dressed to the nines...(photo added)

I've been in Chattanooga for the weekend. C. had to work on Sat. and Sundays, as he does every other weekend - just what happens with his job. So P. and I went to church together. They have started going to a service up on the top of Lookout Mountain, where the church they have been attending for several years has been given an old building. The congregation that had been meeting there for years, Baptist I think, just gave their facility to the Calvary Chapel community. I guess the membership got so thin they maybe dissolved, and the few hardy souls left transferred their membership to other churches. But Calvary Chapel appears to have attracted quite a good number. There were at least fifty folk there. Some who probably live up on the ridge, in that area, and some, like P and C who chose to drive up the steep, winding, twisting, switchback road to go to that much less crowded service on the mountain top. In that pretty little red brick very traditional style church, with tall windows on each side of the sanctuary, and massive bright white columns across the front of the building below a soaring steeple on top.

Though I think I am pretty reasonable, open-minded, the service might have been a little too casual even for laid-back me. Four musicians on the stage doing worship music, two with shorts on. One of those, a female with short shorts, that was a bit too distracting to fully appreciate her singing ability. It's pretty much 'come as you are when you roll out of bed' at the church I attend on Sunday mornings, but that was something I was not ready for. Even though I see people in T shirts that look slept in, frayed cargo shorts, and holey jeans, looking like they don't own a comb, I'm doubtful the daisy duke shorts up there on the stage were my definition of appropriate.

After church, we needed some lunch, and went to Wendy's. Pretty crowded with families when we got there, but cleared out before we left. To the point that we were the only ones in there. Until an older couple came in the door. Dressed to beat the band. Looking 110% patriotic. I assumed they had been to church, and were stopping by before going home. I could be all wrong, as all they had was one cup of ice cream between the two of them. She was in blue and white stripes, with a red sweater and bright red straw hat with a flourish of a red feather tucked in the side: just like Yankee Doodle Dandy. And her escort, we assumed husband of many, many years, was very conservatively dressed in a neat suit. With a hankie carefully tucked in his breast pocked, with all four points tidily showing, neatly spaced on the left side of his suit coat. Wearing the necktie I am sure she picked out for him, that was striped like the flag on the wide end, with a bright red background and white stars up near the neat, perfectly tied Windsor knot.

We were so taken with their carefully crafted, meticulously planned appearance, P surreptitiously snapped a photo. And could not resist speaking to them as we were leaving, commenting on how nice they looked, and admiring his patriotic tie. We wondered if they had been together for sixty plus years, or were on their second date....