Meander3081

A Place For A Wandering Man

2012-01-28T17:19:00.000-06:00

Memories often take strange turns. Yesterday, I was thinking, as I often do, on a single subject, a tune played by the younger brother of a school classmate. On his trombone, he'd play a jazzy version of, "Believe me if all those endearing young charms", and he had it well perfected.

So, often without provocation, I will suddenly begin to hum or whistle that jazzy tune. Sometimes, I will give my tune words, such as:
Believe me if all those
Endearing young charms
Which I gaze on so fondly today
Were to change by tomorrow
And fleet in my arms,
And the skies are not cloudy all day....
Home, home on the range...etc.

And so, I started thinking of my dad, and am forced to once more relate another "dad fact", which, I'm sure, may be boring to some.

The first three years of my life were spent on the road. My dad, who had started his working life at age 14, after the untimely death of his father, was a "traveling salesman".

The family went along with Dad on his work, living for no more than a short while in many towns across Texas. I was first, then my younger sister and I, traveling with Mom and Dad, occasionally stopping for awhile in Nacogdoches, the city of my birth, to allow we little ones to stay with Granny for awhile.

Of the products he sold in those early days, I only remember a line of glass mixing bowls, and subscriptions to Progressive Farmer magazine. It was work that he loved, however.

In the year that I was four, we moved to Nacogdoches, and lived there until shortly before I reached five. My dad worked for a time in the woods with my grandfather, who was a logger, and tried a small scale printing business in a building behind our house (a duplex shared with one of Mom's cousins), and I suppose, filled in part time at the post office. Then, we packed up and moved down to the Texas coast, to Bay City, Texas, where he worked for awhile in an appliance store owned by an old family friend.

Then, one evening, he walked into our little house, and announced, "I'm a FULL substitute!" Not knowing for sure what that meant, I later found out that he had accomplished a goal. He had become a postal employee at the Post Office in Bay City.

When I was eight, and my dad was away in the South Pacific during The War, my mom bought a second hand upright piano, and was very insistent that I take piano lessons. She probably should have taken them herself rather than waste her money, but she felt that my sister and I needed the experience of learning music. One thing she really wanted me to master was, "Home, Sweet Home". It had always been my dad's favorite.

Once my sister and I were away at college, my dad began to sell a brand of recliner chair and aluminum cookware locally, and soon hooked up with a representative for several furniture factories. He gave up his job with the post office, which, I later understood, he had never come to love. Once again, he became a "traveling salesman".

He later separated from the senior representative, and began representing furniture factories on his own. My mom chose to stay home, and traveled with him only occasionally, and on numerous trips to Furniture Markets.

It was not until many years later, during the year that I was fifty-eight years old, and we sat with the minister preparing Dad's eulogy, that I suddenly realized that the year in Nacogdoches, and all those years in the post office, which frequently gave him headaches, were to provide my sister and me with a stable environment during our "growing up" years. I had never been aware of the sacrifice he made for us, because he never gave us reason to think about it.

My dad was a traveling man, who loved the road, and the interaction with people of all temperaments in countless places across the country, but he always came home on weekends, and carried with him always the sentiment he had held as a boy,
"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;"

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MY CHRISTMAS CAROL OF THE BELLS

2011-12-05T18:15:00.001-06:00

I am known by my family and friends as "Scrooge", resulting from my negative attitude of the end of year holidays, which I'd prefer to call "Potlatch" for its crass commercialism and excess...centered, oddly enough, around the traditional birthdate of our Lord Jesus. However, I will always be cheered by the beautiful music of the season, and most especially, "Carol of the Bells", which has been a symbol of joy throughout my life.

12/05/11

Last week we attended a choir and orchestra concert at our local high school, with Christa's sister Brianna performing. Once again, I was treated to "Carol of the Bells", sung on the move as the choir marched onto the stage. Then again, to "Carol of the Bells" as the orchestra STEAMROLLERED it!!! Gosh, what am impressive sound, on that magnificent, large stage in that acoustically impressive Performing Arts Center.

Remembering the tiny little space in this same high school when my daughters were enrolled, and the much less elaborate performances that space required, I was thrilled by the progress made in the production of high school performances.

When I was in high school down on the Texas coast, the gymnasium was our performance space.

Moving back in time to another holiday season,

12/13/02

Lastevening there was another choir concert at Christa’s school,another evening to miss CSI, but to be rewarded with lovely choralpresentations by a terrific bunch of kids.

Theshow opened with the women’s choir (tenth graders as women? Wow!)singing “Carol of the Bells”. I was immediately nineteen again,hopelessly in love at Christmas, and constantly accompanied by my“buddy for life” Jerry, who was also deeply in love (fortunatelyfor both of us, with a different girl).

"Carol of the Bells" was one of our favorites during that Holiday season of eternal love and adventure. Jerry and I took the girls first to his mom's home in Fort Worth for a few days, then down to the coast to spend the weekend at my parents' home. All the while, whenever we were on the road, we frequently sang, hummed, or otherwise intonated the melody of "Carol of the Bells".

Onlythree years later, I was hopelessly in love with a different girl(not Jerry’s different girl, my own different girl), married, and looking forwardto becoming a dad. I hadn’t heard from Jerry in more than a year,and would never see him again.

NowI’m an “old guy”. I’ve done a lot of things since nineteen,but "Carol of the Bells" will always be a source of extreme pleasure for me.

Epi~~logue~~taph...For several days now, I've heard the tune of "Carol of the Bells" used in a number of TV commercials. When I hear them now, I cannot help but overlay Family Guy singing "Ding! Fries are done!" If ever I had illusions that Carol of the Bells could rekindle my Christmas spirit, those illusions are now shattered. WalMart wins! Just call me Scrooge.

Santa Clara Day, 1961...Our Last Day Without Donna

2011-09-20T13:29:00.002-05:00

It was the evening of August 11, 1961 when my mom and dad arrived in Santa Fe. It wasn't their very first visit, but they were still newcomers to the enchantment that I felt in the small 'city' in northern New Mexico. I'm not sure they ever understood that enchantment.

The purpose for their visit was to be the birth of our second daughter, whom we were expecting "soon". Mom was to stay a couple of weeks to help out with the new baby while dad hit the road to get back to his work of traveling to different cities as a factory representative for several furniture manufacturers.

The next day, we decided to make a sightseeing day of it, showing the "old people" the world we had discovered. We left our apartment at 530 E. Garcia Street in the morning, and headed up the hill to Camino del Monte Sol, where I worked at the corner of Camino Monte Sol and Camino Cruz Blanca, in the shadow of the prominent landmark, Monte Sol.

From the office, we wound our way along Camino San Acacio to have a look at Cristo Rey Church, a prominent monstrosity which is attractive to tourists, before heading up the "more or less" paved Upper Canyon Road. Looping back toward town on the unpaved Cerro Gordo Road, we turned back uphill when we encountered pavement at Gonzalez Road, and proceeded to the mountain. No newcomer to Santa Fe should tarry too long without going up the mountain! We actually went all the way to the ski lodge, but in August, it was pretty well deserted, and whatever snow lingered was hardly noticeable, as it was dirty enough to blend into the soil. The park road down to Tesuque was unpaved then, and somewhat rough, so we took it for its scenic quality.

Arriving back to the highway at Tesuque, we turned north to Española, and crossed the mighty Rio Grande. It was Santa Clara's Feast Day at the pueblo, so we joined in the festivities for awhile before heading down NM route 30 past Black Mesa and making a right at the intersection to go back up to Los Alamos.

We looped through Los Alamos, and apparently my old (forty-six year old) dad must have been getting tired, and certainly not knowing where we were by then, saw the sign pointing to "Bandelier", and mistook it for "Bernalillo", and remarked that we must be close to Albuquerque, which was a known quantity, and wanted to take it as a "short cut".

I took that as my cue, and headed for home. We arrived back home in the early evening, having felt that we'd put in an eventful day, even though the telling of it was not nearly so adventurous. Needless to say, we turned in early, both the old folks, my wife, and I. Our only daughter Adrienne, who had recently turned two, was never ready for bed, and she often would get up and wander around the apartment for long after we were asleep. She was asleep before dawn the next morning, however, when we determined that "it was time". I alerted the obstetrician's service and we left Adrienne with the old folks while we headed down to Saint Vincente's, which was only a short distance away, at the corner of Paseo Peralta and E. Palace Avenue. Apparently, we had timed it well, or pitifully, depending on your point of view, because I had only just settled into a chair in the waiting room, in order to wait for the long hours of anticipation, when the doctor himself came in and escorted me to where I found a wide awake Donna, casting a sidelong glance at me (a look which has a certain distinction which has remained with her throughout her life), and I almost expected her to say something, she seemed so alert.

Of our four daughters, Donna was the nearest to "natural childbirth", that we've experienced, and not necessarily by choice. My wife assured me that she didn't want to do it that way again, but it happened so fast that they didn't have time to "put her down" in the normal "hospital" manner. I'm sure it was our Santa Clara Day adventure that made our Donna unique among her sisters, who themselves, are each unique in the context of human existence.

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View PreDonna Day in a larger map

Old Guy's Rambling Remembrances #38

2011-09-19T18:05:00.000-05:00

I had promised my friend Mary that I'd look up the "PreDonna" anecdote from the ancient depths of my anecdotal life. I'll still do that, but I will do it from memory, and will wait until the cool hours of morning. So today, for whomsoever might see this, it's not the experience I intended, but it's an experience nevertheless.

STILL
10/18/99

Last night our oldest daughter, the quality checker at Motorola, who can’t keep her phone bill paid, laid out sixty bucks per to treat us to the Moody Blues, in celebration of our September 13th wedding anniversary.

These old geezers have still got it! This is our third Moody Blues concert, but the first time we’ve sat on the third row about ten feet from the edge of the stage. I’ve been spoiled forever! I never want to see them again from “half a mile” away, as we’ve done in the past.

I was sitting about fifteen feet from Ray Thomas, and was able to catch a discreet wink and wave he shot at an excited little girl who was sitting on the front row, two seats in front of me. After the last number he threw the little girl the tambourine he had been playing between flute solos. Later, during the encore, Graeme Edge came forward and tossed the little girl a pair of drumsticks.

As we were leaving the concert, my wife said that she thought that little girl would become a devoted fan, and that someday she’ll bring her kids to see the old geezers performing in their wheelchairs. Those guys are really great! It was a terrific show, and had my blood stirring the whole time.

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WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN?

2011-08-01T22:57:00.003-05:00

I occasionally think of Pete Seeger, and that the answer to his question will never occur in the lifetime of Mankind.

It appears that once again, the persistent slimy creature remains in the Washington spotlight, and last I heard (I don't really try to hear much) about him is he plans to run for President!

Let us hope that we're not in for another round of that time-honored American pastime, IGNORING THE LESSONS OF HISTORY. This observation is from a long time ago, in the fleeting lifetime of humanity.

DEPART THE SLIPPERY SWAMP DWELLER

11/9/98

Friday when I left work, I heard a rumor which, by the time I reached home, had developed into a sure thing..

As I walked in the door, my wife said “crossfire should be good tonight.

If you lived in Georgia, and had voted for Newt Gingrich, what would you be thinking right now?” Thinking that was a question I really didn’t have to answer, I went ahead and indicated that they must have known that they’d voted for a man dedicated to saving the country from the voters, so it should be OK with them.

On Washington Journal Saturday on my favorite sports network, C-SPAN, ol’ Newt was the preferred topic. It seems that while a lot of people agreed with my thought that an elected official who resigns is violating his contract with America, an almost equal number were spinning this to “he did the honorable thing”. These same people think that President Clinton should also resign, to save his destructive adversaries the trouble of having to try to drum up some way to throw him out.

I really won’t miss Newtie very much. If any of you can remember when he was doing the hatchet job on Connie Chun, he tried to have us believe that his own mother was simple minded, after she leaned into the microphone and whispered “he says Hillary’s a bitch”. If I’d called my little mother simple minded, she would have paddled my butt, or at least made me wish that she’d only just paddled my butt.

What we get now as Speaker Of The House could be better or a lot worse. I hope we get better.
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ANOTHER RUSH

2011-08-01T12:47:00.002-05:00

I have thought that, as much criticism as I've given him since the 1980s, that I still believed that it has been since the 2008 election and subsequent inauguration that Limbaugh's become more flaky than ever.

Looking back at this memory, one which I've always cherished, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he's always been a flake.

GET REAL, RUSH

7/13/98

Last week when President Clinton was in Florida, he stayed at the mansion of Sylvester Stallone. Rush remarked on his Thursday show “You know, I guess I’ve always thought that Stallone was a Republican. You know, like Willis or Schwartznegger.”

I guess Rush hasn’t seen Willis in the pre-Jake days of “Moonlighting”, Schwartzenegger in “Kindergarten Cop”, or Stallone in the soft porn movie, “Party at Kitty and Stud’s”. Rush, these guys are all actors. Like Ronald Reagan, they get paid a lot of money to play parts that other people have written.

I think, Rush, that you’re losing your grip on reality. These actors are very good at what they do. Even though they are all quite competent at playing the part of mentally challenged macho men, they can also play other parts. Those are not their real personalities, Rush!

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NEW BLUE

2011-07-30T13:07:00.004-05:00

Last week sometime, at a vehicle gate on the upstream River Trail, I encountered a couple, a man and a woman, in an attractive new golf cart. My first reaction as they waved cheerfully, was "What are those damned golfers doing on MY trail?"

I rode on with hostility in my heart for these transgressors. I noticed that they had been wearing blue shirts with a logo I did not recognize. I made my way on to the lakeshore, and stayed awhile, and on the way back, stopped at one of the trails parks to refill some and discard some water. As I stepped out of the rest-room, I noticed what I thought was the same new blue cart, but I feel as if the people were not the same, although their shirts seemed to be the same.

I returned to the lakeshore again the next day, and somewhere along the trail, I saw yet another new blue cart, and noticed that, as they proceeded along MY trail, they would beep their obnoxious little horns at each blind curve. OH, surely these people should be reported for bustling around in these motorized vehicles on the trail!!!

Then, on a third day, a few days later, I had just crossed the dam road at Overlook Park, and began the easy slope down toward the killer hill. I heard one of those beeps, and there, coming toward me around a curve, was one of those new blue carts with only a single occupant! The cart pulled aside to assure me room to pass, and the very nice appearing lady occupant waved cheerfully to me, and I noticed that she was wearing a vest, rather than the blue shirts with the logo. Her vest prominently displayed "Park Ranger".

I stopped and we had a chat, as I explained to her about my hostility toward those strangers I'd seen hogging the trail, but now I understood. She gently explained that she'd tried one of those shirts, and found that she just didn't like the heavy blue material what made it much too hot, so she wore the vest over her own lighter weight shirt! As I continues my ride, I told her that now, instead of my hostility, I was very happy that they were there! And I was!

I do not know if those people who patrol the trail are volunteers or of they're moderately paid for their service, but it is a valuable service they perform, even if their actions may seem to annoy us occasionally.

And so, in retrospect, I'm theorizing that swapping the heavier old green utility vehicles they had been using for the snappy blue (I'll say "Eagle Blue") carts was a practical move for the sake of economy, and probably an intentional tribute to our local high school gladiator squad.

"EPILOGUE".....The punch line.
When, earlier today, I placed the final period and posted this for all the world to see, I cheerfully went on to other things. It was hours before it suddenly dawned on me, and my mind returned to Mrs. Sullivan's eighth grade English class. I had given a book report on Robin Hood, ended my report, and returned to my seat. I was already home after school when I realized that I had not finished, and had left it hanging in the wrong place, so the next day, I asked Mrs. Sullivan to allow me to complete my report.

This morning, as I was headed out to my appointment at The Barber Shop, driving this time. I was about midway down that narrow ravine, pretentiously named "Spring Valley", where The River Trail and the road are in close proximity, when I saw one of the new blue carts coming up the trail toward me. Prominently displayed on the windshield of this one, I saw a "PARK RANGER" label.

I'll probably always wonder if that nice lady park ranger up on the upper shelf above "killer hill" had revealed my story to "the authorities", or was this new label simply something that they had always intended, but had not yet accomplished in those days before I met her on the trail.

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WHAT CAN I SAY?

2011-07-22T14:20:00.000-05:00

This afternoon, I had another of my musing fantasies.

We have a young snapping turtle who travels freely between the dooryard ponds, I think it is the same turtle that was much smaller last winter when we first saw it. Turtles rarely stay in one place for long, but this one seems persistent. I suppose that snapping turtles could have somewhat different habits from sliders.

Last week, as I was walking past the lower pond, I noticed the turtle eating a mockingbird.

I was sitting on the porch putting on my shoes, in preparation to spending my customary ten to fifteen minutes outdoors in this oppressive summer weather before ducking back into the AC.

A squirrel came to take a drink from the upper pond, and I could not avoid watching closely to see if I could see the turtle sneaking up on the unwary squirrel. It didn't happen, but I still could not avoid my anxiety.

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AQUAMANIA

2011-07-21T09:46:00.003-05:00

My Granny was born in 1885, five years before the massacre at Wounded Knee finally settled the physical aspects of our differences with the natives. There were no gasoline powered vehicles used in combating the native people of our land.

I was born in 1936, and my mother was 26 years old. Granny was 51. Until they moved to Houston, Granny got her water from a hand-dug well in the back yard, and her brother, who lived "out in the country", also used a hand dug well, which was connected to the back porch for convenience. One could look down into these wells and see the water.

Granny never learned to drive an automobile. When my mother was growing up, she began driving at 14 so she could transport Granny. When Mom wasn't available, Granny had to hitch up a horse to her buggy and drive herself.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the media's insistence that this drought, so seemingly inconsequential to me, is the "worst of the century". Perhaps "worst" is the keyword. It's easy for me to see that springs in our limestone country which once ran freely and dependably, have begun to flow more sporadically and infrequently. Our immediate ancestors were able to subsist on the precious water which flowed so freely. In places where there was no spring, an atmospheric windmill could provide plenty of fresh water from a source only a few feet below the surface (maximum draw depth for a windmill is not quite 34').

A drought in "the old days" was much more serious than today, but the people were more flexible in adapting to it. Right here in central Texas, adobe, which is now considered an expensive fashion in the desert areas of the southwest, was once used as a building material because labor was virtually all that was required to convert your site into a usable living space. It required very little water or mechanical devices.

I think we have come to take water for granted, just as we take petroleum for granted, in fact, down south of San Antonio, a great deal of water is expected to be used for the extraction of the last dregs of gas and oil through a process called "fracking". I do not deny that we need that petroleum. For forty years at least (and much longer from people who have greater vision), we've known the resources we've squandered are becoming much more difficult and expensive to obtain.

I complain constantly about the gu'ment using that large dam they built upriver to steal our river for the use of citizens who want green lawns.....and though it's all in fun, there certainly is a tone of seriousness to it.

Water wells which once cost a few hundred dollars to drill are now many thousands, as they must go deeper and deeper to find a dependable source. This not only disturbs the natural flow of the everpresent limestone country springs, but, in the Houston area, it once caused entire subdivisions which were built on dry land to gradually subside below sea level, as the water table which supported the land was sucked up by Houston's need for water.

I think, although I hate to admit it, that this may truly be our "worst drought", because we, as shortsighted humans, cannot accept that we should learn to live with nature rather than try to conquer it and constantly demand tribute from it.

We can never do that. "The earth abides".

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Old Guy's Rambling Remembrances #37

2011-07-20T11:07:00.003-05:00

THE DIVERSITY OF MANKIND
10/10/98

‘Way back on memorial day my 11 year old granddaughter Christa was spending the weekend with us. Among other things we had been doing to amuse ourselves, we had spent the whole weekend with the TV tuned to “Animal Planet”. Monday evening at 8:00 PM my wife said “OK, now we’re going to watch our show. You’ve had control of the TV for the whole weekend, Christa.” She changed the channel, to the mutual disappointment of Christa and me.

When she saw what we were going to watch, Christa said “Allie McBeal? I never thought you’d watch that!”

I responded “What do you mean? It’s the best show on television.” “Except maybe for “King of the Hill.”

“Well, you don’t watch Seinfeld or the Simpsons.”

I almost smacked my little granddaughter before I took the time to reflect. Why don’t I watch those shows? The most revolting person I’ve ever encountered, a talk show host from Temple, thinks that the Simpsons is the best TV show ever to grace the planet. That could be the reason, except that I wasn’t watching The Simpsons before I ever heard of that talk show host.

Seinfeld, we have always thought, is just a dumb show about nothing. Not long ago I surfed right into a piece on Court TV about a man, a watcher of Seinfeld, who had been fired from IBM because of an incident related to his being accused of sexual harassment. Part of the testimony included his having shown the woman a copy of a dictionary page which described the notorious body part from one of Seinfeld’s shows. She said that he made her look at the dictionary, and went on about making sure she understood the definition.

I’m glad he won his judgement, about 1.3 million dollars from IBM, but I hope that he never sees a penny of it. The man is too dumb to be let out of the house, much less given a large sum of money.

My wife, who was in the kitchen during the Court TV thing, asked what body part they were talking about. I told her.

“That’s not the way to pronounce it, anyway” she announced.

“Are you sure?” I replied as I grabbed for the dictionary.

The first dictionary did not even have the word, the second had a definition but no pronunciation; when I finally found it a third dictionary, I saw that of two ways to pronounce the word, neither of them rhymes with “Dolores”.

THAT’S THE KIND OF SHOW SEINFELD IS..

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REFLECTION IN MAY... ABOUT DECEMBER--- 5/10/11

2011-06-11T16:41:00.002-05:00

For such a large portion of my life I was a young person, never giving a thought to being an old person

However, a few days before Easter, as I prepared to be seventy-five, I was in the back yard digging a trench for a burial cable which had electrified a deck for a score and five, but no longer had a deck to serve. It would now serve a corner post of the patio cover.

I was sitting on the ground, surrounded by a mattock, a shovel, a sharpshooter and 5' crowbar, the digging tools of a younger man. I realized that I had decided that they were faster, but required more energy than I cared to exert. My tools of choice were a garden trowel and a hand-hoe/cultivator, and patience.

Whenever I’m working on a project now, trying to determine the less physically taxing way to do it in lieu of the fastest, I often think of the dawn of civilization, when manpower and time were much more abundant than tools.

The most convincing theories have always seemed to credit women with the discovery of agriculture. I personally feel that from the beginning, the stronger sex has delegated the more menial and less adventurous tasks to the less physically endowed. Consequently, rather than being faced with the tedious task of packing up to reestablish their homes each time a herd moved on, or the berry-picking season opened in a different area, Woman’s creativity permitted humankind to “settle down”, to manage crops and animals rather than chase them helter-skelter.

Knowing now, in these years when everything is heavier and more difficult than it used to be, I’ve become convinced that it was women and elderly people, lacking brute strength, who created tools and agriculture, the elements of civilization, while the young bucks were content with roaming around and improving their weapons.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNCLE BRADLEY!!!!!!

2011-02-25T18:31:00.002-06:00

This morning, my wife was reading the Kiddierag. She always reads to me the list of birthdays of famous people, and we're either impressed by how old or how young are those people we know from their celebrity.

Today she called out Bradley Davis, of Dripping Springs, was 102 years old today!

"OUR Uncle Bradley?" I asked........Bradley Davis is the uncle of my Uncle Vernon (Bud, who was one of my favorite mentors during my early years.

When I was about eleven, my parents drove my sister and me to Columbus, TX, where we met Uncle Vernon and family. Aunt Pearl and the kids rode back to Bay City with my parents and sister, while I went to Austin with Uncle Vernon to help him for a week in the construction of their new house! A DREAM adventure for a curious eleven-year-old!!!! Uncle Vernon was always an adventurous driver, and we made the trip from Columbus to Austin in just about an hour.

On the second day we were working, Uncle Bradley came over, and I decided that HE must have been a mentor for Uncle Vernon. For years (until I was a grown man and began to realize that he was so authoritative in his explanations that you had to believe him, even when he was sometimes slightly mistaken), I thought that Uncle Vernon was the smartest man in the world!!!!

It was Uncle Bradley who first showed me the importance of properly working concrete into forms. When Uncle Bradley casually mentioned once that "Dulling the point on a nail will help to keep the wood from splitting", I decided that surely that made sense. Nowadays, when I see those DIY shows on HGTV, and someone says, "Be sure to dull the point on a nail before driving it into wood, or the wood will split!", as if they had just thought of it, I'll think, "Uncle Bradley told me that more than sixty years ago!

On the third day we were working, Uncle Vernon gave me a day off! Uncle Bradley and I picked up another kid, who was probably about sixteen, and we went out to Fox's Fishing Camp on Bull Creek, where Uncle Vernon kept his boat in season. We took the boat about three miles up Lake Austin to the site where Uncle Vernon was, in addition to building his dwelling, was also preparing to assemble government surplus building from Camp Hulen for use as a lake cabin! Our goal was to determine that the material had been delivered, and, sure enough, it had. There was purpose to our trip, but to me, it was just a pure learning adventure. Uncle Bradley was familiar with many of the native plants that we encountered on the weedy walk along the bank (we had missed the exactly location by a couple of hundred yards). Therefore, I gained a good part of my limited botanical knowledge from Uncle Bradley.

Since that first week in the presence of Uncle Bradley, I've encountered him several times in the intervening years.

Aunt Pearl and Uncle Vernon grew older, and Uncle Vernon suffered a stroke and disablement after a routine medical procedure. Uncle Bradley, however, seemed to keep being the same old Uncle Bradley......"He just kept going, and going, and going". Once, several years ago, when the "old folks" made a trip to Colorado, Uncle Bradley drove them.

Aunt Pearl, and later Uncle Vernon, have both passed away, but the very last time I saw Uncle Bradley was at Uncle Vernon's funeral, and later at a family gathering at a cousin's house afterward, and he was looking quite dapper for an "old guy".

KEEP 'EM COMING, UNCLE BRADLEY.......you're a remarkable old fellow!!!!

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In The Spirit of The Holidays, Life Goes On, Conflict Goes On.....

2010-12-09T09:34:00.005-06:00

And today, the TV, the newspapers, and the Facebook is seething with references to the Holiday Season Battles! The tired old efforts to make the winter solstice a time to fight among ourselves linger on.

'way back in early December of 2005, I got an email from an old friend which linked me to this, by Debbie Daniel.

I thought about what she said, and tried to apply it to what I think, and made the following response. I sent a copy to my friend, and another to Debbie. I don't recall any reply from my friend, but Debbie and I exchanged a couple of emails.

I found that she loves Santa Fe, as I do, and that, although we disagree on a lot of things (which, of course, makes her disillusioned), she's not nearly the nasty person I expected her to be.

OH, MY GOODNESS, I JUST TOOK THE TIME TO
FIND OUT WHO DEBBIE DANIEL IS!

12/1/05

And now it will no longer be necessary for me to take that e-mail message from my dear old friend seriously. Debbie is offended by everything. Although I’m offended by a number of things (old guy’s privilege), I could never live up to her standards.

I can truthfully say that I’m offended by our taking of the ancient American custom of Potlatch and incorporating it into the celebration of our Lord’s birthday.

I suppose I shouldn’t be offended, because such things have been standard practice throughout the history of Christianity. When the early Christians were getting started, there were pagans everywhere, and few Christians. In order to win friends and influence people, those early Christians were just oozing with political correctness.

