Pictures of Jay's late father are way scarce.  For one thing, he was always the shutterbug, the one who yells "say cheese" and unleashes the Flashbulb Dots Vision Syndrome. The few exceptions have largely been consumed by the dysfunctional family's long-lasting dis-functions.

Nonetheless, this is William Gross himself, photographed in glorious black and white by Jay, himself, with his Hasselblad 500c while the Old Man photographed Jay with the Kodak Instamatic that he's holding.

Says Jay, "We clicked each other at dusk on the lawn in front of my photo lab. The Old Man spent most of the latter part of his life in Rochester, New York, annually revisiting the South to pursue the elusive fish of central Florida. Some summers he took the car train, but when he drove the whole route he stopped off in town for a chat and a night's rest. Born in Rochester, he didn't mind the winters there. I was born in South Carolina and didn't mind the summers here. So... Well, you know."

Here's another one, courtesy of Jay's Cousin Chuck Jermyn of Rochester.

It's a cool old 1940s portrait that suffered greatly from cropping, perhaps to fit into somebody's too-small frame, but Jay managed to Photoshop a scan of it into usefulness.

Then there are these shots, also courtesy of Chuck.

Bill and Joephine (Bill's girlfriend in Rochester), and...

Bill and his sister Irma, in the 1960s in front of the family's home in Aiken.

Jay's been around. His family often ventured to Folly Beach, South Carolina, for vacations. That tradition took a small break in the 1950s when Hurricane Hazel eliminated the wooden ocean front hotel that the family frequented. The hurricane arrived while the family was IN the hotel. Jay's father, ever mindful of the weather, noticed the unbeachability that had beset the trip for several days. He gave up waiting impatiently for the weather to clear and packed up the Studebaker for the trip home. By that time ocean waves were lapping onto the narrow lane that led to the mainland. The rain was extremely heavy but he managed to get all of us home. Wet, but safe.

After that experience, annual beach outings moved to Myrtle Beach a couple of times, but settled on Savanna Beach and Tybee Island, Georgia, when Jay's favorite aunt moved there with her new husband Bill.

Jay liked Savannah for its donut shops, and he enjoyed the drive to his aunt's house for its down-home Southern scenery, mostly trees and cotton fields. A few times he went to Savannah with his grandmother on the passenger train - they still had those back then. Jay took the train to New Orleans, and to Dallas and back several times. He's also enjoyed the wondrous and famous Silver Meteor to parts south, namely Florida, as well as to Washington, DC, and Richmand, Virginia, from which a couple of times he took a train to Charlottesville, Virginia.

He does not like flying. Or airports, or crummy scrunched up seats with no legroom. But Jay has yielded and flown to places too far for car or train. After driving to California once and only once - and back - Jay's sworn off of deserts. He's seen one, and that's enough.

Some years ago, Jay roamed extensively around these United States. By Hondacar. Houston, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nashville, Orlando, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta, and lots of places between. Discoursing on the wonders of Amiga computers and peddling his magazine and his books. Lately, he pretty much confines his travels to 'round town. Too many diets to watch, too many pills to take, and not enough driving time between requisite rest stops.

Jay's Sainted Mother long ago went on to that Big Hair Salon in the Sky, leaving this particular universe a sadder if not much wiser place. So on this, the annual Mothers' Day celebration, Jay surrounds himself with comfort food and mostly lays low.

He and his Mama had their differences, often about inconsequential things owing to a mile-wide streak of stubborn in both. Most of the time, they patched their disagreements with mute apologies and moved on to other matters. And to items they could agree on, like the delectability of Mama's home cooking. Born in 19(mumble), Mrs. Gross was the older-sister-by-five-years to Jay's favorite aunt. Their mother was also noted for her cooking and taught them well, but all three adopted different styles and used different recipes for just about everything.

