Malvie's Musings

This and that…THE HOGS, a December Romance, a Master Craftsman, and What I like About the South

2012-01-13T20:59:00.001-06:00

HOW BOUT THEM ARKANSAS

RAZORBACKS!!!!

Back-to-back 10-win Regular Seasons
Two losses: Alabama (National Champion) at Tuscaloosa, and LSU (National Champion runner-up) at Baton Rouge.
Top 5 finish, AP and USATODAY (Coaches)—fourth time in school history
32 consecutive AP Top 25 rankings (regular, pre- and post-season polls)
Cotton Bowl Champs!
Cotton Bowl victory over a very good Kansas State team
Only the second 11-win season in the history of the University of Arkansas (the first one, 1977, featured one loss and a spectacular Orange Bowl win).
Overall, a fantastic season and there’s more where that came from.

(…and Tyler Wilson and Knile Davis are both coming back, along with Cobi Hamilton and a large chunk of both the offense and defense. My personal thanks to the Seniors, who believed and who never stopped fighting; your names have joined the Razorback pantheon of great players. You will be missed.)

Hey, college football world:

WE. ARE. BACK.

It’s GOOD to be da HOG!

>>0<<

I got a little Christmas money the other day, and decided I’d have my grandparents’ clock repaired.

All my life growing up, my grandparents had a Seth Thomas clock with Westminster chimes (in case you don’t know, “Westminster” is the tune played by the clock in St. Stephen’s Tower, at the Palace of Westminster in London. The biggest bell in the tower, which strikes the hour, is “Big Ben”).

Of course, Granny and Gramp’s clocks didn’t sound EXACTLY like Big Ben, but it’s the same idea. Every quarter hour, the clock plays a different piece of the melody until it gets all the way round to the hour again.

Unfortunately, neither of my Seth Thomas antiques have worked in years. They need a good cleaning/disassembling/reworking. I looked and looked for an appropriate horologist (that’s a clock expert), and finally figured I’d found one.

So, I dragged both my old clocks over there. I was hoping to find someone in some little hole-in-the-wall somewhere, not some slick jewelry/clock store or some such (that would charge me an arm and a leg and not fix my clock).

I’m happy to report I nailed the target on this one, and then some. Guy has this small clock shop in an industrial complex in an industrial area not terribly far from my home and work. I knew IMMEDIATELY that I was in the right place—walked in, his workshop is stacked and piled with clock parts, and the shelves around it are filled with beautiful clocks he’s repairing. I’ll take a picture next time.

What I totally did NOT expect was the lesson in clockmaking I got (free of charge, comes with the service). He disassembled my clocks in seconds (literally, seconds) and said, “Oh, yes, this is a 417” or some such. He explained to me at length exactly how the clocks were made, by whom they were made, and even showed me the code to tell WHEN they were made (June, 1947 and April, 1967 respectively). He told me exactly what was wrong with each, then rumbled around in his pile of parts and came up with parts that would fit each. I was mesmerized. He quoted me a good price (I have to come up with a little more than my Christmas money) and I left my 1967 model Seth Thomas “Heritage” Carriage clock with him. It should be ready any day now and I. Can’t. Wait.

It’s truly wonderful to talk with someone who is an absolute expert in his field. The man KNOWS clocks. He is GREAT with them. It was an honor to sit there and listen to him tell me all about them---information I’ll never really use, but fascinating to sit and listen to. I loved it.

>>0<<

You know, when you can find love in this old world, that’s a good thing.

My 88 year old father, after 2 years of being alone for the first time in his life (he was born, lived at home to age 18, moved to San Diego with his older brother, moved back home, met Mother, married her, went in the US Army Air Corps (they’re kind of paternalistic), got out, came home to Mother, and lived with her continuously until her death in January, 2010.). He’s 88 years old and this two year period is the first time in his life he’s ever been ALONE. He asked me one time, “How do you stand being alone?” I told him, “Well, you get used to it, then you kind of like it. If I ever find somebody again, I’d want them to have their own place.”

In any event, it was obvious to all of us that he was miserable, declining, and waiting to die. He read books. He watched his 55” Sony. I visited monthly, my sister took him to lunch 2-3 times a week. My niece visited (mostly when she needed solace or cash or both). Otherwise, he was alone.

Without telling my sister or me, he went online and found a “Senior Christian Singles” website and met a woman ONLINE. She lives in Beaumont, Texas (east of Houston). He finally admitted to me that he’d been conversing with her, and that he had stuck his courage to the sticking place and was heading to Beaumont to meet her in person.

All this was in October, 2011.

Here are the wedding pictures from January, 2012 (their comment to me: “Honey, we don’t have time for a long courtship!”). My comment to everybody: “She was a lonely old lady whose husband died. He was a lonely old man whose wife died. If they can have some laughs and a good time together, however much that is, POWER TO THEM!”

They seem to be very much in love, in fact, like teenagers. I’m delighted for them. They’re making their home in Beaumont, Texas (convenient for me, about an hour and a half from my house).

(I like Jean. She’s not my Mother, nor will she ever be, nor will she ever TRY to be. She’s Dad’s wife and companion and bully for them!).

Maurice and Jean Jones

Jean’s comment upon seeing this picture: “My GOD, I look like an old lady!”

Siblings: Arline and Maurice, Nick and Marla

Rachel, Peyton, and Justin (my GOD how can Peytie-Pie be that BIG!)…and, Rachel (having lost the pregnancy weight) is a gorgeous young lady these days.

David and Phil

Leave it to Aunt Shorty to steal the show! I love this picture!

>>0<<

Dad and Jean in a much more natural state (for them)

>>0<<

On being Southern:

Today, I was talking with a business associate. Nice lady, I’ve known her professionally for several years, we have a cordial, professional relationship.

We were discussing a business situation today, including talking about dealing with an individual neither of us really like.

Somehow in the conversation, the topic of place-origin came up (“Where are you from originally?” --everybody in Houston is from “somewhere else”).

She said, “I’m from a little town you’ve never heard of: Marked Tree, Arkansas.”

I said, “I’ve been to Marked Tree many times! I’m from Malvern!”

We both grinned hugely, any tension immediately evaporated, our accents instantly moved “south”, and we spent the next hour and a half regaling each other with stories about growing up in Arkansas.

You won’t find that with people from NYC or Philadelphia or Chicago or Los Angeles.

…and THAT’S what I like about the South!!!

Priceless

2011-11-24T12:33:00.001-06:00

Gasoline: $350.00

Hotels: $150.00

Pain from 2,200 mile round trip: off the scale

Living life to the fullest? PRICELESS!!!

>>o<<

So, last Friday after work, I blazed a trail out of Houston (I managed to beat the worst of the traffic, just the slowdown around IAH) and headed northeast. I figured I’d drive till I was tired, then find a side-of-the-interstate motel.

I ate a Corn Dog on the way (more on that later in the week; the smell of Corn Dogs will become overpowering as we approach Baton Rouge tonight…).

As I got to Texarkana, I felt surprisingly good, so kept going, and wound up in my old home area, Little Rock. Spent the night, got up the next morning, and had a facebook comment from my buddy Rich. Rich had adopted one of my rescue Border Collies, a very shy girl named Bonnie, and he’d been bugging me for some time to come see her—so I thought, “I’ll take this opportunity to do that, I’ve got a little time to give.”

Bon Bon has come nicely out of her shell. She’s a happy dog, and obviously devoted to Rich (and he’s crazy about her, a success story!). She is NOT fond of cameras, even when they’re disguised as cell phones, and this is the best we could do (Geebus, I guess I really AM that fat. Oh, well, the camera adds 10 lbs. and I’m big boned; yeah, that’s the ticket!):

>>o<<

Anyone who knows me knows of my fondness for the Arkansas Razorbacks. Since I had such a long trip (INDIANA!?!) ahead, I had planned to skip the Mississippi State game and keep driving. All morning, on the way to Rich’s, I kept seeing the flags and magnets, people decked out for the game, heard one or two Hog Calls. MUST…MAINTAIN…FOCUS…

So, I left Rich’s and sadly made my way to the interstate. I called Nathan and he said, “Are you NUTS? You LOVE this stuff, and it’ll only add about 6-8 hours to your trip!”

You know what’s coming next…

Malvern’s Own Madre Hill

DO NOT DO THE FREAKING WAVE! BUT IF YOU MUST, DO NOT DO IT WHEN WE ARE ON OFFENSE!!!

My phone ran out of juice (freaking blackberry…they have lousy cameras, too) and that was “it” for the pics.

>>o<<

Before the game, had several fun things.

Went by my old house on Hillcrest:

Enjoyed the walk up Monroe St. to see the Old Gray Pile; bunch of kids playing football in front:

Ran into my dear and wonderful friends Kyle Gregory and her son, Cameron, and their bunch from Monroe. They had brought some exchange kids up for not only their first Razorback game, but their first American Football game!

Left to right, Monroe, Brazil, Netherlands, Monroe (and that’s Kyle’s FRIEND on the left, not Cameron, I don’t know why I didn’t get a pic with him).

>>o<<

Left Little Rock after OUR GLORIOUS VICTORY, then drove to Marion, Illinois (that night). Next morning, got up and drove to Palmyra, Indiana, to pick up my Magnavox. It was GREAT, as advertised! Loaded it, then immediately started back.

On the way, back, couldn’t resist (in a driving downpour with heavy traffic) snapping (one-handed) a picture of Louisville’s Stadium, where Bobby Petrino worked his magic.

Drove the rest of the day to Birmingham, Alabama and stayed with my wonderful friends Kathy and Larry Beaumont. Next morning, got up and headed home, past Tuscaloosa (Home of the #2 ranked Alabama Crimson Tide), through Mississippi to Louisiana, then past Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, where tomorrow the #3 ranked ARKANSAS RAZORBACKS take on the #1 ranked LSU Tigers. I couldn’t resist a risky one-handed snap there, either, in heavy traffic crossing the mighty Mississippi:

So, in one trip, I went to the “Home Away From Home” of the #3 team in the country, then passed the home of the #2 team in the country, then passed the home of the #1 team in the country.

>>o<<

Got the Magnavox home, Nathan helped me unload it, and we placed it in the room and plugged it in. I pushed the “power” button and held my breath. The old Maggie roared to life---that deep, full-throated wonderfulness I remember so very well---and the tuner, which was exactly where it was when I bought it in Palmyra, was tuned to 99.5—which, in Houston, is Sunny 99.5---and they were playing Bing Crosby singing “I’m Dreamin’ of a White Christmas”. (They next played Alvin and the Chipmunks, and then Santa Baby, but I digress).

>>o<<

Other people are “normal”. They grow up, got to college, get married, make babies, raise them, have grandkids, grow old, and die. If that’s your thing, good for you and power to you.

Me, I’d rather mix in a little adventure. It’s what makes life worth living.

I have to end this blog post right now…it’s Thanksgiving Day, H-E-B is open (but only till 2), and I have to pick up 2 bottles of Zing Zang, some limes, an extra bottle Worchestershire Sauce, some red plastic cups—we’re headed to Baton Rouge at 4 to see our #3 Razorbacks beat #1 LSU for a possible berth in the National Championship game. I’ll worry about the money and the time off from work later…for now, the tailgating foolishness RIDES AGAIN!

>>o<<

Uncle Malvie, proudly keeping up the Tarkington and Jones families’ tradition of ~~craziness~~ eccentricity since 1957!

Lightening the Load, Indeed (and, the Ghost with the Most)

2011-10-30T22:36:00.001-05:00

My friend Kathy Beaumont’s most recent blog post was about lightening the load---going through and getting rid of stuff. The rule should be: if you haven’t used it for a year, it needs to go.

I’ve been in “get rid of it” mode for a while now, and after Kathy’s post I kind of sat up and looked around me.

It’s going to take me YEARS to go through this stuff. I’m sentimental to the max, and if I find one of Grannie’s* gum wrappers (she liked Juicy Fruit), I’m loathe to toss it.

In some cases, though, I’m glad I hung onto some things that theoretically I should have tossed or given away years ago.

>>o<<

In 1968, I went with my Dad to help my grandparents purchase a stereo. The old Philco radio had bitten the dust; in any event, 78 rpm records were “out” and while Granny still wanted to be able to listen to Nelson Eddy and his Orchestra’s rendition of “The Old Rugged Cross”, she also wanted to hear the contemporary sounds of that Mantovani fellow,

not to mention the mellifluous tones of 101 Strings.

So, we hopped into the 65 Olds and went to Haverty’s in downtown Little Rock. At that time, Main Street, though fading, was still Main Street and Haverty’s had this huge store. They had their stereo equipment on the 4th floor, and up we trekked; after some debate, Granny* and Gramp made their selection.

It was a Magnavox Astro-Sonic (everything in the 60’s was just so much more cool and groovy if you put “Astro” in the title; in Magnavox’s case, it was their trade name for “Solid State”—no tubes, all transistors) in a beautiful pecan cabinet (vaguely “Mediterranean”, another hot styling trend of the time).

It had an actual subwoofer, two 12” front speakers, two 3” tweeters, and two 12” side speakers, and it could crank the music. The controls—I don’t know how they and Marantz (a higher-end brand) did it, but the controls just glided. Ball bearings? They were incredibly smooth and rich feeling.

I’d wait till everybody was out of the house, then put my records on and blast away with it. With pier-and beam foundation and wood floors, the underside of the house made a perfect reverb chamber. I always got caught, because the pictures would all go crooked on the walls and I’d always miss one or two; I could rattle the dishes in the kitchen cabinets. And, periodically, I’d forget to turn the volume back down and Granny would get a jolt when she went to play a record.

I loved the sound it made.

Sadly, after Granny and Gramp died, the Magnavox went to a different part of the family and I lost track of it. After all these years, and with a large vinyl collection collecting dust on the shelf in Malvern (my turntable died years ago), and boxed since the move to Houston 4 years ago, the records were on the “endangered species” hit list. (“Be ruthless with discards.”)

THEN

I was sitting here the other day, posting away on one of my Bulletin boards. One of the younger posters asked about various music delivery devices and some of us older ones were talking about things like cassettes (eeww) and 8-track (surprisingly, I like them better than cassettes) then about vinyl records (33 1/3, 45, and the older 78’s). Many of the younger posters have never seen or heard a record!

I was looking online (you can find anything on the interwebs) and thought, “I’ll see if there’s a picture of that Magnavox somewhere. I seem to remember it being featured in one of their ads.

And…I found a photo. A “live” listing on ebay. The exact set, IDENTICAL to my grandparents’, apparently flawless, with the original paper on the turntable, owner’s manuals, etc. Owner is throwing in her Dad's vinyl and 8 tracks (!), many of which are still shrinkwrapped.

I couldn’t resist.

So, the weekend before Thanksgiving, I’m driving to Louisville, Kentucky to pick up my beautiful 1968 Magnavox “Astro-Sonic” console stereo, albums, and 8 tracks.

Here it is, in all its Mediterranean Pecan glory:

(and ya know what else? It doesn’t have all those exposed wires and crap we’ve just gotten used to with all the component sets we’ve had for decades now. This stuff was classy).

The other rule (besides “if you haven’t used it in a year…”) is: if something “big” comes in, something else must go OUT in order to make room. I’ve got it figured out.

Now all I have to do is figure out which of the boxes in the storage bedroom actually contain the albums. Gee, I haven’t heard the White Album or Abbey Road or Steppenwolf or Led Zeppelin or Iron Butterfly or Peter Frampton or the Byrds or Chicago on ALBUMS in at least 20 years. Yes, I own much of that music on itunes. (Some of it, notably Abbey Road, I bought in album, then 8-track, then cassette, then CD, and now it resides in itunes). Still—the sound on the vinyl, blasting out of those Magnavox speakers---

I can’t wait! Here Comes the Sun (do do do do ) Here Comes the Sun and I say, “It’s all right!”

>>o<<

Paul Eells, a gentleman it was my great pleasure and privilege to know, was the announcer for Vanderbilt and a fixture on Nashville television—until he accepted a similar position at KATV Channel 7 in Little Rock. He loved the Razorbacks, was the Voice of the Razorbacks, and I belt out his “TOUCHDOWN, ARKANSAS! OH, MY!” every time they score.

Paul died tragically in an automobile accident on the way from Fayetteville back to Little Rock. A few weeks later, Houston Nutt took the Hogs to play Vandy in Nashville, right around Halloween. The score was close and Vandy was driving. They had to attempt a last-second field goal for the win. It looked perfect—till a gust of wind hit the ball and blew it wide. Hogs win.

It was said that the Ghost of Paul blew on the ball and caused it to sail wide.

Yesterday, a day most celebrated as Halloween (I don’t like changing the holidays to fit the weekends, but oh well…), once again, Vandy was driving the field to win the game and had to attempt a field goal---which sailed right, in almost exactly the same spot.

Paul Eells, the Ghost with the Most!

*Both my grandmothers were “Grannee”. Grandmother Jones was “Granny”, while Grandmother Forthmon was “Grannie”. Grannie lived with us; I spent the summers with Granny and Gramp in Malvern, with Grannie nearby at Aunt Paulie’s.

Object Lessons

2011-10-23T16:56:00.001-05:00

In an unsurprising move for me, I determined to practice work-avoidance (I have so much to do at work right now, I really am going to have to work tonight, Sunday, in order to have a prayer this week).

Last weekend, I visited Aunt Shorty (aged 92), who had (in her usual effortless manner) whipped up home-made pulled pork bbq for me (in the crockpot). I asked her how she did it and it really did sound simple.