The birthdate that we celebrate as that of our Lord Jesus was selected to conform to the pagan celebration of the winter solstice. The Christmas tree was originally a pagan symbol as well. These were good things for the Christian faith, because they helped to make converts.

There is nothing being done to keep Christians from celebrating Christmas in any way they choose. Our Constitution allows freedom of religion for everybody.

In the tradition of Potlatch, which is the core of the American Christmas celebration, is it not a noble thing that the merchants try to court as many potential customers as they can? The early Christians would have approved. They knew how to respect people’s cultures (as long as it suited their own purposes).

Hooray for Richard Branson!!!!! Debbie could never live up to his standards, and what’s more, he’s had fun doing it. In the spirit of our early Christian forbears, why not make a truly American holiday of ChristmaHanukaWansa, and decline to worry about Debbie Daniel being offended?

I think Jesus would say that his birthday could best be celebrated by doing good works for people less fortunate. Does Debbie practice that? Or does she just bitch?

..

Handy=?

2010-11-27T12:19:00.005-06:00

This lunchtime I was squeezing out a little dab of honey mustard for my sandwich, knowing that when I discarded this squeeze bottle, it would not be completely empty.

I recalled the summer of 1968, when I purchased my first plastic tube of Brylcreem. I thought it was such a wonderful thing, and wondered why it would not work for toothpaste, etc. Apparently it would.

In 1968, toothpaste was still packed in metal foil tubes, which could be squeezed flat and rolled from the bottom until the very last drop of toothpaste could be evacuated from the tube. Some rather short time after I'd discovered the plastic tube for Brylcreem, I began finding toothpaste also in plastic tubes. Now, as far as I know, there's no place in this country where one could buy a metal tube of toothpaste.

My wife bought me a new tube (plastic) of toothpaste about three or four months ago, thinking I'd just about exhausted my old tube.....BUT, I'm still squeezing toothpaste from it. And you know what? When I finally decide I'm finished with this tube, and discard it, I'm sure there'll still be toothpaste lingering inside the plastic tube, which can't really be flattened as were the old metal ones.

After the plastic toothpaste tubes I began to see squeeze bottles for all sorts of food products, such as mustard, mayonnaise, honey, etc. It is very, very difficult to completely empty these squeeze bottles using the recommended procedure.

Is it essential that "convenience" also involve waste?

..

Old Guy's Rambling Remembrances #36

2010-11-15T08:35:00.006-06:00

WHAT IS IT ANYWAY?

7/6/98

At noon I went over to Lowe’s. Whenever I do that, I hear Rush for a little while.

In the short time I listened, there was a lot of discussion of oral sex. Those two words seem to combine a lot whenever people with too much time on their hands are talking about Bill Clinton.

I was immediately reminded of a hilarious story that Doctor Laura once told about a woman who was trying to sue a company because someone from that company had told her that he would get her a job in exchange for oral sex. She complied, and a couple of days later, when she called the company to inquire about her job, she was told that the job description of her “interviewer” gave him no authority to hire anyone. Let’s say that she had been “tricked”.

I didn’t give it much thought at first, but later began to ponder. How did that woman administer the oral sex in question? Did she crawl under the fellow’s desk, or lean back against it? What does the phrase mean? Naturally we have our immediate first impressions, but there are certainly more meanings than one for that particular combination of two words. Isn't kissing “oral sex”?

Once, many years ago, when I was a younger fellow and an enthusiastic thespian, I was engaged in deep conversation with our director, a woman several years my senior. I can’t remember what we were discussing, but when someone approached, she looked up from our huddle and casually remarked “we’re having sex.” As I think about it, I can truthfully say that we were having oral sex. Actually vocal. We had been exchanging points of view, and since we were sexual opposites, surely sex was involved.

..

Old Guy's Rambling Remembrances #35

2010-11-05T21:29:00.007-05:00

This evening, just as I was preparing to turn off the TV and go upstairs to read awhile and have a Scotch before going to sleep, I heard of the death of Jill Clayburgh.

I suppose my persistent question will forever continue to go unanswered.

WAS SHE, OR WASN’T SHE?.......AND THE ONLY WAY TO KNOW FOR SURE IS TO ASK HER.
4/7/99

In January of 1987 I was in Santa Fe, hanging out. I had told myself that I was there to look over the job potential. We were well into the mid-80's "voodoo economics" catastrophe that eventually led me to give up my business and get a paying job with a manufacturing company.

I didn’t find much activity there, and really didn’t try as hard as I should have to justify being there. My wife was home with Julie, who was expecting Christa “soon”.

I did have a word processor with me, and wrote down a lot of thoughts, but they have all been lost or misfiled over the years. One of the persistent thoughts has been the “sighting”.

Every afternoon about the same time, I’d walk around the plaza. I could swear I thought I’d seen Jill Clayburgh. She seemed to be making a routine trip each afternoon to Hagen-Daas, then walking back toward La Fonda with a cup in each hand. On the third afternoon of this routine, she gave me a sweet smile and walked on. It was at that time I decided that she probably wasn’t really Jill Clayburgh, but a secretary, and was not headed for the hotel with ice cream, but to one of the downtown offices with coffee from Woolworth’s.

Last night I accidently saw a new sit-com which featured Jill Clayburgh as the mother of the main character. Then this morning, I happened to catch a few minutes of some movie where Jill was playing the wife of Michael Douglas, who was dressed at the time in a baseball uniform. That’s all I saw of the movie, but once again I’m trying to decide if it wasn’t really Jill, and not a secretary, that I saw on the plaza that week back in 1987. Who really cares anyway?

I guess I do, but who else?

..

Old Guy's Rambling Remembrances #34

2010-10-21T21:32:00.007-05:00

LANGUAGE BARRIER

10/4/98

Friday, someone at the place where I work was iterating the phrase vaca caca. Since this did not come from a real Spanish speaking person, I let it pass at the time, saying only that a Spanish speaking person would never say that.

Since then, however, my mind has wandered to the Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, an excellent movie starring Edward James Olmos.

Gregorio Cortez is based on a corrida written by Americo Paredes, who, along with his other great accomplishments, was my freshman English teacher at the University of Texas.

The story, which is supposed to be based on a true story, happened in Karnes County, Texas around 1912 or so. The sheriff went out to the home of Gregorio to question him about a horse trade he had been reported to have made. In his best Spanish, the gringo asked Gregorio if he had traded a caballo that morning. Gregorio, who knew almost no English, answered truthfully (in Spanish) that no, he had not traded a caballo. The sheriff interpreted this as a lie, and pulled his gun to arrest Gregorio. Not understanding what was happening, Gregorio pulled a gun, and in the ensuing gunfight the sheriff was killed.

Gregorio hit the road, and was pursued over a large portion of Texas until finally apprehended. He was tried and sentenced to life, even though the State of Texas released him a few years later. The root of all of poor Gregorio’s trouble was that the sheriff had asked him if he had traded a caballo (horse) and Gregorio had actually traded a yewa (mare). A simple misunderstanding had turned a case of self defense into murder, and done great damage to the lives of two men, the sheriff of course, and Gregorio Cortez.

When Humble Oil Company decided to become not so humble, going blantantly international, they chose the name “ENCO”, a cute name for “Energy Company”. This worked fine in the good ol’ USA, but in some foreign countries with which they did business, it was an offensive word. After much careful research, they became “EXXON”, so that they wouldn’t offend anyone (until they killed all those fish at Valdez).

For more than forty years, my lack of fluency in the language of women has caused me a great deal of torment. It is very difficult to know what to say, and when to say it, and when to not say anything at all..

Be careful what you say, you never know who might be listening.

..

Old Guy's Rambling Remembrances #33

2010-10-21T08:29:00.003-05:00

FUNERALS INSPIRE MEMORIES
9/25/98

Juanita was my parents’ neighbor for twenty years or more. The funeral played to a packed house. Obviously, my mom and dad were not Juanita’s only friends. I was very pleased to see that three of my four daughters were able to make it, as well as my sister and her husband and two of their three daughters.

The service inspired a lot of thought about my parents, who have passed on within the last few years. My father was William Palmer Holmans, and I am William Clarence Holmans. Family members still call me “Little Bill”, or “Billy”, and as long as I knew her, my mom called me her “little boy”.

My dad was a great guy, who in my first year of college, gave up the “secure” job he had taken with the Postal Service when he had decided that it would be necessary to settle down and provide a stable environment for his small kids.

After giving up that job and going back on the road, he never had another of his chronic headaches and became more secure and happy in his life than he had ever been in the twelve or thirteen years that he was with the Post Office.while my sister and I were growing up.

Every year, he would go to the furniture market in Chicago, and often would go by automobile, car-pooling with other members of his profession, and driving straight through to Chicago.

At the reception following Pop’s funeral, the conversation got around to one of Pop’s sales buddies who had died in Dallas on the same day as Pop, a few hours later. It is said that the man’s wife remarked, “Just enough time for Bill to come by and pick him up”.

..

Old Guy's Rambling Remembrances #32

2010-10-20T09:06:00.004-05:00

FUN WITH CATS

9/4/98

For most of my life, I have thought that the best way to treat a cat would be to catch
it napping, and smash its head in with a rock. But lately, I have come to be
somewhat fond of the obnoxious black critter we had to adopt because Christa
“desperately” needed a puppy, and couldn’t have both.

Last Tuesday, when I was on my way home I had to stop on Country Club Road
because the car in front of me had stopped for a very small kitten. After the little
fellow scampered to the side of the road and the other car got out of the way, I
noticed that the kitten was a bobcat. I found myself hoping that its mama was
somewhere close around to look after it. Every day since then, I have kept my eyes
peeled along that section of road, hoping not to find that he had made an
unsuccessful attempt to cross the road. Willie is getting to be an old softie.

Back to the black pestilence. Gradually since the Fourth of July, with the help of
Christa, I have developed a portion of the front yard into what I first called my
“Meditation Station”, then my “Serenity Stop”, and now most often my “Tranquility
Base”. (My life is “relatively” mellow now, but I’ve had my moments of stress)

Every morning and evening the black beast and I will sit out there for a few minutes
while I have a hot cup or a cold glass of tea, and savor the delicious peace of the
trickling water, the gurgling splashes of the fish in the pond, the wind bells, and the soft fur of the black critter who always makes a point of being right under my free hand.

Last evening we were doing our serenity thing when I heard a strange and unusual
noise which I couldn’t place. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, but I
suspected the cat. I even put my ear down close, and found it wasn’t he.

It turned out to be the sound of raindrops falling down through the varnish trees and
hitting the big leaves at various levels. After taking a few hits, we decided that no
matter how lovely the gentle sprinkles were, neither of us wanted to get really wet,
so we went our separate ways. I know, however, that we’ll get back together soon.

..

Why Stop Now?

2010-08-07T17:56:00.012-05:00

When I was a freshman at The University of Texas, a long, long, time ago, when Austin was less than half the size it has now attained, I lived with an aunt and uncle who lived about three miles from the campus. They lived 'way out near Robert Mueller Airport.

When I was home for the Christmas break, I petitioned my dad for a bicycle, which I thought would be very handy for getting to school, and I could save about a dime a day if I didn't have to ride the bus.

Pop vetoed the idea, thinking that there would often be bad weather, and I'd still have to ride the bus when it was raining, or too hot, or too cold, etc. He had found a superlative deal on a five-year old Chevrolet, which had been traded in by one of his coworkers, so he bought me a car. I enjoyed using the automobile, but I had only been driving my car for one semester when The University initiated "parking permits", and I could no longer park just anywhere I chose. So I still dreamed of bicycles.

Before I finished at The University, I had gotten married, and less than a year after that, while still in college, I became a dad, so it was about ten years after my freshman year that I finally bought a bicycle. Since that time, I have not allowed myself to be without one.

When I ride, I try very hard to follow the rules of the road. A bicycle is a vehicle, and must follow the same rules as an automobile. An exception is that the cyclist is allowed to ride on the shoulder, while motor vehicles are not.

At a red traffic light or a stop sign, the cyclist must come to a complete stop, the same as an automobile driver. I will always stop at a light, but at a stop sign, I will frequently, in fact, invariably, make a "rolling", or "California" stop, coming to a complete stop, but not long enough to require putting a foot down.

I have noticed, however, that my stop lasts longer than at least half that of the cars, and at least as long as most of them. That has caused me to wonder.......would it be possible to change the way that traffic is directed, in order to make it more convenient for drivers as well as cyclists, without sacrificing safety?

In our small town, except for a couple of very busy streets, and bottlenecks where these streets cross the interstate, traffic is reasonably light. However, even in larger towns, very frequently a stop is forced when there is no cross traffic at all.

Wouldn't it make sense, wherever there's a "two-way" stop, which affects traffic in only one of the streets, to replace the stop signs with yield signs? Stop signs would continue to be required when traffic conditions demand equal treatment of both streets (there can be no "four-way" yield signs), and lights would continue to be necessary at certain intersections.

I think that requiring a complete stop where conditions do not warrant, contributes to driver apathy and scorn for the traffic laws.

Old Guy's Rambling Remembrances #31

2010-07-26T17:58:00.005-05:00

SMILE A WHILE
3/25/00

When I was a callow college youth, without the consummate wisdom with which I am
now endowed, I would brag to my buddies, “i know how to get any girl to smile at me.
Just walk along with a cheerful attitude, smiling instead of leering, and they’ll smile
at you”.

Much, much later, when I finally became a man, I learned that the smile was a primal
feminine defense mechanism that transcends species. It is widely used among human
females, as well as others of higher forms of life to say, “I acknowledge that you are
stronger than I, and that I have something that you desire greatly, but if you can
resist your natural impulses to make the unspeakable demands, then, as an individual
like yourself, and not an object to be exploited, I can become an affectionate and
loyal friend, for as long as we both may live. If you like, we could have a cup of
coffee, and some meaningful conversation. My husband would think it’s OK, so long as
you behave yourself.”

The smile rarely means (as the college youth might be inclined to surmise), “She wants me”.

I’ve tried to remember this throughout my adult life, and the very knowledge of it
has earned me a lot of nice hugs over the years.

Past, Paint, Plastic, Preservation, Puppylove

2010-06-04T09:03:00.008-05:00

Tuesday, as I was putting a coat of paint on "The Annex", I thought of my past. My last employment was for a company that made custom items from FRP. We call it FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic), yet in Europe, it's called GRE (Glass Reinforced Epoxy).

I recall that the first time I saw a specification for two GRE tanks for shipment to the Middle East, I thought that GRE must be the liquid which would be contained in these tanks!

Whenever you say you have a "fiberglass boat", you're really not being correct. If you've ever seen wet fiberglass insulation, you know that fiberglass would certainly not hold water, and would quickly be destroyed by it. FRP encases the fiberglass in a solid coating of plastic of some form. The form of plastic would vary with the liquid to be contained.

When I built the cover for "The Annex", I used a similar principle to make it watertight. I glued an old bedsheet to the surface of the cover, wet it down well, and allowed it to shrink until it made a tight fit to the plywood surface, then I painted it several coats.

The integrity of "The Annex" depends on renewal of the paint periodically (at least I think it does), and a fresh coat of paint makes it look better.

When I was about eight or nine, an "older guy" came through the neighborhood, painting the gas meters. I suppose this older guy must have been about eighteen or nineteen, but to us "little ones", he was an adult who had no problem talking to us. He told us his name was "Kilroy", so that's what we called him. Asked if he was THE Kilroy, he replied, "of course".

He hung around for quite some time. The aluminum paint that he was putting on the meters dripped all over, and, even to my unsophisticated eye, seemed to be a really sloppy job. I wondered if this was what it was like to have a job with the gas company. Maybe that would be a cool job, being paid for being lazy and sloppy.

When I was sixteen, I was walking around the town square, hoping to find a job. In front of a Variety Store (I sometimes think of the term "Bridey Store", which was my name for them as a five-year-old), I saw a kid I knew, who was going to quit his job, and he thought that if I talked to the store manager, I could get the job. I did, and I did,

I was flabbergasted by the attitude of my family, including Granny, who said, "Billy has a JOB!" Well, I thought I'd been working since I was about eleven, caddying at the local golf course, but apparently no one thought of that as a "real job".

The bookkeeper at the store was a knockout, and a very pleasant person. An older woman, of course, in her early to mid twenties, and she often invaded my teenage dreams. Naturally, to my disappointment, she was a married woman, whose husband was in Korea.

Her husband finally came home from "the war", and I was introduced to him. My lovely Betty Bridges was married to KILROY!!!!

.....

Remembering an adventure of fate....

2010-05-24T22:03:00.003-05:00

This evening (I'll probably finish this tomorrow, so perhaps I should say, "Monday evening"), I went to a choir concert at my ninth-grader granddaughter's school.

As I sat there waiting for the show to start, I thought about how times had changed since I was in ninth grade. In MY day, performances were staged in the gymnasium. Some gyms even had a stage built into one end for the times when the space was used for a play or concert. The acoustics were usually insufferable.

The theater at the ninth grade center where our granddaughter goes to school this year had a nicely functional space, with a large stage, sloped floor, and fixed seats. Looking up, one sees some acoustical devices which someone once told me were called "clouds". The "clouds" reminded me of a period in my life which I thought was somewhat anecdotal.

For my design thesis for graduation from the University of Texas School of Architecture I decided to design a "Fine Arts Center" for a particularly attractive site at the confluence of Bouldin Creek and The Colorado River (which later became Town Lake and is now Lady Bird Lake).

It was not until I started researching my project that I found that, in those days, Fine Arts Centers were not a regular fixture of virtually every reasonably sized city. I found, among the meager resources of the Architecture Library, only a single Fine Arts Center, the one in Colorado Springs, designed by John Gaw Meem.

I feel that I did a very mediocre job with my thesis project, and was quite disappointed with the way it turned out. Often I'm my own worst critic, and perhaps someone saw some merit in my design that I didn't, because I got a passing grade, and left The University, to go out into the world and complete my education in Architecture with a correspondence course to remedy a failing grade in American History.

During my first summer of working for an architect in Baytown, Texas, we made a trip to Albuquerque to visit some of my wife's relatives who lived there. We vowed to move to Albuquerque as soon as we could.

It happened that we were free to move to New Mexico in December of that year, and we promptly did so. I'm sure that it was sometimes, even usually, done differently, but I was accustomed to "pounding the pavement" looking for work. That's what I did (however, I drove around in my new VW instead of actually pounding the pavement). After looking unsuccessfully in ABQ for more than a week, Uncle Bill, who was making a trip up to the Taos area, offered to drop me off in Santa Fe to check around there while he went up to Taos, and would pick me up on The Plaza in the afternoon. sounded like a plan to me. I had been to Santa Fe the day before, and was quite impressed with it, although it was snowing just enough to keep me from seeing more than a block or so in any direction.

At the second place I visited, the architect looked at the work samples that I presented (featuring my Fine Arts Center), and made a phone call. I heard him say that the person to whom he was talking might be interested in my work. I asked him how far it was, because I was on foot, and he called up one of his employees, asking him to "take this fellow to Meem's office".

It turned out that the firm of Holien and Buckley, John Gaw Meem's successors, was working on.....A FINE ARTS CENTER for the University of New Mexico!

One of the very first things that I worked on at Holien and Buckley was the suspension for the concrete acoustical clouds in the recital hall. I doubt that those clouds weighed more than five or six thousand pounds (some details can be lost to time when you're an old guy), but s couple of boisterous Okies who worked in the office made up a rowdy story about a heroine opera singer on the stage, and a villain standing on the cloud above her head with a hack saw!

...

Inspired By My Facebook/Flickr Friend Don....

2010-01-15T09:05:00.010-06:00

Today, I was moved to tears (sort of) by the video posted by Don on Facebook. Long before I saw the movie "Cold Mountain", but after I'd fallen love with Alison Krauss, I saw a piece in the paper that inspired me to watch the Oscar presentations, something that normally interests me not at all.

WAS SHE OR WASN’T SHE?
3/1/04

A memory, almost six years old........

Saturday, I read in the Austin American-Kiddierag that, at the academy awards, my beloved Alison Krauss would be wearing a pair of 4½" heeled, diamond encrusted shoes. The shoes are said to have cost two million dollars.

I was not necessarily impressed by the two million dollar part, because such things are common in Hollywood. I had never seen Alison wearing 4½" heels before, however, and wondered if it wouldn’t detract from her wonderful, wholesome presence.

I so love Alison Krauss that if she had been standing there naked as a newborn, but singing, I would have loved her still. She was, however, wearing a beautiful white floor-length gown, which completely covered her feet. I could not tell, and maybe will never know, if she was wearing the Cinderella shoes, but she sang like an angel.

Trying to console, my wife said, “ It’s possible that they found the shoes would not fit her (what would be the chances, anyway), and she didn’t wear them”. I really should say “Who cares?”, but I may spend the rest of my life wondering.

Footnote:
I decided today that maybe I should attempt to settle this question once and for all. And so, I present to you the evidence that I was able to find. Simply be advised, that no one should ever take as gospel truth what he finds on the WWW. All I can say with certainty is that the dress in the photo is the same one she was wearing on that evening. And I can also say, that glamorous as she looked on that night, the photo seems to indicate that she's still the gal I've come to admire so much.

..

Today In The Kiddierag, Plus A Memory

2010-01-04T07:56:00.005-06:00

This morning, my wife was calling my attention to a piece in the paper. I can come to tears any time I hear about an innocent child losing its life for whatever reason, so I honestly feel that the little ones deserve to be as safe as possible, but how can anyone really decide what's "safer", when traffic accidents come in all shapes and sizes?

She also mentioned the extensive new road construction in the Austin area (I stay away from that place nowadays, whenever possible, but it still has an impact on our lives).

When will they ever learn that they can build cars a lot faster than they can build roads, and that they can never eliminate traffic and its resulting consequences by building roads? It seems so very difficult, bordering on impossible, for them to get the new commuter rail going, yet our lives have been plagued with road construction continuously for as long as I can remember. As they build, widen, and "improve" the roads, the cars just keep coming.

Safety gadgets are constantly being mandated, or voluntarily added to promote sales, but I know that by far the most effective safety device on an automobile is a driver that uses good judgment! No one can ever be completely "safe" in a motor vehicle crash!

A Rambling Rembrance:

AIR YOU GOING TO LOVE THIS?

6/20/98

Yesterday on the radio they were doing a piece on air bag testing. It seems that up to
now, all the crash dummies have been made in the image of men. They will now have by the end of the year a whole family of dummies. There will be a Mama dummy, a Papa dummy, a six year old kid dummy, and a little baby dummy.

It has been disturbing to many that a number of recent deaths of small women and children under twelve have actually been caused by the air bags that the government says we must have to save our lives.

At the end of the program, we were assured that after new research, a future generation of air bags will be able to sense the size and weight of the person in its care, and make a decision whether or not to inflate.

Well this is great, isn’t it? If the inflation of this air bag is so essential to saving lives, then if, when we have the wonderful new technology of sentient air bags, my small wife and I are going to Alice and crash into one of those jack knifed 18 wheelers in Austin, what is going to happen?

It would seem that the bag would probably decide to save me, but since there would be the possibility that my wife may be killed by the bag itself, the bag would no doubt determine that she should be left to her fate.

Has anyone in Washington thought about the possibility of maybe making air bags an option, so that people who want them can pay a little extra (or a lot extra in the case of the future smart air bags), and those of us who trust seat belts could say “no thanks, I love my wife”.

..

On Christmas Day, what could be better than the 1975 Mother's Day Funfest

2009-12-25T08:26:00.011-06:00

Author's note: This tale has been told before by Fred, and without doubt published in the Austin Chronicle, as was his habit, under the title, "The Great Mother's Day Massacree" I'm simply recounting the experience from MY viewpoint.

We were all involved in some capacity with the melodrama, "Secret of the Mine" with our local community theater. I was playing a school board member, while my wife was Lulu, a saloon girl.

A young member of our group, who will recognize herself if she reads this, will remain nameless in this story.

On opening night, we were backstage, and the young member of the group was in costume. The director had written in a part for her as a "master of ceremonies". She grabbed me by the shirt front, and we stood there motionless (except for her trembling hands) as she recited all her lines in my face!

The show went rather well, I think, that first weekend, and on Sunday, since no matinee was scheduled because it was Mother's Day, Fred, his wife K, my wife, KR, and I had planned a canoe ride down the San Gabriel

K and KR transported our combined total of six kids down to my mother's house in Austin, and brought back some delicious deli items for lunch. After lunch, we put the canoe into the river, and started our trip downstream. Our goal was Marie's house, about seven miles by road, and maybe eight or nine miles by river. We had been to a cast party at Marie's house the night before, and knew she still had some left over beer in the keg.

We had had rain during the days before this trip, but it was not raining then, although there was the typical overcast, which we normally ignore unless it's doing something more.

About half way to Marie's house (Marie also lived adjacent to the river, downstream from us, in Jonah), we began to notice bits of wood and tree branches floating along with us. About three-fourths of the way to Marie's, there was a low water bridge, that, when we reached it, was not submerged yet. By then, we were aware that the river was rising, but we were almost there, weren't we????

A short distance past the bridge, we pulled over onto a shelf to "think about it". As it happened, Dr. Otti, one of the faculty at our local high school, was standing at the top of the bluff above our shelf, watching the river. We asked him how it looked from up there, and he mentioned that it was coming up, but not a lot. OK, we couldn't be more than a mile from Marie's, so, "Let's go!"

Before we'd gone a hundred yards from the shelf, Fred, who was in the bow, called, "Let's turn this sucker around!", and as he said that, I was looking almost straight UP at him, past the girls, who were seated between us. The water was really beginning to "pitch and roll".

And then, we were all in the water, holding onto the canoe from outside the gunwales. KR was not a swimmer, so we made sure she got back into the water-filled canoe to hold on from inside. Then Fred and K swam to the south bank (Marie lived on the north bank).

KR and I continued on with the canoe, edging toward the north bank, where many low hanging branches kept us occasionally ducking under water, until I was finally able to grab a sturdy branch that could stop us, and WE LANDED! We tied the canoe to the branch, and climbed the bank, to find that we were on Marie's land, and less than a quarter of a mile from her house!

We quickly crossed the pasture to Marie's, and had a beer! While we were settling in, thinking it would be hours before we would see Fred and K, Marie mentioned that she'd found the young "Master of Ceremonies" asleep behind her couch in the morning, but she had left by now. The girl was definitely one of us now!

While we were waiting for our fellow travelers to find their way across the river, I walked down to the Jonah bridge with Marie's son, who was visiting. We found that the river was flowing about six feet above the bridge, and cascading with at least a ten foot drop to the water below the bridge.

I think I decided then what a foolhardy stunt we had pulled. If we hadn't caught that branch which stopped our forward motion down the river, Grandma and Grandpa might have found themselves with four kids they'd never expected. The Jonah bridge was only a couple of hundred yards downstream from Marie's.

We'd hardly gotten back to Marie's, when a panel truck pulled up, and let Fred and K out. They had quickly found a ride with someone who was well acquainted with the county roads, and he'd been able to get them from one side of the flooded river to the other much quicker than any of us had expected!

Before the gu'ment messed with it, our river sure was a lot of fun!

On the second week's performances of the melodrama, KR was very concerned that her skimpy costume could never hide all the bruises she'd gotten on Mother's Day. Another of our group, our Mickey Finn, assured her that the bruises just added to her character!

