In 1986, USAir, based in Washington, DC, was a co-sponsor of an event celebrating the premiere showing of the movie Top Gun. It was a spectacular event, with the Navy’s Blue Angels flight team arriving at National Airport, parking their aircraft near a USAir hangar being used as part of the event and reception.

For this colossal event, USAir had invited dozens of high-ranking Navy leadership, politicians by the score, and me. My friend, who was heading up public relations for USAir, asked me, and I gladly accepted. It was fantastic; this was indeed a celebration for US Navy Aviation. 

Since his follow-up movie, “Top Gun: Maverick,” was a smash hit, and he is playing a US Navy aviator with the rank of Captain, I suppose in his next “Top Gun” movie, he will finally be promoted again. We are all waiting to see Admiral Maverick in action. Carry On, Tom.

My dearest friend is a tenured professor, a teacher of early childhood development (which is why my antics don’t surprise her), and a librarian.

We both love to read; she knows I learned to read at a very early age, and I read everything that catches my interest. She’s somewhat critical of my fondness for a well-known newspaper based in New York City; however, we manage to respect each other’s preferences.

Naturally, we love book stores and libraries. One day, we were wandering through a well-known chain bookstore that, sadly, is no longer in operation. At one point, I said to her, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could take brand new books home, without buying them, returning later for more?” She turned to me and said, “You can visit your local public libraries more.” Now you see how valuable her early childhood development skills are to our relationship.

Thanks to my mom, I learned to read at an early age. A large part of her teaching included her reading of our morning newspaper to me, while she sounded out the words. By the time I began kindergarten, I was already a whiz at reading. While print newspapers are nearly fading away, I read several newspapers every morning. The New York Times has more digital readers than home subscriptions.

With everything being available online, reading in schools is no longer as important as it was in years past. I don’t think anyone in my family reads anything; no books or newspapers. While I understand why people don’t read, it seems to me they are missing a valuable part of knowledge as a whole.

Several months ago, I joined a group of my fellow men’s group members from the Church to prepare breakfast for local high school students. It was my maiden voyage in the project; I cautioned this new effort since my only previous skills came from obtaining the Cooking Merit Badge when I was 11.

The kitchen in our Church would be perfect for a medium-sized restaurant; it has a huge gas stove with industrial-sized burners. I soon found myself assigned to frying about 100 sausage patties using two large cast-iron frying pans. Hardly the equipment for a timid, inexperienced chef.

I live in the South, so sausage is crucial for any breakfast project. I had to get these patties cooked perfectly; no overcooking allowed. At the mid-point of my effort, one of the more experienced team members leaned over and asked me if I’d used the meat thermometer to check the proper cooking temperature for each patty.

I looked from the pile of cooked patties to my colleague and confessed, No, I hadn’t. Just as I wondered what I’d do to correct this fatal mistake, he laughed and said he was kidding. Whew, crisis averted. Everything went well, and 35 high school seniors soon lined up for the meal. They didn’t seem to mind that we were serving sausage patties, pancakes (another team member is the pancake king), and eggs for lunch. I’d not seen the damage 35 teenagers can do to a food line in quite a while; it was a marvel to behold (one healthy young man ate 12 pancakes).

For me, this was fun, and I’m now a permanent volunteer; however, I did realize that I’d be a lousy line cook in any diner, especially Waffle House.