So, in order to practice work-avoidance (and knowing that I would have to work very late every night this week, and being very tired of Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silvers, Taco Cabana, and even Pei Wei and Popeye’s), I decided to see if I could accomplish some crock-pot bbq myself. I reasoned, if I fix a big batch on Sunday, I can probably eat it for several days (till I’m sick of it) and neither cook nor go out (the microwave is your friend).

So, having listened to Aunt Shorty’s recipe and done a quick Google search, I set out for the local H-E-B to obtain food and supplies.

On Sunday.

What was I thinking? It was, of course, packed.

I won’t go to Wal-Mart in Houston. Too big, too many people, too much of everything. I go there about every 3 or 4 months and buy $200 worth of things like toothpaste, shaving cream, TP, paper towels, etc. Those things really are cheaper there and if you buy them in big bulk and just store them, you limit your trips.

The local H-E-B has what I call the "International Bizarre” (spelling intentional) flavor to it. Houston is a big melting pot of people from all over the world, and they flock to “my” H-E-B. You’ll pass a gaggle of muslim women in their scarves, standing behind 3 or 4 Nigerians in full tribal-gear, who are waiting for the Korean family in front of them to move out of the way. The store is tight and packed from top to bottom.

Every time I go in there, I vow mightily never to return. It’s not necessarily the “international bizarre” aspect (I’ve found that women of all nationalities are equally adept at allowing their brats to scream bloody murder for no reason at all while Mom shops, oblivious), it’s the crowds.

You wouldn’t think that someone who’s attended as many sporting events as I have, and lived some of the places I have, would be bothered by crowds. I’m finding that, as I age, that’s one of the things I tolerate less and less gracefully. I won’t wait on line more than 15 minutes for ANY restaurant. I cuss the traffic at all times. I have no patience for long lines at the airport, nor for stupid people on the plane who hold up the whole shebangabang so they can angle for the perfect seat (pick one, sit in it, buckle up, and shut up). I’m becoming, as my friend Keith says, a “crank”. (The nicer word is “curmudgeon”).

So today, as I pushed my cart through the packed aisles at H-E-B, trying desperately to locate “Liquid Smoke” (it’s in the bbq sauce aisle, not the spice or baking aisle), digging around looking for dark brown sugar (you’d think there’d be lots, but they only had a few bags) and being shocked that they are all the way out of Duke’s Mayonnaise (if you’ve not tried it, do so; I’ve switched from my lifelong Hellman’s to Duke’s), I was pushed, prodded, shoved, and generally swarmed by the aforementioned muslim ladies, Nigerians (they wouldn’t get out of the way and had a whole aisle blocked with their carts and bodies; oblivious to the many people on both sides they were holding up), and garden-variety Mexicans (if they’re US Citizens, they’re “hispanic”, but if they’re Citizens of Mexico, they’re Mexicans), Americans (chocolate and vanilla varieties), and Asians of various origins, I was cursing steadily and non-stop under my breath. “I will never, ever, ever set foot in this abomination of a store again,” swore I. I utilized somewhat different vocabulary words for that, but that was the general drift.

Upon arrival at the checkout, the nice young African-American checker was a welcome relief (he speaks English as a native language; he’s polite and nice and southern). Of course, he had no sacker, so he had to check the customer’s groceries, then sack them himself.

As I waited for him to finish with the nice hispanic lady in front of me, I leaned wearily on my cart (having gotten all my stuff onto the conveyor), and happened to glance up at the front of the store.

Directly in front of me was the large American flag that adorns every H-E-B grocery store. Surrounding it in huge letters were the words, “GOD BLESS AMERICA”.

And I’ve rarely been so embarrassed for myself.

Here I am, lucky enough to have been born in the richest country in the history of humanity, during a time when it ruled the earth for most of my life. America has always been “The Great Melting Pot”. We’re from everywhere: Germans, Swedes, French, African, Asian, English (my own family background); you name it, we’ve got it. I’m rich by the standards of both 99% of the world’s current population AND my entire family tree. Dad did well, as did his brothers and sisters and Mom’s brothers and sisters, but the great-grandparents were dirt farmers, all sides. Mother and Dad told stories of outhouses and kerosene lamps (Dad’s family was rich, they had GASLIGHT). The great-grandparents on all sides were poor dirt farmers with many children; uneducated, eking out an existence from the land, losing 3-4 children a generation to disease, living with 16 family members, multi-generational, in a clapboard shotgun shack on a farm in Arkansas with newspapers glued to the walls to keep the wind from howling through the cracks between the boards. They were still better off than THEIR ancestors, who came from England (and a few from Germany) with the clothes on their backs from a Europe where constant war, starvation, hard work, and short lives were the norm.

And all these people I’d been cussing were here for the same reasons my family came here: a better life for themselves and their children. Hope for the future. The American Promise, the American Dream.

Maybe next time, I’ll be a little more tolerant and a little more calm when someone from another country invades my personal space (because in their country of origin, personal space is a luxury no-one even dares to dream).

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,

Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,

Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,

As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

God bless America,

Land that I love.

Stand beside her, and guide her

Through the night with a light from above.

From the mountains, to the prairies,

To the oceans, white with foam

God bless America, My home sweet home

God bless America, My home sweet home.

I am stoopib (but lucky)

2011-10-13T23:05:00.009-05:00

Ok, the plan was clear enough: 1:00 pm flight, Hobby to Tulsa; direct flight, meaning the plane stopped in Dallas but I didn't have to get off.

I am an A-list passenger on Southwest, so I can now arrive at the airport only one hour ahead of flight time (remember when we complained about that? The lines now can easily exceed 1 hour; the only way I can get away with it is by being A-list, which gets me in the "First Class" line.

So an hour for security. Probably need to allow 15 minutes or so to park, and it takes 45 minutes to get from my house to Hobby.

Logic would dictate that, if I have a 1:00 flight, I need to leave the house no later than 11. Add (subtract) 15 minutes if leaving from the office.

So, this morning, I had all these plans about leaving on time. I started working (I work from home when I've got an early call at the airport). One of my clients had "this problem", another had "that problem", and I'm sitting there in my shorts and t-shirt (nothing packed yet) working on them.

I look up at the clock: 11:15. Uh-oh. I haven't packed; I have neither showered nor shaved; I have not fed and watered the dogs; the trash is sitting there to be taken out, and I'm officially 15 minutes late leaving if I get in the car RIGHT NOW.

So, my trusty laptop to the ready, I go to Southwest's website to find the next available flight. 7:15pm. NOTHING SOONER. ALL SOLD OUT.

Crap.

"The Professional Insurance Adjuster SWINGS into action!" (Liberty Mutual training film, ca. 1963). I started throwing things: threw clothes into a suitcase, changed my mind and threw them into my new rolly-garment bag (that exactly fits a Southwest overhead bin), threw the dogs into their crates, threw dog food into their bowls, threw myself into the shower (having given myself a fast swipe with the razor and the teeth a fast swipe with the brush). Slammed it together with amazing (for me) speed and was out the door by 11:47.

By the time I was on the Beltway speeding--er, flying--er, drivng the LEGALLY POSTED SPEED -ahem- around the curve at the Southwest Freeway, it was 12:00. 1 hour to flight time. NEVER going to make it.

But, the traffic was light and I made it to Telephone Rd. without mishap. The lights on Telephone seemed synchronized, there were no cops, and practically no traffic ("Miracles happen every day!" --Oral Roberts).

12:10pm. Swerve off Airport Rd. into the main entrance and curve around to the parking deck entrance. "Parking Deck Closed". All levels "FULL".

Crap.

Not going to happen.

12:17pm. I go to my favorite Remote Lot. They have two tiers: if you park on Level 1, it's more expensive but you don't have to lug your bags down the elevator to get to the shuttle. So I'm driving around Level 1. Nothing. Almost head-on with a dude in a Nissan SUV. He swerves into a side area and I smirk: "You'll have to back that thing out!" Smirked too soon! He pulled directly into a parking place! There were 3 back there I'd never seen. I swerve into the next spot and start grabbing my stuff (he's got his and is sprinting for the shuttle). Get my stuff and head for the shuttle. As I pull within visual range--she drives off. Dude had made it, running in his suit and dress shoes. I hate running.

Crap.

Now it's REALLY not going to happen. But, I've come this far...

12:27pm: Next shuttle comes 'round; he listens to my sad tale, gasped out. He drives me directly to the door of the airport.

12:35pm: Through the main door at William P. Hobby Airport.

12:36pm: Arrive at TSA line. Not terrible--I'm A-list, so I go to the "First Class" line. There are about 10 in front of me (as opposed to the 100 or so in the "regular" line. However, a curious thing is happening: the "regular" line is moving at a smart clip; the "First Class" line is stopped. We are informed TSA is opening a new line just for us. We watch them go through their -amazingly slow even for them- motions and FINALLY go through the new line. I have both a laptop and cpap to take out and run through.

Crap.

Oh, well, I'll go through, try for the gate. If the plane is there, great. If not, I'll beg the nearest Southwest person to take pity.

12:51pm: Through TSA, walking briskly -in flip-flops- through the airport dragging rolly bag and lugging briefcase. Make it to the "Rotunda", where the flights are posted. Gate 24, good (closer). Flight 92, "Boarding". Time on clock on flight posting board: 12:58.

12:58pm: I huff my fat ass down to Gate 24. About 3/4 way, I decide that having a heart attack, asthma attack, or stroke at the airport would cause me to miss the flight anyway, and slow to a walk.

12:59.30pm: I arrive at Gate 24 as the gate agent is walking toward the door to close it. "Wait! I'm on your list! I'm here! I'm here!!!"

She takes my boarding pass and says, "Hurry". I can take a hint.

1:00pm: I am at the door of the plane, which miraculously is open. Flight attendants grimace and pilots smirk, but here I am!

Two seats (middle) left on plane--in the back. NO room for the rolly bag; I ask the lead flight attendant if she wants to gate-check now; "No, just go on back there." So I get to the back of the plane and -unbelievably- they make room for my rolly in the overhead.

They shut the door and off we go. I'm still trying to decide if I need to holler, "I'm comin, Elizabeth!" a la Fred Sanford.

Have a delightful conversation with the nice lady sitting next to me; we comment on the great view of Houston as we depart and then talk all the way to Dallas.

Ah, Dallas.

We land. The Dallas passengers depart. Southwest's method on Direct Flights is to have everyone remain in their seats till they get the count right; when they do, all the "through" passengers move to the front of the plane.

They can't get the count. They can't board the plane till they get the count. They're off--by ONE. Uh-oh.

Gate agent (exasperated): "Ok, I'm going to call your name; when you hear your name, shout "here" so I can count you. If I don't call your name, you're not on the list!"

Guess whose name he does NOT call...

SO, he makes me deplane and take my belongings. Out to the counter I go. The nice man at the counter insists that I'm on the wrong plane! I tell him, "but here is my reservation (thank God for Smartphones), and it shows this flight!" He says, "Look, I'm not lying, come look at my screen!" Nicholas Jones. Of Conroe, Texas. "THAT'S NOT ME! I'M NICK-ALAN JONES of HOUSTON!!!" He looks again. "Well, there was a Nick-Alan Jones scheduled for this flight, but he was a no-show." "Um, sir? I am here! Here's my TDL: it's me! I just got off yonder plane from Houston, on which I was transported. I handed my boarding pass to the nice lady at the gate."

(Grumble grumble) "Well, since you no-showed ("We are here, we are here, We Are Here, WE ARE HERE!!!" --the Whos, "Horton Hears a Who"), the whole reservation cancelled out. You're not on the roster for Tulsa."

"Sir, I need to go to Tulsa. I obviously used an airplane--yours--to get here from Houston. I have a confirmed, paid, and ticketed reservation which you can view on my phone." (I was remarkably calm; I displayed NONE of my usual tendencies. I was practically Spock.)

(Grumble grumble) "I know what happened. She just didn't ding you in when she put you on the plane!" (Aha! Dawn Breaks!). "I'm sorry, sir, it'll just take me a second and I'll get you reinstated."

He hands me a "C" boarding pass. "A C? That's the best you can do when you pulled me off the airplane?" "You're right, sir; just come with me." And with that, he marched me back to the gate and told the gate agent to interrupt the line and board me.

So, I arrive back at the airplane. Pilot asks, "Uhhh, didn't you just get OFF this plane?" I must've looked pitiful, because he patted me on the back. "Where are you going?" "Tulsa!" "Ok, we'll take you to Tulsa right now." "Thank you!"

At last. I make my way to my favorite seat, 5A, which is open. I put my rolly in the overhead (lots o room!). I make the large guy in the aisle seat (turns out he's from Ft. Smith) move so I can get to the window. Sit down. So far, so good.

Flight Attendant: "Ladies and Gentlemen, be sure your carry on luggage is either in an overhead bin or under the seat in front of you."

Carry on luggage.

When I deplaned, and went to the counter, I swung my briefcase up on the counter. When I was marched back to the gate, I left it there. Not only the company's computer, BUT: My enrollment stuff for next year (figured I'd look at it during downtime); my $600 watch; my billfold featuring TDL, debit card, hospital cards, and about $300 cash; my cell phone--everything I need to sustain life as we know it.

I start to try to swim upstream but the onrushing B's and C's are in a hurry. I catch the flight attendant's attention. "I left my briefcase at the desk!"

She--Jasmine--stops boarding, gets another FA to help, and swims upstream, retrieves the briefcase--intact--and delivers it to me at my seat.

3:15 on the dot: We arrive in Tulsa, I sail out to get my rental car, which transaction goes flawlessly (though nothing quite screams "rental" as much as a white Dodge Avenger...). Got to Stillwater in time to meet the girls for dinner at Mexico Joe's (Eskimo Joe's Mexican relative), where I had an amazing concoction: Fajitas--made with chorizo, beer soaked brats, and peppers, topped with sauerkraut and german mustard, accompanied by two very nice beers.

I have to give props to Southwest: They did everything they could to make my flight (that I screwed up by being late) as good as possible. The lovely Jasmine; the kind pilot; the unflappable gate agent in Dallas--all worked to take care of my screwups.

People in Stillwater are very friendly, and our waitress was tops.

Sometimes, it's just better to be lucky than good.

Never heard of this one...

Never heard of this one either--but it was DELICIOUS!

Whither, Bus 0?

2011-09-18T20:22:00.001-05:00

When my family moved from Corpus Christi to Fort Worth in early 1965, I was in heaven. Most people (including my entire family) loved the beach (I do too, now). As an 8 year old who had to get two allergy shots in each arm each week and keep an oxygen bottle hanging around in order to breathe—no idea what I was so allergic to; the doctors did one of those “scratch tests” all over my back and determined that I was allergic to over 100 things; they decided it was “mold”—I wasn’t so fond of Corpus or the beach. Fortunately for me, whatever it was in 1964 no longer seems to be an issue to me, I can go to the beach with the best of ‘em. Of course, now little kids point at me and say, “Look, Mommy, it’s Shamu!” But, I digress (as I so frequently do on here).

In any event, there we were one Sunday afternoon, living in Corpus, with an enormous grapefruit tree in the lush, tropical back yard (I hate grapefruit; my family loves it; now I once again have a grapefruit tree—not quite so enormous—in my back yard in Houston, and I still hate grapefruit), 5 blocks from Ocean Drive, playing with the new beagle puppy while Dad put the finishing touches on his workbench, when the phone rang. It was Dad’s old boss, Mr. Foster, telling Dad he had a big promotion waiting for him—in Ft. Worth, Texas. Starting immediately.

Two weeks later, we were living in the StarLight Motel in Ft. Worth while Dad worked and Mother frantically looked for a house (pouring rain, a screaming 2 year old, a whiny 8 year old, a less-than-fully-house-trained beagle puppy and Grannie, all in the same motel room; the search was, indeed, “frantic”). Ft. Worth was then and is now tied to the defense industry; when war is hot, so is Ft. Worth real estate. Mother managed to find a house almost “out in the country”, an enormous mid-century modern ranch-style house slung low across the crown of a hill, on Boat Club Road featuring a spectacular view of Lake Worth. (Our life in that house is another blog post; sagging walls, a plane crash, the saga of Tom the Cat, Mother’s new puppies, a lightning strike that caused the telephones to light up and dance with sparks flying, septic tank backup, UFO sighting, meteor shower, fire, and me swinging in the tire swing wearing my football helmet because the mother scissortail whose nest was in the tree didn’t appreciate my swinging). Mother thought she was getting Lake Worth (a good school district); unfortunately, she didn’t check quite closely enough. Boat Club Road was the dividing line and we were on the Saginaw side.

Saginaw is now a good school district; the town itself, then a sleepy ranch community, is now a prosperous and full-fledged suburb. In 1965, though, it was the sticks—and I had to ride the school bus. This was a whole new concept for me. We had always lived a block away from my schools. Now I was to ride the bus over 10 miles of arid North Texas prairie to the school (which, at the time, had an elementary, junior high, and high school on the same campus, just different buildings).

As with most things, I adapted.

If you’ve never ridden a school bus, the first thing you should know is that it has a distinctive smell. Kind of like the men’s locker room (sox, jox, soap and water), the boys’ dorm (sox, jox, and the aroma of “boy”), the girls’ dorm (10,000 different varieties of perfume and makeup), and the library (paper, glue, dust, and mold), school buses have their own unique and distinct aroma, instantly and forever memorable. As I recall, the odor was a piquant blend of part unwashed human, part peanut butter sandwich, part number two pencil, part upchuck, and part poopy, with a slight overlay of gasoline, exhaust, and burnt brakes.