I still get a little thrill when I think of that young "Master of Ceremonies", who has gone on to make a performance related career for herself out there on the Left Coast.

..

Old Man's Rambling Remembrances #30

2009-12-22T08:08:00.006-06:00

Someone I know is spending several weeks before and after the solstice in the mountains near Las Vegas, NM. I am so envious! Northern New Mexico is where I live, no matter where I may be. Although our regular visits have slowed down somewhat, I coninue to have my memories.

TAOS WEATHER SNOW JOKE
5/9/99

My wife always goes prepared. A week’s trip usually requires packing for all contingencies for at least 11 days.

There are two passes which lead directly into Taos across the Sangre de Cristo Range. You may approach by the river road from Santa Fe, but the shortest way is to go in through one of the passes from Las Vegas (New Mexico). As we approached the village of Mora north of Las Vegas, the wife made a call to Donna, to let her know the correct phone number where we might be reached.

“Would you believe”, she said to Paul, who had answered the phone, “that we can see fresh snow? Just a few patches, but it’s fresh snow!” I turned right at Mora toward the slightly longer route, because I wanted to explore the road up to Angel Fire. I had recently recommended that road to my sister, but had never been on it myself. Within ten minutes, we were surrounded by vistas of solid white, with a “Central Texas style BLIZZARD” (a light snowfall anywhere else) which limited visibility to about one-third of a mile. “It’ll be gone by the time we get to Taos,” was my analysis.

When we arrived, however, there was still a light snow falling. My sweet wife almost wailed “I didn’t pack for snow in May!”. I have no idea why she was so concerned. We were in Taos, for goodness sake! We had jackets, you have to have jackets in northern New Mexico, whatever the season, but she was afraid she wouldn’t be “fashionable”.

In Taos she could have gotten away with wrapping the bedspread around her and stepping out
into the town. In the little city of mud, almost anything goes, although we we've never noticed complete nudity.

By Thursday, the “style” had evolved from serapes, jeans and boots to shorts and sandals, and I
noticed that, although she did not wear any of those things, she looked perfectly fine! In Taos, people know how to live.

..

Last of the Rufus musings until he calls for more....

2009-12-19T13:23:00.012-06:00

[Sir, just stopping by to say..."Hey"...How you be??? Need a blog topic??? How 'bout the pros and cons of being drafted or volunteering for the military. Religion and personal choice...on a higher power...i'll think of more...:}]

Son, it seems to me that I'm down to the final segment. I really can't think of anything really inspirational to say about a higher power.

It's obvious that the human race has, since its inception, sought after a higher power, and all I can say about it is that there certainly could be one, and probably even is one.

I have mentioned in statements in the past that, "everybody makes his own Jesus", and by that, I mean that this higher power is subject to the whims of the puny human race. That simple statement, in my mind, seems to be the key to the whole thing.

No one can actually see that higher power, and, in general, conversations with that higher power tend to be very one-sided. Have you heard a song that goes, "Jesus is on the hot line, tell Him what you want"? To me that's appalling. Is the sole purpose of Jesus to give us what we want? What about what He wants? Nothing in the song says, "Ask Him what He wants".

Have you ever noticed that everyone who claims association with a supreme being knows with absolute certainty that what the supreme being desires is exactly the same as that person himself desires? I find that sort of odd, too, because everyone's "desires" seem to be different, sometimes slightly, sometimes radically!

Someone long before me said, "In the beginning, God created man, then, soon afterward, man created God" (or something like that)

When I once said that the most religious people all claim to know God exactly, while agnostics claim that they just don't know, I decided that the agnostics are probably closer to God than anybody!

I hate it that God has to be a scapegoat. The name of God is used to justify the most horrible manifestations of mankind's cruelty to his own kind. The name of God has been used to justify us to ourselves. For two semesters when I was in college, in order to register, I was required to sign a paper that said that I believe in a supreme being. Our country's motto was changed from "E Pluribus Unum" to "In God We Trust" in those early years of the Cold War when we felt the need to distinguish ourselves from the "Godless Communists". I still wonder what God must think of the communists? I know what Phyllis Schlafly thinks about them, but I really want to know what God thinks.

So what do I think regarding a higher power? I believe I'd like to know the nature of that higher power, but I'll never find the answer in the theology of the various religions.

I feel fairly confident that all I've learned about the higher power falls well short of the truth.

.

An Old Man's Rambling Remembrances #29

2009-12-06T21:39:00.003-06:00

This has been a day of remembering. Got all nostalgic about my ties to New Mexico, and thinking of interesting experiences I've had throughout my life. Also had a good portion of the family over to sing, in our own fashion, "Happy Birthday" to my son-in-law Paul.

West Texas is certainly not New Mexico, but it still holds value in my heart. The following is another of those old rambling remembrances I ran across today.

HOLDING DOWN THE FORT
8/24/99

On our first day at Fort Davis, while waiting for check-in time, we stopped into the “Drug Store” restaurant, hotel, and souvenir shop to have some of their world-famous hamburgers. On a bench in front of the store, there was a seedy looking fellow, long hair, beard, really scruffy looking clothes, somewhat wild eyed. He was sitting and waving his hands around in the air, bobbing his upper body forward and back, occasionally making a series of unintelligible sounds, as if he were communicating with the local insects.

We saw him several times during the afternoon, sitting there on the bench with his feet tucked under him, making his noises, bobbing, and gazing restlessly at the porch ceiling as he waved his hands around.

Along about four o’clock, we saw him walk down the block, get into a fairly late model Crown Victoria and drive away.

Next morning about nine am, we saw him drive up, park his car, and walk up to his post. My wife said “Every town like this needs a character, and I guess that’s his job. Every day when his shift is over, he goes home, and comes back to work again the next day!”

I can picture him now, home after a long day of being nuts, sitting in his den with a glass of Glenlivet and a good book, as he waits for his strikingly beautiful wife to set the table with white china, crystal, and sterling silver, a lovely pot roast and green salad.

..

Next For Rufus, Do You Mean Religion Or Personal Choice, Or Both?

2009-12-04T06:03:00.004-06:00

Not sure what's next, son. Maybe you ought to go ahead and start thinking of more...

[Sir, just stopping by to say..."Hey"...How you be??? Need a blog topic??? How 'bout the pros and cons of being drafted or volunteering for the military. Religion and personal choice...on a higher power...i'll think of more...:}]

You say "Religion and personal choice", and I suppose that means one thing, but it could mean two. I am going to assume today that it means "Religion and personal choice". I'm thinking that means, "Do we have a personal choice of religion?"

I think that those who are most inclined to flaunt their religion would say, "No". These are the people who have the answer. If you do not agree with them, then you have to be wrong. I have said many times before, "Everyone creates his own Jesus". Otherwise, we would all be in agreement about religion, and personal choice would be irrelevant. It would not even be an issue.

So, son, if you're asking, "Is religion based on personal choice?", I'll have to answer, "It must be, and, generally speaking, all who proclaim religion have made a personal choice to believe what they want to believe". For that reason, I have also said that I think "Agnostics must be closer to God than anybody". The more I see of bickering, petty and otherwise, about the finer points of religion, the more I feel that my thought about Agnostics must be true.

I sincerely believe that God is, and God does, but we as humans are hopelessly inadequate to know the truth about God.

..

Rite Of Passage.......

2009-11-29T08:46:00.006-06:00

A week or so ago, my wife put a Robert B. Parker book on my nightstand, into a 6" high pile of "recommended" reading. She told me I'd enjoy it, and so far I have.

In this little book, Spenser is telling Susan about his early years, and she listens intently, with the customary banter which always transpires between them.

The part that really grabbed my attention, as Spenser relates the upbringing which led to his perfection, was the experience of his first kiss. I had to think of my own.

I was certainly a "late bloomer". When I entered the University of Texas, I tested into an advanced standing freshman English class. Coming from a small town, I felt exceptionally proud of having achieved what should more likely be achieved by students of larger, more sophisticated schools.

There was a girl in that class, and we tended to make certain that we sat next to each other. Almost invariably, she sat to my left, and, every time, I would notice the diamond ring she wore. Diamond rings meant something, didn't they? The girl, whose name was Liz, was probably the same age, or certainly no more than a year older than I, but she gave all appearances of being a WOMAN! We hung around together quite a bit, walking across campus to our next classes, and discussing various topics, but the friendship remained platonic. I may well have been the most timid person on the campus.

I had a girlfriend "back home", and we maintained a regular communication by mail (back in those days, snail mail was the norm. Nobody had email). After going for about three months with this girl, who lived over in Lake Jackson, about forty miles from my home, I finally worked up the nerve to say to her, "How about we kiss goodnight for a change?" (You can't imagine what a shy, late bloomer I really was). The girl, whom I'll call Fain, because that was her name, got an excited twinkle in her voice and said, "Should I turn out the porch light?". After she turned out the light, we mutually pecked each other briefly on the lips, and continued that same ritual for the few times that we continued to date. I will never be able to consider those kisses with Fain as being my "first kiss".

When I returned to my English class from Christmas holidays, as usual, Liz was sitting to my left, and one of the guys walked up to her asking, "Liz, are you engaged now?" I was shocked! This beautiful creature who had been my buddy for most of this semester, whom I thought had been engaged because she wore a diamond ring, had been unattached all this time, but now she wasn't! She had become engaged on a holiday trip back home to Chatham, New Jersey.

Once, when a test had been passed out, Liz took a quick look at it, and exclaimed, "Ohhh, Bill!" My infatuation had thought enough of me to use my name as an expletive!

At the end of the semester, Liz was leaving school to return to New Jersey to get married, and we were sitting in my car in front of her dorm, when I timidly asked if it would be legal to kiss the bride in advance, since I couldn't be at the wedding. My buddy replied, "Of course it would!", and moved in for her kiss.

OMIGOSH, THAT was my first kiss! From then on forever, I knew how a girl should be kissed, and have been enjoying the process ever since.

Liz and I communicated by snail mail for some time after that, she told me that her engagement and wedding had broken off, but she never came back to school. She got a job with the state of New Jersey, in the Motor Vehicles department, and bought herself a new 1955 Chevrolet. I kept a photo of Liz in my billfold for a long time, and I kept a photo of her car on the visor of my 1949 Chevrolet. My friends sometimes made fun of "Bill's getting his rocks off on a picture of a car".

..

Trying To Figure It All Out, "What's Life All About?"

2009-11-28T08:21:00.015-06:00

Found the following on my Facebook page a few days ago, and it scared me. My boy is asking me to get serious. I'd like to do that, but I'm not really sure I know how.

[Sir, just stopping by to say..."Hey"...How you be??? Need a blog topic??? How 'bout the pros and cons of being drafted or volunteering for the military. Religion and personal choice...on a higher power...i'll think of more...:}]

Probably, topics such as this cannot be handled all at once, so I'll start at the top of the list, and spread it out over time. I know he'll think of more....;^}

Concerning the pros and cons of being drafted or volunteering for the military. When the draft was discontinued, my eligibility had already run out, and at the time, I thought it was a good idea.

Without the draft, people in the military would be there because they made the choice, and would put more soul into being military. That seemed to make perfect sense during a time when there was nothing really serious going on in the way of military activity.

Up until the time of President Daddy Bush's 'Desert Storm', I thought things were fine the way they were. But then I began to hear, "The recruiters dint tell us nothin' like this. We joined for the educational opportunities, and a chance to better our lives. What's this business about going to war and putting our lives on the line?????"

Some of my fondest memories are from my teenage days, when many of my dad's friends were veterans of WWII. Back then, the military was a pretty good life, and, in general, it was well respected. They spoke with enthusiasm about their experiences in "The War". Most of them chanced to be non-combatants, serving in mail service, but the best stories came from those who claimed (whether in fact or in fiction) to have been subjected to extreme danger in Europe.

My dad was a volunteer. He was in his early thirties, slightly older than those who were the major target of the draft, but he felt certain that, if the war continued, everyone would eventually be called up. He chose the Navy because he claimed, "I can take a lot of hardship, but I'd really rather eat off a table and sleep in a bed. In the Navy I won't end up in a foxhole".

I was a draft dodger, because I started college as the Korean Conflict was ending, and college students needed only to apply for a "student deferment" to postpone their obligation to the draft. Time went by, and by the time I finally became almost eligible for a diploma, I was married with an infant daughter. Nothing urgent was going on at the time, so, as a family man, I managed to avoid being called. In most of the numerous places I looked for employment after leaving The University, it was mentioned, "And because you have a child, you're not likely to be drafted away from us". Although the deferments extended my eligibility for the draft from 27 to 35, I was never drafted. I was a draft dodger by happenstance, not by design.

I have great respect for the armed forces of our country. They serve a useful purpose, even though that's not always apparent. I was an inadvertent draft dodger, who never served in the military.

I think that it's time to return to the draft as a way of recruiting our military forces. Knowing fully well that things would not change drastically in the demographics of enlistees. With a draft, there's a much better chance that, when really needed, the military can be expanded as required, with a much better representation of the overall citizenry, who should serve their country as an inherent obligation.

..

An Ancient Tale Of An Experience In Llano

2009-11-23T08:45:00.006-06:00

Apologies to my recently adopted son, Rufus, who has suggested some topics, which I fully intend to get around to. The topics suggested by Rufus will require some deep, concentrated thought. This did not.

The following is my account of the "Blue Moon Wedding", which took place in Llano in the back yard of the Dabbs Hotel. I have decided that I would post this (more or less) for my Flickrfriend Kathy, in New South Wales, who expressed an interest. The account is contemporary with the wedding, which took place quite a long time ago, and was originally posted on the door of my office. It is by no means a complete account of The Blue Moon Wedding, but I always limited my "door hangers" to a single page.

Some people who saw the originally posted door hanger thought it was fiction, but it was not.

THE WEDDING - 3/31/99

WE ARRIVED JUST IN TIME FOR THE ASSEMBLED CROWD TO SAY “HURRY, WE NEED YOU FOR PICTURES!” SHORTLY I WAS STANDING IN THE STREET IN FRONT OF THE DABBS HOTEL WITH A DOUBLE BARRELED 20 GAGE FROWNING DOWN ON BILLY, WHO WAS ON HIS KNEES “PROPOSING” TO MY BABY DAUGHTER LAUREN.

I HARDLY HAD TIME TO TURN AROUND WHEN I SPOTTED LAUREN IN HER LONG DRESS SITTING ATOP AN OLD UPRIGHT WHICH RESIDED ON THE PORCH. IN FANCY LETTERS PAINTED ACROSS THE FRONT WAS “THE LLANO PIANO”. OF COURSE WE ALL WONDERED IF MAYBE IT WAS THE ONLY PIANO IN TOWN. HOW SHE GOT THERE SO FAST WILL ALWAYS REMAIN A MYSTERY TO ME.

THE WEDDING WENT WELL. THE PREACHER WAS DRESSED IN A CHOIR ROBE WORN TO RESEMBLE A DUSTER SUCH AS YOU SEE IN WESTERN MOVIES, WITH A BOWLER HAT. BILLY WAS WEARING A VEST AND A THIRTIES MODEL STRAW HAT.

THE MUSICIAN WAS PLAYING HIS GUITAR, A TUNE WHICH I MIGHT HAVE HEARD EARLIER IN THE DAY, WHEN I TUNED TO SHOWTIME AND SAW A LITTLE BIT OF “ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST”. LAUREN CAME OUT OF THE BACK DOOR OF THE HOTEL, LOOKING JUST LIKE THE FRONTIER BELLE AND APPROACHED THE PREACHER AND BILLY WHO WERE WAITING, HATS IN HAND.

THE PREACHER WAS A LOCAL PERFORMER OF THE AUSTIN AREA AND GOOD FRIEND OF THE GROOM’S, GUY FORSYTH. HE ANNOUNCED THAT ALTHOUGH THEY HAD PAID FOR THE FOUR STAR DELUXE WEDDING, BILLY HAD TOLD HIM TO “CUT TO THE CHASE”, SO IN JUST ABOUT HALF A MINUTE, MY DAUGHTER WAS MARRIED, AND THE PREACHER BEGAN TO SING “DO YOU MIIIND SOMEONE GRINNIN’ IN YOUR FACE”. THEN WE ALL PREPARED TO GET ON WITH THE EATING. A BONFIRE WAS KINDLED DOWN ON THE BANK OF THE LLANO RIVER, AND A GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL.

IT HAD BEEN CLOUDY ALL DAY, AND THE PROSPECTS FOR THE BLUE MOON, WHICH WAS THE ONLY REASON FOR HAVING THIS WEDDING AT THIS PARTICULAR TIME, DID NOT SEEM LIKELY. BUT AT AROUND 8:30, SOMEONE SAID “THERE IT IS”, AND WE LOOKED UP AT THE FULL MOON IN ALL ITS GLORY, SHINING AMONG THE RAPIDLY MOVING CLOUDS.

.

An Old Man's Rambling Remembrances #30 or 31

2009-10-16T22:36:00.005-05:00

Properly, this memory should not be posted until a more appropriate date. It's several months until 1/16/10, but if I wait that long, I may have forgotten. Memories rely on memory.

A DAY FILLED WITH BEAUTY
1/16/05

TODAY WAS CELEBRATED AS MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY. AS I WAS DRIVING TO
WORK, MY FAVORITE RADIO STATION WAS PLAYING A RECITAL BY A TEENAGE
CHORAL GROUP OF THE “I HAVE A DREAM” SPEECH. I WAS OBLIGATED TO SPEND A
FEW MINUTES SITTING IN MY CAR IN THE BELCO PARKING LOT WHILE THEY
FINISHED THIS BEAUTIFUL WORK OF ART.

I AM PROBABLY, AT THE VERY LEAST, ONE OF A VERY FEW PEOPLE AT BELCO WHO
HAVE ADULT MEMORIES OF THE DAYS BEFORE DR. KING, AND IT SADDENS ME EVEN
WHILE GIVING ME A SOMEWHAT HOSTILE FEELING TO HEAR ANYONE MAKING FUN
OF OR BELITTLING THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THIS GREAT AMERICAN.

WHILE DRIVING HOME, I WAS TREATED, ON THE SAME RADIO STATION, TO AN
INTERVIEW WITH BETTY CLAIBORNE, A BLACK LADY WHO, AFTER FORTY TWO YEARS,
WAS PARDONED TODAY BY KATHLEEN BLANCO, THE NEW GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA.
MS. CLAIBORNE WAS APPREHENDED AND CONVICTED IN BATON ROUGE IN 1963, AT
THE AGE OF 20, AFTER ATTEMPTING TO ENTER A PUBLIC SWIMMING POOL.
http://theadvocate.com/stories/011505/new_blanco001.shtml

ARRIVING HOME, I WAS HANDED A CAN OF ”CAMPBELL’S CHUNKY GRILLED SIRLOIN
STEAK WITH HEARTY VEGETABLES” SOUP. MY WIFE HAD TO ATTEND A MEETING,
AND I WAS ON MY OWN FOR DINNER. I HAVE HAD THIS SOUP BEFORE, AND,
ALTHOUGH MORE COSTLY THAN I THINK SOUP SHOULD BE, IT’S JUST ABOUT MY
FAVORITE. SOMEHOW CAMPBELL HAS BEEN ABLE TO PRODUCE A SOUP THAT TASTES
AS IF IT WERE SLOW COOKED ON A COLEMAN STOVE AT AUNT LIZZIE’S. A VERY
NOSTALGIC FLAVOR. MY GRANDMOTHER HAD ELECTRIC LIGHTS WHEN I WAS A TOT,
ALTHOUGH SHE COOKED ON A WOOD STOVE AND DREW WATER FROM A HAND-DUG
WELL. HER SISTER° HAD THE SAME, EXCEPT WITHOUT THE ELECTRICITY. KEROSENE
LANTERNS, WITH THEIR ACCOMPANYING AROMA, LIT AUNT LIZZIE’S HOUSE.

I WAS ABLE TO FINISH THE DAY WITH “THE BLUES BROTHERS” ON AMC, AND THEN
TO READ A CHAPTER FROM “COLD MOUNTAIN”. ON THE WHOLE, A TRULY
WONDERFUL, SENSUALLY PLEASING DAY!!!!! ALTHOUGH I FREQUENTLY WALLOW IN
NOSTALGIA, I’D STILL NEVER LONG FOR THE DAYS BEFORE MLK.

°A footnote:
I grew up thinking that Aunt Lizzy was Granny's sister, because when I was little, I thought they looked alike. In truth, if you study old photographs, you'll easily see that, in the early days of my youth, everyone looked alike. From the generation before my parents, it was often hard even to distinguish the men from their women, except for the way they dressed.

Living with Aunt Lizzy was Uncle Tom Allen. But Granny's maiden name was Allen! In all the years, I never asked my mother the question I should have. My mother only confirmed that Aunt Lizzy's husband was her Uncle Tom Allen.

It was only after my mother was deceased, and after I originally wrote this memory, that it occurred to me that Uncle Tom was Granny's brother, and Aunt Lizzy was Granny's sister-in-law! Such a simple answer to a puzzle that had hounded me all my life!

..

Goldilocks the sequel, (to #29)

2009-10-04T13:00:00.007-05:00

When Rie commented to my Old Man's.....#29, I suddenly realized that this occurred almost ten years ago. Goldilocks must be quite a grown up lady by now. I have not seen her since I wrote this remembrance back around the turn of the century!

REMEMBER GOLDILOCKS? (3/1/00)
4/19/00

Last evening I stopped by my barber’s. When I got there, who but Goldilocks was sitting in the barber’s chair! She and Julie, the barber, were chattering away in their usual cheery, excited, conversational mode. I sat to wait my turn.

A man who came in right behind me seated himself nearby, and only after Julie was finished with the young lady was I to find out that the man was not a customer, but Goldilocks’ dad, who had come to pick her up. He met them halfway across the room, so I did not catch the question he asked, but Julie answered “Didn’t you know what we were going to do? We colored her hair.”

As Dad and Goldilocks walked hand in hand toward the door, (and toward me), I remarked to Julie, “You won’t be able to call her Goldilocks anymore, you’ve made her hair darker.”

After they’d gone, Julie laughed and said “Dad, you really blew it! She’s blind, and she’s going to think I cheated her, or that I’m incompetent or something! We made it lighter!”

That’s probably the reason that Dad hadn’t heard about the plan. When women, such as Goldilocks and her mom, make decisions about their appearance, they rarely think that men are observant enough to really notice, or care.

..

An Old Man's Rambling Remembrances #29

2009-10-03T10:00:00.006-05:00

AN OLD, OLD TRIBUTE TO JULIE

Many of you know Julie as a dedicated political agitator, and among those of you who don't love her, some might even consider her a pest. I've known Julie all her life, and she's always put herself enthusiastically into every thing she's done.

Once upon a time, I worked for a living, and Julie did not own her own shop, once upon a time.

The following is from those days.

GOLDILOCKS
3/1/00

This evening, I lost track of the time. I suddenly remembered that I desperately needed to get my hair cut, or I wouldn’t be allowed in the house when I got home.

I made it to the barber shop as fast as I could get there, seriously worried that my barber would be gone home already. I hadn’t made an appointment. I got there a little after seven, and was delighted to find the place still open. My barber and the shop owner were both still working.

When I came in, my barber Julie was working on a teenager, whose classy looking young mother sat nearby, watching.

“Hi, Dad, you need a haircut?”

“How many times”, I answered,” have I told you not to waste my time with insanely stupid questions! Just look at me.”

Julie returned her attention to her customer, chatting cheerfully, as Julie always does.

She said to the girl, “Your hair looks like Goldilocks’”, and I broke into my usual barber shop patter. “Come on, Julie, all you know about Goldilocks is hearsay. You never saw her in person, how do you know how her hair looks?”

She said to her young customer, “I’m going to show you a great way to do your hair by yourself”, and started twisting the girl’s long hair in an elaborate pattern, and at each step giving the hair to the girl, who took it from Julie into her own hands and continued the step. “Now isn’t that cool?”, Julie asked, letting the hair fall back to its original shape. The girl was very excited as they chattered away, and it finally became time for the cheerful pair to part.

The Momma paid Julie, the girl took her mother’s arm and together they walked out. It was only then that I noticed that the young lady could not see. It was this old man who had been in the dark the whole time...

I got my haircut first, before I told Julie I didn’t have any money to pay her, so she made me give her about a haircut’s worth of free decorating advice for the shop.

That’s my Darlin’ Julie!

..

Next time....

2009-09-27T14:34:00.003-05:00

My second daughter, who is also my teacher (sifu), has two boys, both born at a birthing center, with knowledgeable, sympathetic midwives. No hospital, doctors or anesthesia. Donna was very pleased with her experience, although, she admits, and I can attest from hearing her from down the hall, that it was a rather painful experience, both times.

Her younger sister decided she'd try it for her second child, so my second granddaughter was born at the same birthing center, in Austin. Julie decided that, if she ever had another child, next time, she'd "do drugs". The 'natural' way was not for her.

When I went to the lake yesterday, after a trip to the pharmacy, I parked the car in the assigned parking lot, and walked down to The Overlook to see if the lake had risen any from the recent rains. Then, while there, I thought I'd walk up to the opposite end of the flint beds to see if the submerged pickup was still in the lake. No pickup, so I'm willing to assume that it had been recovered.

But, as I made this journey on foot, and continued on to loop around to my car, I came to the conclusion that the trail is much longer on foot. Next time, I'm taking the bicycle. The 'natural' way is not for me.

..

Whose rights?

2009-09-22T10:35:00.008-05:00

Today, in the Kiddierag, I saw a very well written letter from a lady in Horseshoe Bay. She questions the "objectiveness" of the newspaper which published 23 letters on Sept 12 supporting President Obama's speech to children.

According to the paper's own comments, those were the letters they received. Perhaps the citizens whose letters caused school administrators from all over the state to exclude the speech felt they'd done all they needed to do.

The lady from Horseshoe Bay admits it was a good speech, but goes on to talk about the president. According to her, "every piece of legislation Obama (she never calls him President) supports calls for dependence on the government and giving up individual rights and responsibilities." I don't believe that, myself, but we all have the right to our own opinions (so far) in this country.

But, lady from Horseshoe Bay, you mention "rights". I feel very strongly that the last three Republican presidents have done more to attack our "rights" than President Obama. You really should think about that. The government has a responsibility to protect the rights of all Americans, not just those of your friends.

...

Imagination is funny....

2009-09-17T15:16:00.006-05:00

I once got a personalized "rejection" letter from Time Magazine in response to my submission to "letters to the editor". This is the only one I ever got that was not a simple form letter.

I cannot even remember the exact wording to the article to which I was responding, but it had something about President Jimmy Carter erroneously including hydroelectric, wind, coal, oil, and gas with solar energy.

Although I had never given this subject any previous thought, I almost cried out loud, "Wait a minute! The president's right!" When I mentioned this to my dad, he said, "Doesn't oil come from dead fish!" So my dad's right, but how did the "fish" manage to live and grow in the first place, in order to become dead?

Mankind has been living throughout its history on stored solar energy! The sources of energy on which we depend the most, the fossil fuels, are finite. When we've used all the oil and coal, they'll be gone.

Perhaps gas continues to be manufactured naturally through the decomposition of our waste, but in no way to the extent it was with the decomposition of prehistoric animals which died in abundance.

All the "fossil fuels" are products of solar energy, and I had never thought of that before, but the president did!

