dollar empire in a short time.

One of the many pretty flowers

The home started out as a small camping retreat for Mr. Bellingrath to take him away from the pressures of work at the suggestion of his doctor. The small camp cabin turned into a beautiful two-story impeccably furnished home. The couple had no children and when Mr. Bellingrath died (nine years after his wife died) he left the home and gardens as a memorial to his wife and for the public to enjoy.

Mrs. Bellingrath collected Boehm Porcelain from around the world and the extensive collection is displayed throughout the home.  No photos are allowed inside the home, but you can check out the pictures of the home and gardens by following this link.

Another cruise ship

Following the home tour we watched a short film on the house and then boarded a river boat for an enjoyable 45-minute cruise on the Fowl River which runs next to the Bellingrath property.

Joan and I took a long route back to the front gate and walked the boardwalk that takes you through the bayou gardens. We were looking for wildlife, but saw only one fish.

With the heat and humidity rising we took frequent breaks but got back to the main entrance and gift shop in time to cool down in the air conditioning before boarding our bus back to the hotel.

We arrived back about 3:30 p.m. and headed to our room to freshen up for the official reunion photo session and then the formal  banquet.

Another beautiful spot in the gardens

My shipmates and spouses gathered on the mezzanine floor for the photo session and then we sat down to a wonderful dinner and a Mystery Dinner Theater presentation “Murder on the Carnivore Cruise.”

The title of the play was pretty appropriate considering Joan and I just got back from our own Carnival Cruise.

The cast was funny, but I missed figuring out the murderers were by a country mile. It was a fun night, but everyone was pretty exhausted from the early morning wake up and the room cleared fairly quickly following dinner.

Joan and the bamboo tunnel

In the morning we said our farewells to my shipmates and started the long trek home about 8:30 a.m. from Mobile. More and more shipmates from my time on the ship have been coming to the reunions which makes it very nice for me as I have gotten reacquainted with a number of guys I was friends with at a critical time in my life.

George, who is the association secretary, has done a great job of collecting memorabilia (including the ship’s flag from our 66-67 cruise that I saved for 40 some years before donating to the association). Each reunion brings more and more memorabilia from the cruises and George has done a great job of assembling photo books from nearly every era of the ship’s history.

Sadly, this reunion was the first where none of the World War II sailors aboard the Cogswell were able to attend. They were sorely missed.

Storm clouds on the way home

A few miles outside Mobile we drove over a long series of bridges that traverse several rivers. It was an interesting road project, one like we had never seen before.

With storms crossing the country we found ourselves driving through several squalls. Traffic was slight and we breezed through Alabama and Tennessee and when I realized we were approaching Louisville just about rush hour we decided to stop and have dinner at a Texas Roadhouse Restaurant just outside Louisville to let traffic clear out before finishing our trip.

We finished dinner a little after 7 p.m. and breezed through Louisville landing in Clarksville, Indiana about 7:30 p.m.

One sad fact we noted that the further we got north the higher the gasoline prices. We topped off in Alabama for $3.11 a gallon. By the time we got to Indiana it was more than $4 a gallon and it got worse as we drove into Michigan.

We had some nice weather on the trip

We heard they are blaming some refinery fire. I have this picture in my mind of the oil company executives sitting around their conference room laughing and pulling notes out of a hat to come up with an explanation of why they are going to gouge us this time.

"Hey, let's pull out the old standy excuse that we had a refinery fire. That always gets 'em," the executive says. It would be more refreshing if they just said they want to fleece us. At least that would be honest.

The Best Western was nice and we got a good night’s sleep before the final leg on Thursday.

More rain followed us home to Lapeer but we arrived about 4 p.m.