We were assigned bus routes, and had a designated place to wait. We didn’t always have the same bus or driver; they switched around some, but mostly it was the same. We’d all line up (at least moderately) obediently, waiting for the huge yellow bus to wheel up and take us home.

Saginaw had a variety of buses; the area had begun to grow, the tax base had increased, and they were keeping the Ward School Bus Company of Conway, Arkansas in business with their orders for the huge new International Harvester buses, wheeling up with their nice shiny new seats, powerful engines, and automatic transmissions.

But my little band of bus brothers and sisters lived at the very end of the line—and there weren’t many of us. So, most of the time, to our resigned and shared horror, as the shiny new Bus 17 and Bus 24 and Bus 35 pulled up to pick up the other kids, up to our line with a wheeze, a gasp, a screech of brakes, and a multitude of rattles lurched the dreaded BUS 0.

Bus 0 (it really did have a “0” as the number) was the first school bus the burgeoning post-war Saginaw was able to afford (before that, Saginaw kids literally DID walk 9 miles to school every day—or they rode their horses…).

Bus 0 had once been the pride of Saginaw. With shiny yellow paint with the black-stenciled “Saginaw Independent School District” emblazoned across its exterior, she embodied the aspirations of the community to a good education for their children; a better life for the children than they themselves had. Her interior had started out with deep, rich peacock blue walls up to the windows and a refreshing seafoam green ceiling. The seats alternated, in rows, between peacock blue and emerald green; the floor was black linoleum with little white flecks that resembled grains of sand. The whole effect was something like being inside an aquarium. (This was a good thing in the fall when temperatures in Texas are still hovering in the 90’s, because Bus 0 featured 45/45 air conditioning—45 windows open, 45 miles per hour. There was no heat at all. The aromas became especially sharp on rainy days in winter with the windows closed and everybody’s feet wet. And, of course, invariably Curtis—the class clown—would issue a loud and odiferous fart, which only added to the subtle ambiance and general misery…).

Unlike the big square new International Harvesters, which resembled nothing so much as a large yellow loaf of bread on wheels, Bus 0 featured the sinuous curves of 1940’s streamlining. Where the new buses had a large door in back for “emergency exit”, Bus 0 featured a rounded roof and two small, triangular-shaped windows in back, with much smaller exit door (we figured it was permanently rusted shut…). The front doors on the new Harvesters were electric; Bus 0 had a manual one, operated by the driver with a shiny chrome knob; the door made a hideous screech when it opened.

If you want to see photos of a beautifully restored example, this fellow has them on his flickr: Looks a whole lot nicer than poor old Bus 0 did when we knew her; be sure and look at the interior shot, for that cool “aquarium” effect!

By the time Bus 0 had hauled 20 years’ worth of screaming kids to and from school, football teams to countless football games in small towns 50 and 60 miles away, then the band, then band and football equipment (after the football entourage outgrew it), with probably at least one or two children conceived in the back seat on the long trips back home, she was slightly the worse for the wear. Generations of kids had scratched their initials on the walls. Every few years, the boys in the Auto Shop (high schools don’t have Auto Shop any more, do they?...) would haul her in, unbolt the seats, paint the interior in whatever color the school had paint for at the time, and bolt the seats back in. The Home Ec girls would stitch new seat covers out of whatever naugahyde the Home Ec teacher could round up.

As a result, by the time we got her, Bus 0 had seats in a medley of colors, from brown to black to red, with some of the original peacock blue and emerald seats left (some featuring duct tape). The once-shiny chrome on the seat trim had worn off with years of hands holding onto them. We knew what the original colors were because of course, we too, as generations before us, scratched our initials into the walls (a compass was especially useful for this purpose) and could see the various layers of paint. The proud yellow paint on the outside was faded and worn, as were the brakes, exhaust, transmission, and engine. We didn’t see how she could make it one more mile.

And frequently, she didn’t.

To get to our area, you had to cross a “Low Water Crossing”. These are very common even today across much of Texas. While in the rest of the country, most creeks have actual water in them, in Texas the small creeks are dry except for those days (usually in spring) when the rain comes in sheets and the water rages in torrents down the normally dry creek beds. Since this happens only two or three times a year, it’s both silly and wasteful to put a bridge over the creek, so Texas just paves the road down to the creek bed and puts a thick layer of concrete on the creek bed itself, with drain holes through it—and a measuring pole beside it, marked in feet—some as high as 14 feet—and that’s a Low Water Crossing.

Our particular Low Water Crossing had a unique feature---the Low Water Crossing was at the bottom of a small hill. You would have to drive down into it, then gun it to get up the other side.

The modern International Harvesters had to exercise great care not to get their enormous rear ends caught on the back and drag. They did, however, have sufficient power to gun it up the hill.

Not Bus 0. She wasn’t having any of that. She wasn’t going up that hill. Our usual bus driver (the kindly Mr. White, who must have been a science teacher or a shop teacher at the high school; white shirt, black pants, white sox, black shoes, skinny black tie with tie-clasp, flat-top hair cut, and a pocket protector full of wonderful pens and pencils. The way I knew Mr. White was “kindly” is rather embarrassing; my first day, I couldn’t remember where the bus stop was and rode the bus until the end of the line. I was the only person left. Mr. White turned to me and asked me why I hadn’t gotten off and I told him I couldn’t remember where my stop was. I did know my address—remember, we had just moved-- and Mr. White drove me home in his own car) would holler at us to be quiet, then he’d make a run for it. Bus 0 would strain mightily, engine whining, transmission gnashing as Mr. White would gear her down trying to get up the hill.

She never made it.

So poor old Mr. White would have to back up and stop at the edge of the Low Water Crossing. We would all pile out of the bus and stand on the side of the road. Mr. White would gun, coax, cajole, and grind the complaining Bus 0 up and over the hill. We would all then trudge up and over the hill ourselves and climb back aboard for the remainder of the trip (imagine that nowadays…). Rain. Sleet. Snow. Blistering heat. No matter. We just accepted that we were going to walk up that hill.

We’re all in our 50’s now, Saginaw is a prosperous suburban school district, and the buses all have air conditioning and automatic transmissions. These kids will never have to get out and trudge up the hill, alone, in whatever weather is extant, nor would anyone even conceive of such a thing. Bus 0 has long since been retired.

I’ve always wondered what happened to her. Is she rusting away even now in some field, minute flecks of her yellow paint still left, the words “Saginaw Independent School District” still faintly visible; her tires long since rotted away, her windows broken, her seats tattered, her door rusted permanently open, with generations of field mice, possums, coons, and other fauna living in a home with fading peacock blue walls and seafoam green ceiling? Was she bought at auction from the school district by a band of hippies, who painted her psychedelic colors and drove her across the country to form a commune, wherein she wound up in Arizona or Nevada or some such place? Or did some farmer buy her and user her for a chicken coop?

Whither, Bus 0?

I wonder.

Numbers, Colors, and Letters

2011-08-28T13:52:00.001-05:00

This has been the summer for numbers, colors, and letters.

Phase II Water Rationing: Odd numbered houses (mine) may water between 12 midnight and 10am, or 8pm to 12 midnight, Wednesdays and Saturdays only. $1,000 fine.

Ozone Alert Level Red: Asthmatics, old people, children stay indoors. Healthy adults limit outside exposure. Not too difficult to do, with...

Triple-Digit Temperatures: Normally I complain that the "official" temperature measurement is never accurate, because they measure it at that nice grassy field at the airport instead of here in the middle of the concrete. Not today. The actual air temp at the nice grassy field at the airport is 107. My car says 114. I trust my car.

24 Days: number of days in 2011 that Houston reached air temperatures at the nice grassy field at the airport of over 100 degrees, shattering the previous record of 14. The day the streak broke was only 99 degrees. It’s been 100 degrees + every day since (3 days and counting).

D4, 77.80: The Texas Drought of 2011. D4 means “Exceptional Drought”, the highest category; 77.80 is a percentage—that’s the percentage the largest state in the lower 48 covered by a D4 drought.

5.90: Number of inches of rain in Houston in 2011.

20+: Number of days (historically) in which Houston has received in excess of 5.90 inches in a single day.

13.9 million: Number of unemployed Americans as of August 5, 2011.

9%: 2011 Unemployment rate, see above.

22.7%: Estimate of ACTUAL unemployment rate, 2011 (including underemployed and those who have given up), as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ OLD formula, used from its beginning until 1994.

23.2%: Highest unemployment rate at the peak of the Great Depression, 1932.

1%: Growth in US GDP, 1/1/2011 – 8/1/2011

8.3%: Growth in corporate profits, same period.

Sigh.

Thank God for Football.

Empty Rooms and Hamburger Meat

2011-07-31T20:43:00.001-05:00

My friend and fraternity brother David Whitlock (that’s DR. Whitlock to you…) wrote a blog post/newspaper article that really hit home to me. He had to go “home” to help his brother and sister-in-law clear out the family home. He called his “Empty Rooms and Memories” (note my shameless ripoff of his title). His post is really excellent; you can read it here.

I’ve lived in Houston for 4 years now. August 6, 2007. My Mother’s birthday, August 6. She always loved her birthday, she celebrated hers for a week and did the same for ours. We always tried (with varying degrees of success---mostly failure---) to find a present that she would like. As I said---with mixed results at best.

The house at 939 E. Sullenberger was bought new by my grandparents in 1948. It was an emergency stop-gap, really; he had accepted a job in Texas and they sold their house on McBee St. and were preparing to move---and his old boss came to see him, begged him to stay, promised him the sun, moon, and stars---and he accepted. So suddenly they had to have a place to stay and these little houses had just been completed. They bought one, intending to live there a year or two and keep looking for something they wanted.

They never left.

In 1979, my Grandfather died (Granny died in ‘72) and Dad inherited his parents’ place. He and Mother had been warring for several years over where to move when they retired---she wanted to move back to Dallas and he wanted a small fishing village somewhere on the Texas coast. So when the family homeplace came up, they decided to retire, move into it, stay there a couple of years and continue their years-long discussion over where to move.

They almost never left.

When I moved back to Houston, they couldn’t stay there alone—she had already had a stroke, he was taking care of her, and the house (1 acre of yard) required a lot of upkeep that he frankly was tired of doing. So we moved them into a rental in San Antonio, and sold the house.

The last walk-through was very bittersweet, and David’s article brought that all back. I walked through that empty house, my footsteps echoing on the long-grain pine floors, looking at the unfaded places on the walls where the pictures had hung all those years, listening for the screeching sound the old oven door would make as Granny, then my folks, would pull something delicious out of it. All the meals we had around that Chromecraft table in the kitchen, all those nights by the fire or in the screen room or days raking leaves or seeing the first robin of spring on the back porch---all of it came back in a rush.

Just a few months ago, I had occasion to go back to Malvern (hometown) to see Mom's grave; drove by the house. The people who bought it have trashed it completely. I wish I hadn't gone--and I'll never go again--but a couple of things that trip pointed out: the house is just...a house...and it lives on as I remember it, all of us there for Christmas, me napping in a chair (now in my own living room) with head on one arm and legs draped over the other...and more modern things like Mother’s “Baby Blue Lincoln” in the carport, and the Seth Thomas clock on the mantle ringing out Westminster…

I think of Mom at the oddest times--I was browning hamburger meat the other day. She was very particular about hamburger meat; it had to be browned just a certain way, almost burnt, kind of scraped off the pan; gives it more flavor. She taught me how and that's how I like it too. So I was standing there at the cooktop the other day, browning hamburger meat---and it dawned on me: not only was I doing it “her way”, I was using HER spatula to stir it with and preparing to pour it in one of HER bowls.

…and I missed her so badly I had to stop for a minute and just cry.

But she’ll live on in my memory. The rooms aren’t empty, at least not while I’m alive to remember them.

Family, Mexican Food, the Hogs---and naming conventions….

2011-06-17T23:35:00.001-05:00

Tonight was great fun as my little “family” got together again. Jeremiah was in town for work; we managed to get Jimmy (who had just driven all the way HOME to Sienna Plantation) to drive back IN to Houston to meet us, Nathan picked me up, and we blasted off to eat…mexican food.

Mexican food is something we here in south Texas take for granted, like the sun coming up in the east or water being wet. We forget that when you move away, you crave it. Jeremiah and Ginger are enjoying the cool climes of Colorado, but what Coloradans think is “mexican food” I won’t even dignify with a description.

Jeremiah, having entertained his big client with a day of fishing (and having burnt himself to a crisp in the 105 degree sunshine), was craving some good ol mexican food, so off to Los Cucos we went.

It was just awful…we had to eat it to keep from hurting the waiter’s feelings. Yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket! We had to eat it to keep from hurting their feelings, yeah!

(They held us down and forced beer, mojitos, and margaritas down us too…oh, the humanity!)

Let’s see, things we decided:

Bobby Petrino is a genius
Houston Nutt is an idiot
Note to Rotnei: buh bye
Mike Anderson will restore Razorback basketball to its rightful place in the world
Alabama (University of) sucks
So does LSU
and we’re going to beat both of them this year (despite a somewhat suspect O-line)
Ohio State and its cheating coach and players can kiss our Razorback Red asses…(and that’s a lot o real estate)
Speaking of cheating, Auburn is going to get it yet over Cam “for sale to the highest bidder” Newton
Note to Mike Anderson: just call it “40 Minutes of Hell”, mmm-kay?
Tyler Wilson will be fine; at least Tyler can see JJ on a crossing pattern 12 yards away and throw the ball TO him instead of trying to throw it THROUGH him like Mallett did….
Sure wish we had learned to “scoop and score”
Recruits, recruits, recruits (I don’t follow recruiting, I just enjoyed that conversation)
Bud Walton Arena (and Barnhill before it) used to be so loud your ears would ring after a game
and it will be that way again.
Long almost waited too long to pull the plug on Pelphrey; one more year of empty seats and Long would have joined him; he did a nice job on the hiring of Mike Anderson, though, so all is forgiven.

A great time was had by all; we all just enjoy each other’s company. I’m very fortunate to have these great guys as my friends. I hope I live long enough to watch Jimmy’s grandkids playing, and have Nathan and Jeremiah (middle aged) have to help me up the steps at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium to watch us win a string of National Championships.

Jimmy, Jeremiah, Nick, Nathan

After we split up, Jimmy went back south. Jeremiah’s hotel was directly between my and Nathan’s houses, so we had ridden together; thus, we headed home together.

For some time, Nathan and I have enjoyed a laugh about the naming conventions of the subdivisions and apartment complexes in Texas. Jeremiah hadn’t thought of it before, and we got him started. It was one of those things that, the more we played it, the funnier it got.

How do you play? It’s easy!

First, use the article “The”. You want to do that to give yourself extra airs and importance, so that people will say, “Wow, they must be really cool and important!” You know, like saying you’re THE Ohio State University (snicker).

Then, take any name from Group A, insert the article “at”, and select one name each from Groups B and C.

Ready? Here we go:

The

A B C

Arbors	at	Brittany	Chase
Lakes	at	Brentwood	Place
Oaks	at	Greenway	Hills
Fairways	at	Ashton	Pointe
Parks	at	Tivoli	Forest
Meadows	at	BelleMeade	Shire
Villas	at	Shadowbriar	Creek
Lofts	at	Briargrove	Square
Willows	at	Waterford	Green
Glen	at	Timberglen	Springs

Which yields things like:

The Willows at Brentwood Pointe

The Lofts at Greenway Hills

The Fairways at Bellemead Chase

The Glen at Tivoli Place

The Oaks at Brittany Forest

The Meadows at Ashton Square

The Villas at Briargrove Creek

Now the fun part: Mix –n- match!

The Brentwood at Willow Pointe

The Pointe at Brentwood Willows

The Chase at Bellemeade Fairways

The Bellmeade at Fairways Chase

The Forest at Brittany Oaks

The Brittany at Forest Oaks

The Pointe at Ashton Forest Villas

You can keep this up for hours. The more you do it, the sillier it gets. It’s especially fun as you’re driving around these great Texas cities. It’s even more fun when the developer (ever trying to outdo the competition) strings a series of them together: The Villas at Brittany Oaks Forest (in Briargrove Glen Place on the Parkway).

Then extrapolate the theory to other areas:

The Cheaters at Tressel Horseshoe

The Futility of Nutt (at Vaught-Hemingway)

The Purchase at the Plains of Auburn

The Arrogance at Black Warrior River

Now, you try it!

See how that all ties together? …and you thought I couldn’t do it!

One of the coolest things of which I've ever been a part: Alamo Honor Flight #3

2011-05-07T10:07:00.015-05:00

It took me long enough to get these pictures edited and done, but finally here they are (and I have a day-job as well...).

This is one of the coolest things in which I've ever taken part.

If you don’t know about the Honor Flight Network, it’s a group of ordinary Americans who believe it’s high time we thanked the brave men and women who literally DID “save the world for Democracy”—the Veterans of World War II, truly “The Greatest Generation.”

Alamo Honor Flight—and I also can’t say enough about Tracy Huff and the other great folks there—all volunteers who have “day jobs”—takes Veterans from the San Antonio area to DC to see the World War II Memorial. There's no charge to the Veterans---they've already "paid". It’s an amazing thing.