Hydro power, which is created by the solar driven process of water being evaporated from the oceans by the power of the sun, and dropped on the land, being carried by rivers back to the oceans, can be converted to electricity by running the water through turbines to drive generators. That makes it solar energy, because without the power of the sun, it wouldn't happen. The same with wind power. It is the action of the sun throughout the day that causes the winds to move the air. It doesn't happen without the motivating power of the sun.

When I wrote a letter to Time Magazine telling them that the president was not "erroneous", and explaining why I believed that, I got a very nice little letter from a junior editor saying that "most people think of solar energy as being solar panels". Yeah, that's right! But Jimmy Carter was NOT WRONG!

At the time I wrote my letter, back in the late '70s, solar panels were just beginning to be taken seriously, and that's how people visualized "solar energy".

I look back on the 30+ years that we have been absolutely positive that our fossil fuels were becoming more scarce, and that as other countries began to want to develop to the standards set by the US, these fuels would be depleted at an accelerated rate.

So, Amy, you little junior editor from Time Magazine, I think you have it right, although you didn't say it in just this way.....our imagination is far and away too limited to really tackle the problems that face us.

After these 30+ years of so very little innovative thinking, it's time to look outside the box! I'd like to see some of us right here in the good ol' USA to really begin to "think outside the box", but will it be US, or will it be some of those from a "developing" country, who really "takes the bull by the horns".

Having heard numerous comments from fellow citizens condemning the extremely sensible "Cash for clunkers" program, I tend to suspect that it won't be US who has the imaginative ideas.

..

What's the logic in that?

2009-09-12T23:10:00.004-05:00

A lot has been screamed at President Obama about his health care reform giving free health care to illegal aliens.

President Obama says no health care reform bill being considered includes any care available to anyone in this country illegally. One representative from the right side of the room called the president a liar for saying that.... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/politics/ ....

Is there really anybody in that screaming crowd unaware that hospitals are required to treat emergency cases without respect to ability to pay? Under the current system, this indigent care is paid for by the fees the hospital charges paying customers, whether through their insurance companies or from their pockets.

No hospital care is free, it's paid for!

Is there really anybody in that screaming crowd unaware that group insurance is less costly to the individual than individually purchased policies, and in fact, very few people can now afford individually purchased policies? The larger the group, the less expensive per individual. That's what groups are all about, so, screamers, would it not make sense to broaden the base of the group to make insurance more affordable?

You say that the government can't do anything efficiently, but if they were to compete with the free market by providing a single option, they'd run the efficient free market companies out of business? What's the logic in that?

Do you know that the government is "we the people", and if we don't like the government that we are, we have a vote to change it? If enough people agree on an issue, it becomes the will of the people. That's the way we make our wishes known. That's the way we MADE our wishes known last year.

You have a right to scream, but please use a little reason, and think about what it is you're screaming about, if it's not too much for you.

Tomorrow, the Killer Hill! (maybe)

2009-09-07T17:09:00.003-05:00

For more than a year now, I've had as one of my life's great goals, to conquer the killer hill.Approaching The Plunge
This morning, I left without a plan. I live at the midpoint of The Trail. I usually set out with a decision to go down toward town, or up toward the lake. Today, I headed toward the down trail, but changed my mind en route, turned right instead of left at the proper place, and went for the upstream trail.

About two miles from the house stands the killer hill, which traverses the abrupt rise between two historical "benches" of the river (which has been cutting away at the ancient seabed for far longer than I can imagine, and have never bothered to look up).

I started up the severe slope, and, as usual, gave up somewhere around midway to the top.

By pushing the bike, I reached the ridge where it makes a sharp curve and begins to level off, where I encountered two ladies pushing their bikes down! At least I never push my bike down, after the first time that gave me a feel for it.

One of the ladies, said "it's a killer hill, isn't it?" Indeed it is! Maybe everyone has the same attitude I do, and maybe everyone calls it Killer Hill.

Before I left, my wife called out, "pace yourself", and I find with the passing years, that her "suggestions" seem to make more sense than once I thought they did. So, when I got to the bench which marks my regular "water break" at the top of Killer Hill, I decided to go back down and make my way down the trail to home and air conditioning.

While sitting on the bench, I looked at my gears, and noticed that I was in mid-range. The new cable I installed a month or so ago must have slipped, and needed adjusting.....which, as far as I'm concerned, means next time I make a run for the killer hill, I might just make it!

After taking the accompanying photo, I met a man who could not have been more than fifteen years younger than I, who had just made it up the hill under pedal power! Rufus, my boy, I'm gonna make it, and maybe it will be tomorrow!

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Off My Chest, and Hopefully Not On Someone Else's

2009-08-30T19:33:00.016-05:00

I was fifteen years old before there was network television. I went through school when segregation was the norm in the South and graduated from high school in the same year that the Brown vs Board of Education decision was handed down from the Supreme Court.

It was several years after the efforts of Dr. King, and many more years after Brown vs Board of Education before desegregation became a reality in the schools of Central Texas.

In the early seventies, one of my employees lamented that black boys were extorting her son's lunch money at school. Her feeling was that the black boys were poor kids, who had never had anything before, and were taking advantage of the white kids with money. I wasn't sure that was the truth of it.

My experiences with black kids in my early years was rather limited but straightforward, we worked together, and we played together in the summer and on weekends. We went home to our segregated worlds, but we connected and interacted at the golf course. The black boys invariably outnumbered the white boys, so we "whites" got a diminutive insight into being a 'minority'. There were very few Hispanics in our town back in those days, and none of them worked as caddies. It was just the "white boys", and the "colored boys" (which is the identity they preferred at that time in history).

In our little town, working as a caddy meant going to the golf course, signing in, then waiting around to be called. On Saturday mornings, before the regular time for the golfers to start showing up, we'd "swim" in the water hazards in search of lost golf balls. There was actually more pay to be had in recovering balls than carrying golf clubs, once you got the knack of finding them.

While waiting around to be called from the caddy pool, we'd play football, "golf" around the adjoining park with clubs and balls borrowed from the pro-shop, and often, have little 'scraps', which may or may not have any underlying hostility, becoming instantly the center of attention in the caddy pool.

One lesson I learned from the experience was cultural diversity. I feel fairly certain that cultural diversity was much more in evidence during those days of segregation than it now is, but I still feel that it deserves to be acknowledged.

When the black boys took advantage of my employee's son at school, I think they were exhibiting "one-upsmanship", to gain prestige among their peers. It was not because they were in desperate need to take the kid's money. To this day, I believe that if the white boy had not repeatedly given in, he would soon have become immune to the extortion. I'll always believe that they could have been his friends if he had engaged them as equals.

Today, on Facebook, I was surprised by the attitude of some of the next generation, who objected to the exploitation by the entertainment industry of black actors and comedians. Is this true, in these days of enlightenment? Could I be the one that's mistaken?

Rush Limbaugh frequently accuses anyone of a liberal bent of attempting to keep minorities "in their place" by providing them with welfare, food stamps, affirmative action, etc., while the "conservatives" wish to allow them equal opportunity by providing them with no breaks of any kind.

So, which is it? What I'm failing to understand is why is it exploitation by the industry that makes a black actor dress up in drag? Was Flip Wilson's Geraldine, his most defining role (back in ancient times), a product of industry exploitation to emasculate him, or was it a brilliant idea that he created himself?

Do these people have the same attitude about John Lithgow's portrayal of Roberta Muldoon, or John Travolta's as Edna Trumblad? Were these actors demeaned or advanced by their ability to do these roles? Are the guys from Greater Tuna demeaning themselves because they get more laughs when they play their female roles?

I'm still dismayed by the consensus that, "Hillary Clinton's response to the misdirected question of the African was out of line", or that Barney Frank's response to the planted questioner in his town hall meeting was "uncivil". Is it uncivil to treat fellow human beings as peers?

I have so much left to learn, as I gradually approach the Autumn of my life....;^}, and I'm so devoid of answers.

..

Am I ready for this yet?

2009-08-24T13:02:00.007-05:00

Several days ago, I commented on a Facebook entry posted by someone I've known all her life. She had described closing our borders as a "conservative" (in the Newtie/GBW modern definition of 'conservative') issue, and she seemed to be calling it a distasteful, inhumane thing.

My response was, in effect, "I'm for closing the borders, but I dare you to call me a neocon!" I did not elaborate on that, and I've been feeling somewhat guilty about it ever since.

I am not in favor of closing our borders to immigration. Our country was built on the efforts of immigrants.

A quick overview of the history of immigration into this country would indicate that efforts to control immigration have not been simple or equitable.

But my comment about "closing the borders", made in haste, should have been more carefully worded.

I am very much in favor of "closing the border" to lawbreakers. My father's father immigrated from England in the nineteenth century. He became a citizen of this country in the manner prescribed at the time, along with his father and brother.

Am I alone in feeling that I'm an American, and surely must have fairly close relatives who are English? I do not know any of them, nor do I feel that any of them would be entitled to enter this country illegally, just because I happen to be here.

And even if I did know them, I would not feel that they might be entitled to enter this country illegally, just because I'm here.

Why does a significant portion of our population feel a kinship with their country of origin that precludes law? Without rules, and without consension, our civilization is jeopardized.

Our country was founded on dissension, and there is an inherent right for citizens to contest unjust law, but what can be unjust about controlling access in an organized manner, as is practiced in every civilized country.

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Just a few words before I make a fool of myself.....

2009-08-12T21:41:00.007-05:00

Many years ago, I was a Volkswagen owner. I got my first in 1960, and owned eight of them over the years.

Volkswagens were fun to own, because you could practically dismantle them in your driveway, and fixing them was simple hobbycraft, especially if you were equipped with John Muir's book, How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive. One thing that John Muir said, which I think was very wise, was about exhaust emissions.

His idea was that exhaust emissions were not such a serious factor in the small displacement engines of Volkswagens, and that made me think that the gu'ment really took a wrong turn when they began to resist pollution from automobiles. What would have happened to the auto industry if the regulators had simply put a limit on engine displacement? They wouldn't have had to stop at 900 CCs, that's probably a little too small for the average family car, but someting around two liters or so, and then they could say, "This is the maximum displacement. Go forth and build the best, most efficient, handsome and marketable dreamboat you can with that one limitation".

Instead, they went for PPM measurement of toxic gasses. Of course an engine that sucks less air passes less gas. So the Ms would be smaller, and the PPs would be more or less taken care of by the smaller M number.

Lately I've heard on the radio, and also on TV, some laments by people who just don't seem to get it. A fellow last Monday was talking about the "clunkers" program. He thought it had no value, because it didn't really save anybody money. Someone else said it didn't really help poor people to get cars, and yet another was talking about the fact that the clunkers had to be drivable, and they were going to destroy the engines. What a shame to destroy a perfectly good engine.

Today, a dealer was saying that, since they could not resell the trade-ins (clunkers), there was going to be a shortage of used cars for them to sell.

Yesss, isn't getting rid of the old cars one of the main purposes of getting the government involved in these transactions? Isn't the point to encourage the sale of new, more fuel efficient cars, and to get rid of inefficient fuel hogs?

If it isn't, that SHOULD be the the primary goal of We, the People, of the United States of America...to promote the general welfare by starting to clean up the air we breathe.

And, as usual, this turned out to be longer than intended so it's somewhat more than a "few words", so I may have made a fool of myself anyway.

..

Maybe this will be the one about the banks......

2009-08-11T21:35:00.007-05:00

If you don't know by now that I'm an old guy, then surely you haven't been paying attention.

In the days of my youth, there was no minimum wage, and kids were allowed to work. My first paying job was caddying for one of my dad's co-workers, and later, I would caddy as a free agent on weekends and during the summer.

My first payroll job was stockman in a variety store for 40¢/hr. I was an industrious young worker, and it did not take me long to amass a fortune of $100, which I put in the bank. My dad went with me to open the account. The account was actually a savings account, which paid about 3% interest, which was prevalent at that time.

The teller said that they were somewhat flexible, and if it happened that I needed some of the money, I could write a check on the account. That was in 1953, I think, and of course the First National Bank in our town was a local bank, and they knew me.

Later, when I was a grown up man with family responsibilities, I had moved to a town near Houston where there were two major banks, both local. As a matter of fact, until the '80s, branch banks were illegal in Texas. Each bank stood alone.

The bank where I kept both a checking account and a savings account charged a fee for checking accounts, something like a dollar a month, but paid interest with no fee for savings accounts.

The other bank in town did not charge a fee for checking accounts. The president of that bank was quoted by one of my co-workers as having said, "If I couldn't run a bank without having to charge my customers to keep their money in my bank, I'd find another line of work".

I left that town for New Mexico, which allowed branch banks, but they were still, for the most part, local banks. None of them was "too big to fail". Savings accounts still paid 3%, and, of course I had one, although I never made much money on savings accounts. If I needed a loan, I would talk to a vice president, and he knew me by sight, and he knew where I was employed.

Years later, but still before those fateful '80s (when Federal regulations were virtually abolished, and Texas laws were changed), I moved to this town where I now live. The First National Bank was a local bank, and I had my favorite loan officer. He'd reach for his checkbook whenever he saw me, but he'd always show an interest in what I was doing, and how things were going in my life, so after a little chit-chat, he'd give my loan.

One Christmas season, somehow things got out of hand, and I managed to get seriously (for me) overdrawn. I had made a lethal error in keeping my checkbook balance, so I went to the loan officer in a panic, throwing myself on his mercy, and asking him for advice. "Don't worry about it", he said, "we know you'll be getting some money soon, and you can catch up then". This was about the time when one of the tellers phoned me and very apologetically explained that they were going to have to start charging $1.50 for overdrawn checks.

Those were the days when one could pick up a check from the counter at most stores, and write that check for your purchase. Checks were processed by people who as often as not knew you, not machines, which most certainly didn't know you.

Physically, the bank I use is the same piece of real estate, although it has gone through, I think four changes in name and ownership. It is now a small branch in a very large banking empire (I was so tempted to say "evil empire", but decided not to).

My oldest granddaughter was born in 1987, and when she was about six, we helped her start a little savings account with her Christmas and birthday money. By then, they had started charging a fee for maintaining savings accounts. The poor kid did not keep that account more than a few years, because there was so little activity, and the interest rate was so low that combined with the service charge, the account would eventually cancel itself out.

A couple of days ago, I was watching on TV a feature on "community banks", which apparently still exist, but the thing that caught my attention was a comment that nowadays, apparently, small loans are handle through credit cards. This made me wonder if perhaps these loans were made through a third party (ie a credit card company) with a corresponding interest rate! My gosh, what are we coming to!

I understand that nowadays, the banks are cleaning up on overdraft charges. That $1.50 of the '70s has blossomed into $30 or more for each overdraft, and the desperate times are apparently leading to an increase in overdrafts, whether accidental or just "hopefully anticipatory".

I'm sure you all know what happens if your payment arrives late (or if it's posted late) by even one day at the credit card company. You're in deeeep trouble!

I have come to the conclusion over the last few years that things have really changed in my long lifetime. Customers are no longer the sought-after patrons of any business, whether it be a bank or a big box store. Customers are now chickens to be plucked.

Return To Blue Hole

2009-08-07T13:21:00.008-05:00

Unlike Rufus, who wonders how many of us may have been conceived here, I am a relative newcomer to Blue Hole Park. My kids all hung out here once upon a time, but I only casually passed through (passing though is no longer allowed for motorized traffic), until the spring floods of 2007 took Blue Hole away from us.

It was then that I became interested! My hostility grew as our "conservative" infested city gu'ment waited nearly a year for FEMA funds, which they decided they needed for the resurrection of the park. I hope they at least said "thank you", if they indeed got the funds which I feel should not have gone for civic projects.
...A view of Blue Hole from north bank
Today, after my last Saturday's trip down to Austin and Bull Creek Park, I vowed to check out the cliffs on the north side of Blue Hole. It appears that these cliffs are the living rock of which the ancient seabed was made. These have not been upended or fallen into position like the "gravity wall" at Bull Creek. So, while I was on this side, I took an overview photo of the picnic area I visited last week.
...A different world
In the years it has taken me to grow up, things have changed on our world. This access to the cliffs is still used, but seems quite adventurous by today's standards.
...Sign of the times
We often see relics of times gone by, and do not know for sure what purpose they served. Here on the cliffs is a sign saying "Unlawful to jump or dive from the cliffs", and ironically, it's directly adjacent to a footing which looks very much as if it once supported a diving board.
...WTF?????
Another footing? This is not the same as the one near the sign. Could there have been a second diving board, even higher than the first? How fun-loving and adventurous were our forebears! (And of course. those of our younger generation who scoff at oppressive city rules).

...

A new outlook on the killer hill

2009-08-06T12:42:00.007-05:00

I thought that perhaps I was getting old and feeble. I'm sure that's probably the case, but maybe things are not quite as bleek as I'd thought.

I've always resented the vehicle inspection laws. If they had any validity, they would be more uniform among the states, and they wouldn't be changing them from year to year. Although it's a good idea to keep your automobile maintained, it has always seemed to me that an arbitrary set of "safety standards" that only has a vague relationship to safety is punitive.

The law requires that we have an inspection of our motor vehicles each year. Bicyclists are on their own.

On Monday, as I started out to bike The Trail, I noticed that the final sleeve on my rear shifter cable was trashed! I wondered just how long that had been going on. From the appearance of it, maybe it had been going on for some time..........I made my 7 1/4 mile trek that day using only the sprocket shifter, using only the low and intermediate gears.

Tuesday, I bought a new cable kit (even though my only problem was with a single little sleeve that's only about 10" long). In the way of Willie, I waited until Wednesday to replace the cable, and, in the evening rode the bike to Taijiquan down at San Gabriel Park, noticing that the ride seemed to be easier, and I must have found gears I had forgotten I had.

Today was the day of proof. I rode The Trail upstream to the lake. I was "just plumb tickled" to find that I could take the hill up to Springhouse quite easily. It's hard to remember just how long it's been since that's happened.

When I got to the killer hill over near the dam, I rode to about 8' past the midpoint mark. That's only 4' short of my previous record ascent! Once again, I can have hopes of making the entire killer hill, with a little more practice. I suppose that what I thought was old age was simply a cable that was not able to properly reach the entire range of gears

The moral to this story is, "No matter how much you dislike being inconvenienced, it's a good idea to maintain your ride once in a while. You may get more satisfaction than you can imagine".

Epilogue: 8/07/09
Last evening, we were at the home of our next-door neighbors' for awhile, and my wife mentioned a spooky Jeffery Deaver book she's reading about data mining.

I noticed a missing ")" from this entry, and went to correct it. On my editing screen was an ad logo, "Improve your bike's performance".....be not decieved, the WWW owns us!

...

Maybe it's a good idea, but......

2009-08-03T07:40:00.003-05:00

I've noticed that I just had three of the closest spaced hits in the history of my "blog".

This is in response to my posting what I considered nothing. If nothing is really what you'd like to see, I probably will not be able to comply.

Remember that I begged for comments. It's not that hard to leave a word or two, so that I may know that "nothing" is what you'd most like to see on my blog.

Until I hear otherwise, I'll probably continue in the way I've been going, with an effort to be a little more concise and less rambling, for those of you who have more limited attention spans. I hope that my efforts to be concise will not start to contradict the name of my blog.

Willie C

..

A blog I once followed, and will continue to follow......

2009-08-02T19:26:00.004-05:00

......once permitted comments to be screened by the author. Now, as I saw fit to make a favorable comment, I find that the option has been closed.

I will always welcome comments from anyone. I want to know what you think, and your comments will not be ignored. I express thoughts as they come to me, and they certainly are not to everyone's liking. I'll just have to accept any criticism or praise in the order that it comes. I will not screen your comments.

Maybe someday, I'll say something you enjoy hearing, and I'd love to know that you enjoyed it. If you did not enjoy it, then for sure let me know, so that I can think about whether or not I agree with you.

Willie C

''

Today was a day I thought it might rain......

2009-07-31T22:19:00.005-05:00

We had a little thunder this afternoon. Right in the middle of Judge Christina, I was shaken out of my concentration on a game of Freecell by an extremely loud thunderclap!

It even startled my wife, who was upstairs doing some sewing. I looked out through the sliding glass door, I suppose to check on our backyard trees, and was almost nose to nose with a spotted fawn. My wife, who was standing on the stair by this time, said something like "Oh, the poor little thing! Did he run into the door?"

It had never occurred to me, and still doesn't, that the noise I heard was a tiny deer hitting the door. I'm sticking to the thunder story, since it was actually thundering.

The little critter touched his nose to the glass, and I thought of running for my camera, but I'd never have made it. By the time my wife reached my side, he had decided to split.

I suppose that he'd managed to come in under the fence. My electric fence, which guards the back yard and garden area, is a single strand, 16" above the ground, which is quite effective in keeping the back yard clear of the "grown-up" deer.

As the little whitetail headed out, he suddenly seemed to trip up near the end of the compost bin, and was sort of struggling on the ground. My first thought was that he'd managed to get tangled in the fence wire, and went out to try to free him.

I told my wife to turn the fence off, and as soon as she did, the deer regained his footing and scampered away. I'm guessing that the struggling motion he was making was that each time he tried to move, the fence would zap him, and he'd flop back down to get away from the offending wire.

Without the shocks, he knew what to do, and hit the road.

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Wild Hogs and Madrid

2009-07-21T18:12:00.019-05:00

A few days ago, my wife saw that a movie called "Wild Hogs", with Tim Allen and John Travolta was scheduled on FX, and we decided to watch it.

A large portion of the movie, about a wannabe 'biker gang' of "middle age crazies", which included Allen, Travolta, Martin Lawrence, and William H. Macy, took place in New Mexico. I hope everyone knows, I'm a serious New Mexiphile, and the unlikely travels of the "gang" took place in a part of NM that's near to my heart. What makes the travels "unlikely", is that after passing the "last gas station for 200 miles", they ran out of gas and pushed their bikes into Madrid (not MaDRID, as in Spain, but MADDrid, as in New Mexico), in the Ortiz Mountains near Santa Fe.

If my ancient memory serves me, Michael Corenblith's grandmother was a gracious lady named Mrs. Madrid (like in Spain). I wonder if the play on words prompted the selection for this setting for the major portion of the movie.

For what it's worth, I appreciate your choice of sets, Mick! I've watched Madrid over about forty years, growing from a ghost town to a rather lively place populated with unique people. Once when I was there, I think it was in the '80s, I saw a genuine "Austin City Limits" highway sign on someone's front porch.

It certainly made for a fun-filled movie, however unlikely the whole plot seemed to be! Thanks for making me feel I was there, Mick!

Following is a memory:

AN OSCAR FOR ONE OF MY BOYS? NAAHH!
3/25/01

A tape of “The English Patient” was playing when my wife found the article about Mick in the paper. Naturally it was too late to make plans to watch the Oscar awards.

The year was 1969 or thereabouts when I gave in to the repeated phone calls from one of the administrators at Reagan High School offering me potential employees through their work-study program. The following Monday morning, a young fellow knocked on my door (when Lauren was born, I decided to have my office at home for about four years).

“I’m Mick Corenblith, and I’m here about the work-study program”. I put him to work, and several months later, the guy from Reagan called, offering me potential employees through their work-study program. “Got one, already” I answered, and I assured him that my employee was neat and clean and well mannered, (I didn’t mention the shoulder-length hair, since it was neat and clean). It was after I hung up that Mick confessed that the guy hadn’t sent him, that he had simply overheard one of the telephone conversations, and had tracked me down.

After graduation, Mick started studying Architecture at UT, and continued to work at my office, but he changed his major to communications after a couple of years. He worked for me about five years, total, and was a model employee, and a lot of fun to have around. He kept me up to date on the latest music, and assured my wife that shoulder length hair would continue forever to be fashionable for men. He was still wearing his shoulder length hair when he came by the house a few years after he went to Hollywood, but since that time, it looks as if he’s finally given it up.

It always gives me a little thrill whenever I see Production Designer Michael Corenblith in large letters spread across the screen, and Mick’s nominated for an Oscar for designing “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.

A FOOTNOTE: (2-01-2010)
Recently, after reading this, Mick informed me that the decision had nothing to do with his grandmother. To select the sites, he has to take many things into consideration, including economics, consideration of "the talent", availability of facilities, a local labor pool, etc. New Mexico had already been selected before he was hired. He selected Madrid for its location as the most favorable of several sites in that general area of New Mexico. I like my version better.....;^}.

,,

Rides to remember......

2009-07-18T17:51:00.006-05:00

Today, I rode downstream, then back up the free river, with a stop at Mr. Bonner's Bench.

I found, in my trip up the free river, that the Rock Street foot bridge project was well under way. They had moved the detour sign, and while I was photographing the workers in action, a group of cyclists happened by, who discovered an easy detour around the construction, so I followed them.

After passing the Old Cemetery, I rode up to Chautauqua Park, a place I'd never seen before, and may not need to see again.

After stopping for a while at Julie's barber shop, I cruised the east side to the IOOF cemetery. My goodness, a lot of dead people live in our little town. I had never had any idea it would be so big.

Tomorrow, I think I'll go upstream. It's more fun. Yesterday, my wife, who had gotten up quite early, suggested I go out earlier than usual. I thought that might be a good idea, and decided to try to fit a cap under my helmet, to help ease the burden of the slotted exposure of my scalp to the sun. That same wife suggested I use a handkerchief. My goodness, where does she get all that smart? If you've never tried it, it's a great way to keep the sun from shining through the helmet's slots and heating up your head.

As I was pushing my bike up the killer hill, whom should I encounter but the robust young woman I usually see who always says "Sure is hot today"? But yesterday was an hour earlier than usual, and she just said "Hi!" I didn't get to return the greeting with my usual, "It'll be hotter later today". I wonder who's at her house to tell her it would be a good idea to start early?

I rode to the cove, and went up into the cove quite a way. Then, I thought, "What the heck!" I'm a cautious bicyclist, but I'd recently learned that a little flat ledge along the lake shore about 18"-48" wide, made for an easy ride with my all-terrain bike. Why couldn't I do it here? I found out that I couldn't, really. Things went well for a little way, but suddenly, the bike stopped short against a rough place, and I didn't. I have "almost" taken headers before, but I think this is the first time I'd ever actually gone over the handle bars. I also threw my chain in the process, and had to stop to set it back on track. Something about that day, a Friday, not exactly a weekend, but the banks of both sides of the cove seemed to be crowded with fishermen, and, of course, I assumed that they were all looking at, and laughing at, me.

I sedately pushed the bike until I reached the "riding" ledge at the flint beds, and rode from there. Lo and behold, about halfway along the ledge, I met two cyclists coming toward me. I rode off the ledge onto the slope, which ends abruptly at a 12 foot drop into the drink. The slope was very gentle at this part, but I was very grateful to the lady member of the pair, who trailed slightly behind her mate. She stopped and moved her bike to the uphill side of the ledge so that I could get back up before the slope became a little bit more than I cared to deal with. As I thanked her, she said she was also somewhat squeamish about the slope in that area.

They must have looped around soon after riding the ledge, because they overtook and passed me as I was taking a water break at the top of the killer hill.

I saw this couple later as they had stopped at the rest rooms at the crossroads. I should have stopped and asked, but since I didn't, I'll always wonder, "Could they be the "crossroads" couple?" They certainly could be.

