Just when you have tired of it......oh well down load read it in your spare
time ; then roll it up and start the Yule fire with it ..Best Michael

The following is from my restoration journal .
We have just performed work on Fort Morgan in the Gulf of Mexico .Part of a
master plan study that will continue into the new year..Mostly the fort is a
ruin in need of stabilaization. It is celebrated in history as the
Confederate fort that with stood the Yankee siege up until 1864 when
Adm.Faragate(sp) shouted "Damm the torpedoes full steam ahead" after loosing
the flag ship ironclad Temcumseh with all hands.
It is windswept and remote as it reaches fairly far out into the Gulf. Its
below ground Vaulted brick masonry 1824 originates from forts designed by
Bernard ;
Napoleon's architect.The vaults are monstrous and leak with calcified ground
salts from internal setting beds.
After our work this week  we took a small fast sail boat  from the fort;
along the coast   to the port of Mobile for the week end
.then headed  home for the holidays .

The following is from my notes:
Mobile Bay

We headed into the wind and dumped the main sail quickly to the ships
freeboard
letting the jib sail spank the wet night breeze.
Blustry snow sqalls rain on and off out of the dark pitch and sting our faces
Our small boat is adrift among nameless freighters laying at anchor here
We are dark and cold looking for anchorage riding the disgusting chop of
industrial bilge mixed with offal of a dozen nations.

In the South ; the deep South
winter comes in frozen  fog and half sun
inching its way down bayou Pierre and
frosting the magnolia of the Yazoo and the
brittle leaf Gulf rivers of the Dog and Wolf

The nights are cruel with frost and freezing rain
driving the homeless clo-shards
like so many  dead leaves;...threadbare from summers oven
 into the timeless dog-trot shacks  that spill their guts out into the  stone
alleys of Mobile's forgotten Vieux Carre

There
While nobles supp from rippled plantation glass  under live oak
the alcoholic and the dirty destitute inch their way along colonial
cobblestone
and huddle hard against grog shops and strip clubs of the 19 cent waterfront
Grinning toothless and hustling for handouts while holding dime bags for
reckless teens
 who sell their drug raveged bodies to the gullible and depraved  who ooze
from  dead end palm courted suburbs drenched in endless television and Drivit.

The dirty foam slaps the sides of our Hunter 41"as lanyards tap in the wind.
it was a decent sail until we hit this miserable anchrage.
The white beach estuarys of the Gulf coast are home to thousands of duck
and we lucked out with taking a brace of black billed teal  with black powder
fowling pieces on the inland tack just to the lea of Dolphine island .
 .We celebrate as this garantees  our return meal in the new year.Already the
duck is being discussed as gumbo or Thai style with sea food.
Then as the grey light of dismal day gives into a  wet black squall of night ;
 we sail on before putting a hook in Mobile bay and   making for the gas
lights  of  the waterfront  in a small Zodiac with no lights.

Its cold and misting in swirls..... we huddle like castouts.
Flurries sting our faces and oiled floatsam stains our clothes and soaks our
socks.
We are overloaded with sea bags and ruck sacks  and cannot really see.

Ashore.at last at Point Conde.The 16 cent Spanish fort to Mobile .
The young men will douche with cologne and head off for Rue Dauphine  to
tarry in  the garish  flesh palaces and dance  the broken glass in  late
night  hooker bars
in rituals of libido and passion  ;whooping and hollering with rebel yell as
white  lizard skinned  srumpets in southern  lingerei clap hands and shimmy
with childish  squeals to their  licquored bravado

The older men  who are far from home and miss their family
will  engage in repasts of shrimp and oysters with noble wine in front of a
fine fire
while  ageless black men in white elegant service jackets
sate their appetites  with time honored recepie and traditions from cellers..

Later as the fire burns on; they will  perhaps gamble a little in the back
rooms with  the company of educated hostesses
 who know how to prey on hundred dollar bills with talented  mirth and
focused abandon in the roulette of life so practiced here.
It is the warmth of the guile that men find so blindly charming.

Mobile is the last port we will see before we part for home.
 A chance to blow off steam together in the decaying architecture of 19 cent
waterfront before we head out in the morning for  airports and highways ...
...to be home...home  with little Mary who turns one year old this
solstice...Safe travels my friends Merry  Christmas
 Michael .
          ..all/rts2000