AHF consists of a regular staff; they have these things down to a precision that the armed services could admire. They take along "Guardians"--others, non-regular, who help. I was privileged to be a Guardian on Alamo Honor Flight #003. I had responsibility for Dad, Mr. Theriot, and Mr. Gonzales, three Great Americans (and I do not use that term with even a touch of irony; they really are).

We left the San Antonio American Legion Post 2 on Fredericksburg Rd. in San Antonio with the Vets on the "big" bus and us Guardians (where we belonged) on "the short bus" ;-). Along with a full motorcycle escort from the San Antonio PD (we flew through red lights), we were escorted by a large contingent of veterans on motorcycles. In short, we had an escort barely matched by Prince William and Kate Middleton.

We arrived at the airport and Southwest Airlines met us at the bus. A word about Southwest--they don't advertise this, they don't trumpet this, but they provide--at no charge--the airfare for some (but not all) the veterans. We, of course, paid, but it is a really cool thing that Southwest does. Next time you fly, try Southwest first, please, as a thank you for this cool thing they do.

After Southwest checked us in at the bus, TSA let us go through the "Pilots and employees" line, and it's the only time I've known TSA to be friendly and helpful.

Then the magic began.

We lined the Vets up two-by-two, wheelchairs (about 17 or 18) in front, and started for the gate. As we did so, the main airport PA announced the Vets' presence and what was going on; people flocked to get a glimpse of these Heroes. At least 200 people lined the route, cheering and clapping, and thanking the Vets for their service.

When we got to the gate area, lined up on either side were active-duty members of all branches of the Service--Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard--saluting. There was a full-blown Color Guard there; when they presented the flag, the young service people snapped-to and saluted---and so did the octogenarian Veterans, every last one of them--stiffened into "Attention" and saluted the flag.

Afterwards, we sat around in the lounge waiting for our airplane to arrive. The young servicepeople were mingling with the Veterans, getting fascinating glimpses of what they did.

Let me interject: every single one of these guys has an AMAZING story. Here they were, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 years old (they lied to get in, some of them) and they were ripped from quiet lives in cities and farms and small towns and literally flung to the far reaches of the earth. One of our guys survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; others were in the Battle of the Bulge. Two were on Navy ships which collided (accidents happen all the time), one was helped out of the water by the other. Dad was in the China-Burma-India Campaign; we met a man (on our flight) who was in Kunming, China at the same time as Dad. Mr. Theriot, one of "my" guys, was in the Marines; he had been a clerk-typist, and typists were in short supply. They yanked him out of his unit and put him at a base in the Marshall Islands, typing (remember, no computers, no cell phones, no internet, no Excel spreadsheets). The rest of his unit perished on a little atoll called Iwo Jima. Mr. Gonzales told me nobody had ever thanked him for his service before. When he was mustered out, they dropped him out at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, and gave him $0.15 for a bus ride home. Every one of them was amazing, every single one. Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars, life-long military or wartime only; pilots, navigators, and bombadiers on B-17's, a marine who stormed the beach at Normandy---what an amazing assortment of experiences, and every one of them, TO THE MAN, shy, retiring, "aw shucks". "We were just doing our job." "We had a job to do and we did it." "Nothing to make a big fuss over, we just did what had to be done."

These guys really didn't accomplish much---let's see: they conquered the world, defeated tyranny and evil, came home, started families, went back and fought communism in Korea and Vietnam, fought and won the Cold War, raised families, built the airports and the freeways and jet aircraft and skyscrapers and suburbs and all manner of technology, from color tv to microwaves to pacemakers--and sent man to the moon! In short, they built the America we now know. Otherwise, they were generally slackers...

Anyway, as we sat around the departure lounge, the young servicepeople paired off with a Veteran of their service. When the time came to board the aircraft, the Veterans had a full military escort to the door of the airplane.

On the flight to BWI, the Southwest Flight Attendants kept it lively asking the Vets questions like, "Ok, who's over 80? (All hands). 81? 82?" etc (the youngest was 85, the oldest, two of them, 94). The Pilots were also top-rate, narrating the trip for the Vets (some of whom hadn't flown for decades), "On your left, you can see Houston, Texas..."

When we arrived, we went straight to the hotel, the Hilton BWI Airport. Again, next time you travel for business or pleasure, consider Hilton first.

That evening, after cocktails at the bar---and it was great to see these guys interacting over a beer, having a wonderful time---we had a very nice banquet--and crashed.

The next morning, up bright and early. We breakfasted, loaded up the buses (my team was on the Blue bus, the "B" bus, a.k.a. the BEST bus!) and roared into DC, stopping at the World War II Memorial.

We laid a wreath at the Memorial, with full Color Guard, and our young Marine friend Charlie playing "Taps". Afterwards, we wandered around and had some great experiences (which you can see below).

We left WWII and toured around on the bus, passing the Capitol, the White House, and the various other memorials, arriving at the Navy Memorial. Lots of Navy guys on our trip, so this was poignant for them.

Next, we loaded back up (remember, these are octogenarians, with 17 or 18 wheelchairs. "Loading up" means rallying at the bus, getting the Vets up the steep stairs and settled in seats, while others fold and stow the wheelchairs. I became quite adept at wheelchair stowing and unloading, as well as pushing wheelchairs, being "back" or "front"--one Guardian at the top of the steps holding on, one behind to catch if the Vet falls) and headed for the Korean War Veterans Memorial, Lincoln, and Vietnam Memorial. Again, poignant moments at each. Some of our Vets were in all three conflicts: WWII, Korea, Vietnam.

We loaded up again and headed across the Potomac (sadly, the cherry blossoms had come and gone) and went to the Marine Corps Memorial. After a quick stop at the Air Force Memorial, we entered Arlington National Cemetary, and were puzzled! We stopped at the gate; one of the AHF staffers got off the bus, taking a Vet with her, and hopped into a cab. We were worried something might be wrong with him, but a cab? Turns out, he has made his arrangements to be buried at Arlington. When a husband and wife are buried there, they are buried in the same grave. His wife had died and he had not been able to make the trip to Arlington to visit her grave. Kathy had prearranged the cab, and they had a map--so he got to go, for the first time, to see his wife's grave.

After a tour of Arlington and watching the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, we returned to the hotel (exhausted but exhilarated) for more cocktails and another banquet. At the banquet, one table was set aside--set for dinner, with a candle, but with the chair pulled up. It represented all the Veterans/compadres of our Vets who did not return, but who gave their lives in the service of their country, and were there with us in spirit.

Also at the banquet, another amazing thing: we got to meet (and thank) three surviving Tuskeegee Airmen and the luminous Miss Joy (wife of the luckiest one).

The next morning, we repeated the trip in reverse--with the same result: cheering crowds, Honor Guards, the whole 9 yards.

The looks on these guys’ faces, and their stories—it was a magical weekend.

A quick word about Alamo Honor Flight from Tracy:

We purchase the other veterans airlines tickets, all the hotel rooms, all the food, buses, and other travel related expenses. We are really happy to say that 97% of all donated funds go directly to the veterans and these costs. I want to ensure you that it is very difficult to secure the funds for these flights. Although we do have folks supporting us out there........our team members are out there raising the funds needed for the success of these trips.

Now, this is Nick talking: If you'd like to sponsor Alamo Honor Flight, donations are welcomed--and needed. Corporate sponsors especially are sought, as they can really go a long way. You can get donation information here: Donate Now

This worthy organization deserves all the support we can give them.

(by the way, after a solid week of messing with picasa, photobucket, and blogger, I have officially given up on trying to get the pictures in correct order. Here they are, you should be able to figure out which go where)

Any of my Alamo Honor Flight folks, if you want the "large" photo for blowing up, etc, email me at malvernhog@yahoo.com; I'll be glad to share.

Priceless

2011-01-30T16:12:00.001-06:00

Plane Ticket: $470
Rental Car: $40
Gas for Rental Car: $50
Hotel: 8,000 points plus $15
Getting to see Aunt Shorty again: Priceless.

Last week, Aunt Shorty fell again and messed up her last knee surgery (again). While in the hospital, she had a heart attack, and things just didn’t seem to be going well. She is 91. So we flew Dad up to Rogers to be with her, and (after some discussion) Marla and I decided to fly up and see her.

She seemed some better, for which we are most grateful.

I’ve written in this blog before about Aunt Shorty. She will never know how much she means to me or to my sister---but one thing that caught my attention on this trip is how very much she means to so many other people. As word of her predicament spread through the family, family members flew in from California, New York, Florida, and Texas. Others were ready at a moment’s notice. Last night, we all kind of sat around and told stories. It’s amazing how much this one small woman has done in her phenomenal life. She has mentored so many of us; she has taught so many of us how to live. She is a real-life “Auntie Mame”; the difference is, Auntie Mame only had one “Patrick”; Aunt Shorty has literally a hundred.

If love is currency, this woman is rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

>>o<<

Aunt Shorty’s house had burned down last year; the insurance company did their job, and she was literally days (like, this week) ahead of moving into her shiny new “replacement” Greycliff. Greycliff itself is a promontory overlooking Beaver Lake in Northwest Arkansas. It’s beautiful, and the view of the lake goes for miles. Everyone in the extended family has spent many happy hours there; it’s a great spot and the house was full of love.

When I was doing all my Razorbacking, and during the time Aunt Shorty was still able to accompany us to the tailgate parties and the game, there was a particular time when my –adopted- nephew Jimmy was invited up. Like everyone, Jimmy loves Aunt Shorty, and like everyone he was taken with Greycliff.

It was one of those damn Jefferson-Pilot games, featuring the god-awful early kickoff. Tailgate parties for the JP games were BREAKFAST parties; breakfast tacos, sausage biscuits, bloody marys, screwdrivers, and mimosas. Since it’s a solid hour from Greycliff to Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium under the BEST of circumstances (much less Gameday), we needed to leave EARLY (those who know me know I don’t do “early” very well).

Nevertheless, we were up, washed, coffeed, flagged, magged, and ready to roll. Jimmy stood transfixed in the den. “Come on, Jimbo, let’s GO!” “In a minute!”
“Jimmy, we’ve got to LEAVE!” “IN A MINUTE!”

What Jimmy did was take a picture of the sun coming up over the lake, from the den at Greycliff. Aunt Shorty loved that view and loved that event; she’d watched it hundreds of times. Jimmy got a GREAT shot; had it blown to an 8x10 (this predated digital photos), framed it and gave it to Aunt Shorty. She loved it! When she’d go down to Fayetteville to stay at Pop’s, she’d take that photo with her and it would sit on the mantel where she could see it from her chair.

Pop died and she moved back to Greycliff for good—so she thought. The fire happened, and the photo was lost along with everything else.

>>o<<

Earlier this year, I’d asked Jimmy to dig the actual photograph out and scan it. The photo he was able to send was very small, low resolution, and didn’t blow up very well. He worked and worked and got it as good as he could get. Friday, in amidst all the hoopla at work (I'm very busy at work right now), I was working on that picture, trying to get it good enough to give to Aunt Shorty. I finally got it “as good as it was going to get” after multiple trips to Wal-Mart. (Their one hour photo deal actually is pretty good).

So after work, I screamed over to Wal-Mart and got the print. Went to Hobby Lobby to get the frame. All the frames have GLASS in them---Aunt Shorty’s in the hospital, so that’s not so great---you gotta figure it’s going to get knocked off, and a room full of broken glass is no fun.

So I determined to have them cut a piece of Plexiglas and put it in the frame. The dude behind the counter, bless his heart---well, you know, not everybody can be a rocket scientist, bless their hearts. I was having a hard time explaining to him what I wanted him to do. I had left the picture (it was now getting late, and I had not packed or prepped in any way for the trip) on the counter there where they do the custom framing. A lady and her two little boys came up and the other person waited on them. One of the little boys had his grubby hands ON MY PHOTO! He was leaning on it, rubbing on it, etc. I ran over and said, loudly, “EXCUSE ME?!” The lady kept right on blabbing, oblivious. I then committed an unfortunate act. I roared at the kid. “GET OFF MY DAMN PICTURE!” Of course the mother came unglued and went off on me. I then went off on HER. Took my picture and had the man working on the frame---and thought, “Now, you weren’t raised like that, no matter how badly you were provoked.” So, I turned to the little kid (who really meant no harm) and apologized directly to him, man to man. I then apologized to the mother. In turn, she apologized to me and we wound up chatting and being nice. She was concerned that he had messed it up; I explained the trouble I’d had getting it just right and what it was for—and we wound up being very friendly.

So remember, a little nice goes a long way, and bad kharma always comes back to you.

In any event, the picture turned out great. Aunt Shorty loved it, and it’s now in her hospital room.

And here it is: Sunrise at Greycliff, by James P. Yarbrough.

>>o<<

Helpful advice: Whatever you do, under no circumstances should you go on a trip and buy something like a thermos-style coffee cup (for coffee-to-go in the car), along with several shirts (that you can’t get at home, but that you leave the tags on when you pack the suitcase) and then try to go through the freaking TSA checkpoint at an airport. My GOD, they were all over it. They ran my bag through 3 times. A Supervisor was called. The clock ticked (as flight time got closer). I offered to show them what was in the bag; apparently speaking to them at such times is tantamount to shouting, “I AM A TERRORIST” in the airport. After much consultation, THEY unpacked my bag and spread everything out on the table. They ran the full-spectrum test on the bag. “Sir, we’d like to ask you some questions.” “Sure, just don’t make me miss the last nonstop to Houston on a Sunday afternoon.” “Don’t get cute with us, sir.” “I’m not, but I don’t want to miss my flight---and there’s nothing at all that says I have to be any nicer to you than you are to me. What do you want?” “We notice that you have a suspicious item (holds up coffee cup; people are staring.” “It’s….a COFFEE CUP.” “It looked like a bomb casing on the x-ray. Why would you have this in your bag?” “Um, I bought it, paid for it, and wanted to take it home with me?” “Why didn’t you put it in your checked luggage?” “I didn’t have any checked luggage.” “Why not?” “Because my whole trip is scheduled (if I make this flight…) to be 23 hours; I didn’t NEED to check anything.” “Why do you have all these clothes with the tags still on?” “Because I bought them at Wal-Mart on my way out of Rogers; they are 3-X Razorback shirts and I can’t get them in Texas; I just stuffed them in my bag while my sister was turning in the rental car.” “Sir, this is very unusual.” “Well, then, I guess you need to arrest me for buying souvenirs while I was on a trip. I have done nothing wrong, I have nothing in there except clothes and a coffee cup (which you may have if you want it; I paid $5 for the thing) and my digital camera (which you may NOT have). Now either arrest me or clear me so I can make my flight.” “You have a nice day, sir.” “Oh, it’s peachy-keen already.”

The TSA is worthless as tits on a boar hog. And you know what? This here’s America and I can STILL post that on my blog, because we STILL have freedom of speech (sometimes).

>>o<<

This week was the 25th anniversary of the Challenger Disaster (my original blog post subject, before all this other came up). For a certain generation, this was a seminal event in their lives, probably because they were little kids when it happened and it made a big impression.

Not to say I’m jaded; the Challenger disaster was AWFUL, but it didn’t upset me any more than the launch pad fire for Apollo I (I went to Edward H. White Middle School; Ed White was one of the Apollo I astronauts, who, along with his colleagues Virgil “Gus” Grissom and Roger Chaffee, died horribly when a flash fire engulfed their capsule, fed by pure oxygen---and there were no INTERNAL clips to blow the hatch, and the EXTERNAL process took 10 minutes. By the time the horrified gantry workers were able to pry the hatch off, the three men had burned alive.

Apollo 13 is an amazing story of human daring, brilliance, and extreme courage in the face of certain death. It made a fabulous movie (thank you again Tom Hanks); it was riveting in person. We watched it on those big black and white TV’s the schools had then, EVERYBODY watched. We had success with that one.

The Spaceship Columbia, crewed by a brave group of daring astronauts, exploded in a hail of fire over Texas in 2003, with the loss of all souls aboard. They’re still finding pieces of it.

Space is a very, very dangerous business. Each one of the successful flights is a triumph of human intelligence, will, and plain old guts. Every one of those people is a hero for trying.

It is my belief that we MUST get mankind spread around a bit, off this big blue marble. Those of us who stay here (I always wanted to go, but at this point I’m too old and my health is too bad) may perish, but the race will continue. We MUST keep reaching for the stars (as Kasey Kasem used to tell us).

Many of my friends remarked on the Challenger Disaster how much they appreciated the words of Ronald Reagan. I’m not a Reagan fan, but he (along with Bill Clinton) was a very good “Mourner in Chief”. I do want to set the record straight, though---the words he quoted were not his; they were from a marvelous poem, by a young man who, shortly after he wrote it, was killed in combat in World War II. It has been recited many times, and is the favorite of many pilots.

In honor of the Challenger crew, the Columbia crew, the Apollo I crew, and all those brave men and women who risk their lives in the air:

High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds -
and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of -
wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
and, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Pilot Officer, Royal Canadian Air Force

1922--1941

The Shirt of Shame; or, How I Survived the Sugar Bowl

2011-01-06T20:42:00.003-06:00

When I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, the office in which I worked was representative of the entire Southeastern Conference. Whether your cry was “Go Big Orange!” or “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, PIG! SOOOOOIIEEEE!!!”, you had a friend in our office. (We had a significant Minnesota contingent as well, it being St. Paul Fire and Marine, so periodically you’d hear “Goh Gohphers!” in a Minnesota accent, followed by derisive sneers from the assembled SEC brethren and sistern—and all the gals in the office were definitely sportschix…).