When I got home, that same practical woman who had made me leave early, before it got too hot, and also had given me the handkerchief idea, saw a few bloody scrapes on my arm, and made me clean them up. That I can't explain, but I guess it's a "gal" thing.

..

An Old Man's Rambling Remembrances #29

2009-07-15T16:52:00.002-05:00

LIBERAL, OR LIBERTINE?
12/24/99

Occasionally, I will be accused of being a liberal, as I was yesterday. I don’t think I ever was one, and if you use the definition that Rush Limbaugh uses when herding his sheep, I don’t think that any real human being can be.

If indeed you want to call me a liberal, I’d say that it puts me in good company, such as that of Jesus Christ, and the Founding Fathers of our country, but I don’t really presume to think that I can fulfill those qualifications.

It came about with a discussion of the tree-sitter on the west coast who made a settlement with the lumber company for ownership of her tree, with visitation rights. I originally thought that she had been bought off by the lumber guys, but it was the other way around. In any event, I’d say that she won, with her tree and three hundred feet surrounding it, which she can keep as natural forest..

One of our number (you all know who, so I’ll not use names) said that there are more trees than ever before in this country. This may easily be so, but a tree farm does not a forest make!

How can anyone condemn the judicious use of our public lands for harvesting timber? My complaint would be with the reforestation (tree planting) methods used. Single cropping has caused the ruination of land throughout history.

When I was in elementary school, we were taught that timber companies would mark selected trees and remove them, leaving the other trees in place to grow some more. By the time I was in college, I noticed that the timber companies were clear cutting the forests in a checkerboard pattern, leaving areas which would reseed the cut over areas. Now, they clear cut, plant the trees they want, and to hell with the forest.

Why shouldn’t the timber companies be allowed to use their land in any way that they want to? I can think of no reason whatsoever, but when they’ve finished with theirs, and want to use National Forests, this land which is “your land and my land” in the same way, it is my right to complain!

Live on, Woody Guthrie!!!! One man’s morality is another man’s challenge.

...

An Old Man's Rambling Remembrances #28

2009-07-15T09:19:00.007-05:00

Today, I watched on C-span, a little bit of the confirmation hearings of Justice Sotomayor. As soon as I left the room to write this, my wife changed the channel to "Light Classical", but while I watched, I was reminded of that "Just so you'll know" comment by Natalie Maines about GBW, which got her so much scorn from the hick music crowd.

I'm sorta thinking that I should say something similar about our illustrious senator, John Cornyn, and while trying to find my remembrance of "I SUPPORT OUR TROOPS (and our Dixie Chicks)", I found the following:

ONE NEVER KNOWS
12/13/99

Last summer, on a whim which had been building for more years than I can remember, I phoned a former high school classmate in Hawaii. The last time I had seen Milton, we had been fifteen years old.

Milton was my third choice of people to call, but he was the one for whom I was able to find a phone number. One of the other choices was living in Washington State, so could not be located in a search of Hawaii. The other, I later found out, has an APO address, so could be anywhere. Milton placed him last on Johnson Island.

Milton informed me of the class of ‘54 reunion, which was coming up in October. I spent at least
ten minutes, and maybe up to an hour, wondering if I should go, “I can’t make it now, but I think I’ll shoot for the 2004 reunion” was my final decision. It should be great fun seeing all those young people grown up to be old folks.

We had several exchanges of mail (Milton had never gotten the hang of e-mail, but thought he
should probably give it a try, as soon as his wife could teach him how). He could receive faxes from me, but I couldn’t easily get them from him, so I’d fax him, and he’d snail-mail in return. He gave me lots of valuable information about what had happened in the intervening forty-eight years since I’d last seen him.

I doubt that he ever knew exactly who I was among people he had known. My year in Hawaii was a significant event in my life from which I returned to the same house in Texas. In the lives of the people who were “native” to Hawaii, it was just another year.

I heard last evening from a recently acquired e-pen pal in California that Milton had passed away last Thursday. In his last letter, he was looking forward to a trip to Australia. I intend to pursue with haste to live, as best I can, a full life. One can never know which day will be his last.

Epilogue:

I never did find the Dixie Chicks remembrance in my vast library, which sometimes gets inadvertently trashed, but I'd like to say this about Senator Cornyn. "I certainly agree with you that any nominee for Justice of the Supreme Court should be scrutenized as thoroughly as possible, but in doing so, try not to embarrass yourself and the state you're supposed to represent."

..

A Pleasant Memory of My Beloved Home

2009-07-13T07:07:00.004-05:00

In 1961, Labor Day was on September 4, and I lived with my wife, my daughter Adrienne, who was two, and my daughter Donna (who had not yet finished her first month out in the open air of our world), in an apartment in Santa Fe, New Mexico, my spiritual home.

On this Monday, July 13, 2009, with a predicted high of 102°F, I think of the day before Labor Day in 1961.

I worked for a firm which had been inherited from John Gaw Meem, with a couple of raucous Okies, a Yankee from New York, a Texan with whom I'd had classes at UT, and a New Mexican who had met the Okies while in school at OU, and coerced them into coming to Santa Fe.

Our firm was a partnership. We had a laid back boss, and a skittish boss, who worked well enough as partners, but sometimes were both a source of amusement as well as consternation for those of us who worked under them.

It came to pass, sometime about mid-summer, that the skittish boss wanted to build a new house. He put his old house on the market before he got started on the plans, thinking it would taked months to a year to sell it, but it sold within the first month. Not too good for a skittish fellow, who must get high behind and get his project under way.

He, his wife, and their son moved into an apartment, but the apartment was certainly not adequate to house their vast collection of house plants, so they were arranged on the portal of the office building, virtually filling the fairly large space.

On Sunday, September 3, I was thrilled to awake to a moderate snowfall which was still under way, and I quickly roused our neighbors upstairs, who were from New Jersey. The lady of the neighbor couple exclaimed, "Snow on September 3, why, that doesn't happen even in Jersey!" (I hate it when Yankees judge everything to the standards of Yankeeland".

After church at St. Francis Cathedral, we packed the neighbors and our kids into our 1960 VW and drove out to view the white. We drove by the office, which was only a few blocks away, expecting devastation on the portal, but there was not a house plant to be seen!

Arriving at work on Tuesday morning, I noticed that all the plants had been moved indoors.

I asked the boss about it, and he explained that they knew better than to leave house plants out later than Labor Day, and they had come in on Saturday and moved them all inside.

Many years later, on September 3, 1977, we had a beautiful cool, fall-like day (not all that normal for Central Texas), and even the kids, who really knew little of Santa Fe, remarked, "It's just like Santa Fe!"

The Lazy Man's Ride

2009-07-11T09:00:00.008-05:00

My apologies to Judy, my Facebook/Flickr/Blogfollowing friend, who's probably already been exposed to this. I feel that this is a somewhat unusual adventure for me (a person who does not necessarily enjoy ticks, scratches, etc.

I thought, however it was an outing I may repeat someday, because the vast network of paths invites exploration.

The Dark Path Of A Slugabed
7/10/2009

Today, I slept well into daylight. Finally abandoning the sack at about 6:30 AM, I messed around doing morning things until my wife mentioned my bike ride.

Looking at my watch, I realized that it would soon be my lunchtime, and the "heat of the day"!

Thinking about a little path which starts near one of the river crossings on The Trail, I thought I'd give it a try.

About a mile and a quarter from home, I ventured into the deep, dark wood.

A short ride, less than three miles total from home, to here, and back, but a ride nevertheless. Better than none.

...7-10-09 Into The Deep Dark
Not knowing if this could be a potty path or something more substantial, I began a short walking tour up the hillside.

I quickly found that I was at the edge of a wooded disc golf course, and a substantial network of footpaths, leading to various places within the "forest".

...7-10-09 Have I Been Teleported to NC?
What forces of nature have sculpted this tree? I felt as if I might have wandered onto the trail to Linville Falls.

...7-10-09 Kathy's Dream
The gracious lady from New South Wales loves the sight of decaying wood returning home to the soil. On this hillside she would find much to love.

...7-10-09 The Lamppost Says No
Among the "briars and the brambles", one begins to feel he's lost all contact with civilization (if not for the sound of children playing at the country club pool nearby).

Then, a break in the foliage shows me The River Trail, only just across the river. I'm not lost in the forest, I'm only a short distance from my road home.

...7-10-09 Fungus 02
The lady who loves decaying wood would classify this fungus, and tell us about it.

I will simply call it "nature's art", and leave it to you, the viewer, to appraise.

...7-10-09 Unfriendly Fairway
No wilderness this, so close to the disc golf course! I walked a short distance into the course and looked back for this photo.

And for that matter, the golf course of carts, greens, and manicured fairways lies within easy reach, although I did not bother to walk my bike that far.

If you've not done it with any of the others, I'd like for you to click on this photo to link to the Flickr site, and view "all sizes", which will show the disc cage better.

...7-10-09 The Way Out
However, after I'd taken my photo of the disc trap, I began to look for the path I took to arrive here. It was not all that readily found. But here it is, the very same little path I took from the crossing.

Almost ready to mount my steed and become homeward bound.

...7-10-09 Vicious Guardian
How did I miss this coming in? A fearsome sight to one who's inattentive.

It missed me with its vicious thorns. Why? Such things never happen to me.

I should have left this path bleeding, but I was somehow spared.

...7-10-09 Traveling Rock In Both Dimensions
Back at the river crossing where I first pushed my bike into the dark wood.

In the river, I feel fairly certain, is the rock on which four of us sat and looked at the stars during a midnight hike in the distant past when the river was ours.

I especially like to imagine that I'm seeing the rock in two places, the world of the River Trail, and a topsy-turvy world in which the sky is below.

Time and the power of our once-upon-a-time river have given this rock mobility. We sat upon it a mile upstream, and I looked in vain for it for years after it disappeared.

I had simply underestimated the power of our little river.

...7-10-09 Selective Drought
The dark path abandoned, and peddling my way home, I pause to reflect.

Who can view this without feeling that The Creation is ongoing, and we're living with it even now?

...

An Old Man's Rambling Remembrances #27

2009-07-08T10:12:00.008-05:00

This morning in the Kiddierag, I saw this piece by John Young, an excellent writer for the Waco Tribune-Herald.

It appears that Justice Clarence has made the news once more.

Remember folks, the following is not the news. John Young's article is.

The "random remembering" goes back to shortly after our previous president was carried into office by his daddy's Supreme Court.

AS THE APPLE FALLS
OR
THE PERILS OF DYNASTY
2/2/01

Like father, like son, some people say. That silly looking smirk is not an affectation, it is an inherited characteristic. Also the urge to rub people’s faces in it must also be inherited.

Once Mr. Bush the elder stood in front of the people of the united states and said “he’s the only man for the job”, referring to supreme court nominee Clarence Thomas. That was an insult to the memory of the great man, Thurgood Marshall. I like to think of it as contempt of court.

Now we have John Ashcroft as our new attorney general. I really doubt that he will live up to the expectations of those who fought hardest against him. It remains, however, that in his own state of Missouri, the voters preferred a dead man to Mr. Ashcroft as their representative in The Senate.

Those loudest of Mr. Ashcroft’s defenders, the likes of Orin Hatch, Rush Limbaugh, etc., have said that it’s such a noble thing that Mr. Ashcroft did not contest his election in court. I’m not sure I understand why they think that they can say that Mr. Ashcroft was “noble” without implying that President George W Bush is not a noble man.

...

Bosses, The Trail, and The Fourth Of July!!!!

2009-07-03T13:39:00.010-05:00

How exciting the see the trail so well used today!! I chose the upstream direction today, because it just seemed right.

Every day is Saturday to a retired person, and the folks who "hooped at the barber shop" yesterday were going to be "hoopin' at the park" on The Fourth Of July. I thought I'd ride down to the park this afternoon to watch.

Silly me, I knew that my former place of employment was closed today for the fourth, so, of course it must be the fourth (and yet, today is the third of July).

Folks were out in force today, enjoying the excellent weather (which will be HOT later in the day). I had not gone far before I saw on the trail a group of six people, which included my very last boss, the one who saw me into my retirement, and thus holds a special place in my heart.
He's the only boss I ever had who is also my neighbor.

Not only were my very last boss and his wife in the group, but also their oldest son and his family, from The Land Of Enchantment! They're also expecting more family members later today, so it's my guess there'll be a great time for them all this weekend!

The trail was fairly well populated before I got to killer hill, then I seemed to have it all to myself.
...Monsters' Ball
Arriving at the lake shore, my imagination was captured by the apparent party going on among the weeds a short distance away. I rode across the barren rock, then walked a short distance through the short grass, and joined the party.

...Blue Sky, Blue Water
The blue of the cloudless sky, the blue of the water, the white glare from the limestone, combined with the slight reddish tint to the soil and some of the grasses, made me feel very American on this eve of The Fourth!

...Relief From A Cloudless Sky
And this place is not all relentless. The cozy little shade at the base of the juniper shrub looks very inviting.

And so, I moved only about a hundred yards more along the shore, simply to check to see if the bronzed, blond bikini hiker had made her way along the north shore trail to her "sun and swim" place. Not finding her, I started for home.

As I moved along the easy route home from the lake, I saw more people on the trail, and shortly after decending killer hill, I encountered the family who'd been cooling themselves in the spring at Springhouse Crossing. It was a fine ride, and a terrific way to start the day.

Fly 1
On my inevitable "water break" at Springhouse Crossing, this dragonfly sat for me. I think these fast-moving creatures are very pretty, and they never seem to sit still at my dooryard pond. I'm happy to have found this one.

..

Yesterday, I was thinking about banks.......

2009-07-02T09:46:00.007-05:00

I think that soon I will gather my thoughts about banks, and how we've managed to evolve from "If I couldn't manage my bank any better than to have to charge my customers a service charge, I'd get out of the business", to Government bailouts. I have no answers for this, but it's on my mind, and I'm trying to give it some serious thought.

Instead, today, I'm going back many years to my working life, and posting an old, old, doorhanger, which, I think, holds just as valid today, almost eleven years later, only perhaps, more so.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

10/16/98

Last week Richard was raving excitedly about a new pickup he had looked at. It apparently has all kinds of sensory devices. One of the new safety features is that if any of the cylinders start to overheat, those cylinders will be shut down, and will coast while the rest of the cylinders do the work. I think this means that if your car overheats, you just keep on going. The car will restart the hot cylinders after they have cooled down.

My thirteen year old pickup doesn’t have anything like this. As Victor and Steve can attest, I have called in a few times when I didn’t quite make it and needed a ride (or a tow). They can probably remember more times than I can. I never leave my house, however, expecting something to go wrong.

It’s hard for me to imagine that it would be desirable to have a car that knows something will go wrong, and will take care of its own problems. I wonder what happens if something goes wrong with one of the gadgets which is supposed to protect you if something goes wrong?

I keep thinking that if something goes wrong with a car, you should have it fixed (someday). What happens if all those gadgets that keep the car running prevent you from knowing that there is anything wrong? You have lost control, and are at the mercy of the car and its gadgets.

Do you suppose that a manual transmission is even available on one of these wonderful machines, or have they decided that the driver should be taken out of the loop altogether?

..

Curmudgeon Rides Again, Without "Issues"

2009-06-29T12:45:00.008-05:00

I am fortunate to live adjacent to the River Trail, about midway between the River Park and the gu'ment's lake. I can chose to go one way or the other.

The upstream journey to the lake requires slightly more effort for a dude my age, but is more invigorating. It suddenly occurred to me today, that downstream to The Park and beyond is for meditation, and upstream to The Overlook and beyond is for stimulation!

Today, I partly rode, partly pushed, up the hill to Springhouse Crossing. Still mulling over the "Gap in the world" caused by the loss of the buzzard tree, I tarried for more than just my usual water break.
...Alas, A Gap In The World
I feel fairly certain now, that this is the grounded remains of the buzzard tree. It apparently met its final demise concurrently with another, larger tree, which was also sometimes used as a roost. Not wanting to disturb the delicate, soggy ground that surrounds both trees in the outflow from the spring, I will probably never get closer than this.

So, after a somewhat uneventful trip to the lake, I decided that I'd take a small jaunt along the North Shore leg of the gu'ment's Goodwater Loop which fails to be very bicycle friendly, and is not really a pleasant experience in the summer. This would be my first trip this way in 2009, and my last until probably November. October at the earliest!

I came across a frequently used campsite, which seems to have not been used this year. A puzzle? Why not? I have only found it occupied once, on a trip last spring, although it has always shown signs of frequent use. There were three young (all male) campers here, who were preparing to break camp. One young man was standing in the middle of the trail, looking meditatively over the lake, and he must have just finished relieving himself, not having as yet "tucked in". I politely pushed my bike around him without a word, but wondered as I remounted and proceeded along the trail, if I shouldn't have asked, "Do you hang out here often?"
...Campsite
I turned back at the "campsite", not really wanting to make this a North Shore excursion. It's almost July, and my wife always tells me, "pace yourself", whenever I set out.

One of my favorite water break stops along the North Shore is this old watering trough. There's no water here. Certainly this land has not been used for ranching for at least thirty years, but the circular trough remains, and provides a nice, shady bench for relaxing and contemplating the aroma of the young sycamore tree which shades it.
...North Shore Water Stop

Having had enough of the North Shore trail for now, I retraced my route, and a short distance beyond the water stop, I came to the fork in the road. This is the place where, on my first trip on the North Shore leg, I first encountered the bronzed blond bikini hiker and her two great dogs, who were frequent visitors to the lake last year on weekends.
...Two Roads Diverged to.....where?
Once at this junction, I took, more or less by accident, the shady fork, and found it's a more pleasant route, but ends further from the lake, and closer to the Overlook trail head, so one must make a choice. Today, I chose the more direct route to the shore.

On a hot day, and although this was not yet a hot day, it soon would be, the lake provides welcome relief, no matter what negative words I might have otherwise to say about it.
Tall Man And The Cool Depths
And one is tempted to think he should jump in, as so many do on days like this, but not today, not for Willie.
Should I Slide On In,.....Nope

And one cannot walk this shore without paying homage to the flints. What fun to contemplate the infinite variety they present!
Tip Of A Flintberg
This cutie, only about 2 1/2 inches long seemed so tenuously connected to its matrix of limestone that I thought I might be able to pry it loose and take it with me. No such luck! It wanted to stay, and so it did.
...Tiny Lunar Landscape 01
...Tiny Lunar Landscape 02
...Silk Purse, Or Sow's Ear?
How long would it take to see all the flints in this quarter mile? I don't think you ever could! You may see them one day, and the next day, you might see them in a different light than the day before. My mother once said, when she was trying to persuade to move back from New Mexico....."The mountains are pretty, but once you've seen them.....". How in the world could you EVER "see" a mountain???? It's impossible!
Would a hundred years be needed to document the flints? I don't know, and I'm not willing to find out, so I'll go on home, and come back another day.

The ride back downstream is easier, and a feeble old geezer like me can make speeds up to 18+ mph on the twisting, turning trail back to the killer hill, which traverses a significant level change between flat shelves. It's down and up, but mostly down, and a fun, shady ride.

Almost home, there's a rapid rise from the river, then another rapid rise up to the crest of the ridge. I've found that, for the previous couple of times, I've chosen to add about a third of a mile by traveling a way along a level road to "recuperate" before tackling the second rapid rise.
...California House
If I should tell you where I live, you'd be able to find me on the crest of the ridge. On the same street, a little way down toward the river, there's a house that exhibits freedom of choice. The people of this house have a driveway which opens to the street above, and they've made a little driveway and parking space off the other street below. I like the idea of coming home and asking myself, "Should I drive into the garage, or should I enter by the scenic route?" I think I'd like to knock on their door someday, and praise them for their ingenuity. However, they'd probably say, "Oh, it was like that when we bought the house a couple of years ago". Oh, well, I think it's a pretty idea, anyway.

Grateful for being forced by my ancient lung power to take the level "recuperative" ride before going on up the hill, I had an idea, which I acted on. The last few rides upstream have been a little more tiresome than before, and the hills somewhat steeper. I was pushing where I usually rode. A little WD-40 spritzed on the chain and sprockets would improve my lot. (Texas weather is capricious, and my bicycle is sometimes exposed to the elements). It's so easy, in the excitement of getting off to the trail, that I usually forget the lube. Why not do it as soon as I reach the end of this ride? OK, why not?
Overhaul In A Spray Can
Tomorrow's ride will be smoother.

What Does A Curmudgeon With A Bicycle Need For Fulfillment, An Hour?

2009-06-27T16:53:00.022-05:00

This happened yesterday, while I was still trying to figure out how to do something with the Old Cemetery.

Setting out on the downstream trail, I got to the downtown bridge. It was there I noticed that the gu'ment's riverbed was was beginning to be dry again. Is this something that happens frequently, that I never noticed before last summer?
....Alas, The Lake, Again.......And, as you can see, the little River Park Lake is beginning to reach the mostly dry level of last year.

I crossed the trail bridge, to take the southern leg of The Trail up the free river.
....Alas, The Lake, Again, Again
I expected to follow the free river leg of the trail to where it reaches the Old Cemetery, so that I could fantasize some more on the lives of the town's pioneers.

Reaching the downtown bridge which spans the free river, I found my way BLOCKED!
....Proggers?
So, what was going on?

My wife had read in the local paper last week that there'd be a new pedestrian bridge built at the end of Rock Street.

Why?

There's a small strip of land between the rivers before the confluence, and some condos have been built on this land. Well, Willie, being the imaginative soul that he is, thought, perhaps it was to be a trail extension. Why not spend some of the City's tax money to improve the trail? A picture in the paper shows the proposed bridge to be a "stepping stone" bridge, which dams the river, with water flowing through gaps in the bridge, forming "stepping stones". But I ride a bicycle, and the trail claims to be handicapped accessible except for a very small distance near Springhouse Crossing! How will this bridge serve the people of the town? Limited service! Someone wanted something "pretty", I assume.

So, the arrow, which you can see on the barricade if you look closely or view large, points up a concrete lined drainage swale which goes up to the street. Lettering on the sign says "Crosswalk Closed, Use Other Side". Very helpful for someone wanting to know how he might detour around the heavy machinery.

I chose to go in the opposite direction from the sign's instructions (whatever they were), and take a look at the free river.
....Even The Free River Flows Lightly This Summer
I couldn't go far, of course, I simply parked my bike next to the trail, and walked a few steps down the slope to get a view of the river, which was very, very weak at the moment.
Free River Turtle
A turtle eyed me from the shoals. I'm not sure he normally sees people standing so close to his domain, because soon he was gone.
....Life In The Free River
But not too far "gone", because I saw that he was only a few feet away, in what I'm sure he assumed was a more secure location.

I thought that another day, I'd find a more favorable route to the Old Cemetery, and turned around to return home. This day, I'd get home before the heat became oppressive!
....Who?
As I prepared to cross over the trail bridge across the devastated gu'ment's river, I spied a grackle who seemed to be saying, "Who has done this to my river!"

I arrived home an hour after I left. Seven 'n' a quarter miles of green travel, and good meditation time, with photos!

..

One of the toughest things to rationalize.......

2009-06-23T22:04:00.007-05:00

This evening one of my Facebook Friends posted a link to....this.

The very concept of faith healing is foreign to me, but I'm certainly able to recognize a serious civil rights issue here. I cannot think about all-encompassing faith without thinking of the story I heard once from my father-in-law, who was a very moral and religious man. I'm also a person who's seen enough evidence to think that modern medicine can kill you too, sometimes. And we also live in a country in which rights to believe are fundamental. I'm sure you already know that my next words will be, "but each human has its own idea about which 'rights' are 'right'. A moral as well as legal dilemma."

"There was a preacher who found himself trapped by a heavy-duty flood. He was standing on his rooftop, looking out over the endless expanse of water that surrounded him.

He had been there a while, praying to The Lord to deliver him, and so far, he had not been "delivered". Two men came by in a rowboat, and tried to convince him to go with them to safety. 'The Lord will be taking care of me', said the preacher, 'that's a small boat, and you need all the space you can to rescue other people. Don't worry about me. The Lord will take care of me'.

Not too long afterward, a rather large ferry boat, which was assisting in rescue efforts, came up to him, and offered him a ride to safety. His response was virtually the same, that there were many others out there in the water who needed saving, and he was a man of God, and had faith that The Lord was going to take care of him.

The water continued to rise, and eventually he was balancing on the very peak of his house, with water all around, when a helicopter came into view. The helicopter dropped a line, and they did their best to get him to choose to come aboard. The preacher, with his abiding faith, waved them away. The Lord was going to take care of him!

Eventually the water completely engulfed the preacher's house, he was swept away and drowned.
Upon his arrival at the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter immediately recognized him and told him that The Boss wanted to see him in person.

When he came face to face with The Lord, he cried, 'Lord, Lord, why did you let me drown. I had faith in you, and you ignored me!'

The Lord responded....'What more could I have done? I sent you a rowboat, then I sent you a ferry, then I even sent you a helicopter, and you waved them all away!'"

There is an old saying, the source of which I can't remember (if I ever knew) that "The Lord helps those who help themselves".

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An Old Man's Rambling Remembrances #26

2009-06-17T08:26:00.002-05:00

AGATHA CHRISTY NEVER MEANT TO BE PLAYED BY TEXANS
5/12/00

Last evening when I got home, the show “Friends” was starting on tv.

“Courtenay Cox Arquette?” I remarked. “Did she think that marrying into a family of actors could turn her into one?” My wife answered with “She’s not all that bad”.

Once upon a time, in a lifetime far away, the people of my town looked upon me as a thespian.

My first attempt with our local community theater group was the part of doddering old General Mackensie in Ten Little Indians, a play in which everybody is supposed to die as poetic justice for sins that they had committed and escaped punishment.

One of the characters was a sweet young thing, who escaped the “death sentence” of the story because she was really innocent. She had been a governess, whose young charge, Peter, had drowned on an outing. The governess’ dereliction of duty was really something of an accident as she had been distracted by Peter’s Uncle, who had somewhat malicious intentions.

Ten Little Indians should never be played using an untrained girl from Texas to play the part of the young governess. I’ve watched the play many times by amateur groups here in Texas, and every time, I come away with the feeling that “If I ever play in that one again, I want the part of ‘Peter Zunkel’”.

Everyone I tell this says “There’s nobody in the play with that name”. I guess you have to expect that people living in Texas may be Texans.

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Why have art and utility become separated?

2009-06-16T11:06:00.006-05:00

It all started with a simple exchange about headstones.

Only a few minutes after I commented to one of my Flickr friends that I was saddened by the fact that art has become a separate compartment in our modern lives, my wife called from the next room, "hey, come see this!" HBO was showing a feature on "The Gates", presented by Christo in Central Park, NYC, in February of 2005.

I think that the piece was very well done, although I only saw less than half of it. It was well under way before my wife managed to discover it. The part I saw showed the emotional impact on a wide variety of people, from local to international. Christo and Jeanne-Claude had aged considerably since I was privileged to see them face to face at Laguna Gloria many (approximately 30) years ago, but then so have I aged, I think. It's harder to see it in my own face.

Throughout history, cultures have been judged by the artistic accomplishments of their everyday lives. It is probably one of the most basic of human deeds. The people who are reputed to have inhabited Seminole Canyon far as long as ten thousand years, left nothing but their art. Only a few fragile remnants of their utilitarian life have been found, but the paintings they did abound! In our harried "modern" life, it appears that art fails to be a part of our everyday lives. I once heard my wife tell of a friend of hers, who was a very talented artist, who claimed that "art is something that has no utilitarian purpose". I abhor the idea that art should be separated from utility.