Take cornbread, for example. Go ahead, take three pieces. Among the three consummate cooks, no two made the concoction the same way, although all tasted great. For reasons known only to their egos, they often sought Jay's opinion on their dishes - soliciting compliments, of course, and threatening to topple the delicate balance of power. Jay could not like one over the other, you see, but fortunately didn't have to as all the dishes were great. The challenge, often insurmountable, was to say as little as possible, preferably nothing, without giving offense.

The competition for Jay's favor exacerbated at holiday time - like Mothers Day. In fact, Jay came to dislike family occasions because of the intense pressure to favor one cook over one or more of the others. Never noted for diplomacy, Jay usually managed to invent delicate ways to issue compliments to the chef without offending the other two chefs. Mostly, however, he tried to steer clear of the questions in the first place, sometimes with just as disastrous results.

Unfortunately, with food there's no sidestepping the issue. You either eat the dish or don't, and if you don't eat it you couldn't stand it. Right? In Jay's fiercely competitive family of cooks, that means ask for seconds and maybe thirds, or be accused of not liking the dish. As in: "Awww, you only ate two slices of my (pick one: peach pie, chocolate cake, fruitcake), don't you like it?" Jay's extra hearty appetite and insatiable sweet tooth saved him from having to invent excuses.

With Italian food covered for now, we move on to other fare. There's Mexican, and its corrollary Texican - slash - TexMex, to consider. Jay's palate doesn't like being singed, so the milder spiciness suits him fine. His favorite Mexican dish is Chile Relleno, a wondrous concoction prepared with roasted chile peppers and cheese. Tangy, but not painful. He also likes tamales, enchiladas, and of course tacos in their many guises.

Jay visited actual Mexico in person once, decades ago. He dined like royalty in a small place in Reynosa, Mexico, where no one spoke a word of English. Jay's learned some Spanish since then, but on the trip south, south, south from Fort Worth, Texas, his traveling partner, a professor of mathematical-type stuff and a long time friend, assured him there'd be no need for Jay to cram Spanish skills along the way, as university classes were still fresh in his mind. They drove on, and when they got to Mexico, the first test of the good professor's Spanish was a road sign that said (forgive any misspelling after all these years), "No estacionarse." Jay, who was driving, asked frantically, "What does that mean? Is this a one-way street?" The professor shrugged a "don't know." Fortunately it only meant no parking, though cars were parked all around the sign.

After several days and many other great episodes, Jay and his friend dined in the nicest restaurant they'd seen in Reynosa. Jay spotted it the night before, observing that a block-long line of well dressed Mexican families were lined up outside, waiting for tables. Jay and his friend went early, to avoid the rush. The waiter brought the menu, and Jay asked his professor friend to translate. Unfortunately, Professor Math didn't know Mexican food, and asked the waiter if he spoke English. Nope, sorry.

Undaunted, Jay looked through the menu and pointed to everything he recognized. He'd learned the word "dos," two, and repeated "dos" for each item he pointed out. The waiter jotted furiously on a pad, saying things and asking questions. Jay nodded, though he understood none of it. After much gesturing and smiling all around, the waiter went off, presumably to the kitchen. In a few minutes the feast began. Dozens of dishes, all of them delectable though Jay knows not to this day what they might have been, accompanied by an inexhaustible supply of tortillas, salsas and garnishes. And bottled water - Jay'd seen a truck unloading the huge jugs of water the day before.

Jay and the Prof are both what we call here in the South "big eaters." They consume mass quantities of food, the more if it's good, and even more if they've starved all day in anticipation of a fancy meal, as they did in Reynosa. Even so, it turned out that everything Jay pointed to on the menu was in fact a "family" meal intended for several people. After a while, Jay and the Prof asked, no, begged, the waiter to stop bringing food. With some difficulty they finally succeeded in getting him to desist. Then the Prof got worried. "Oh, no," he worried, "we've run up a huge bill and we won't have enough money and we'll be imprisoned in a foreign land, never to be heard from again."