Of course, being the SEC, we were all rabid football fans, and football season was the highlight of the year. Every Friday was Jersey Day---since we had “casual day” on Friday anyway, the VP/GM relented and allowed us to not only wear khaki’s and sport shirts (that was “casual”), but we could wear our team jerseys.

Fridays were pretty colorful events; the majority wore Tennessee orange, but every color was represented. Periodically, across the office, for no particular reason at all, you’d hear a shout of “Go State! Go State!”, followed almost immediately from another corner by “Hotty Toddy, Gawdalmighty, who the Hell are we? Flim Flam Bim Bam Ole Miss by damn!” “Roll, Tide!” was quickly followed by “WAR DAMN EAGLE!”

I loved it.

My buddy John sat next to me. John was a fascinating dude, having crammed 4 years of college into 8 (the maximum for which his father would stand), majoring in just about everything but finally settling on the fine art of beekeeping as a major (yeah, there’s a lot of call for that, which is why he wound up being a Claim Supervisor). He supervised Property, I had Workers’ Comp.

John was a very proud graduate of the University of Tennessee. Like many Tennessee fans, he bought season tickets to Vanderbilt games just so he could assure himself of a seat every other year when Tennessee played there. I do believe he was matched in his love of the Vols by my dear friend Frank Senter (who sat on the other side of the cube wall from me, and whose obituary I had to write last year, sadly). Between the two of them, the cacaphony of the “Go Big Orange” shouts was a bit much to take.

Our Marketing Rep/Salesdude, Danny, was a likewise rabid fan of the University of Alabama (it’s texass u (spit), without the money…). Danny loved him some Crimson Tide. At the time I was there, Alabama was on an 8-year winning streak against Tennessee; the game headlined the “Third Saturday in October” for the SEC.

Over the years, Danny baited John (Frank, being older and wiser, steered clear—mostly. He, too, egged John on) into making various bets with him, all with the express intent of humiliating John for Danny’s football pleasure.

The main bet, the one that became Legen(wait for it)dary, was the Shirt of Shame.

>>o<<

You have to understand, hope truly does spring eternal in the breast of the Southeastern Conference Football Fan. Every August, each team is invincible. Our quarterbacks are strong of arm and fleet of foot; our wideouts are even more fleet of foot and possess sticky hands; our kickers have strong legs, our linemen mountainous---you get the drill. We are all champions in August.

Every August, Danny would challenge and wheedle John into the Shirt of Shame bet. Danny was a very convincing soul; he would have poor ol John eating out of his hand. “Awww, man, we ain’t got NOTHIN this year. Our QB couldn’t start for Middle Tennessee State; we’ve got holes all over both lines; my Grandma could run past our secondary—y’all are going to beat us down so bad, it’s gonna be awful. I may cry.” John would resist at first, but Danny would keep working. “Yessir, this is gonna be Tennessee’s year. Y’all may hang 50 on us. I sure would hate to have to wear that old horrible orange shirt, I’m sure glad you don’t want to bet me this year.”

(The winner got to pick a shirt especially for the loser, and the loser would have to wear the shirt, stand on his desk, and sing the fight song of the winner. John HATED singing “Yay Alabama” while wearing a crimson shirt with white lettering that said “Roll Tide!!! Alabama 31, Tennessee 10”).

John would resist, but pretty soon his resistance would wear down and Danny would have him. Then, on the fourth MONDAY in October, John would once again sadly mount his desk, wearing the Shirt of Shame, holler, “ROLL, TIDE!” and sing “Yay, Alabama”, to Danny’s general delight and hilarity (not to mention the rest of us).

>>o<<

Back in Arkansas, I told this story to my friends, and we all got a good laugh out of it. The title, “The Shirt of Shame” morphed, and took on new meaning under the tender ministrations of first Dour Danny Ford, then Rooty Tooty Fresh and Hooty. Time after time, we’d depart Malvern, flags flying, magnets on, hearts light, with the fight song playing on the CD player, decked head-to-toe in Razorback gear, singing “Arkansas Fight!”, only to sit in some distant Valhalla of College Football like Athens, Tuscaloosa, Auburn, Knoxville, or Baton Rouge and watch the big boys pull our teams’ pants down. Sometimes we’d play ‘em tough, but a lot of times we were just outgunned and outmanned (and in the case of Hooty, CERTAINLY out-coached).

We got to where, when we left Arkansas, we’d carry all our Razorback stuff—and at least one shirt that was green, or blue, or yellow, or plaid. ANYTHING but cardinal and white. If we got the Hell beat out of us, we’d slink out of town, flags down, magnets in the floor---and change into our green or blue or yellow shirts. The Shirt of Shame.

I’ve worn the Shirt of Shame way, way, way too often.

>>o<<

Monday, we left Houston, Texas (where we live now), me, Nathan, Pam, and Marty (who’d flown down from Fayetteville). Flags were flying (in our hearts; the damn things make too much noise on the freeway), magnets on, hearts light. “Arkansas Fight!” blasting out of the speakers. We were New Orleans bound, headed for Arkansas’ first BCS bowl, to the Sugar Bowl for the first time in 30 years, to play one of the traditional powers in college football, the Ohio State Buckeyes.

We went to Bourbon Street, partied our as—er, uh, booty's (thank you, Shirley Q. Liquor) off, dined like Swine at Mister B’s Bistro on Royal; made our way over to the party by the Dome; cheerfully packed the New Orleans SuperDome with rabid, screaming Hog fans. (On the way out of the game, Marty and I heard two Ohio State fans, about our age, saying, “Man! That’s the first time I EVER saw us outnumbered and outyelled at a Bowl game!”).

The game has been discussed endlessly; everybody in two states (plus a whole lot of people nationally, not to mention the entire Southeastern Conference and Big 10 + 1 + 1 Conference) watched it on TeeVee.

It was a fabulous experience except for the final score. I’m hoarse; I’m chafed; I still hurt all over; I’ll probably go to bed as soon as I finish this post. If you were there, you know what it was like. If you weren’t there, know that we screamed our hearts out. In the following pictures, note that they stop about halftime. I stopped taking pictures and started just standing there screaming.

I believe that is the loudest Hog game I’ve ever attended. I know it was the loudest Bowl game. It reminded me of that Auburn basketball game at BWA back when Kareem and Pat and them were playing, where I do believe my throat bled; I know my ears rang afterwards. At this game, the lady in front of me had her hands over her ears the entire second half. As my Dad says, “Piercin’, man! Piercin’!”

We did our best, but we couldn’t bring home the win. But, we were proud of the Hogs. We were proud of our team; of our fans; of our state; of our conference; but mainly of the University of Arkansas.

And you know what? Driving home, we proudly wore our Razorback gear.

We felt no need for the Shirt of Shame.

>>o<<

Herein are the pictures: (I uploaded the larger size; if you want to see full-size, click the pic)

Bourbon always rocks.

Jeremiah, the Henrys, Jim

Fred and Jan

My nephews are such a mess…

Our much-beleaguered server, Marty, Fred (what’d you eat, boy?), Jan

Ginger’s fried oyster po-boy

My dinner (yeah, I was too close without a macro lens); wood-grilled fish with veggies (and my 6th bloody mary above).

Look at the little spot of colour right in the middle…

Calling the Hogs on Bourbon Street

Don’t tug on Superman’s cape…

Nathan and Pam

Marty and some fat old dude

Nick and Nathan, one more Razorback game

Party at Champions Square

Sea of Red

Blair in da house

Mongoose his own bad seff

Oh dear…

We made it, Aunt Shorty

I have lots more football pictures, they all look a lot like this one…

Start of the second half

Now really, ya just gotta love this…

Rallying for one last attempt

It was truly deafening at this point

Ahhh, sit down and shut up Tressel, you and your cheating thugs.

Oh, well, Nevertheless, GO HOGS!!!

More Hodge and Podge

2010-12-17T21:06:00.001-06:00

Thanks, Joyce, I’m in a slump…

1. What does it mean to have the 'holiday spirit'?

I don’t want to rain on everybody’s parade, but I’m one of those kooks who really prefers the religious aspects of the season. I can do without Santa, Rudolph, and their friends. The commercialism is APPALLING. This is one of the two times of the year I actually AM religious (the other being Easter).

That said, I have always loved and will always love “A Christmas Carol”, I read it every year and watch every version that comes out. My all-time favorites (in order): 1. George C. Scott’s 1984 Made for Television version. The all time great, winner, and still champ. All others pale. It’s on Netflix if you want to take a look. 2. The 1954 classic with Fredric March as Scrooge and Basil Rathbone (Sherlock!) as Marley.

Not wild about the latest semi-animated one, but it was ok. Looks good on Blu-ray.

(And, digressing, the current remake of Sherlock Holmes, entitled “Sherlock”, on Masterpiece Mystery Theater (it’s a BBC production) is amazing. Set in present-day; Dr. Watson is fresh from Afghanistan and trying to find himself and falls in with crazy Sherlock. As our British cousins say, “Brilliant!” WELL worth your time (there are only 3 so far).

2. What sits atop your tree (s)? Why?

I don’t have a tree any more. I’m allergic to real trees and the fake ones are…fake…besides, it’s just all to take down after Christmas.

3. When was the last time you gave yourself a pat on the back?

I try to do it every day. If I don’t, who will?

4. Which of your senses is most sensitive this time of year?

Tough call, between smell (I love the smell of hot punch, or mulled wine; HATE all the candles, etc.) and sight---I do love the exterior Christmas lights, love driving around looking at them.

5. What do you have too much of in your kitchen?

JUNK. Somebody help me…

6. What do you do for meals on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? Big meal? Breakfast tradition? Open the cookie tins and have at it?

Ok, this is a weird one. Our family has never liked turkey. I don’t like it now, just not something I crave. Mother despised it, Dad indifferent; it’s one of the few things my sister and I agree upon. We always had SWISS STEAK for Christmas dinner. We all looked forward to it (Swiss steak is hard to do and a labor of love), it’s one of our favorite things.

Also, I make spinach dip and use pumpernickel as the bread bowl/dip delivery device. I use fresh spinach. I don’t know what it is I do to it that’s different than everybody else, but everybody loves MINE. So I always make that and that’s what we eat while we’re waiting for the Swiss Steak to cook.

7. What is the best thing about winter?

Absolutely nothing, I HATE winter. The only good thing is it gives us a break here in Houston from the summer. The days are short. It’s cold and rainy. Yuck! Snow? EEEWWWWWWW. I’d go live in Southern California or Hawaii or somewhere if I could—tropical all the time, no winter EVER.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Christmas is depressing to me. Don’t know why; my parents did everything humanly possible to make Christmas wonderful for us. I’ve always been depressed at Christmas, even as a child (I now recognize). I am always turned off by it. Maybe that’s why now the highlight of Christmas for me is Midnight Mass (and nobody in my family will go with me; I go alone). It’s a religious holiday; I go to church and that’s all I want to do (besides eat spinach dip and Swiss steak, and read/watch A Christmas Carol).

More Hodge and Podge

2010-12-10T06:49:00.003-06:00

Keep ‘em coming, Joyce!

1. What is the most interesting thing you've done in the last year?

Having a friend email me at the very last second with a ticket, making a flying road trip on the spur of the moment to Little Rock, tailgating on the golf course, watching my beloved Arkansas Razorbacks give us thrills and chills beating hated LSU, then dancing in the stands and singing “Pour some Sugar on me!” with 53,000 of my closest friends.

Some of the most fun I’ve ever had at a football game

(Not my video, I was too busy singing and dancing to make one. I was to the right of this guy, somewhere about the 10 yard line, but this is what it was like. There are several more on Youtube and I love every one of them.)

Ok, one more, couldn't resist and added this one. These boys were having a lot of fun---the great thing is, so were we, their elders! We were all doing the same thing, they just have more energy....from the student section:

2. What is your most meaningful family heirloom?

I’m the custodian of the family pictures and the family history, and they’re going in the car with me if I have to evac for a hurricane. However, if you’re talking “things”, I have my great-great-great-great-great grandfather’s grindstone, and on the other side of the family, a sugar bowl that has been passed down for generations. Both little “antique” value, but tons of sentimental value.

3. What food festival would you most like to attend? If you're not sure click here to see a list of possibilities.

Um….all of them?

4. Snow...do you love it or is it considered a four letter word where you live?

When I was young (college and young adult) I loved skiing. I loved snow (we didn’t have much in Texas, southern California, et al). As I got older, however, and lived in cold-weather climates, I saw snow for the evil it is. Now, my biggest complaint about Houston is that it’s too far north and too cold.

5. Can you ski? Do you ski? Are you any good?

I used to, and I was. I will never do it again.

6. What quality in your spouse or best friend are you most thankful for?

I’d have to say loyalty; I’m fortunate in friends and have several who have stuck with me through thick and thin. Friendships that have stood the test of time.

7. Describe the coziest spot in your home.

I guess the den—I’m not into “cozy”. I’m hot natured, so it’s always cool in here for almost everybody else. My den is a small room off the main living room; the living room has vaulted ceilings; the den doesn’t, and is paneled, and is filled with recliners and the television.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

I’m grateful for the love I’ve experienced and am experiencing, and the great memories. Everything else fades, but those remain.

Eventually I’ll get around to posting my LSU pictures….

Wednesday Hodgepodge—on Thursday and 2 Weeks Late

2010-11-26T02:29:00.001-06:00

I’m behind on everything, including my blog reading and especially on my blog writing. I have some good excuses: I have a new job (and I love it, and it’s exciting and fun), we’ve been right in the middle of one of the most exciting Razorback football seasons in decades, and I’ve been busy keeping up with old friends and making new ones.

But, it’s Thanksgiving, the very first one I’ve ever spent totally alone. Other than watching the Cowboys lose (sigh), It’s seemed a lot like a regular Saturday; I’ve sat on my posterior all day and done nothing but eat, drink, and alternate between football and James Bond movies (SyFy has a Bond marathon on Thanksgiving). It’s actually been relaxing, truth be told.

So, I went over to my friend Kathy’s blog, Life in the Slow Lane, and discovered that she’d lifted an idea from our mutual friend Joyce at From This Side of the Pond, and I liked the idea. Kathy missed the first week; I missed the first two. Unlike Kathy, I’ve decided to just do both of them together and then try to keep up. So, (in the immortal words of the immortal Jackie Gleason), “…and aWAY we GO!”

Week 1 Questions:

1. Do you think you're more like your mom or your dad?

Oh, hell, this is an easy one. There are traces of Dad in there (the reading; the tending to things like classical music and literature; believe it or not, the practicality (“Why is every light in this house on?” “You don’t need a new one, the old one’s not worn out yet.”).

But ask anybody who knew us both, and you’ll get an immediate answer: I’m Mother made over as a man (and she was a clone of her Mama). I frequently open my mouth and her voice comes out. The genes didn’t lie…

Yeah, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree….

2. Do you like roller coasters?

No, I do not “like” roller coasters. I LOVE roller coasters. I think they are among the coolest inventions of man. From my earliest coaster days (The Comet at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas; The Monster Mouse at Playland Park in San Antonio) to present, I love ‘em all. Current favourite: Rockin’ Roller Coaster at Walt Disney World, although I’m tempted to make a trip to Ohio specifically to ride the coasters at Cedar Point.

3. How did you name your blog and do you now wish you'd thought about it maybe another five minutes before you hit publish? Would you change your blog title if it were not a huge pain in the derriere? (French makes everything sound a little nicer doesn't it?)

I couldn’t think of anything better. I wanted “Malvie” in it since that’s been my nickname since Razorbacking days (short for “MalvernHog”). I wanted an alliterative name; ergo, “Malvie’s Musings”. And yes, I’d change it if I could think of something better AND it wasn’t so much darn work…

4. What is the best wedding gift you received? Not married? Didn't get any gifts? Then what is the best wedding gift you've given?

Hands down: When I lived in Little Rock, I sang for years in the Cathedral Choir at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. We (the Choir) were available for rent for weddings (we did funerals for free, although donations were accepted and appreciated). We used the wedding income for things like new music and vestments.

Truly beautiful, isn’t it?

We did this wedding at Christmas. The bride (who was no stranger to Hostess Twinkies; in fact, I daresay the entire Hostess line) was marrying a young man whose father was a member of the Canadian Parliament. The young lady’s family lived on Edgehill Rd., the swankiest address in Arkansas. Her father (probably relieved to give her ~~feed bill~~ expenses to someone else) threw a lavish wedding---the dress was from Paris; all 1,500 seats at the Cathedral were full; the groom’s family and friends flew in from Canada on a chartered 737; the 3-tent reception at the bride’s family estate featured us in one tent, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s Chamber group in another, and the Arkansas Opera Company in another; the florist (a friend/competitor of a choir member) told us the flowers alone were $15,000; the families were whisked from the estate to the church and back to the estate by a fleet of Rolls-Royce’s imported from Dallas for the occasion. It was quite the spectacle.

Of course, making it even MORE spectacular were the bride’s mother dramatically “fainting” during the service, the groom and all his groomsmen being so plastered they literally could barely stand (I guess due to the width of the bride as she waddled down the aisle), and of course, there was the FIRE which occurred when one of the candelabra, festooned with real greenery, caught fire during the service (my friend Scott, ever the proper Episcopalian, took the burning thing to the sacristy, stopping of course to genuflect at the altar while holding the burning candelabra….)