I suppose it's easy enough to say that "The Gates" had no utilitarian purpose, but for a brief time they stirred the intellect of several thousand people, just as, almost thirty years earlier, the "Running Fence" in California achieved the same purpose.

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An Old Guy's Random Rememberings #25

2009-06-15T08:28:00.003-05:00

WHO OWNS THE ROAD?
2/28/03

On the slow Wednesday of Feb. 26 (an unusually icy day for my area), when I arrived at Belco past 11:00 am, I spent the tedious trip tuned in to KLBJ in Austin, thinking that to be the best source of local weather news.

The show was dedicated to citizens phoning in about the weather conditions they were personally encountering, and was very helpful, even though most of them were from south and west of Austin.

One young man called in explaining that he had 14,000 pounds of equipment behind him (what was he driving, an SUV?) but he was talking like a trucker. He expressed the trucker’s usual complaint about careless four wheelers who cut into the trucker’s “lead space”.

I admit that this is a despicable practice, and is dangerous. However, I’ve never heard a trucker say a word about people in passenger cars, who are maintaining a reasonable distance from the big rig in front of them, who suddenly encounter a trucker behind them, fifteen feet away and closing.

Wouldn’t it stand to reason that if an automobile driver cuts in front of a trucker and for some reason suddenly has to hit his brakes, wouldn’t the end results be the same if an eighteen-wheeler was kissing a safe driver’s bumper from behind and that safe driver suddenly had to hit his brakes?

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6-11-09 My Little Bowie

2009-06-13T08:13:00.007-05:00

6-11-09 My Little Bowie
Originally uploaded by Willie C

On a day when I had occasion to do some surgery on the pond system, I dug out the neglected shell of my "Bowie knife", and rewound the cotton string handle, making it serviceable again. Digging around in the mud has made that nice white handle quite grubby, but it still works, if you're not too fastidious about a little "dirt on your hands".

Nearly forty years ago, I was living in Austin. The motor on my air handler began to give me trouble, and I found that the belt driven fan would not work without my opening up the unit and giving the belt a little tug by hand.

I had been told that this model motor had "starter windings", so there was no capacitor to replace. So one day, being fearful that I would eventually burn out the motor if I continued with my "procedure", I called an acquaintance who was in the HVAC business. After some discussion and talk of costs, etc., he suggested that i might try running it continuous.

With the flip of a switch, I turned the air handler fan on permanently, and it ran that way for about three years.

In February of 1973, our "new" house, where we now live, was under construction, and it became necessary to prepare the old house for sale. I fixed a few minor things around the house, then went to the ultimate hardware store in Austin to get a new motor.

When I asked if I could trade in the old motor, the clerk said, "No", but suggested it might make a good grinder.

Sounded like good advice, so, a short time later, when we were settled into the new house and new town, I purchased an arbor and assembled a serviceable grinder, which served me well for a long time.

Soon after making the grinder, I found an old rusted file in the back yard. Remembering that the original Bowie knife was crafted using an old file, I had an idea. I'd make my own knife. I think you will notice that, obviously, Jim Bowie's file was somewhat larger than mine.

To my surprise, my wife seemed puzzled by my project. I wasn't really sure that she wasn't suspicious concerning my intentions for the "weapon".

For many years, the knife hung on a hook beside the fireplace, where it was handy for splitting kindling, until we remodeled the fireplace (another story entirely), and for many years, the grinder continued to be a valuable tool for an infinite number of uses.

A few months ago, after thirty-five years of service as a grinder, after ten or twelve more of serving as a fan motor, the motor suddenly quit with a loud pop and a puff of smoke. I will probably take it apart someday, and try to diagnose why it shorted out, but I will probably never see it working again.

I'll think of it, from time to time, and remember, it once crafted a knife that scared my wife.

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Adventure on the trail........

2009-06-07T13:24:00.004-05:00

I seem to have had an interesting morning. My wife started it, when she looked at the package I'd brought home from CVS yesterday, and said, "I thought you were going to get some vitamins!" "I did.", "Then, where are they?"

Oops! It's easy to remember to forget things when you're an old guy. I distinctly remembered placing the bottle of vitamins on the counter, and after I'd paid for my order, I picked up the prescription bag, and walked away! Well, no wonder the load I rode home with was so light! The bottle of vitamins probably weighed almost as much as the prescriptions combined (about six or seven ounces).

I road back up the trail this morning, and got my vitamins, which I'd already paid for the previous day. In addition, my wife had asked that I check the bank balance while I was in the area, and so I did.

I decided to explore a subdivision directly behind the bank, and came to the realization that this upscale (by today's measure) subdivision was probably where the bronzed blond bikini hiker, known to a few Flickrs, but maybe not to the general public, must live. It's easy to imagine that someone starting from this cluster if "nice" houses could easily walk a short distance through the woods, and connect with the north shore leg of the Loop Trail, and therefore to the lake.

An eventful morning, so far, and on the way home, my mind was wandering around a letter I'd read in the Kiddierag this morning:

The trouble with labels

Re: May 31 column by Arnold García Jr., "The convenient distraction of claiming Cardozo was Hispanic."

I agree that the meaning of the term Hispanic is slippery. I am an Italian. My father immigrated to the United States.

When I came to Texas, I learned that many Italians immigrated to Mexico. They assimilated with the Mexican culture, and their descendants are as Mexican today as any native born. Even though they have Italian surnames, they are classified as Hispanic. I am not.

Is an Italian a Latino, since the Italian language is derived from the original Latin? Given that description, Italians, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanians all would be Latinos.

That's the problem with labels. I remember the uproar when Robert Barnstone, whose mother was Hispanic, ran for the Austin City Council. As he used to say, "Ya basta." Enough.

Tony Tucci

I had frequently and repeatedly related to my younger co-workers that Hispanics didn't have their own race when I was growing up, and they couldn't quite understand what I was talking about.

As it turns out, according to the United States Census, they still don't have a race, and on reading this letter, it's fairly easy to understand why. My mind was still concentrating on this when I passed a serious power walker who was swinging down the trail with a water bottle in each of her hands, and right before me, was a couple of walkers with a dog approaching with the sun behind them. The dog and his man were already behind me when the lady cheerfully called out, "How ARE you?", at which time I thought I'd probably just snubbed some people I knew, but was already well beyond them. Wondering briefly if it would be prudent to turn around and overtake them, I opted to go on home........and that's the it was, on the RiverTrail this morning.

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New Rules?

2009-06-06T06:34:00.004-05:00

Although Bill Maher is a favorite of mine, I do not intend for this to be about him. I just couldn't think of a proper title.

On our hike-bike trail (on which the maintenance people and rangers are very much in evidence using golf carts or "gators"), the posted rule is "keep to the right". It has been probably about a year since I (a bicyclist) came up behind a walker who was walking to the left. My first thought was, "How am I going to get past this fool. There's no way I can pass him on the left without getting off the trail!" I decided to just keep going straight ahead, since the trail before us was clear. It was perhaps the smoothest passing I've ever made on the trail.

In another world, when I was a kid and things were very different from now, there were signs spaced regularly along Texas highways that said, "Walk to the left side of the road, facing traffic". That's a very sensible idea for pedestrians, I think. I have noticed that "hikers" on the hike-bike trail, especially if they are walking in pairs or in a group, seem to be quite surprised when they hear a bicyclist announcing his intentions as he comes up behind them. I've seen hikers jump off the trail, or grab their partners and pull them roughly over to the side, but there always seems to be a reaction which will make them deviate in some way.

It would seem to me that this could be avoided by following one of the simplist of traffic rules.

Bicycles are vehicles, and have always been considered as such. They should always follow the same traffic rules as any other vehicles. Pedestrians are not vehicles.

If the rules of the trail were the same as rules of the road, with vehicles to the right side of the road, and pedestrians to the left, the pedestrians would never be surprised by a bicycle approaching them from behind, and the bicyclist would not have to wonder, "How is this pedestrian going to react to my passing him?". I always get a warm, friendly feeling now, when I see a hiker practicing civil disobedience, facing me on the same side of the trail. Maybe they should re-evaluate that trail rule of "keep to the right", and follow the more traditional traffic rules.

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An Old Guy's Random Rememberings #24

2009-06-01T13:37:00.009-05:00

GROWING UP TODAY, OR IS IT ALLOWED?
1/21/07

In June of 1976, in the middle of what was intended to be a two-week visit to the Grand Canyon, we diverted to a place near Sedona in central Arizona called Montezuma Castle, and later, we abandoned the second week at Grand Canyon, and spent several days in Oak Creek canyon.

Montezuma castle has nothing to do with Montezuma. It was built by the prehistoric Sinagua (Native Americans related to the Hohokam, whose skill in agriculture inspired the founding of the modern city of Phoenix). While walking (or creeping, depending on your point of view) through these ruins, high up in a cave in a cliff, I was struck with the notion that children of these people were required to learn the ways of the world at an early age, or they would never have the opportunity to learn at all. It’s a scary, dangerous place. I think I’ve heard that entering those ruins is no longer allowed. I suppose there's too much concern for the safety of the tourists (although, in this case, it could just as likely be concern for the safety of the ruins, and probably is).

Today, I was watching one of my favorite weekend channels, HGTV, when I heard a building inspector telling an unfortunate homeowner that their old fashioned water taps, separate for hot and cold, were dangerous, and should be replaced by a modern “mixing” type of faucet.

I was mildly hostile to his attitude, and have wondered ever since, “what would those Sinaguas have thought of such a namby-pamby concept?”.

I predict that the time will come, when we’re not allowed to leave our houses, because of all the dangers.

But wait, don’t most accidents happen in the home? How in the world will our progeny be able live in this “dangerous” world?

Prologue
I have, since this was originally written, determined that HGTV is no longer my favorite TV channel. They no longer have the sort of programming that attracted me.

Some things that puzzled me at the crossroads

2009-05-30T11:04:00.014-05:00

Let me preface by telling you that I'm something of a feminist (and perhaps just a little bit of a conspiracy freak). I do not know if it's the way I was raised, of if I was influenced by having four daughters with my wife. Although I often caught a little friendly ribbing about being "henpecked", I was the first member of the family to join NOW.

Several days ago, I rode the trail to the lakeshore. I came to this intersection, at a pleasant park which seems to cater to family gatherings, but is also a trailhead.

From the photo, you may be able to discern that the trail to the lower right goes back the way from which I came. Going off toward the left is the Corps of Engineers trail leading to the lake, while another branch leads to the trailhead parking, which also serves the park.

As I approached the intersection, a lady on a bicycle crossed and headed uphill on the portion of trail that centers the photo. Not too far behind the lady, was a man on another bicycle who called out, apparently using the lady's name. "You're going the wrong way!", he shouted.

And I'm still wondering, "Was she going the wrong way, and, if so, how did he know?" The way she was going led directly to the restrooms and water fountains. Why was he so sure she'd taken a wrong route?

For so many years, since antiquity, the male has always dominated in virtually every human culture. Is there a reason for this, or was it simply a matter of brute force, or brawn over beauty? Does might automatically make right? I'll always wonder.

Does anyone remember the movie version of "Hawaii", when Julie Andrews (Jerusha) asked the young native girl, "Whose baby is it?", to which the girl replied without hesitation, "It's MY baby!" We all know it takes two to make a baby, but why is it usually implied that children belong to the father, and the mother was just an incubator?

Another puzzling thing to me is Genesis. Think about it!

Chapter I:26
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Then in Chapter V, which is the one used by Bishop Usher to count up the days since God created the earth:
1: This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him.
2: Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

In Chapter II comes that story about Adam and Eve, who began to lose favor with God through the actions of the woman, who, by nature, should be subservient according to this account. After all, she would not exist except for the sacrifice of a body part from Adam.

This third account, stuck in between the two other equally valid ones, is the one taught to kids in Sunday school, so it's the one we think of most often. Is there method in this?

There are those (some much more learned and historically oriented than Dan Brown) who believe that Mary Magdalene was never a prostitute. Is it possible that this conjecture was fabricated by the male priesthood to diminish her? I sorta think that "prostitution" and "priesthood" probably developed concurrently in the history of mankind. The bad rap given to prostitution over the ages could easily be a successful attempt to thwart competition.

Perhaps the concept of male dominance in society has always been just that. Allowing the "weaker sex" too much authority would certainly make life more difficult, wouldn't it?

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This was not intended to be about you, Rufus!

2009-05-21T19:40:00.014-05:00

I was once again baited by my old friend Rufus this afternoon, and I decided not to take the bait. I thought I'd say something about my daughter, Sifu Donna.

I have started on a GoogleMap, Willie C's Santa Fe, and I intend to elaborate on my adventures in New Mexico back in prehistoric times, around 1961. I will add to it as time goes by.

But as I sat thinking about Rufus's challenge, the History Channel was on, with a feature about the terrorist aspects of The Ku Klux Klan.

For those of you who are not familiar with the 1960's, this should be required viewing! You think that the battle over civil rights is pretty serious now, you really need to know what it was like then!

I'm not sure that they will ever be able to tell the story of the civil rights movement and the injustices surrounding it as effectively as it should be. It can never be publicized enough that people who believe in the founding principles of this country must be always watchful.

There are people at large who deny that Hitler's treatment of the Jews actually happened, and I'm sure it will not be long before people begin to take the attitude that the things shown in this treatment of the Klan are simple fabrications, and could not possibly be real.

I was an adult at the time they were happening, and I'll assure you that they are real. Learn, and remember! Someone once said the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Be vigilant!

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What do I think about public transportation?

2009-05-12T18:11:00.010-05:00

I'm old enough to remember streetcar tracks on North Congress in Austin. I also remember riding trolleycars regularly, and the newfangled "trolley busses" that got their power from electric wires overhead in Dallas. There was "Interurban" electric rail travel between Dallas and Waco, and long distance train travel was a fairly normal means of transportation.

Kids normally rode busses in the larger cities. They did not have their own cars. I'm from a small town, where walking or bicycle was the way to get around if you were a kid.

Public transportation was a regular thing in my youth, but that was a long time ago. When I got my first car, I could drive to downtown Austin and park in front of the store I wanted to visit. If I had two stops to make downtown, I could drive between them, and expect to find a place to park.

When I was about fourteen, I rode the train with my cousin from Dallas, where he lived, to Houston, where our grandmother lived. The train was so filled on that day that we could only find seats in the anteroom next to the washroom. I wasn't smart enough to realize that these were not luxury accommodations (seemed like a stateroom to this small town boy).

Riding a train that ran regularly between Brownsville and Houston, was a frequent occurrence when making the trip from my home in Bay City to Houston. The family car was something that dad used to get to work, or sometimes, for work, so going to Houston without him was a train ride.

During my first semester at the University of Texas, I asked my dad if he could get me a bicycle to ride to school. My friend Norman had a bicycle. I had been riding the city busses, which were quite adequate, but I thought a bike would give me more flexibility to get from where I lived near Mueller Airport to the campus.

My dad thought a bicycle would not be practical in bad weather, and found me a fairly nice five year old Chevrolet for the extravagant price of $450. Because it was an exceptional car, it warranted a higher than normal price.

While public transportation was a fairly normal thing in the past, it has given in to "personal" transportation. At least in Texas it has.

Once, when I mentioned to my dad that I would use public transportation if it were available, he assured me that it would be "very inconvenient". I'm not so sure.

We have come to think of the automobile as a sane means of transportation, a status symbol, and even a sport. I read recently that only one percent of the energy required to move an automobile actually goes to moving the driver, who is most often alone in the car. The most frequent use of the automobile seems to be a single driver using a fairly large vehicle to move him from a block or so to thousands of miles, with or without anything else being moved by the vehicle.

For at least thirty years, it has been evident that the supply of fuel used to power the automobile will not last forever, yet very little has been done to provide a rational solution for the day when it's gone.

It's that old "human nature" at work. My dear mother once said, "I don't have to worry about it, I'll be dead and gone", while hugging a grandchild with each arm. We so often think that our meager experience is all we need, and what we're doing now is all there is.

People curse the traffic, while never considering that cars can be built much faster than roads, and new roads actually generate more traffic. The automobile is an extravagant use of resources.

So, in answer to the question, "Do you have any thoughts re mass transit?", my answer is, "Yes I do, but I'm too emotional about it to be coherent".

My thought is that, eventually, we'll need mass transit, and we won't be ready for it. A man who served as Governor of Texas from 1973 to 1976, as one of his very few campaign comments, said "We really need to so something about getting mass transit". I think he immediately forgot that after he got elected, but then, he made no further mention of "mass transit" in his six years, anyway. If you subtract 1973 from 2009, you get a number equivalent to just about half my lifetime. So, you can see, it's been a noticeable problem for a long time, but instead of moving toward it, we're moving away from it. We had a significant amount of mass transportation when I was growing up.

Renewable energy sources and public transportation will be essentials of the future, but, in order to achieve them, we'll have to overcome "human nature". A little common sense reflection while sitting in stalled traffic might be a good course of action for everybody.

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Then and Now?

2009-05-09T08:02:00.004-05:00

VOICES OF CHACO
10/6/06

THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT CHACO CANYON IS A MYSTERIOUS PLACE. NO
ONE KNOWS, OR WILL EVER KNOW, WHAT WAS HAPPENING THERE A THOUSAND
YEARS AGO. WHAT HAPPENS THERE TODAY, HOWEVER, CAN BE DOCUMENTED.

AFTER ARRIVING AT CHACO CANYON ON THE AFTERNOON OF THURSDAY,
SEPTEMBER 7, WE DISCOVERED A FAVORABLE CAMPSITE IN A SMALL BOX
CANYON CONNECTING WITH GALLO CAMPGROUND. AFTER WAITING OUT A
BRIEF THUNDERSHOWER, SET UP OUR “FOUR-DAY CAMP”. FOUR-DAY CAMP
RESEMBLES THE SAFARI CAMPS ONE USED TO SEE IN OLD MOVIES, WITH EVERY
LUXURY KNOWN TO MAN.

THERE WERE MANY ASPECTS OF CHACO WHICH FASCINATED ME, BUT ONE OF
THE MOST IMPRESSIVE WAS THE SILENCE. THERE IS LITTLE NOISE IN CHACO.
THE ONLY BIRDCALLS I NOTICED WERE RAVENS, AND EVEN THEY SEEMED TO BE
HUSHED MOST OF THE TIME.

I KNOW THAT CHACO WAS, AND STILL IS, CONSIDERED A VERY SACRED PLACE.
COULD IT BE THAT EVEN THE FAUNA USE THEIR TIME IN CHACO TO BE QUIET,
AND LISTEN TO GOD?

AFTER CHACO

5/09/09

Some may recall that I've sometimes mentioned my awe at the number of people who must have lived in the Southwest in ancient times.

I have later come to realize that it's not so much that there were so many people, it's just that stone buildings last much longer than people. The people that built all those permanent structures in the southwest would stay in one place for a time, from a few hundred to nearly a thousand years. Then, for whatever reason, they'd move on to build permanent structures elsewhere. Whether or not they forgot the old places, the old places would remain, ever so gradually sinking into the land, until at some distant time, they might be discovered and "restored".

I often think, as I drive around out little town, how many structures are being built, compared to how many we once had. Our population has increased, of course, but in no way proportionate to the amount of permanent structures being spread upon the land.

We've managed to, in some ways, take control of our environment (often at the expense of the enviroment), and the need to "move on" has faded away. We now stay in one place, and build, and build, much in the same way as the ancestors, but instead of starting over in a fresh new place, we cling to our fouled nest.

I sometimes wonder if at some distant future time, there will be archaeologists who delve into our ruins and speculate on the sort of life we must have led. Will their speculations concerning our legacy be as noble as those given the people of Chaco? I really don't see how they could possibly be.

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At last, a topic worthy of the name, "Meander"!

2009-05-07T08:07:00.013-05:00

I've been trying to work this out in my head for some time now, and there's no way to "work it out". Therefore, this will be an exercise in stream of consciousness diatribe.

Once upon a time, for a brief period, a prominent Austin radio station had Rollye James, a talk show host with whom I very rarely (Actually, virtually NEVER) agreed, but she had a good show, and I listened to her regularly.

On a fine day in 1996, one of her callers said something like (even to a 73 year-old, 13 years is a long time to remember an exact quote) "what this country needs is a good assassination", and Rollye responded with, "YEAH!, but wait!.......... You'd have to shoot Gore, then maybe Hillary........". (She DID use the word "shoot", which might have given the Feds even more ammunition against her).

DAMN! There were laws on the books which were enhanced in LBJ's time, but had been around even longer, about "threatening The President". The next day, Rollye disappeared from the air for several days, and was eventually fired from the station. It was determined by the station and also by the FBI, that Rollye had threatened the president with her comments, said in jest. Googling Rollye will eventually lead you to know that Rollye later sued Lady Bird's radio station for breaking her contract, and won, but she was no longer in Austin, and I consider that a great loss.

Her eventual replacement was the only person I've ever written a radio station about, saying, "please don't hire this person". Apparently, they didn't listen to me, and hired him anyway. We've been stuck with him ever since.

A couple of weeks ago (or maybe a little longer), he responded to a caller's comment that, "the distinction between capitalism and socialism is not 'black and white' (or words to that effect, remember, that even to a 73 year-old, two or three weeks is a long time to remember an exact quote).

The talk show host seemed to go ballistic! "Yes it is!".....then he started comparing the prosperity in this country to that in Cuba.

I can remember my mother once saying, "Capitalism is the kind of government I grew up with, and it's the one I think is best!" (again, 'or words to that effect')

I'm not a socialist, and, I'm not a capitalist, either. I always wanted to be (a capitalist), but, unfortunately it takes money. I'm a citizen of the United States of America!

But how has capitalism become a symbol of our form of government. Did the founders write it into The Constitution (as some would imply?) Is not capitalism an economic issue, and not a Constitutional issue?

From all I've been able to gather from my long years of being alive, "civilization" had its beginnings when it was discovered that a man, even with the help of his wife and kids, could not easily kill a mammoth or a bison for dinner. It was much better when a group of strong men could get together and plot a strategy.

Civilization is cooperation, extended to whatever level it may reach. Simply sharing the prosperity can easily be called socialism, or it can be called civilization, your choice.

Capitalism is, (in the system of currency which has risen from a need to make the prosperity portable), a means to grow the prosperity, but it IS NOT the prosperity itself, nor is it the CAUSE of the prosperity. Prosperity must always depend on goods, services, and PEOPLE, not simple profit, shouldn't it?

For some years, now, one of our political parties has promoted the concept that lower taxes will free more money for investment, which will increase our prosperity. Oliver Wendall Holmes said that "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization", and I believe he was right. There must be a balance. A government must be able to hold the civilization together, not simply to "attract capital", as our former president believed.

I was surprised to read a couple of weeks ago on Facebook that Julie (MY JULIE!) had something to say about the Runaway Wall Street that led to our current recessed situation. I think she hit the nail on the head!

Is the difference between capitalism and socialism cut and dried? I don't have the answer, but I'm going to think about it. Maybe it's simply semantics, and our different interpretations of it. I guess it's just more "human nature".

..

I really can't answer that, Rodney.....

2009-05-04T12:27:00.013-05:00

Can we all get along?

Today, as I was headed out on my bicycle, my neighbor called out, "Have a nice ride". What's wrong with that? And why did it make me bristle? She was just wishing me well.

Am I an old coot, like my wife, whose family tradition demands that she always have something to bitch about? I remember feeling the same way when another neighbor, living in the same house at a different time from the current one, said "Getting some 'essersise'?" I don't 'take rides', or 'get exercise'!!!

Perhaps I once did. For about a year after I became a retired person, and before the River Trail, I had a ten-mile course worked out that I rode every day. After the opening of The Trail, however, I began using it for running errands, and after I became a Flickr, I began using the bike and the trail for photography trips, sometimes with a specific goal, sometimes to seek a specific goal. The Trail provides a safe way to get to town, as well as to the pharmacy, the grocery store, and points beyond.

I think I'll shoot for a trip to the barber shop downtown tomorrow.

Today, I was going to the pharmacy, as I'd done many times before. I wasn't "taking a ride". When I arrived back at home, I told myself, "I've been somewhere, and I've accomplished something".

I can remember long ago, getting extremely hostile to hear the great, wide mayor of Austin (back when she was a Democrat) insist on saying "energy", when she meant "electricity produced by the City of Austin". I even faulted our poor old puppet president of the early '80s when he'd refer to the United States of America as "America". How innocuous can it be to call our country "America" as if it were THE America? But it offends me, and always has.

I suppose it all boils down to that very perceptive Rufism, "if you don't think like me, then you're the anti-me". We all expect everyone to think along the same lines we do, or their thinking is all wrong. "That's human nature", as Uncle Jim would say. "Everyone should think the way I think". That goes for religion, politics, friendship, ad infinitum.

Why can't we get over it, and "get along"?

..

5-2-09 Cuphea Purpurea Has Survived The First Night

2009-05-02T16:26:00.005-05:00

5-2-09 Cuphea Pupurea Has Survived The First Night
Originally uploaded by Willie C

I have not seen data on the cuphea purpurea, but the cuphea llavea, which looks and perhaps would taste somewhat similar, says, "seldom damaged", as compared to "deer candy" for some plants. It's possible that the deer would be disturbed by the little bat faces on the llavea, and not be bothered by this one, but I'm taking my chances anyway.

My baby daughter gave me this for my birthday, and I set it in place last evening. Some may notice that it's among the dagger yucca, the silverado sage, and the salvia gregii. It should make a nice display there, if it manages to survive.

The times they are a'changing?????

2009-04-30T10:11:00.008-05:00

Yesterday was my birthday. Am I an old guy yet?

On my first day of being seventy-two, I was in Chisos Basin, and took a six-mile photography hike before lunch.

Yesterday, on my first day of being seventy-three, I didn't do much of anything. My wife took me to lunch, and my daughter served me coffee and cheesecake while we watched her small daughter paint herself and all she could reach with red strawberry sauce. My most strenuous activity yesterday was two sets of Yang Taiji in San Gabriel Park!

I have lamented before about the passing of the mourning dove. Gradually, the white-wings have taken over, and it's rare indeed to hear the voice of the mourning dove in our land. I sincerely hope that they have traveled north, and will continue to serenade others, until the raucous whitewings have chased them even further.

I joked, mostly to myself, that for a while, several years ago, the mourning doves would seem to sing out abundantly in the "mornings". Then, later in the day, the carpetbaggers from the south, the whitewings, would take up their noisemaking. I have noticed that they are rarely heard together.

This morning, just about dawn, there was a mourning dove in the neighborhood. My ears perked up, and I was thrilled by the sound for quite a while. I mumbled something that I'm sure my wife ignored completely, "The voice of the mourning dove is heard in the land." Thinking my quip was cute, witty, and original, I felt I must Google it. Lo and behold, I'm not so damn smart after all.

It might appear that those who speak of "jots and tittles", should read more. Certainly more than the King James.

The voice of the mourning dove was gone more or less immediately after I heard the first whitewing of the day.

..

How can we know, Rufus?

2009-04-28T17:05:00.024-05:00

HMMM...Js it worse for a Jew or Muslim to contract the swine flu?