A while later, the Prof agonizing the whole time, the waiter presented the bill. Translated from pesos to dollars, it was little more than a couple of Happy Meals on the other side of the Rio Grande. Sighs of relief. Jay and his friend left an enormous tip, and smiled all the way back to the hotel.

So far, we've covered some things Jay likes: most of Mozart's music, people of the cat persuasion, and other stuff real and virtual. Now we devote digital ink dots to that which Jay does not like. It's a capacious category, so this won't be anywhere near a thorough rollcall. Yet.

First, rutabagas, because they comprise almost all the food items on Jay's not-interested tab. Jay likes spinach, in the wonderful Popeye cartoons tradition, loves carrots and carrot juice, finds lettuce, tomatoes, and beans delectable, and readily consumes cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and - yes! - broccoli whenever possible. He relishes relishes, squashes, zuccini, 'shrooms (the edible kind, thank you), and most anything you'd find in a vegetarian dish, even sprouts in small quantities and edamame. He digs turnips, kale, mustard greens, parsleys and cabbages. Those rutabagas, turnip-like root vegetables, Jay simply does not like. Can't stand, is more like it. He limits his collard greens consumption to a single annual binge on and around the first of January. Upholding tradition, you understand, but collards isn't a don't like, just a prefer-other-things commodity.

Otherwise, there isn't much food that Jay dislikes, though he has many preferences. He prefers, for example, everything he's not supposed to have, especially desserts, more especially chocolate desserts, and even more especially chocolate cheesecake desserts with chocolate frosting on top infused with chocolate mousse and chocolate sprinkles, and chocolate syrup, and scoops - nay, gallons - of chocolate ice cream to hold it all up. Along with a chocolate smoothie to wash it down. In the glory days before he was bitten by the diabetes bug, Jay indulged in a slice of cake called "Death by Chocolate" at a Barnes & Noble café. It didn't work, he wrily pointed out, but he kept trying. His all time favorite pastry, and it's extremely difficult to pick, is pain au chocolat, a wonderful French concoction, wouldn't you know. It's called chocolatine in the South of France and sold in but two establishments local to Jay here in the South of the U.S.A.

Vive le pain.

Chocolate Heaven's a major pain to make: Laboriously convince about 422 kilograms of butter to meld with a couple grams of flour and some yeast. Coddle and bake this dough into just the right shape, and it's le crossant. Don't do it! Wrap it around a delectable concoction of extra dark chocolate, and then bake it up into the most scrumptious morsel in the known universe - chocolatine, pain au chocolat, whatever.

Jay first encountered the delectable in the 1970s in a tiny patisserie in Key West, Florida. Wandering Duval Street in search of breakfast, Jay followed his nose off the beaten path to a Frenchman's tiny bakery. Thrilled, he ordered another, and then another. Ah, but the Frenchman took offense at the reorder and refused to sell it. "This," he explained, "is a delicacy. You do not wolf them down by the dozen." Obviously, Monsieur Frenchman did not know Jay's appetite. Nor care. Jay fabricated a story about an aging relative back in the hotel and scored two more delectables to go. The Frenchman's parting comment: "Pffffft." So true.

Musically, Jay's always preferred classical. He hesitates to use the term, because it's so frequently misunderstood. People often confuse "classical" with "elevator." Oh how much pleasanter elevators would be if Mozart and Beethoven soothed the riders.

Jay defines classical music broadly as music that is lyrical, including baroque and even some 20th Century compositions. He doesn't much like modern "classical" music, the stuff that sounds like someone dropped the orchestra - the infernal twelve-tone, for example, plus any a-tonal riffs that sneak in. Mostly, he doesn't like Brahms' symphonies, either, and doesn't care for much of Wagner's melodramatic leitmotivation. A few years ago, he discovered Brahms quartets and quintets at a concert at the Newberry Opera House, and loved them, adding several nice CDs to his collection. But his dislike of Brahms' symphonies persists.