What does this have to do with gifts? The same day (it was a morning wedding), the maid of a friend of mine was getting married. This extremely sweet young African-American lady (already mother of two) had finally met “Mr. Right”. She thoughtfully invited both her employer (“Miss Anne”) and me, in person (handed us the invitations, hand-written on notebook paper). She knew of my interest in photography, having admired some of my photos, and shyly asked me what I would charge her to take pictures at her wedding. I replied that the photography would be my gift.

So, after Anne and I extracted ourselves from the “extravaganza” on Edgehill, we drove north of the city to the tiny crossroads community where the maid’s wedding was to be held. The church was a white-clapboard A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) church, with a low-slung, concrete-block “fellowship hall” next door.

The bride’s wedding dress was handmade by her sisters. She was radiant walking down the aisle, accompanied by her two adorable children. Her handsome young man, standing at the altar with HIS two adorable children, was obviously head-over-heels in love with her. After a lovely wedding, we adjourned to the Fellowship Hall, which to our surprise featured packed-dirt floors and naked light bulbs hanging from wires stapled to the ceiling. The wedding cake, home made jointly by the mothers of the bride and groom, was the single most delicious cake I’ve ever eaten. I snapped about 400 pictures, had them developed, and put them in albums for the couple, who were ecstatic—and very much in love.

And that was the best wedding present I’ve ever given.

Oh, and the ~~walrus~~ rich young lady and the MP’s son remained married exactly two months. So far as I know, ‘Cille and Tom are still married after all these years.

5. What is the one bill you most hate to pay?

All of them.

6. Is the glass half full or half empty?

Half full, always.

7. What is your favorite word? Okay okay. Calm down. How about one of your favorite words?

How about my favourite NON-word: “IRREGARDLESS”. THERE IS NO SUCH WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

8. Now, this is where you insert one random thought of your own...maybe something that struck you as funny, something that recently had you scratching your head in confusion, something that annoyed you a teensy bit, something on your to do list, something you are looking forward to, whatever. As long as it is in keeping with the friendly tone we've all come to know and love on Wednesdays then we're good. Don't make me get out my wooden spoon.

I don’t know which I like better, pot roast or chili. But I have both available to eat this weekend.

Week 2 Questions:

1. What is the most amazing weather you've ever seen?

I have had the unmitigated displeasure to have lived through 3 hurricanes and 3 tornadoes. The hurricanes were Carla, Allen and Ike. The tornadoes were the Dallas tornado of 1960, wherein downtown was torn up as we watched; a tornado in Little Rock in 1982 wherein I had to get out of the car and into the ditch (in a 3-piece suit) and felt the tornado lift me up (slightly) and set me back down; and the one in Dallas wherein my friend and I had been to the bars, got back to our apartments (she lived upstairs from me and was a friend girl, not a girl friend), fell into a~~n alcoholic stupor~~ deep sleep, and awoke to discover that the roof had been torn off our building while we slumbered on (the Fire Department pounded on the door and took us out).

I’d just as soon pass on any more severe weather, thanks.

2. What is a sound or noise you love?

Here you go.

3. Do you like seafood? What's your favorite seafood dish?

I love seafood. Unfortunately, crustaceans concentrate iodine in their delicious little bodies. Ingestion of iodine for me induces anaphylactic shock, and I have to be hospitalized. Accordingly, I have to eat SCROD while everybody else is enjoying lobster. My favourite pre-anaphylaxis seafood? Tie: Oysters Rockefeller and gulf shrimp.

4. What part of your day requires the most patience?

Houston traffic. Twice a day. Every day.

Here’s another example.

And here’s some GREAT humor about it (you have to laugh; glass half full, remember?)

5. What's your favorite shade of blue?

Columbia blue, when paired with Old Gold (note the colours of this blog. It’s not that way by accident. Columbia blue and Old Gold for Sigma Chi.

6. Do people underestimate you?

I don’t know about now, but they certainly did in the past. ~~Fat people~~ Gentlemen of Stature are usually considered to be stupid for some reason. Additionally, you can walk down the street in New York and hear 50 different languages, but let a southern accent roll out and it’s like the old EF Hutton commercials: everybody stops and stares. They figure anyone from the south is automatically stupid.

7. When was the last time you had butterflies in your stomach?

Two weeks ago, when I started my new job.

8. Insert your own random thought here, and remember...I have a wooden spoon and I'm not afraid to use it.

Goldfinger is my favourite James Bond movie.

>>o<<

The week 3 questions were all about Thanksgiving, and since that’s a rather tender subject at the moment, I’ll decline those.

“That’s a rather tender subject at the moment. Another slice anyone?”

What Border Collies Seldom Understand…

2010-11-06T01:30:00.001-05:00

…is that the mere fact that the refrigerator door is opened is not necessarily an indicator that treats for them are forthcoming....

…is that a queen-sized bed will only hold so many large creatures…

…is that armrests on chairs are for resting arms upon; when an arm is thusly placed, it is not necessarily there because it needs a border collie nose on it…

…is that leather recliners are for people, not border collies…

…is that the dogs in the next yard will be there tomorrow, too…

…is that vacuum cleaners, in and of themselves, are not fatal to border collies…

…is that a 60 pound border collie, when applied suddenly, unexpectedly, and exuberantly to the midsection of a middle-aged man snoozing in a recliner can cause spillage of drink, breakage of computer and a sudden change from baritone to soprano…

…is that yelling because your team scored a touchdown is not the same as yelling because your border collie pottied on the carpet…

…is that loud, raucous, welcoming barking, tail-wagging, and running around upon the entry of “Dad” never fails to bring a smile to Dad’s face, no matter how tough his day has been.

Calling the Hogs For Aunt Shorty

2010-10-29T07:45:00.001-05:00

Aunt Shorty fell walking her dog night before last and broke her leg. She’s having surgery this morning, as I type this. She’s 91.

Shorty (Arline Jones Peeler; her actual first name is "Velda" but call her that at your own peril) started me on the road to rack and ruin; i.e., it was Shorty who infected me with Razorbackmania.

Everybody else kept growing, Arline stopped at 4'9" (she claims; I think that's generous), hence the nickname. She married badly during WWII (drunken asshole with fists), had a son out of it; divorced him (gasp) and was a divorcee living in Waco, Texas (where they wound up at the time of the divorce). She was a secretary (and a damn good one) at the VA Hospital there. She needed "out" (I can relate to needing "out" of Waco...) and put in for a job as secretary to the CO, Dyess AFB. She got the job and moved with her young son to Abilene.

At Dyess, the top ranked pilot was a young-middle-aged, divorced pilot (hotshot), also short, by the name of Calvin Peeler (native of Corona, California). He thought she was hot stuff; she wouldn't give him the time of day. Eventually he worked his way into her affections and they married in 1958. One of Cal's buddies was in the US Army Corps of Engineers. They were having beers and the guy said, "Hey, isn't that new wife of yours from Arkansas? We're getting ready to build a huge new lake up there; you ought to buy some property and have a lake house."

They thought retiring at a lake in the mountains sounded like a good idea, so they made a few trips up the tortuous, winding roads, through the tiny college hamlet of Fayetteville, and found a worn-out farm with a shotgun shack on it that was going to be half taken by the Corps for the lake. They scraped together the money to buy it ($8,000!!!) and bought it.

As soon as the USAF told him his eyesight was not good enough to fly fighters and grounded him, Cal was -out-. They moved to Fayetteville and Cal finished his Masters in Math, then became an instructor at the UofA. Shorty was always a big fan of the Razorbacks, and Cal quickly adapted (he graduated from California Berkeley, "Cal from Cal"). Arline got a job as secretary to the Chief of Surgery at the Fayetteville VA hospital, William J. Fink, MD. The Peelers bought themselves a Cadillac to go to games, and started following the team. They got to be a little crazy about it, going to all games, home and away. This was especially interesting for them in the 1964 Arkansas football season...

They stayed at our house to attend the Cotton Bowl, in which Arkansas beat Nebraska (we were in Dallas). Their 7 year old nephew was hopping up and down on one foot begging to go to a game. The next season, they took that by-then-8 year old to a game---Texas was visiting Fayetteville, ranked #1 again, wanting revenge for their defeat the previous year in Austin. It was getting dark in a stadium with no lights. Texas had the game won, 24-20; Arkansas was out of times out and Broyles was pretty much out of options; 1:21 left to go in the game. Brittenum to Crockett, Brittenum to Crockett, Brittenum to Crockett, TOUCHDOWN, ARKANSAS!!! (as time expired) Arkansas 27, Texas 24.

That was the day I found out it's possible to scream until no sound will come out.
On the way out of the stadium, there was enough voice left (the mute part would come the next day) for the nephew to beg Cal for a souvenir. Never big on such folderol, Cal bought the SMALLEST pennant to shut the kid up. It's hanging on my den wall as I type this.

Cal passed away in 1989 (if you smoke enough Pall Malls, that can happen). At about the same time, Bill Fink's wife died, in the same hospital, of the same ailment (Marlboros). Having then known each other for decades, being close friends, Arline and Bill started hanging out together, and then wound up marrying. Bill was universally known among his family members as "Pop", and that's what I called him as well.

When I moved back to Arkansas, I started going to all the games, taking Dad with me in Little Rock and Fayetteville, and when we went to Fayetteville, we'd stay with Shorty and Pop. It was my privilege to take Shorty and Dad (sister and brother) to the Fayetteville games, where they had a ball. Pop couldn't go because the arthritis had already gotten bad, although he did make it to a few baseball games at Baum (he was much more of a baseball fanatic than a football fan).

Shorty loved the tailgate parties and met many of my friends in WebHogs. She could cocktail and Call Hogs with the best of them and saw no reason whatsoever why she couldn't do all that at 85. She had a ball.

We sat on the west side for years. The lady we sat next to, Donna, was a young chick of 75 to Shorty's 85, and they had been to many of the same games. My buddy Don came and sat with us one time, and at a particularly egregious point in the game, let fly (at top volume) with a "colorful expression". (He sat to my left, then me, then Shorty, then Donna.) He was aghast that he had cussed in front of Aunt Shorty and Donna. This was particularly amusing to me (I had let fly with a slightly less colorful expression), as Shorty and Donna didn't hear him. They had been too busy cussing at the top of their lungs to hear what we were saying....

She sat with me in the South Endzone Outdoor Club the last couple of years, but had gotten to where it was too hard to lug up the Hill to get to the stadium, and the walk back to the car in the crowd down Razorback Rd. was too much.

So that's who she is. She's made us all promise that, when she goes (at say, 130 or 140 years of age) that we will Call the Hogs for her.

I hope that's not any time soon.

Jimmy, me, Aunt Shorty, and Dad, Calling ‘em before heading off to a game in Fayetteville

Random thoughts on “Back To The Future”

2010-10-26T02:08:00.001-05:00

Nathan’s wife Pam was out of town tonight, so he came over and we planned dinner and a movie.

Dinner consisted of Long John Silver’s. I swear, Yum Foods would go out of business without my patronage. What can I say, I like their food. It’s reasonably priced, fast, decent, and did I mention cheap?

We had many movie choices, but settled on an old favourite: The AMC Studio 30 is having two special 25th Anniversary screenings of “Back to the Future”.

Once again tonight on the Big Screen, Marty McFly leaped into Doc Brown’s tricked out DeLorean and went back to 1955, managing to screw everything up but somehow coming out all right. Of course, we know that there were two more movies (which were filmed simultaneously, and the franchise “jumped the shark” in the third movie wherein Doc falls in love and stays in the past).

I first saw this movie at the wonderful, gone-but-not-forgotten General Cinema NorthPark I in Dallas. At 1050 seats, it was bigger than anything out there now. It was one of the first three theaters in the country to get THX sound, with the THX inventors personally supervising the installation. The sound at that theater was astounding. George Lucas famously said it was his favorite place to show (and watch) his movies. No “theater seating”, it had big red plush velvet seats that reclined, offered acres of leg room, and swept down to that huge 70 mm screen.

I had not seen much press on “Back to the Future”; I was in the mood for a movie and just went to the theater to see what was playing. “Hmmm,” I thought, “Spielberg sci-fi movie? I liked Michael J. Fox in “Family Ties”; he’s in a movie?” So I went in.

The first thing that hit me was the THX splash screen. It was introduced in 1983 with “Star Wars—Return of the Jedi” but our crappy theater in Little Rock didn’t have the technology. The first time I ever saw this was at that screening of “Back to the Future”.

I loved the movie, and my enjoyment of it has not dimmed with the years. It is one of my all-time favourites.

>>o<<

Nathan, of course, was born in 1984. He didn’t see “Back to the Future” in the theater, ever. He grew up with the movie in the background, like everybody of his generation, but it was no big deal to them.

So, it was kind of fun to see it together.

>>o<<

At the time (1985) we all thought it was great, looking back into 1955. If you didn’t experience life in the 50’s (which officially ended November 22, 1963), it’s impossible to understand it. It was just a much different country, and the people were different.

Now, the fun is in looking at BTTF as a time capsule—of the now-simpler, more manageable 1985. In 1985, there was no “terrorist” situation; we didn’t have a “Threat Level” or “Full-Body screening” at airports (everybody was still pissed we had to “endure” the simple little x-ray machine at the door); the Twin Towers still stood tall in New York, and nobody had the image of them burning, then crashing down seared in their memories. Jobs were plentiful; it was the “Go-Go” 80’s, baby! No “Great Recession” hanging over everything, where people at parties ask, “Where’s Joe?” and the hushed answer is, “He was laid off and they had to move.” “Foreclosure” was something that happened very rarely, a throwback to the bad old days of the Great Depression.

BTTF was so “modern” then.

-The Mall figures prominently in the story. 80’s kids hung out a lot at the Mall. When was the last time you even WENT to a Mall? (Ok, these days I can’t think of the Mall without thinking of “Robin Sparkles”

-Marty uses a WIRELESS phone—a huge clunky thing with a little retractable antenna.

-We ALL had one of those “flip” alarm clocks---every minute, a little “flip” as the “digital” display changed. Mine was a Panasonic, just like Marty’s.

-Jennifer and Marty are sitting in the park, but after the “Save the Clock Tower” lady interrupts their kiss, they are stymied by the arrival of her Dad (in an AMC Eagle…anyone born after 1980, did you know there once was a “Big FOUR” in Detroit, the fourth car company being American Motors (AMC), producer of the Eagle and Jeep lines?). Jennifer is going to be spending the evening at her Grandma’s---so she has to rush back to give Marty the telephone number. He can’t just call her on her cell, because there are no cells.

-There aren’t any computers, either, nor references to the internet. Nobody buys anything on eBay, or watches a video on YouTube. Nobody Google's anything.

-Marty orders a “Pepsi Free”. They stopped making it in 1987.

-Speaking of Pepsi, this is the first movie I remember where product placement was so very prominently featured (it may not be the first ever, but it sure was “in your face”). Pepsi, Texaco, Toyota, all prominently featured (to their best advantage). Cleverest, to me: When Marty is onstage performing “Earth Angel” with Marvin Berry, the amp is sitting on an upside-down Pepsi case.

-Nathan didn’t know this: the “teacher” in the gym, who passes judgment on Marty and his band (“I’m sorry, kids, you’re just too darn loud”) was Huey Lewis, who had a huge hit with “The Power of Love”, the theme song of the movie.

This led Nathan to wonder what happened to Huey Lewis and the News. I told him they’re still around, still performing, but there’s no Top 40 any more. Ahh, yes, I mused, “Top 40”, as in “A-merican…Top FOR-TY!” with Casey Kasem. I told Nathan that, when I was a teenager, my friends and I would all listen to ATF every week (Saturday morning), to see where our favourite songs were going. We’d keep a list of the songs on spiral notebooks. He thought this quite the funniest thing he’d ever heard, accused me of making it up, and couldn’t BELIEVE that we would do such a thing. I told him well, we might want to buy the single, or even the album, before it left the charts. This brought more gales of laughter. I further told him, when I moved to Houston in 1979, the city featured KRBE, the number 1 FM Top 40 station, and KLOL, the “Head” “Metal” station, plus a couple of country stations, and that was –it-. The rest was AM, which still ruled but was waning. My car had an AM radio; I slung one of those little FM converters under the dash. That’s how I made the switch from KULF, Houston (“Houston…first word spoken from the moon! and KULF IS Houston!”), the Mighty 1090, KAAY in Little Rock, KTSA in San Antonio, and KFJZ in Dallas, to KRBE FM Houston, KLAZ, “Z-98.5” in Little Rock, KTFM in San Antonio, and KVIL in Dallas. Again, shock and incomprehension.

But back to the movie:

-Marty wears Nike’s in the movie. The swoosh was everywhere then. Nobody cared where they were made, or by whom.

-Suspenders: Marty wears ‘em the whole movie. I had at least 12 pairs, probably more. All kinds of colours and designs. All the pants came fitted with suspender buttons, but if they didn’t, I had a variety of “clip on” suspenders. I guess you can still buy them now, but why would you want to do so?

-Jennifer (the first one, who was far better than the second) sure had some big-ol honking 80’s hair on her, didn’t she? Farrah-hair. Very chic. Lots of curlers and lots of hairspray to achieve that look.

-When Marty comes back to a re-arranged future, the living room is a stunning white—with mauve-and-teal accents, brass fixtures, and a glass dining table. Very 80’s-chic.

-Plot hole: Marty comes back to a rearranged future---but there’s still only one car? (admit it’s a BMW, but if Dave is successful now, where’s HIS car? Where’s MOM’s car? Where’s the sister’s car? They ain’t THAT successful if they’re all riding around in Dad’s BMW).