..........Rufus Leroy Tanksley Jr.

One Facebook Friend responded with ????? I don't get it!!!! Well, I think I do, but cannot answer. All I could think of as a response was, "Probably, but I don't think the swine flu cares".

I've mentioned this before. In the same book of The Holy Scripture that gives us the "abominations", eating swine, as well as fish without scales, is forbidden, as well as (I think, although if you read it, you might get a different opinion) sexual acts between men. There are many "Thou shalt nots" in that part of The Bible, but that's the OLD Bible. I have heard some Christians say that the Old Testament doesn't count.

I think they were of a rather off-beat denomination, however. Many Christians put more faith in the Old Testament than in the New, but most at least acknowledge the Old!

It's a crazy world we live in, and it gets even crazier when our religion gets involved. I'd be willing to say that the majority of conflicts between human beings are centered around disagreements about religion.

I'm an eater of pork. Will I go to Hell for it, or do I get a dispensation because of Jesus? I'm not sure that was clearly explained to me in Sunday School.

Some of the people who also eat pork will shout it from the rooftops, "GOD HATES GAYS"!!! Is that actually what The Bible says, or is it just the way it's viewed by those who accept it as so? Again I don't know.

The Bible I spent the most time with in my formative years was the old King James (you know, the one that the apostles used... ;^}). Later, my church used more modern translations, but let us not forget, that they're ALL translations, which puts the frailty of man into the picture. The Holy Bible is an editing job!

In the flowery King James English translation, Leviticus 20:22: Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out.

So, we know that Leviticus spends many chapters on the preparation of bullocks for sacrifice, and uncovering nakedness of all kinds of people, and ways in which a righteous person is to prepare and eat his food, and also mentions that "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them".

It doesn't say exactly who should do the "putting" (simply that they shall surely be put), but elsewhere we find that, "Deut:32:35: To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste." If the Lord wants to inflict punishment, it will happen without the intervention of "righteous" people. The Bible tells me so.

Does anyone know how it's possible to lie with mankind as with a woman? Maybe the standards for "doing it" were different back in those days.

I guess I must now refer back to that part about "Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes", and say, "Doesn't this mean that if you cherry-pick the things you decide are abominations, and ignore the others, isn't God going to order the Promised Land to spue you out?"

I do not intend in any way to belittle or rebuke anyones pathway to God, but it seems that everyone thinks they have the answer, yet I'm not sure that any of us do! Also, in the old King James, the scholars of their time took the Hebrew combination of letters, YHVH, which, even in the Hebrew was intended to be unpronounceable, and inserted a few vowels to make it Jehovah, which IS pronounceable.

Now, my favorite Jehovah's Witness, with whom I had a couple of fascinating discussions before she quit coming around, told me that if I did not call THE LORD by his correct name, Jehovah, there was no point in speaking to him at all. So, if God felt his name should be unpronounceable, and I insist on calling him Jehovah, am I not committing one of those abominations? I don't think there's any rule that really says so, but I'll always wonder about it.

After quite a number of years, I've come to question some of the different people's interpretations of the infallible and unchangeable Bible, and wonder if perhaps it's better to let each interpret it, with the concurrence and guidance of their clergyman (or physician or attorney), and not try to make everyone see it my way, or to force the state to make laws which agree with my interpretation.

Heck, I'm still having trouble with the Holy Trinity. God in three persons, blessed Trinity, and each and every one of them is a male figure! I'm certainly not worthy to influence legislation. I'm not even sure why the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY is sometimes referred to as "The man upstairs".

An Old Guy's Random Remembering #23

2009-04-26T06:12:00.010-05:00

SPIRITUAL REMODEL?
2/24/06

Yesterday, for the first time since last Thursday, the weather seemed suitable for painting my freshly stuccoed front wall. I started with the eaves of the house.

Never having enjoyed painting things above my head, I was somewhat surprised to find myself sub-vocally singing “up above my head, I hear singing in the air..........there must be a God somewhere!” Interesting....., why was I singing this uplifting old song from my childhood instead of thinking about the prehistoric people of the Lower Pecos, my usual topic while working on the front wall?

I suppose the connection is that almost the only archeological record of these very primitive people of the Lower Pecos is their art. They left no permanent structures. A large percentage of the rock paintings left by these people is of a spiritual nature. I’m willing to imagine that the search for God is universal in mankind, and has been a part of our lives virtually from the beginning.

When I was a freshman in college, I became acquainted with an upper- classman who professed to be agnostic. I know of none in my circle of friends who weren’t appalled by his lack of faith.

For the last few days, it has been prominently in the news that groups of people are using “the wrath of God” to disrupt the funerals of gay military people. Invoking The Bible to condemn those soldiers, their parents, and even the United States (for tolerating homosexuality) seems to be their “righteous” mission. Have these people studied their bible enough to notice that much more space in the sacred text is dedicated to the preparation of sacrifices and dietary requirements than to “man lying with mankind”? What do they do about those other admonitions from The Bible? For the sake of their credibility, shouldn’t they be equally vocal about all the rules? Wouldn’t all the rules be necessary for salvation?

When any person seeks God, I’ve come to the conclusion that he seeks a god who will agree with him. In other words, it is clear to me that “religious” people tend to create their own god. Isn’t that detrimental to the security of their souls?

I’m sure I heard a song once which contained the words “God only knows what God knows”. It appears that when people of faith seek righteousness, they inevitably define God in their own terms, picking and choosing God’s will to match their own. Could it be that the agnostics are closer to God than anyone?

PS..... could it be that my work on the front wall has turned into a religious experience?

My Aunt Frankie

2009-04-24T10:54:00.013-05:00

My aunt Frankie had grown up in Nacogdoches. She moved to Houston with her mom and dad when she was a young adult, but always seemed to hold onto the language of East Texas. She would talk freely about the "Newninted States", "newsing" a hammer to drive a nail, and mowing the "fron chard".

She was fifteen when I was born, so we were almost "kids" at the same time.

Early in my life, I learned that Aunt Frankie knew how to make a bird trap, and that someday she'd teach me how.

The big day came when I was nine or ten, and went up to Houston to visit Granny and Frankie for a couple of weeks. Aunt Frankie spent her working life at a box factory which was near where she and Granny were living at that time, and had brought home some wooden strips about 3/4" square in cross section. We used a hand saw to cut them to the desired lengths.

We nailed the strips together in a fashion similar to the "pens" we little kids used to make while playing in Granny's woodpile back in Nacogdoches. We tapered the sides toward each other, so that the result was a truncated pyramid. Then we closed the top with some strips nailed across.

Next, she took one of the sticks and cut a very small notch in it with a pocket knife. Next, came a thin flat board, which she leaned against the notched stick, which was placed almost vertically, but slightly off plumb, to prop the pyramid up. Therefore, one side of the box rested on the ground, and the other cleared the ground by about 4".

Then Aunt Frankie said, "That's it. You put your feed on here, pointing to the inclined board, and when the bird......" At that point I became extremely incredulous. What bird was going to come into that box if my feet were on that board? I quickly realized that she'd said "feed" in her own way. We set the trap properly, but never caught a bird. If a bird had approached, walked under the box, and began to peck on the feed, it would have knocked the flat board out of the notch, and the stick would have fallen, dropping the box over the bird.

I guess I'd probably have not the slightest idea what to do with it if we had caught a bird, but the experience of making the trap was a memorable time with my Aunt Frankie.

Sentimental addendum Feb. 1, 2012:

It must have been early in November of 2001 when my sister informed me that Sunday was All Saints' Day at Aunt Frankie's church in Refugio, and they were dedicating the service to Aunt Frankie, who had left us on May 21. We felt a need to attend. Although we had been to her funeral months before, Aunt Frankie deserves more. I said to my sister, "You must be nuts! All Saints Day was Thursday!", but then I learned for the first time that in the Methodist Church, the church I attended from age five until my first daughter was born, it is customarily celebrated on the first Sunday in November. I must have taken my early religious training seriously, however inattentively.

On that Sunday morning, while waiting for my wife to get ready, I happened to hear on the radio, a rendition of Eddie Arnold singing "Aloha Oe" (beautifully, of course). We made the two-and-a-half hour drive to Refugio without incident, and arrived with plenty of time before the service.

I think that Aunt Frankie's favorite hymn, "How Great Thou Art", must have been sung at least three times during that hour, and each time, my subconscious said...., "Heeeyyy" ...and, often in the intervening years, I'll be going through a song in my head:

Then sings my soul,

My Saviour God, to Thee,

How great Thou art!

How great Thou art!....

Aloha oe, aloha oe....,

Until we meeet again.

Rufus continued.......(not really)

2009-04-21T08:39:00.006-05:00

I just put your name up there, Rufus, so that you might think you ought to read it.

I'm only going to tell the story of a single incident, which relates to the days of segregation and "deep, philosophical discussions about it".

When I was about sixteen, I ran across one of my old colleagues from the caddy pool. We were both working in town at that time, and only went out to caddy sometimes when we didn't have anything else to do. I can't remember his real name, if ever I knew it, and I just barely remember what he looked like. We simply called him "Sonny", but I really don't think it was his given name.

At that time, I'd become sort of interested in racial relations and education, so I was asking Sonny about his school. It became obvious to me that they were not given exactly "equal" educational opportunities.

One of the things Sonny said as we were talking was "Did you ever meet Hilliard?" My answer was, "Maybe so, when I was in the fourth grade, the principal of the 'colored school' was introduced to my class". Sonny said, "A large man?" I said, "Yeah, that must have been him".

I think that Sonny and I both were somewhat disillusioned, because yesterday, I Googled Hilliard High School, Bay City Texas, and found the obituary of Asa G. Hilliard III. Only a little is on the WWW about his father Asa G. Hilliard II, for whom Hilliard High School was named, but I could find no connection to Bay City. I'm not sure that there was time in the life of Asa III to have lived in Bay City. Check it out. If Hilliard III was only three years older than me, then, if the Hilliards had lived in Bay City, it would probably have been better known when I was a kid.

The Hilliard family must have been very well educated, from what I read in the obit. And, of course, we see in history many examples of learned blacks throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, leading to the present time.

I think when I was growing up, the blacks were tagged with "shiftless and ignorant", not because they wanted to be that way, but under segregation, their potential was limited. The Hilliards were a good example of the fact that 'colored folks' could be industrious and well educated, but, in those days, "what was the point", in the mind of the average black person? They had to make their living in the "white man's" world, and live in an isolated area among their "own kind".

Things are not perfect, nuthin's perfect, but they're much better now, and I hope they'll continue to get better.

I'm afraid that this is probably another "draft". I will probably return more than once to update this. I very rarely think I've said everything to my satisfaction.

Rufus, Rufus, Rufus, is this a trap?

2009-04-19T09:44:00.026-05:00

There is a young man that I know, who lives far beyond The Great Divide.

He was in town recently for the occasion of his uncle's funeral, so he threw a party, reuniting with a lot of his high school classmates, and my wife and I, who were simply parents of a significant number of his old classmates! One of the things he said at the reunion convinced me that black people are still very conscious of race, and I'm led to believe, justifiably so.

He's back out there between the wide Pacific and the San Andreas now, but we're still in fairly close communication through Facebook.

In response to a rather simple comment I'd made, Rufus decided he'd set me up to give my views on race relations. It's probably one of the toughest assignments I'll ever be given.

In a simple declaration, Rufus, I could pull a Hillel and paraphrase, "'Don't do to anyone what you wouldn't want them to do to you.' That's the Torah, learn it!" In fact, Rufus, I think that race relations can be summed up with a "basic" philosophy that I've recently adopted, "It's in the nature of all humans to think that everything would be darned near perfect (nothin's plumb perfect) if everybody could be just like me". You know I can't, and won't stop there. I really need to bore people to feel fulfilled.

People seem to have an inherent nature to be suspicious of anyone who's not "just like them". It is a nature that should be overcome, if one is to be a true believer in this country. Our founding fathers expressed it quite well within the basic beliefs of their day, and allowed for amendments as beliefs evolved, that "all men are created equal, and endowed.....etc, etc, etc".

That basic nature, which certainly predates our founding fathers, and probably predates civilization in general, still comes forth, even in the most disciplined.

A few years before the Bill Finley experience aboard ship on the way to Hawaii (where I've said that my views on race began to form), when I was nine or ten, my mother was driving us back home from a Brownie Scout function in the park. Our (rather my sister's), Brownie function had been rained out. The park was about a mile from town. When we reached the highway on the way toward town, Mom suddenly said, "Let's pick up that little boy". My sister and another Brownie, as well as myself said, "Whaaaat???" We kids were somewhat reluctant to stop for the little black hitchhiker, who was about eight or nine years old, but she stopped anyway, and we gave the kid a ride home. He'd been out at the the golf course adjacent to the park to caddy, and had decided that there wouldn't be much golf that day.

I met up with the kid a couple of years later, when I joined the caddy pool, and spent a lot of Saturdays, and a lot of weekdays during the summer, at the golf course.

The young fellow, I never knew by any name but "Bee". He had two older brothers, Alan, who was called "Dogie", and Hezekiah, who was sometimes called "Yopi", and sometimes in fun, "Hezzybull". There was a younger member of the Clay clan, but I can't remember his name, or what he even looked like. We played a lot of contact sports in our spare time at the golf course. It was common to spend the whole day in the caddy pool, and caddy for two or three rounds at the 9-hole course.

The whole point of the Clay story was simply to lead into telling you that, in her later years, as she became confined to her home, my mother, who had first introduced me to association with black people, gradually began to express a fear of black people, and often expressed her fear, with no basis I can possibly imagine.

My experiences in Hawaii, where for a little while, I was a "minority", perhaps gave me a small amount of insight into sympathy for the "concerns" of minorities. The people in Hawaii represent the "melting pot" that we used to consider the United States back when I was in school, but "white" people were definitely in the minority. For the most part, everyone gets along, although only this morning, one of my former Hawaiian classmates, in an email, mentioned "homeless" and "druggies" in a derogatory way.

I thought I was joking when I used to say that "When I ws growing up, the Hispanics didn't have their own race". I found out a year or so ago, when I decided to look it up, that, for purposes of the United States Census, they still don't. Their "race", for whatever reason, is of their own choosing.

Let's consider this massive, rambling dissertation as a "draft". I'm often coming back and adding or subtracting, trying to "get it right", which comes full circle to "nuthin's plumb perfect".

And it also comes full circle to "It's in the nature of all humans to think that everything would be darned near perfect (nothin's plumb perfect) if everybody could be just like me", which summarizes racial prejudice, homophobia, politics, and who knows what else?

I'm really afraid that minorities are destined to get the shaft simply by nature of their being "minority", because they are........(you know,,,"not just like me")

Gretchen's Challenge

2009-04-17T08:13:00.009-05:00

The day before yesterday, I made this Facebook comment:

"I used to believe in the "fair tax", Russ, but I also believed that the Republicans were the noble people best suited to lead our country. I'm pretty sure I was wrong about both."

The next comment after mine was from Gretchen, "William, from what I know of the Fair Tax it seems like a pretty good idea. But you seem really informed and I'd love to know your thoughts on it."

Someone has mistaken me for a well-informed person! I don't know exactly how to respond to that. That I'm an opinionated person is without question, but whether or not my opinions are based on sound reasoning has yet to be determined.

When my wife, first daughter and I moved to Santa Fe, NM in 1960, we encountered the "sales tax". But was it a sales tax? Out of the clear blue sky, one day, my architect employers were required to pay tax on services that we rendered on a job from The University of New Mexico. I was too detached at the time to even wonder what that was all about, but it was explained to my boss that it wasn't really a sales tax, it was a tax on business, and that the businesses were allowed to collect that amount from their customers (if they wanted to). Wow! Nobody had ever thought about that before. Today, in retrospect, I think that it may have been my first exposure to the Bush philosophy of making up the rules to suit the situation. All I can say for sure is that the University, a state entity, was not required to pay the tax money to the architects, but the architects were required to pay it to the state. On more than one occasion, we'd submit a statement (to ordinary citizens), to have the added tax rejected, with the simple comment "No sales tax on services".

But I digress much more than I should! That has little to do with the question at hand, it's just something I wanted to get off my chest.

One of my neighbors when we lived on Garcia Street, who had recently moved from New Jersey, would often say, "The sales tax is the most unfair tax ever conceived". At the time, I felt that the damyankee was out of his mind. How could it be "unfair" if everybody got to pay equally? Of course at that time, there was an effort during the Kennedy administration to abolish the poll tax, and, among my colleagues at work, I strongly defended the idea of Texas' poll tax, so my thoughts are not always clear and logical.

So, that was in 1961. In approximately 1990, I was still defending the idea of the "value added" tax. I managed to bring my boss around to my way of thinking, because it also seemed to make sense to her.

I think that, back in the '80s, they were talking about a "value added" federal tax of about 10%. It was not long before they had increased their fantasy to about 18%. It would probably be higher by now, and don't forget that there are people in this country who make their living interpreting the vagaries of the complicated tax code for people who would prefer not to be burdened with the hassle. No matter what the proponents say, do you honestly think that a "simple" tax code based on a "value added" tax would stay simple for very long?

When they started referring to "earned" income on the tax forms, I did not relish that concept, either. If a person invests his money to earn additional income rather than spending it on a new TV, isn't that also "earning"?

However, as I became an old codger, I began to think that maybe a person who works for a living should get some breaks.

In 1963, the "SalesTax" portion of New Mexico's system was 4%. Now, it's 5%, but many items have been exempted since 2005. Texas didn't have a sales tax then, but they got one soon after I moved back. I think they started at about 3%, but look where they are now! You think of this as a painless tax that you don't have to pay, but it applies to many, many, things, like clothing, automobiles, auto parts, your precious CDs and video games,.............;^} that you DO have to buy.

People who get the most income, "earned" or "unearned", are not required to spend the majority of their income on necessities.

Remember when our former president said (approximately), "It's important to have a strong economy. A strong economy attracts capital". To my convoluted way of thinking, "attracting capital" had a lot to do with the state of our current economy, which is (temporarily) not "strong".

Gretchen, I think I answered your question in a single sentence a while back, but the reason I chose "Meander" for a name is that I can never say anything simply, and I do not easily focus my thoughts on a single task.

BUT, rather than ramble on, I'm going to eventually finish with the second part of the question.

Until 1980, I had a great deal of faith in the Republican Party. They seemed to be the party that had clear visions, and competent people who were well suited to lead.

Why they decided that was not enough, I do not know. But suddenly the Republicans became the rowdy Democrats, who had never appealed to me before. They began to appeal to the baser emotions, and began to emphasize what should have been non-issues.

When I voted against John F. Kennedy in 1960, he was promising to get the tax cut. At that time, the highest Federal income tax bracket was 90%. Now it's 34% (I think), and the exemptions are so high that most people are just as well off not trying to itemize their deductions. Yet it's still a central focus of the Republican Party that "Taxes are too high". Of course they are, but is it Washington's taxes that are too high, or is it Austin's, and in my case, Williamson County's? Those State and Local taxes, which make up at somewhere near half of the taxes that people are so incensed about, would not be affected at all by a change in the Federal tax.

Enough, enough, whether or not I've made any kind of point. I told you, Gretchen, that it wouldn't fit in a Facebook comment, and that's for sure. I regret having been so wordy, but I think I may have revealed some secrets here about myself that I was not yet aware of, so it's been a learning experience. Good luck with trying to make some sense of it.

A Trashy Tale

2009-04-15T22:25:00.027-05:00

The instructions from our disposal company were clear and simple. "Place the bin in the street, with the wheels against the curb. After pickup, the collectors will place the bin in the street, next to the curb, at right angles to its original position".

My wife insisted that she didn't want the bin in the street, putting an obstruction in the narrow street. So, I am guilty of violating the rule, which is intended to simplify the process of collecting the contents of the disposal bins.

HOWEVER, I feel that my violation in not exactly the worst. I have talked to the collectors,and they do not seem to feel that I'm causing them actual grief.

As I ride along the street on trash day on the way to the trail, however, I'm somewhat impressed by the varying interpretations of the rule. or is it simply the standard human instinct to think that, "I know how it ought to be done, and I have a right to do it my way".

My neighbor across the street is a little bit erratic, but he usually places his bin precisely as instructed.

My bin is at the top of the curb, with lifting edge facing the Street. The trucks have a hoist which hooks the horizontal bar and lifts the bin onto the dumping ramp of the truck, but the collector must roll it to the lift. I imagine that most modern waste disposal trucks are like this now. The bins are supposed to hold a maximum 200 lb, but I'll bet that occasionally, they may contain more, depending on contents. That makes them somewhat heavy for a single person to handle unless he has the benefit of the wheels.

This one I'm inclined to give a pass, even though it's definitely placed incorrectly. The collector has to pull the bin off the end of the driveway and turn it in order to fit it onto the lift. This is a fairly easy process, though, nothing like man-handling a 200 lb. bin off the curb, rather than simply rolling it over the curb into the street.

This one is placed diametrically wrong! How the collector must have to struggle to get the bin off the curb! Once the wheels clear the curb as it's being pulled, the weight of the bin drags directly across the ground. I'll bet that he'll actually push it forward, and around into the driveway, where he'll push it "head first" off the end of the driveway and then to the truck. Quite a trip.

This arrangement is so bad that the camera seems to have deliberately hidden it from view. There are actually two bins in this arrangement, one provided by the collection company, and the other by the homeowner. They are placed sideways to the street as if they'd already been dumped, but we can easily see that they've been placed here for pickup. The bins are also placed so that the handles by which the collector is supposed to push the bin to the lift are facing each other in close proximity, making it impossible to easily wheel the bin into position.

I'm sort of trying to connect these images into some other significant events that are taking place here on this trash, as well as tax, day. The Texas legislature is close to passing a statewide anti-smoking ban. I'm not sure I actually believe that smoking is a God given right, but I'm not exactly in favor of the legislation either. Of course those who have become addicted to the smoking habit are absolutely certain that their rights are being violated, but I'm not really sure they are. Let us remember "Do you have a 'right' to yell "fire" in a crowded theater?" Our rights should not allow us to endanger the health and safety of others. That's one of the things that the gu'ment should be taking seriously.....protecting us from each other.

Then there's this thing down in Austin, and all over the country, I suppose, called the "Tea Party", sanctioned by the 'conservatives', and Rush Limbaugh. I may be one of the few people, but I'd like to hope that there are quite a few of us, that believe "voodoo economics" has been a total failure. I really think that the Federal Government is not interfering with citizens rights by collecting taxes. I do think that the Congress is acting irresponsibly in allocating the tax money that's been collected. How did Congress get their authority? We voted for them.

4-11-09 Spring In The Spring

2009-04-11T13:35:00.008-05:00

4-11-09 Spring In The Spring
Originally uploaded by Willie C

Today, I committed myself. I am now committed to get back on my daily bike ride schedule. The financial distaster, as well as simple wintertime lethargy, have kept me in my chair while not at my computer scrounging away at a few miscellaneous Belco jobs.

It's time for the old guy to get back to looking at his active participation in life, so, I'm starting with the trail.

I noticed today that the trailside spring project looks almost done, now. Over the winter, a young fellow has been singlehandedly making these "improvememts" to the little spring, and now it looks as if it's about ready for people to enjoy. As the summer progresses, and the elephant ears grow in the outflow stream, it should take on a very soothing appearence.

I was thinking as I rode today, that my oldest daughter introduced me to Facebook not long ago, and since joining that happy group, I've become "friends" with a large number of my four girls' schoolmates, as well as a few of my own. Since starting to communicate with my old high school crowd, I've began to reminisce bigtime. I've started cataloging some of my teenage adventures in Hawaii at Willie C's Honolulu, and waxing very nostalgic on Facebook with my friend Lew, whom I'd only seen twice since 1954. I suppose that nostalgia is a favorite pastime for old people, and there's no doubt that I'm an old person.

An Old Guy's Rambling Rememberings #22

2009-04-08T15:27:00.003-05:00

U.S. GAS

4/16/99

In 1944, Mama, my sister and I were preparing to make the long trip to San Francisco to stay with my dad before he shipped to the South Pacific. In those days the government had decreed that everybody should be a patriot, and almost everything that was essential was rationed, in order that we should share the burden of war.

In order to make the trip, we had to have an extra allotment of gas coupons. Mr. Naiser, the service station owner, in his strong German accent, spent a great deal of time talking to the people in charge, trying to explain that it was an ”emerGENCY”. The people on the other end of the line were more or less insistent that Emma come in person. “Emma Gency?” send her on over and we’ll talk to her about it.

About 13 years later at the same station (Mr. Naiser was no longer around), I stopped in for gas in my own car, and the attendant asked if he could check under the hood. “I just changed the oil, it’s ok, but could you check the water?” He actually said, ”well, I just wanted to see if I could sell you some oil”. I insisted that he check the water anyway, but he grumbled about it.

About 20 more years passed, and self service stations were in vogue. I resisted them for a long time, because I thought that there were people whose skills were limited to pumping gas, and not much else. Without me, they would have no jobs.

One day I stopped at a station near my mother’s house in Austin, and stopped in the “Full Service” lane. The attendant stuck the hose into the car, set the trigger, and stood leaning against the car until the pump stopped. From that day on, I have pumped my own gas. "Service”, like “chivalry”, is dead.

An Old Guy's Random Rememberings #21

2009-04-08T13:25:00.004-05:00

MEAT SAWS AND TEENAGE BOYS

2/7/99

Yesterday Frank was giving me some Harbor Freight sale catalogs. I had mentioned that my wife gets several catalogs in the mail each day, but they only have clothing and furniture, nothing interesting like power saws and routers, and Frank, being the caring guy that he is, wanted me to have some catalogues too.

Frank mentioned that he had recently bought a meat saw from Harbor Freight at a very reasonable price. I told him that bought my meat saw in the late seventies when the regular price was about the same as what he had paid.

This morning it occurred to me that I had bought my saw at Davis Hardware in North Austin, back when it was located in a building which is now a huge Blockbuster store. I don’t think that Davis Hardware exists any more.

In the late ‘40s my cousin Charlie from Dallas and I would spend the summers thus:

A couple of weeks in Dallas at Charlie’s house, a couple of weeks in Bay City at my house, and a week or so in Austin at Aunt Pearl’s house.

Whenever we were in Austin, each morning we would take the bus downtown and “hang”. At that time, Davis Hardware and Academy Surplus were next door to each other on Congress Avenue. Talk about heaven!! We would spend a couple of hours in each, then would make our way up to The Capitol and hang out there for a while, then to the university area, stopping and checking out every motorcycle shop we could find along the way. Finally, as suppertime approached, we’d make it back to Aunt Pearl’s house, which was a block from Robert Mueller Airport.

Kids are rarely allowed to roam free now as in those days. I think that’s too bad,

My Rush to Judgement?......

2009-04-04T22:49:00.005-05:00

I was out yesterday (Friday) in the early afternoon, and heard a little of Rush Limbaugh's show.

It was "open line Friday", wasn't it? But I didn't hear him take a call. I suppose I heard him for only about half an hour, and we all know that he'd rather listen to himself than take calls, anyway.......but on OPEN LINE FRIDAY????

I'm not sure, but I think that there was one phone call that he mentioned, but for some reason he didn't take it. Maybe the caller got tired of waiting and hung up, or maybe he just found some reason not to work it in. I really don't know.