Not much of an opera buff, Jay can't recite the lyrics of even famous arias, much less recount the plots or name the characters. Yet he loves some operatic music. That includes anything sung by Kathleen Battle, most any Mozart except the dire Don Giovanni, the better Verdi, and virtually all of Gilbert and Sullivan, plus the usual Puccini, Vivaldi, Offenbach, Gounod and whoever else. Jay first became interested in opera in the Sixties while working at a newspaper. Relegated to holding down the newsroom by himself on Saturdays, Jay brought along a small radio, and while surfing the dial landed on a Texaco broadcast of Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel from the Metropolitan Opera. The performances became his weekly thing, except the infamous Ring cycle, respite from the clatter of the teletypes.

Besides Miss Battle, some of Jay's favorite singers are Diana Damrau - her Queen of the Night is way impressive - Detlef Roth, for his Parisian Papageno, and Luciano Pavarotti for, well, everything he ever sang, really, but also for Yes, Giorgio, his fabulous movie. "I saw it five times," Jay recounts, "with a very patient friend in the one theatre in town that played it for the short time it played." There's major irony at work during the linked aria, as the character on stage is victorious in love, while the singer's love interest is busy leaving, added poignancy to an incredible performance. Layers, you know. Lots of layers. Makes for a great movie. Rummage on Ebay for a (scarce!) copy of the video, but don't think you'll ever get Jay's.

For a cat person, Jay has a funny way of expressing it, being catless. His most recent kitty was the late Puddytat (as in: "I tawt I taw a..."), a beautiful seal point Siamese who wandered up one day and stayed for eight years. Jay and Puddytat went through a lot together, not all of it pretty. Alas, Puddytat had a disastrous encounter with a neighbor's land yacht and disappeared, but showed up ten days later, weak and injured. Jay rushed him to a local vet who diagnosed a broken jaw and a damaged eye and managed to restore Puddytat to functionality, but not quite. Puddytat lost an eye. A year or so after the injury he asked to go outside one sunny afternoon. That was many Novembers ago, and Puddytat has never been heard from since. Jay's still heartbroken.

Insistent Puddytat napped on Jay's computer desk in front of the keyboard, swishing his tail when disturbed by uncatlike activities like typing and moving the computer mouse. Quoting wistful Jay," At night, he slept on my feet, which was way welcome in the winter but somewhat of an imposition in warmer months." So the irreplaceable Puddytat remains un-replaced.

In addition to Puddytat (pictured at right), Jay's two-ago-former abode generally had one or more porch cats dropping by for snacks. Puddytat brought an orange tomcat home and introduced him, just in time for dinner. Jay named him Jellico. "Puddytat is the only cat I know who kept a pet cat." Puddytat insisted that Jellico remain a porch cat, while Puddytat remained mostly an indoor cat who walked by himself (in the Rudyard Kilping sense of the phrase) and went to romp outside when he pleased. After a few months, Jellico apparently moved on to a more gourmet porch. That is, he stopped coming around. The second picture shows His Orange Highness munching Original Flavor, hanging out on the porch.

These days, Jay consoles himself with mere pictures of cats, some local, and some from the far reaches of his Hondacars' universe - about two days drive. The most catworthy place has been Key West, home for a while to His Exalted Authorness Ernest Hemingway. Ernie's wife's elegant house there, now a Hemingway shrine, still houses multitudinous people of the cat persuasion, setting off a long-running flap in the Conch Republic that for now has subsided to dull mutterings.

Ernie, the tour guides explain, was a cat person, and kept twenty of them. Some of the cats that now hang out around the place are actual descendents of original six-toed Hemingcats. Wooooo-ooooo-ooooo. Disregarding the number of toes, they're all very friendly and most are willing to pose for pictures. The most famous of the famed is a grey one named (brace yourself) Zane.