-Plot hole: At the beginning of the movie, Marty revs the DeLorean up to 88 in the parking lot at the Mall. When he’s in 1955, he has to go way, way down the street to accomplish the same thing, and lumbers 0-60 in about 2 minutes.

-Plot hole: Marty appears not to know his own grandparents, aunts, and uncles? He’s never been to their house and doesn’t recognize them? They live in the same town!

-Biggest error on the part of the directors: leaving out the rest of the scene where “Darth Vader” comes down from the planet Vulcan to convince George to take Lorraine to the dance (starts at 3:34 in the clip).

>>o<<

All in all, a fun visit to an old friend.

One more thing: At the end, Doc Brown finally succeeds, traveling himself into the future. 30 years into the future, to be precise: October 21…2015.

I STILL want my flying car!!! I was promised a flying car!!! Where is it?

I want my flying car!!!

Coincidences continue from the New England trip

2010-10-20T07:53:00.001-05:00

As you can see from the previous blog entries, Dad and I enjoyed a vacation in New England a couple of weeks ago.

Yesterday, I got an email from an old friend; we were at Trinity together back in the day. He now lives in Houston as well, and we never see each other, but that doesn’t diminish the friendship (it’s a shame we don’t make time).

Anyway, Jerry wrote me the other day:

Nick,

     I stopped by Malvie's Musings today and was so excited to read about your trip!

Polly and I were in Maine at the same time! Like you, we left on Saturday, Oct 2

and flew into Boston. Our US Airways flight arrived about 4:15, so I guess you were

out of the airport by then. We drove up to Boothbay Harbor, Maine and spent the week.

Tuesday we went to Wiscasset and ate at Sarah's Twin Schooner Pub that you have a

picture of. Then we went on to Augusta to tour the capital. You, apparently, were in

Rockland on Thursday. We drove through Rockland that morning on our way to Bangor.

Polly had to see Stephen King's house! Then we drove back through Rockland that afternoon.

I might have been one of those cars you were dodging as you crossed the street!

We drove back to Boston Saturday, Oct 9 for our flight home about 1:00.

     Both our great minds just knew it was a great time to go to that part of the country!

I just can't believe we were crossing each other's paths and didn't know it.....

                                                                                Jerry

Ok, so we live about 30 miles apart and we fly all the way across the country at the same time and are in the same place at the same time.

As we said back in the day, “That’s…bizarre!”

Jerry, let’s get together soon.

Dad n Me in Boston, Day 7

2010-10-08T16:44:00.001-05:00

Well, here we are in the hotel in Boston, repacking, going to bed early so we can catch our flight back to Texas in the morning.

It’s been a wonderful 7 days, and I’ll be glad of it till my dying day (which may come soon enough if this cold doesn’t get better; or maybe I just WANT to die and the rhinovirus is toying with me, saying, “Oh, no, you’re gonna LIVE through ME, buddy!”).

We took our time this morning leaving Brunswick, and drove down I-95 to Boston. We’re staying in one of the suburbs. Boston traffic is---Boston traffic. It astonishes me that anyone would ever complain about Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, or even Austin when there are examples of traffic anarchy like Boston available.

Drove to the “Wonderland” T station and hopped the Blue Line for downtown. Walked around Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, then a quick cab to the wharf to see an old friend.

Ya gotta love Legal Seafood. Yes, it’s the tourist trap, but they really do have excellent food. One martini later, I felt alive again. I’m allergic to shellfish, so I had the tuna sashimi style with seaweed salad and mashed potatoes. Dad had----a cheeseburger. I tried to get him to try any of the sensations on the menu, but he was sticking with the tried and true, and I didn’t argue.

We were tired, worn, and I’m not feeling well, so we just came back to the hotel for the night.

Tomorrow: Houston.

Dad n Me in Maine, on the Train, Day 6

2010-10-07T22:52:00.001-05:00

Train!

I love trains. Always have, ever since Dad brought me my first one (well, Santa brought it. Mother and I went to the store for some milk on Christmas Eve so Santa could have milk and cookies; when we got home, that debbil Santa had come and gone! He was early (Dallas was apparently one of his first stops, and Santa probably wanted to get done early so as to get at least a little sleep). In any event, I loved that train. Later, Dad got HIS train from HIS Dad’s, and I had both.

My grandmother Forthmon (“Grannie”), who lived with us, would take the train back to Malvern to visit her relatives, and I’d go along too. It was always grand. We went on “Ol Bluie” (Texas and Pacific, and later Missouri Pacific’s engines were all navy blue with gray trim; I didn’t realize at that age that there were DIFFERENT engines, they all looked like “Ol Bluie” to me).

Yes, planes get you there faster. I used to love plane travel. Now, I’d be just as happy never to get on one again. Trains, now that was when travel was more leisurely, more glamorous.

In any event, today Dad and I boarded the Maine Eastern Railroad and took off on a journey of 50 miles to Rockland, Maine (it took 3 hours, which might explain why people abandoned the train). Still, it afforded some great vistas and we had a marvelous time.

In Rockland, it was raining a bit. We found a used bookstore (always a plus), made purchases (you thought we’d go into a used bookstore and come out empty?), and found a great lunch place to have drinks and lunch quietly, in a great atmosphere, as the rain fell gently outside.

When the rain stopped and we were suitably refreshed, we went back toward the depot, and went to the Maine Lighthouse Museum (Kathy Beaumont, where are you when I need you?). Had a great time; our guide was fascinating and just boiling over with facts and figures about lighthouses. I honestly knew nothing about them other than they were cool and had big lights. I learned that the US Lighthouse Service operated before the Coast Guard, and that many of the lighthouse keepers were women. Quite a few performed amazing acts of heroism, saving lives. One of them, Ida Lewis, had a pennant with 18 stars, one for each life she’d saved. A fascinating glimpse into a life I knew nothing about.

I think some of today’s were among the best photos of the trip:

“Ol’ Greenie?”

Not exactly the boarding platforms at Grand Central Station….

“The Magnolia” was spiffy in green.

Maine WORKS. This is where many of our current US Navy ships are built. There’s a huge Naval Air Station in Brunswick.

I loved it! They were all clustered along ONE of the rails (not the other!).

Wiscasset from the rails.

The gulls’ friends the pigeons were clustered on this house….

I wanted to go.

Note the widow’s walk on top of the house.

Rockland harbor.

Rockland, Maine.

It’s all you need.

View from our table at lunch.

The Rockland Light (center of picture, on the peninsula).

Port Arthur, Texas, baby!

Back on the train; this time, we rode the “Alexander Hamilton”.

The following are my favorite pictures of the trip. Salt marshes and mud flats. Lobstermen checking their pots. I LOVED this part of the trip.

When exactly did I turn into Orson Welles?

^^^Probably my favorite.

Remember Microsoft “Bliss”?

Tomorrow: Boston!

Dad n Me in Maine, Day 5

2010-10-06T20:32:00.007-05:00

(I did two posts today, so be sure and check out the "new" one immediately prior to this one).

Sometimes, life gives you lemons. And there again, sometimes it gives you lemonade.

Lemons: Today, it rained. And rained. And rained. Boy, did it rain. Sheets and sheets of rain. Lotta watta. Oh, well, sometimes it rains. We go from 100% chance today to a 40% chance tomorrow. Dad and I are both excited about tomorrow, it’s our train excursion from Brunswick to Rockland via the Maine Eastern Railroad.

Lemons: Somewhere between Vermont and Maine, I caught a real-live, honest to goodness bad cold. I haven’t had one in the entire time I’ve been in Houston, and here I am, coughing, sneezing, loading up on Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Zicam, Benadryl, the works. Yuck. But, I’ll survive. I hope I don’t give it to Dad, but with us in such close quarters, I’m afraid that’s a virtual certainty.

Lemonade: My old Buddy Frank Senter died last year. He was a great guy, tons of fun, and always had a great outlook on life. He had had some pretty severe physical problems which ultimately led to his (very premature) death, leaving his lovely wife Diane.

His name really wasn’t Frank, it’s just that he had an unusual first name. He was named after his father, Pleasant Senter. Frank’s real name was Pleasant Senter (i don’t remember whether it was Junior or III or even IV).

Frank was a total character. A staunch supporter of the University of Tennessee, Frank could be counted upon to do and say funny things, and show up in the most interesting times and places.

So I wasn’t surprised yesterday, at all, to discover that in Brunswick, Maine (a long way from Tennessee), they’ve built a nice multi-use facility named Senter Place (photo below). You get there by going on the main drag to the Maine drag.

The main drag is PLEASANT street.

So you go down PLEASANT to get to SENTER Place.

Hello, old friend. Was that you dropping in to smile and say hello?

>>o<<

Since we were rained out today, Dad and I decided to take it easy. We slept in, then drove in a most leisurely manner up US 1, enjoying Bath, Wiscasset, and points in between. We then cut up to Augusta, Maine’s capitol city, which boasts 20,000 residents (a far cry from the state capitols to which we’re accustomed).

It was pouring so hard when i took some of these, I decided they looked better in black and white. Perhaps you’ll agree.

Photos:

The main street is Maine Street, laid out a full 12 rods wide (198 feet). After a devastating fire (the Indians burned it), the citizens declared "never again", and built their street wide enough that a fire could not jump from one side to the other. It's huge.

^^^Hello, old buddy. Hope they’re treating you and Barney the Hound well up there in Heaven.

Below: This was the “Captain’s Row”---Brunswick was a big shipping center, and the Captains were rich. Their homes were built all in a row, with widows’ walks.

I couldn’t get this in one pic, so I took two and stitched them together. I wish I had done a better job, but you can get an idea of how beautiful this house was, with its original wrought-iron fence and widows’ walk.

Bowdoin College has a beautiful campus:

Bowdoin boasts that its class of 1825 featured Nathaniel Hawthorne ("The Scarlet Letter" and "The House of the Seven Gables") and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (who taught there for years thereafter). They were preceded by one year by their friend Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the United States. Additionally, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written at Bowdoin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, while her husband was a professor there (she had never been to the South). The class of 1877 featured Robert Peary, who later (as "Admiral Peary") was the first person to reach the North Pole (we'll go with that, anyway). In 1946, Alfred Kinsey (who revolutionized the way the world looks at sex) graduated from Bowdoin.

Bath:

Doesn’t this just make you want to stop into Ben’s for a trim?

Wiscasset:

On the way to Augusta:

Augusta, which has far too many traffic circles:

How’d you like to attend this high school?

Dad n Me, Vermont to Maine, Day 4

2010-10-06T19:21:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, we decided we’d “done” Vermont. Of course, there’re 10,000,000 things to do, but we felt as though we’d seen the leaves, and that was our purpose. Besides, both of us were anxious to get to Maine.

Bullwinkle never did put in an appearance :-(.

From Vermont to Maine:

This “river” meanders along US 4 (well, US 4 meanders alongside the river) from Woodstock to IH 89.

Crossing the Piscataqua River Bridge into Maine (see the state line sign inside?)

Interlude; She’s Doing It Right!

2010-10-05T08:04:00.001-05:00

My niece texted me this photo (taken with her phone) last night.

I know she’s asleep, but that baby is CALLING THE HOGS!!!

Dad n Me, in Vermont, Day 3

2010-10-04T23:46:00.003-05:00

What an interesting day, on a whole variety of fronts, from start to finish.

Well, start with last night. We went to a restaurant here (there aren’t many) that promised “Vermont’s best Barbeque”. I was a bit skeptical and ordered the Prime Rib (they had a huge variety of things on the menu BESIDES barbeque, which to me is always a bad sign….). Dad insisted on trying the “pulled pork and brisket combo”.

My prime rib was excellent, and we’ll leave it at that (hint to Yankees: we won’t try to do maple syrup and clam chowder. You leave the BBQ to us).

This morning, we got up to another –less than stellar- hotel breakfast. Jettisoning my carefully laid plans for the day, we elected instead to go to Woodstock, Vermont, through which we’d passed on the way up here. We were certainly glad we did so.

Woodstock is great; you could almost wonder if Walt Disney used it for his model for Main St., USA at Disneyland and Walt Disney World (he didn’t). “Quaint”—they’ve got it by the bucket.

We went to a great little restaurant (Ok, it said, “Creamery”; who knew it was a breakfast place? We thought it was an ice cream store; the locals clued us). While waiting for breakfast, I overheard (the tables are less than 1 foot apart and you fall over people getting in and out) the conversation behind us; 4 ladies “of a certain age”, discussing, in unmistakable accents, the possibilities of their favorite football team, the South Carolina Gamecocks, going all the way. The biggest concern seems to be the Arkansas game…of course, I had to turn around and give them a big Woo, Pig! Sooiiee. They loved it.

So naturally, walking out of the restaurant (there was a line to get in), I also passed a cute young couple fully decked in Auburn attire. I WPS’d them, too, and was delighted to hear, “Oooohh, we’re scared of y’all! Y’all are the scariest team we’ve got all year!” (the young lady) and “We’re not afraid of ‘Bama, but y’all OWN us; y’all are going to kick our ass!” (the young man). I assured them of good will except when we play them. Dad was already ahead of me (you can see that in one of the pictures), and I was hurrying to catch up. I couldn’t help but stop, though, and pat an older man on the back, saying, “How bout ya, Georgia Dawg!?” to which he responded, “Man, y’all should have whipped ‘Bama worse than you whipped us!”

As I said before, it’s GOOD to be da Hog!

>>o<<

We left Woodstock and headed up IH-91. Dad had heard on the radio at breakfast (I wasn’t listening, I was too busy eavesdropping on the Carolina ladies) that the leaves were really turning on Vermont 111. Using my trusty Crackberry, I determined that VT 111 runs from right around the Canadian border south through a mountainous area. So, off we went up IH 91; we then cut back on 111 past Lake Seymour, the largest lake wholly contained within Vermont’s borders (“Feed me, Seymour!”). Beautiful. Dad was shocked at how very GREEN everything was (as opposed to Woodstock/Killington/Rutland, which is in the southern part of the state and blazing with color. Dad remarked again and again how tall and green the corn still was, and they were haying still. I guess here in Yankeeland, fall goes from south to north?

Dad had my camera (I was driving; we got a great rent car, a Volvo C70, and I was having fun with it; Dad won’t let me put the top down….what a “looser” as they mis-speak on the message boards…). Dad made over 300 photos today, some really excellent, some not so much. I took quite a few myself (with the same camera), so they’re mixed. A random sampling is below.

We made it back to St. Johnsburg and had lunch/dinner, then back to the hotel, where it’s now 11:00 pm and I’m starving.

One more little tidbit: I was standing in the hotel lobby this evening, and heard the tail-end of a commercial for a "sports store" (I think they sell sporting goods, and of course here that's big business....). I didn't catch the name of the store! But they had some very, very interesting music playing in the background--it was the Razorback Band playing "Arkansas, Fight!" I honestly thought I was in the twilight zone.

>>o<<

Observations of Vermont:

1. It’s “quaint”, but where do these people buy gasoline? or groceries? or eat out? or go to the drugstore? I haven’t seen any of that here, except in Rutland, 20 miles away. They drive?

2. If you want salt on/in your food, there’s a shaker on the table. Same with pepper or any other spice.

3. Don’t ask for Tabasco, it hurts their feelings.

4. Was cole slaw invented in Vermont? It’s been served to me at every meal since I’ve been here except for breakfast. “Oh, we’re very proud of our slaw!” Is this some New England thing I’ve forgotten? I don’t remember it in Boston? They serve slaw like we serve chips and salsa.

5. “Quaint” = add 25% -–or more-- to the price you’d expect to pay.

6. In Houston, if you’re doing less than 70 mph, you’ll get run down. In Vermont, if you’re doing 40 mph, you’re “FLYIN’ “(insert Yankee accent).

7. It is totally beautiful here. Mountains, trees, lakes, all perfect. What do these people do for a living? They can’t all own b&b’s or operate gift shops? The occasional farmer, yes, but what else is there? We’ve seen no industry here at all.

8. They build their houses directly on the street, I mean, like, 4 feet from the street. Then they don’t draw their curtains/drapes/blinds at night. Um, I just need more privacy than that.

>>o<<

Photos from today (a random sampling of the 300+).

Nice back yards, on the river…

I have to look up the story on “Suicide Six”.

James Wilson’s plaque^^^

and his place…

Morgan, VT

Clear as a bell. No trash.

Look at that stand of corn. Dad couldn’t get over it.

More tomorrow. Tomorrow, after stopping again in Woodstock for some maple syrup to take home, we’re off to Maine.

Dad n Me, in Vermont, Day 2

2010-10-03T23:19:00.001-05:00

When we got here to Killington last night, it was dark; we couldn’t see anything; the hotel was less than we had hoped. It didn’t set the mood well.

When we got up this morning, though, it was a whole new world. Killington is about 2,500 feet; the top of the mountain is around 4,300 feet. Houston, by contrast, is 55 feet above sea level. Humidity here non-existent.

The mountains are blazing with color. I love Fayetteville, but these are actual MOUNTAINS, not an eroded plateau.

We took a gondola lift to the top of the mountain. Many, many mountain bikers here enjoying the beautiful riding weather and fabulous leaf show.

We drove down to Rutland, Vermont, a very picturesque little town (that nonetheless actually has modern conveniences like Walgreen’s, CVS, Denny’s, and yes, the dreaded Wal-Mart….

We ate at an Applebee’s-esque restaurant (New England chain) called “99”, after its original restaurant at 99 State Street in Boston.