I can remember more than sixteen years ago, hearing a caller on a local talk show telling the host that "the election will be decided before 8:00, Clinton will win, and Rush Limbaugh will "turn up his toes and dieeee". Didn't happen. If anything, Rush has only gained in his dubious popularity (I'd be less dubious if I heard a few more callers) since that time.

Yesterday, however, It certainly appeared to me that he was "running scared". Do you suppose that, just perhaps, the Obama administration will NOT fail, but Limbaugh will? We can only hope. It's possible, anything's possible.

EPILOGUE......Today, April 7, 2009, I heard Rush for a few minutes. He took a phone call today, but it segued so nicely into another monologue that I thought it may have been a plant. One of his chief topics of soliloquy today was the "drive-by" press's adoration of our current president. For my own part, I felt I must disagree with his attitude. I had come ot think that it would not be long before Fox News, in order to live up to its slogan "Fair and Balanced", would have to begin defending Obama.

Does History Repeat?

2009-04-02T22:16:00.005-05:00

For a long time I have been interested in the American Southwest. It probably goes all the way back to the time I first experienced the scent of rain on the desert in 1944, but I did not get really serious about it until I was adult.

As I became aquainted with the "ancient" ruins, through first-hand observation as well as reading everything I could find on the subject, I was amazed by their quantity throughout the Southwest.

I thought that there must have been a fantastic number of people to have created so many permanent structures. I have come to realize rather recently in my life that these "permanent" edifices were not so permanent after all. They simply last a long time in the mild, dry climate of the area.

The many, many stone buildings, caves, and such structures would be used over a period of time, then, for varying reasons, among them the depletion of resources, or sometimes climate change, the people would move away to build other structures elsewhere, leaving the old buildings to fall into decay, but making a permanent mark on the landscape.

When I first moved to the town where I now live, it was a small town, under 10,000 people. The business area was clustered around the courthouse square, traditional for small county seats. Now the town has more or less tripled in population, but the number of buildings has increased much more than that. I will mention banks, because at first there were only a couple, whereas now they build at least that many every six months or so.

It's not peculiar to my little town, it seems to be happening everywhere. Big box stores seem to follow some sort of mathematically determined grid pattern. There seem to be far more than should be justified under the old standards we grew up with.

Shopping centers and malls are built, and used for a time, then new ones are built, and the shoppers are attracted to the new ones, leaving the old ones to deteriorate. The number of outmoded shopping centers seems to increase yearly.

I'm wondering if someday, some young man will be observing our towns and think that there must have been a fantastic number of people living here, but it looks all run-down and dead now. Where did all the people go?

Why fight it?

2009-03-26T15:14:00.011-05:00

AUSTIN — The fight over how evolution is taught in Texas public schools is heading for a showdown this week.

I've been hearing about this for some time on the news, and today I looked it up, to find the above in an article by Gary Sharrer of the San Antonio Express-News. I do not intend to dwell on the article at length, but just what are they fighting about? link

Are they teaching evolution in schools now? Teaching evolution to me seems about as ludicrous as teaching abstinence. One cannot be taught how to evolve, and one cannot be taught how to abstain. When I went to school, evolution was definitely not taught, yet I feel my grasp of biology is probably as good an any layman's. My oldest daughter, who started school about twenty-eight years later than I, has told me that she didn't think the subject of evolution came up in her science classes either.

Science is based on the scientific method, which involves observation, and as facts are discovered through observation, they're included in the list of details available. Some of these facts are often later found to be inadequate or faulty, and they are discarded (often reluctantly) when their inadequacy is proven. That's what science is all about, isn't it? Dogma is supporting the infallibility of a set of concepts, whether or not they withstand scrutiny. Although some have described science as dogma, I do not believe that to be so, and there's no place for dogma in public schools.

By definition, the scientific method requires observation and scrutiny. It's reasonable to assume that old, hard won theories are hard to let go, even after they've failed the final test of scrutiny. But that's what science is all about! There are humans involved, and you all know that my "theory" is that every human creates his own universe, including all aspects of life. "The world would be a better place if everyone were like me", can be used to summarize humanity.

So where is this going? Nowhere, really. I only meant to comment on a state school board decision it rescind a twenty-year-old requirement that "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theory be taught in public schools. It should be understood that scientific theory has strengths and weaknesses, and it's right there in the study of science, by definition. If science actually becomes dogma, it's dead in the water! There's no advancement in scientific theory if all the answers are already "found".

I was reading only last evening, an article of some archaeological digs in our local area of central Texas which aim to dispute the theory of how long man has been on this continent. And if they actually accomplish their goal of disproving an eighty-year-old theory, there's a good chance that they will themselves be questioned and disproved by other scientists in the future.

A FOOTNOTE:

For some comic relief to all this dull scientific jargon, I'd like to submit this little piece I found which, I think, helps to support my "theory" that "History is a matter of opinion", and any recorded history will include the author's point of view. link

What Are My Thoughts?

2009-03-24T13:28:00.006-05:00

Today, I was asked for my thoughts on losing a loved one. I do not think there could possibly be a concise response to that question.

In 1950, when I father's mother died, I noticed that all the women and children at the funeral were crying, and none of the adult men. Was there a reason for that? My grandmother had been ill for quite a long time (to a fourteen year old, a "long time" can be a matter of months. I am not really sure how long it took the cancer to consume her earthly vessel).

As I grew older, I was still not sure quite how to answer the question of why men don't cry. I suspect, however, it's simply part of our culture that it's not "manly" for grown men to express emotion.

When my grandmother's mother died in 1960, it did not occur to me to notice who cried, and who didn't. My great-grandmother was 100 years old. She had been born before the Civil War, and had seen and done much in her long lifetime.

I think that by 1960, I had pretty much come to grips with death, and the fact that it happens to everone who lives long enough (or even some who haven't).

In early 1961, I attended a parade celebrating the death of a lady of Chinese descent who was the matriarch of the Chun Hoon family, who owned a grocery empire in Hawaii. And I mean celebrating! Apparently, in the traditional Chinese culture of the day, it was customary to rejoice a death. Madame Chun Hoon had fulfilled her terrestrial destiny. I'm sure there were those who grieved, but grief is for the living. It has no effect on the deceased.

Is it selfish of us to grieve for the loss of loved ones? Probably.

If we truly believe that there is life after death, or even if we don't, there's no reason, except for our own selfish purposes, to mourn the loss of the loved one. They've simply moved to another phase. We are left behind, but it's a sure thing that we will follow, someday. We should try to make the best use of the time we have.

It always brings tears to my eyes to observe a small child surprised. A happy, laughing little one who suddenly trips over a crack in the sidewalk and skins a knee, or one who is carried away by an undertow to be found later limp and lifeless, will make me weep audibly.

An Old Guy's Rambling Remembrances #20

2009-03-23T22:25:00.006-05:00

These observations were set down on June 15, 1996, and are obviously somewhat dated, but their reality lives on. Rush no longer takes very many calls, but he still reads many of his own ads. Apparently I was dead wrong, thinking that a talk show depends on phone calls from listeners, but the attitudes expressed on his show have changed neither jot nor tittle.

The President who referred to 'Hate Radio" is no longer president, but he still does much good work in the public arena, which is not likely to be the case for our immediate past president.

LIMBILIA

WHY STRIP, RUSH?
Whether you believe that God created man in his present form on the fifth day, or through millions of years (of time as measured by puny man), have you ever wondered why that loving, omnipotent God would give to man a nose which would require a spring-loaded bandaid in order to "breath right"?

BECAUSE RUSH TOLD ME TO,
Tomorrow I will check the grocery shelves for Laredo & Leftie's Salsa. Do you suppose I'll find that it's made in New York City?

AS THE PILOT OF OUR DESTINY,
Rush claims he "single-handedly" got for his followers the congress
they deserved. If they also get the president they deserve, what can
be done about those of us who do not deserve this kind of treatment?

I HAVE NOTICED
Rush always has to tell his listeners when he is joking but they also have to tell him when they are joking. Sophisticated humor is wasted on dittoheads, they just don't seem to get it.

FOR SOME TIME, NOW,
Rush has opened his program with praise for his new computer, which is "state of the art" (this week). Since computers have become a public necessity, the industry has grown by leaps and bounds, and electronic products have become very reasonable in price. Electric automobiles, however, will never be of any use to the public, and their excessive price can never be justified, according to Mr. Limbaugh. If you didn't hear it, you certainly should have heard the dressing down that he gave the poor woman who has an electric car, and finds it to be very practical and desireable. There's nothing to be gained by disagreeing with Rush.

OFTEN WHEN RUSH ANSWERS HIS PHONE
He hears "Gosh Rush, thank you for taking my call. I've been waiting an hour and a half to talk to you. It's quite an honor to be able to talk to you." Rush usually answers with a modest "my pleasure" (I have never heard him say "you idiot, if you didn't call, I wouldn't have a job"). The caller will often go on to say that "the reason that all these liberal wackos get voted into office is that those of us who are hardworking citizens don't have time to go to the polls, we're too busy. The only ones who find the time to vote are the good for nothing deadbeats who live off the government". That's when I crack up, and Rush expresses gentle agreement with the caller, and goes on to his next carefully screened call. Anyone who calls Limbaugh, but is too busy to vote, leads a poorly organized life.

HAVE YOU NOTICED
That the same dittoheads who bemoan the dumbing down of America, condemn the public school systems, and cry about our kids' lack of knowledge and their increasing stupidity, claim that increasing numbers of young people are attracted to Rush, Newtie, and the "conservative" views of the Republicans?

WHAT DO DITTOHEADS THINK
When Rush raves on and on about the FBI's finding a copy of Algore's
book in The Unibomber's cabin, but was loudly insisting after the
Oklahoma Federal Building bombing that there is no way that people
could be inspired to violence by reading or listening to Rush Limbaugh
(or as pronounced by The President, hate radio)?

An Old Guy's Rambling Remembrances #19

2009-03-20T08:49:00.005-05:00

THERE’S NO TOOL LIKE AN OLD TOOL
1/21/02

While working on the porch Saturday, my mind wandered to the days when the "old" porch was ten feet deep and seven and a half feet wide, my “cave”, where I did many a project, etc, including veging out on the porch swing, protected from the weather.

I had driven several nails into the cedar siding, and on them hung assorted tools, like limb saws,
lopping shears, etc, so that they would be handy for use whenever the mood for yard work struck
me.

That memory led me to Stephanie and Scott. Scott was a nuclear physicist, who did interesting
stuff with radioactivity. Stephanie was a lovely girl, a great conversationalist and occasional lunch date on days I’d visit her Jollyville restaurant when she wasn’t swamped with customers.

The first time Scott and Stephanie and their two boys came to our house for a visit, Scott was
impressed by the idea of the tools hanging on the wall.

We had talked from time to time about my designing a house for them, but nothing had ever come of it. Once, when things were slow at the office, I called Scott and asked why we didn’t go ahead and get started on the project.

He announced that they had bought a house, and he named the builder and the location. Lo and
behold, without being aware of it, they’d picked a house that I had designed as a spec house.
Occasionally, friendships have been lost and divorce proceedings have been started over the design of custom houses, so I was really somewhat relieved to have missed out on the custom work.

When My wife and I went to their new house for dinner, I noticed that Scott had put some wooden pegs in the wall of the porch, and hanging on them was an assortment of interesting antique tools, the likes of which one would never risk using for yard work.

Apparently the poor guy had missed the point completely.

What's The Matter With "Kids" Today?

2009-03-17T08:30:00.018-05:00

Many of you might not believe this, but I was once a young man. When I was about 19, still two years away from legally drinking alcohol, I worked for a summer in an ice plant which sold beer.

It was about that time that Southern Select, one of Howard Hughes' companies, introduced a beer called "Superlight". It was low calorie specifically designed to be appealing to women. You may find this hard to believe, but women were not often seen drinking beer back in those days. My dad's Aunt Berta impressed the hell out of me at Grandma Moore's 92nd birthday party, when she was drinking beer right along with the men! I've spent my life thinking of Aunt Berta as an avant-garde, adventure-loving chick, without ever knowing any of the real facts of her life.

Many jokes were made about "women's beer" when Southern Select Superlight began to be advertised. If Jay Leno had been around then, I'm sure he would have had much to say about it.

Today, it seems that the flavorless low calorie beer is the beer of choice for most young people. Whenever I visit my children's homes (they all live nearby now), I'm offered "light" beer. They hardly ever seem to ever have the other kind.

Last evening, we gave a family dinner party in honor of the second birthday of our youngest granddaughter, in combination with a "rehearsal dinner" for her parents' wedding. It was not to be a drinking party, but as part of the liquid refreshments, my wife had brought home two six-packs of Lone Star. One was the red-labeled "real" beer, and the other was the blue-labeled "lo-cal".

I had two of the red-label, and did not notice what anyone else was drinking. It seems that most were drinking soft drinks or iced tea, but I was not keeping tabs.

This morning, I noticed that, of the six, there were three red-labels left, and of the six, there was one blue-label! That meant that only one red-label was drunk besides the two that I had. I'm willing to bet that the other was drunk by my wife.

This evening, we're going to the home of the newlyweds, and they'll have a keg of Guinness! I wonder if it will be "light"? Anybody want to bet?

Footnote:

Google does not seem to know Southern Select Superlight. Light beer seems to have gotten its debut in 1967, when a new brewing process was discovered. I will stick to my story, and if anyone should, in the future, I'd appreciate any input. Southern Select was apparently made by the Galveston-Houston Breweries, and Superlight does not seem to be mentioned. We all know that Howard Hughes was ahead of his time, and quite eccentric, and producing light beer twelve years before its invention would not have been beyond him.

Epilogue to the footnote:

The party's over, or whether or not it's really over for all concerned, it's over for me. I've come home, and am happy to announce that a good time was had by all, and the beer was real. None of the metalic tasting low-cal beer. This was the real thing, dark and rich, and very tasty.

2009-03-17T08:30:00.016-05:00

An Old Guy's Random Rememberings #18

2009-03-14T13:51:00.011-05:00

ONCE UPON A HIGH OLD TIME
12/2/01

Yesterday, I was heading out to buy some material for some carpentry required for our Christmas plans, and I heard a promo for “the original Threadgill’s, Austin’s first music scene”. They lie! There is no more “original Threadgills”. It is gone, buried in the glitz of a fancy restaurant.

In the early '70s we belatedly discovered Threadgill's, which had already been an establishment for decades. Once a gas station, it still looked like one, although it looked as if the floor hadn’t been swept in thirty years.

There were no lights in the restrooms, which one had to go outside and around to the side of the building to reach. If one chose to close the door, it became very dark. My wife and her friends would never use Threadgill’s restroom. They’d go half a mile up Lamar Boulevard to my office to relieve themselves. The guys, however, would often step into water flowing across the floor and take aim, hoping to wet only the bottoms of their shoes.

In spite of the facilities, the Wednesday night jam sessions at Threadgills were a thing of beauty! Usually about thirty to forty people would sit around on chairs, shelves, countertops, and the floor of the crowded space, drinking beer, nursing babies, and occasionally singing along, while an assortment of talented musicians would perform. The highlight of any Wednesday evening would be when Kenneth Threadgill would come out and sing his renditions of old Jimmy Rodgers songs. Although we never went to Threadgill’s except for the Wednesday evening jam sessions, it was a lively place any time.

On one occasion Julie and Chuck Joyce, two musicians from the Hootenanny Hoots, were driving around Austin and saw a small band, hippies with instruments, on the side of the road. They pulled over and invited them to come to Threadgill's. Since the show was usually in an impromptu, open-microphone style, Janis Joplin, one of the hippie musicians, shyly stepped on the stage before shouting "Silver Threads and Golden Needles." Her voice was a dull shriek that night, most reports say. Nonetheless, she became a close friend of Kenneth and Mildred. One night, in jest, she got two free Lone Star Beers from Kenneth for not singing.
http://www.tsha.utexas.org/handbook/online/articles/view/TT/fth58.html (This URL has apparently died since 2001. It will not work for me. Maybe its veracity is exaggerated).

We were well acquainted with the work of Chuck and Julie, and heard them many times. However, before her death, Janis Joplin had been virtually unknown to my wife and me.

.

Today On The Road.....

2009-03-13T17:07:00.017-05:00

If anyone wonders why I spend so much time in my wife's car, it's simply that a couple of months ago, I had a problem with the hydraulic system on the clutch of my pickup. Since there's been no urgency (the wife says we can't afford a camping trip right now). I'm taking my time fixing it. A more stable, warm weather condition would be helpful to the old guy, so what's the rush?

Today, I went to Round Rock to get a bucket of mud at Lowe's, along with a couple of other items, to be used in our ongoing hobby house projects. Today, she had the radio tuned to a station in San Antonio, and I discovered Laura Ingraham! I will say right now, that I feel pretty sure that Rush has set the standard for talk radio now. At least, his imitators often take calls. I've always felt that talk shows should be like that. Maybe it's simply an old man's fantasy that it's the reason for "talk shows".

Anyway, for someone who has so little to say, Laura certainly packs a lot of talk into her show. Today, she stimulated my imagination. When I first tuned in, she was blasting President Obama for "not having gotten all the problems of the country solved since he took office", and now, "he's going to take a vacation to Chicago after only 55 days in office!" What does it all mean, is 55 days too soon to be considering a vacation, or is the man a slacker for not having gotten all his promises fulfilled in the ample time he's been president?

It's all irrelevant, because the President of the United States is NEVER on vacation. But, the next thing she said, after initiating a contest to "name the vacation White House", was, "Bush didn't go on vacation after only 55 days, did he?"

I was not able to answer her question then, and I'm not able to answer it now. I suspect he might have. I have not even been able to get a precise count on the number of days that President Bush was away from Washington for "R&R", but it certainly appears that it amounted to somewhat more than a third of his eight years on office. That seems to be a record, but who could expect less of George W. Bush?

When I got home and mentioned to my wife that I'd discovered Laura Ingraham, she replied, "yes, that's Dr. Laura. I hear the strident witch much too often when I'm in the car." I could not believe how long it took me to convince her that Laura Ingraham and Laura Schlessinger are two different Lauras!

Later, when I ventured out to go by the bank, and mail a letter, I was privileged to hear Dr. Laura for a few minutes on the same station. I think for the very first time in my life, I was actually beginning to feel sympathy for Dr. Laura. What has happened to her show? Perhaps Rush Limbaugh has the right idea, after all. "Don't take callers, they mess up your show". One of the good Doctor's callers was trying to get advice on how to get her daughter-in-law to allow her more time with her grandchild. After three times of telling the woman that she couldn't advise her without knowing the daughter-in-law's side of the story, and getting the same "yes, but can you give me some advice how to make my daughter-in-law.........", she finally told the woman (more than once), "you should kiss her butt", and the woman replied "I can't do that", then Dr. Laura was able to say, "Then I can't help you", and rang off that call.

One of the most amazing things I'm finding about the talk shows, the ones which President Clinton once referred to as "hate radio", is that Sean Hannity opens his show with "Independence Day", and that both he and Rush Limbaugh claim our Founding Fathers, and, in particular, Thomas Jefferson, as their heros. How can it be that those who think so differently from me think that their point of view is what's best for the country, when I like to think that about my own point of view?

I guess, "that's human nature". It's the nature of humankind to hold the personal belief that, "the world would be a better place if everyone were like me". Uncle Jim, you must have been right. Life is "every man for himself".

3-7-09 The Steadfast Tin Frog

2009-03-10T22:27:00.011-05:00

3-7-09 The Steadfast Tin Frog
Originally uploaded by Willie C

You started it, Gary!

My Flickr friend from down the faultline has expressed the idea that this could perhaps be the "the elusive Aztec frog, once believed to be extinct".

Is it possible that it was last seen at Aztec, New Mexico? Since my youth, I had been skeptical of things relative to Aztec. That's the site of the renowned Aztec ruins and the restored Great Kiva.

For fifty years or more, I thought of the restored great kiva as a hoax, much elaborated and enhanced to hype it up for the attraction of tourists.

I saw the restored kiva in November of 1995, and thought it was quite impressive, but I still thought that very much of it was most likely conjecture, and veneered with modern ideas and styling. It was not until December of 2005, when I returned to Frijoles Canyon after many years of absence, and later in September of 2006 when I visited Chaco Canyon, that it began to work its way into my stubborn brain that great kivas were a significant feature in the ancient cultures spurred by the phenomenon of Chaco Canyon. There was a fine example at Frijoles Canyon, which had been excavated since the last time I'd been there.

The Great Kiva was most certainly not a one-of-a-kind tourist attraction. There are countless great kivas in the southwest, and it takes only a little imagination to believe that the restoration at Aztec is no doubt historically accurate.

Am I talking here about ancient cultures or amphibians? I've lost track now.

Tonight, just as The Mentalist was getting under way on our TV I heard, through the front door, the trilling of the toads! They have come to join the living leopard frogs, which have been serenading me nightly for weeks.

Tonight I will hear their voices in concert close by, beneath the open windows of our upstairs bedroom. Perhaps the Aztec frog will be so emotionally moved as to join in their song. We shall see.

Then, a predicted cold front will bring rain and chilly weather, and my wife will surely nag me to close the windows.

I'll still hear the concert, but it won't be the same.

An epilogue on the morning after....March 11, 2009

The toads retired before I did last night. The singing stopped before 10 PM. Perhaps it was because of the impending change in the weather, perhaps it was simply that they were tired after their mass incursion from wherever they had been, and needed to rest. Whatever the reason, I did not get my bedtime serenade last night.

This morning, about 6:12 AM, I awoke to the sound of swiftly moving air, and raindrops. Being well aware that my wife would not savor the idea of rain on her freshly painted window sill, I got up and closed the windows. Tonight, I feel fairly certain that it will be cool enough that I will leave the windows closed tonight as well.

I'll still hear the toads, mingled with the voices of the leopard frogs, but it will be muted. The direct communication with nature will not be happening for a few days longer.

A FOOTNOTE:
The friend from down the faultline is no longer down the faultline, He's out on the Chihuahuan desert taking photos and living his dream! Live it up, with your EyeOnTexas. I'll envy you always.

..

Who am I, anyway, my dear, esteemed legislature?

2009-03-10T12:18:00.009-05:00

When I gave up my home in Santa Fe, in the paradise of Northern New Mexico, to become wealthy and renowned in Central Texas, my uncle Jim, who along with my dad, was responsible for luring me into this move, made a statement that estranged us for life. Uncle Jim told me that people would try to take advantage of me. “That’s human nature”, he said. I didn’t believe him. In my world, people weren’t like that. I never did like Uncle Jim much after that, especially since it always seemed that it was Uncle Jim who took advantage of me most of all!

The more I think about it in these more advanced times, the more I think that perhaps I was wrong, and Uncle Jim was right.

The Congress, each and every one of the representatives we elect, must take an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic". In my opinion, "domestic" could well mean the Uncle Jims of this country. The hard won regulations that Congress had initiated over a long period of time in response to problems caused by their lack, began to dissolve in the '80s, as the administrative branch of the Federal Government began to increase its support of big business.

Regulations get in the way. Yes, they do! When I say that I'd prefer that the gu'ment stay out of my business, it's a small thing, and is not likely to receive much action. But if I were to say that the gu'ment should protect me from the unscrupulous actions of "salesmen", and large corporations, then it's a small thing, and is not likely to receive much action.

When I was growing up in Texas, branch banks were illegal in the state. I had to move to New Mexico before I ever saw a branch bank. Now, Texas banking laws have been changed, and deregulation has allowed banks to provide services they were not allowed "in the old days", and virtually ALL banks are branch banks.

Our locally owned First National Bank was bought by Mbna, then Nationsbank, and now it's Bank Of America. Apparently, now, banks are too big to be allowed to fail, and the public is having to bail out these mismanaged private sector businesses BIGTIME!

Once, Texas had usury laws. If anyone really reads this stuff, they might remember that within the past year, I wrote in one of my entries that the private sector building industry needed to get rid of the usury laws to get money flowing in from out of state. Yes, I suppose that's true, but now, it appears that money flows OUT of the state at a faster rate than it used to. What's gained?

In addition, the banks have set up headquarters in the state that allows the most usurious lending practices in the country, and does their business under the laws of that state!

I'm old enough to remember a number of automobile manufacturers that once made vehicles in the US, and failed, leaving the Big Three, which, they say cannot be allowed to fail.

I met a banker back in about 1965, at a social function. When I mentioned that I was an architect, he he said he really admired me, a person who combined the talents of an artist and an engineer, but I was doomed. The trend would be toward big, powerful, corporations, which would be handling all business in the future.

I'm sure he was probably right, judging from the way things are done today, but when the Constitution was written, there weren't all that many national or global corporations. I'm inclined to think that the intent of our Constitution was to be for the benefit of citizens, not huge businesses.

I'm a citizen. I think the Congress should return to its intended purpose, to protect ME from enemies, both foreign and domestic.

..

An Old Guy's Random Rememberings #17

2009-03-09T09:57:00.013-05:00

This event in my life happened only a few days after the Story Circle adventure.

A Delightful Day in October
10/28/01

A couple of weeks ago, Aunt Macrina invited my wife and me to come to an Oktoberfest celebration they were having at the “old ladies home” where she lives. I grew up calling her “Aunt Margaret”, because that was the name she was normally called until a few years ago. Actually, I learned Aunt Macrina’s name when I was ten, and Aunt Macrina was about thirty. She, her son Charlie and daughter Suzanne, and I were spending a week in Galveston. We stayed at the home of Macrina’s sister Micky, whom I fondly remember as the most beautiful woman in the world.

I heard my aunt on the phone one day, saying to someone “yes, this is Macrina”. I chuckled, thinking that she must be pretending to be her niece, who was near my age, and was named Macrina. At that time she was sitting on the sofa with a towel draped across the front of her body. Aunt Macrina and her sister both seemed to enjoy informal dress in that Galveston home, even though their mother also lived there. Of course, when I was growing up in those pre-TV days of yore, the average ten-year-old could assign no practical purpose to a nude woman, but a thing of beauty is a joy to the eye of any beholder. All my life since then, I have been emotionally moved by graceful forms, whether natural, artistically conceived, or architectural.

Yesterday, I went to Dallas without my wife, who had a previous commitment at her mother’s house this weekend. After traffic and trouble finding the correct street, I finally found the “old ladies home”. I was almost forty-five minutes later than I had intended, and I wasn’t sure I had the right place, because the address didn’t match Aunt Macrina’s stationery. After the third pass by the only place on the block, I decided I had to stop and ask for directions. As I approached the sign that claimed “information”, I noticed Senator Ted Kennedy sitting on a bench talking to a white-haired lady. Then I realized that it wasn’t Teddy Kennedy at all, but my cousin Charlie (who carries a smidgin more of the Irish blood than I do). He looked up and I waved. The white-haired lady stood up and held out her arms to embrace me.

The place where Aunt Macrina lives is a beautiful, up-scale community. The majority of the ladies there showed signs of having been well cared for beauties in their earlier years. Aunt Macrina’s classic features seemed almost plain in that room. It’s not actually an “old ladies home”, it’s just that the female residents outnumber the males by about twenty to one.

The last fifty years dropped away, and Charlie and I were once again the Snamloh brothers, Selrahc and Yllib, dining with our gracious hostess-mother, who was giving orders to the waitresses, pushing food at us, making sure that we got enough to eat, and in general, treating us like the teen-age boys she treated the same way half a century ago.