1981

More Diving

I had been diving several times after meeting Julie and I had been telling her how much I liked it and encouraged her to get certified. She said she was interested in diving, but her vision was a problem.  At the time she wore contact lens and pretty much could not see anything without them.  Well that was a problem since it is recommend one should not wear contacts while diving and you can’t wear glasses under your diving mask. After checking with the dive shop we found that you can have a custom dive mask made in which lens are made into the glass of the mask.  We ordered one with Julie’s prescription and after arriving she took the dive certification course at Hatt’s Dive Shop with Jim Bobb as the instructor and then as I had done, the class had their checkout dive at the “cable crossing” in West Palm Beach. After Julie was certified, we took a trip up to go diving at Gennie Springs which was is north of Gainesville. Being so close to Gainesville we stayed with Mom and Dad for the weekend which was interesting for, although we had been sleeping together for the past few months, Mom insisted that Julie and Anne sleep in the guest bedroom (Brenda’s old bedroom) while I slept in my old bedroom.   While Mom was nice enough to Julie and Anne, it was apparent that she didn’t really approve of Julie.  Mom had always wanted me to marry a “nice Christian girl” and Julie was raised Catholic and as Mom would sometimes say, “You know those Catholics.” like there was something wrong with them.  I didn’t see what the matter was, Julie hadn’t been to Catholic church in years, and never since I had known her and while I was raised Baptist, the only time I had been to church in many years was when I was home visiting Mom and Dad.

On the first day that lobster season in July Julie and I went with a group from Hatts Dive Shop led by Jim Bobb out on a private boat owned by a guy named Harlin which was not as big as the regular charter dive boats and I commented in my dive log that it was “a bit crowded with seven divers.”  One of classmates from Julie’s dive class buddied up, with Julie and I for a three person buddy team.  I wrote in my dive log, “Julie bagged one, then Celina followed, I saw two bugs but only caught one.”  “Bugs” was the dive slang for lobsters for they look like really big bugs.   After moving the boat to a new spot that was deeper and had visibility I wrote in my dive log, “Went to deeper water, surf was glassy.  Found 1-3 foot ledge reef with 1-3 lobster every 5-6 feet. We were the last ones down but still caught six.”  After returning home, Julie, Anne and I had lobster for dinner.

Click to see back side of card

On June 15th I received a postcard from Grandma Junior who was in Canada. She wrote, “We are about to eat dinner in Canada. Will see you all next week. Grandma Jr.”  I found very odd, it is the only letter or postcard I ever received from her and it puzzled me why she sent it.  

Grandma