While in the restaurant, I was stopped by a guy in a Syracuse sweatshirt. “You guys (Arkansas) have a GREAT team! We were all pulling for you!” (“youse”).

We left Rutland on US 7 and headed north, to Vermont 73, a scenic route through the Green Mountain National Forest. Beautiful, just beautiful.

Tomorrow, we’re going back to Rutland for breakfast, then we’ll cross into New York and head up I-87, the Adirondack Northway, past Lake George. cutting across to Ft. Ticonderoga, then back into Vermont for another trek through Green Mountain National Forest.

I think I got some nice snaps today; I’ll put a representative sample on here, then a link for the rest for anyone who has the interest.

^^View out our front door

Dad’s first ride on a ski lift

Where is my friend Scott Hamilton when you need him?

Mary’s up there watching out for us with her blue dress on (over door)

We would’ve stopped, but they were closed.

“But vere is Squirrel?”---Boris Badanoff (or maybe it just refers to one of my sister’s old boyfriends?

That’s higher than 55, right?

View Full Album

Dad n Me to New England

2010-10-02T22:27:00.001-05:00

Day 1, HOU to MDW to BOS to Killington, VT

No photos today. Tired, the alarm went off at 5:00 this morning.

I’ve always loved Southwest Airlines, but you know, I’m older now. I like assigned seats. I like a little more comfort.

It took 4 hours to get to Killington from Logan.

The “Big Dig” is TOTALLY amazing. Wow! Last time I was in Boston, they were digging it. It’s done now. Wow. Just wow.

Everywhere we went today, we either ran into traveling Hog fans (who hollered and Called the Hogs) or ran into someone who watched the game. I got comment after comment after comment: waitresses, the guy who rented us the car, flight attendants, random people at baggage claim---they all saw the game and they all commented on it, how great Arkansas was, etc. The waiter at the restaurant tonight has a son at South Carolina; he commented that we were the one game they were totally fearing.

It’s good to be da Hog.

Random Observations From the Alabama@Arkansas Game, 2010

2010-09-27T22:12:00.003-05:00

This weekend was fascinating for me. I haven’t been back to the Ozarks since the Georgia game last year, pretty much 12 months.

I love Houston. It’s a great city, much maligned by people who are not familiar with it, or who see it from the freeway only. Tons of great restaurants, sports out the gazoo (Astros, Texans, Rockets, Dynamo, Cougars, Owls just to name a few, and now Sugar Land is getting a AA baseball club), great museums, fabulous symphony, one of the better opera companies in the US, beautiful parks, great zoo, NASA, San Jacinto, Galveston---if you’re bored in Houston, it’s your own fault. I love living here. I love my beautiful home. I even like my job (at least my co-workers, and in truth, it’s never boring). I love having a large chunk of my family close by (ESPECIALLY MY “GRANDDAUGHTER”, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE ENTIRE WORLD).

The Mexican food is superb. The cerveza is cold (St. Arnold’s and Shiner both brew fantastic taste sensations). The winters here are short and warmish. Summer is brutal, but if you love convertibles (as I do), it’s not all bad. I wish I could afford for the Mexican yard crew to come mow my yard, but then I’ve always enjoyed doing it myself, mostly.

Still….

As I traveled with Nathan to the Ozarks (Nathan did a truly fine job this weekend looking after tragic old me; he drove all the way to ‘nam and all the way back, handing over the wheel only when we got to Conroe (northern suburb of Houston); helping me up the Hill when I was having a tough time, enduring truly awful Mexican food in Springdale just because I wanted to go to a “sit-down” restaurant instead of fast-food), the further north we went, the more nostalgic and sentimental I became about the hills and valleys, the scenic beauty of the Green Hills of Oklahoma. By the time we crossed the state line at Spiro/Ft. Smith, I was practically in ecstasy.

Northwest Arkansas is a little slice of heaven bestowed by a generous, gracious Creator upon us lowly humans. The Boston Mountains are absolutely beautiful, and, as I posted on my facebook page, “a sight for sore eyes.”

By the time we got to Fayetteville, we were all the way gone into Hog Fever. This is a mysterious ailment that affects Arkansas Razorbacks fans as they approach ~~Nirvana~~ ~~Heaven~~ Fayetteville, Arkansas.

I was 13 years old and living in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1969, so I don’t know what “Texas Week” was like then. I have enjoyed “Texas Week” upon occasion, but nothing then was as wild as campus was this weekend. The joint, as they say, was jumping.

From the lines of students camping out for the game, “Petrinoville” as they called it, to the random screams of “WOOO, PIG!” and “GO HOGS!” heard throughout the night, to the scantily clad young ladies in the Daisy Dukes and high-heel clogs strutting for the handsome young men (ok, scruffy college kids), to the PigScreen TeeVee blaring away into the night, the atmosphere was truly (and proverbially) “electric”.

The next morning, after shopping excursions to the 6th St. Wal-Mart (Wal-Mart is just different in Arkansas than it is here; here, I don’t even want to darken the door, I detest it; there, I can’t wait to go and load up on Hog stuff) and Big Red’s, we finally made it to tailgate heaven. I stopped by to see some old friends, the Bawiecs, Hamiltons, and others while Nathan met up with his folks at “The Gardens”, a now-grassy spot formerly inhabited by the nasty on-campus “married student housing.” Having endured the crowds at the “Hog Heaven” bookstore, I reconnected with Nathan and we headed (well---crept) along 6th Street until we could wind up through the neighborhoods to park near the TreeFort.

The TreeFort is a sight for sore eyes as well, presided over amiably and more-than-ably by my great and good friend Joey Roland. Let’s make this clear: Joey knows how to throw a freaking party.

As many of you know, I’ve had a pretty shitty couple of years. It’s been tough.

I have never before experienced the sensation of an individual standing ovation. I’ve had one collectively (as a member of a fraternity during All University Sing, and as a member—and assistant director—of several choirs. Never individually.

I walked up to the TreeFort and was literally assailed by my friends, shouts and screams of my name as I walked up. Let me tell you, it’s magical. Y’all (and you know who you are) feel free to do that ANY TIME YOU WANT. Seriously, you will never know how much that meant to me.

I have met some of the closest friends I’ve ever had through the Arkansas Razorbacks, some of whom are older, many of whom are younger. I’ve decided: instead of a funeral, when I’m gone I hope they have a big party together and tell funny stories about me….

The game---well, the game was televised nationally and everybody knows the results, so I’ll not recap that here. The Goodyear blimp is still cool; the US Army Silver Wings are even MORE cool.

Mainly, though, the stadium was ROCKING. We were in the upper deck and it was STILL rocking.

I told Nathan coming back yesterday (as we listened to AMERICA’S TEAM, THE DALLAS COWBOYS, beat up on the Texans), we were “Home” in Fayetteville, then we went “Home” to Houston.

Dual citizenship is a bitch, but it has its advantages.

What can I say, I love photos.

Entering “the Mountains of God”…

I don’t know what Frank Broyles had to do to bribe the AHTD into making the road give us this view, but I’m eternally grateful. Wish I could have made a better photo, but 70 mph-or so-is not good for night photography.

Beautiful Baum Stadium awaits the beginning of another Championship season of Razorback Baseball!

Wastin’ away again in Petrinoville…

For Nathan, Adam, Blake, Brandon, Daniel, Shannon, and the other fine young men of Lambda Chi Alpha it’s been my pleasure to know.

For Kathy, Larry, Hunter, Brent and Ben, Alumni Deluxe.

The Bawiec party in full swing.

This is how far the student line had gotten 4 hours before gametime.

Happiness is a TreeFort.

We even let Alabama fans in, especially when they fly all the way from Germany (!) when their wife is 8 months 3 weeks pregnant (!).

Talk about “outkicking your coverage”—way to go, nephew!!!

Oh. My. God.

(and they laughed at our plastic Hog Hats…)

The Founder of the Feast (Joey, in visor) lectures on the finer points of blocking and tackling to an eager student of the game.

TreeFort from the Stadium.

TOUCHDOWN, ARKANSAS!!!! OH, MY!!!!! (Paul, I know you were watching and hollering that on the Heaven Broadcasting System).

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I’m not usually into “Moral Victories”, and OF COURSE I’m disappointed in the outcome, are you kidding? Still, this is one of the best Arkansas teams I’ve seen in decades. Petrino has them going in the right direction. I’d have loved to see Mallett step up, but all in all---it’s hard to be humble when you’re an Arkansas Razorbacks fan.

As for Arkansas itself---Arkansas, you run deep in me.

Reflections of a Razorbacks Fan (at 53) After Yesterday’s Win Over Georgia

2010-09-19T10:18:00.001-05:00

We have been wandering in the wilderness, lo these many years.

Our 3-8 "Farewell to the SWC" tour (I know we were 6-5 in our last year, but this was the last time we went to many SWC venues). We lost to everybody except Tulsa, Colorado State, and SMU.

Our "Welcome to the SEC" tour, complete with loss to The Citadel (We were 3-7-1 that year).

Jack Crowe (who is absolved as of last week).

Worrying about beating SMU (all through the 90's).

Wishing we could go to Shreveport for a Bowl Game.

Sitting in the stands at the 2nd or 3rd game of the year and hearing people talking excitedly about basketball season.

Having our entire coaching staff not know that we had scored a touchdown (I'm not over that one yet).

Watching Danny Ford slap the ground in frustration.

Enduring 63-20 and 70-17 losses, with the associated 12 hour trips home.

Enduring Smoke Draw on 3rd and long.

Losing to UNLV.

Sneaking into the rankings only to get the shit kicked out of us by a no-name.

Watching game after game slip through our fingers.

Losing games we should win.

Winning one game a year that we should lose, thus giving us all renewed hope.

Watching QB after QB get actively worse from year to year.

Wondering why we had 6 QB's and no OL's.

Watching assistant after assistant get thrown under the bus.

"I called that play, brotha!"

Abuse of Joe Ferguson.

Abuse of Coach "Mal-A-zahn"

Donna Bragg.

FOI.

Hearing from other Razorbacks fans that “You should be loyal to the coach, no matter what” and “You must not be a REAL Razorback fan” and “You shouldn’t expect any better than this, we’re JUST Arkansas….”

Hiring a GOOD coach with NOTHING in the cupboard to offer him.

Watching millions of our dollars go down the road to Oxford.

Enduring verbiage from Ole Miss fans on their way to the Cotton Bowl.

It's NICE for this tired, fat old Razorback to be, one more time in his life, anxiously checking the newspaper to see where we are in the polls; to be looking forward with great anticipation (not fear and terror) to the #1 team in the nation visiting Fayetteville; to be watching the schedule, counting up W's and L's and trying to figure out which upper-tier Bowl Game will host the Hogs. It's also fun to rest secure in the knowledge that a Heisman-hopeful QB will not REGRESS due to coaching. It's fun to say "Heisman hopeful" in connection with an Arkansas player.

It's fun!

I know it’s too early to get excited, and there’s a lot of football to be played yet, and Alabama may clean our clock Saturday. I know all that.

We may not be quite there yet, but at least I can look over the Jordan and see the Promised Land.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never Is, but always To be blest:

The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

-Alexander Pope,
An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733

The Arkansas Bubble: or, WOOOOOOOOOO, PIG! SOOOIIIEEEE!

2010-09-05T12:05:00.001-05:00

Nathan sent me an email a couple of weeks ago. He had been working up a blog post, then suddenly realized that (a) he hasn’t written in his blog in a year, and (b) he didn’t quite know what he wanted to say to finish it.

His email:

I started this post, and then decided that I wanted you to finish it. Borrow as you wish, but I hope you are up to the task because it is right up your alley. Tennessee is the other school that might mirror some of Arkansas' insulated nature.

I thought his idea and the expression thereof excellent, but had to sit there for a while and let it ferment to come up with the conclusion. Nathan’s words are in a different shade of blue, and follow:

This is a fashionably late idea that came to me, but thought I would post it nonetheless.

After all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from hat-gate (hat-gate refers to the firing of a reporter who came to a Razorback press conference wearing a Florida Gators hat, and was singled out by the coach; she represented a Razorback publication), I wondered what the big deal was about some random reporter that had been on the job for less than a month being fired for all the reason's discussed. The SEC regional, and especially national media scoffed at the idea of a pro-Razorback radio station.

But if you think about it, Arkansas is its own little kingdom (in a good way-most of the time). The rest of the SEC can't comprehend this because of the influence of in-state rivals in the same conference, in a different conference, or professional sports teams in any number of sports.

For the most part, Arkansas has a "fan trade deficit" meaning we export more Razorback fans than we import fans of other schools to the state. While Little Rock brings in some out of state grads, it is nothing like the melting pot of fandom that is Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Birmingham, etc... I always liked taking road trips to games in Alabama because of all the bumper stickers and license plates on the cars you see. There is a good chance that you would see something affiliated with every SEC school while driving from Fayetteville to Auburn, AL.

Fayetteville is it's own little insulated community when it comes to fandom.......which becomes very obvious if you spend any amount of time there.

Dividers are an interesting thing. Humans have had them apparently since the dawn of humanity itself. Some are real, tangible (an enormous mountain range, an ocean, or even a dense forest). Others are lines drawn on maps to demark boundaries.

In the case of Arkansas, there’s a little of all of the above.

The Mighty Mississippi has been a dividing line for as long as humans have been in North America; the native Americans used it as a divider as surely as we do today. It is where East meets West (and while you might not think of it that way in terms of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, it’s still true). The River, of course, was much more of an obstacle before bridges, rail, then air travel; interestingly, though, television and the internet have slightly CHANGED the divisions, in some cases exaggerating them.

Before the days of multi-million dollar coaches, bazillion-dollar television deals, and SuperConferences, football was a much more regional sport. These days, the University of Texas football team thinks nothing of climbing on the UT 737 and flying to Los Angeles to take on the Trojans of the University of Southern California. Arkansas (west of the Mississippi) blithely plays South Carolina (on the Atlantic coast) year after year.

It wasn’t always like that.

The first time Arkansas played Texas, the boys from the Ozarks (probably fairly wide-eyed) rode the train for a WEEK to get to Austin, Texas (now 45 minutes by jet). (The Hogs lost 66-0, setting that whole chain of events in motion). I do not have the story on this, but I am thinking that, when Auburn played Georgia in the first college football game in the south (in Piedmont Park in Atlanta), it probably took the Auburn boys at least a full 24 hours to go the 80 miles on the train (which stopped at every whistle stop between Auburn and Atlanta). No freeways, not even any paved roads, just red clay and pine forests.

When football conferences were organized, the first ones were gigantic (déjà vu all over again?). It was quickly realized that these giant structures were unworkable. Accordingly, the Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas schools broke away from the giant “Southern Conference” and formed the “Southwest Conference”, which was a bit more manageable. Fans from texass u (spit), say, could enjoy watching their team play in Waco (90 miles away) against the Bears, or College Station (90 miles, different direction) against the Aggies. Even then, the fans complained about the distances from the Texas schools to Fayetteville, Arkansas and Stillwater, Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma schools went with Nebraska and formed the Big 8, leaving the SWC as Texas and Arkansas. After World War II and the advent of prosperity, powerful cars, and smooth, paved roads, many Southwest Conference fans enjoyed traveling to mutual opponents’ stadia to root on their favorite team.

Likewise, when the Southeastern Conference was formed, those fans enjoyed the proximity of running the 275 miles from Tuscaloosa to Athens, or the 345 miles from Oxford to Baton Rouge.

Still, even with prosperity and even with the roads, traveling to and from opponents’ turf is an expensive proposition, taking time, effort, and loads and loads of money.

Accordingly, most folks sat home and listened to the games on the radio (because on television, until the advent of ESPN, there was the ABC “Game of the Week”; if your team appeared on television once a year, you were actually doing well).

>>o<<

Photo courtesy Kathy Beaumont, great friend, blogger extraordinaire, and Razorback till they plant her cold, dead carcass in the ground…or scatter her ashes over the Arkansas River, whichever…

Arkansas has always been an oddity of a state, an extreme mixture of people and cultures. The Delta and Southeastern Arkansas have always identified with the Southeast. They have more in common with someone from, say, Tupelo or Monroe than they do with someone from Bentonville. The mountainous northern and western parts of Arkansas have always identified with their mountaineer forbears from Tennessee and Kentucky---and are heavily influenced by the Midwestern city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ft. Smith, Arkansas is the third largest employment center in the state of Oklahoma. There, you’ll find much more in common with Duncan and Claremore and Tahlequah than Lake Village or Dumas or Helena.

Put another way: my female relatives in Malvern would never think of going anywhere but Dallas to shop. Meanwhile, my Stuttgart relatives would, of course, go to Memphis---and Memphis is one of the bookends of the Deep South (Atlanta being the other).

The state is divided by the Balcones Escarpment, which runs from Mexico through Texas, bisecting Arkansas on a line from Texarkana to Paragould, then on up into Ohio. Northwest of the escarpment is hilly, wooded, mountainous. Southeast of it, the flat Grand Prairie and Mississippi Delta ease slowly down to The River. Naturally, bison, then Native American, then Spanish, then English settlers, then the railroads, then the muddy track of US 67, then paved US 67, then Interstate 30, and at the same time flight Vectors, travel this same path. It’s a natural roadway; would you rather head out across the trackless prairie, or lug up and down mountains, or would you rather skirt along the edge of the mountains, knowing that path would lead you where you want to go?

So, Ft. Smith and the River Valley (west of Little Rock) have always identified with the pioneer spirit of Oklahoma; the Delta is the same whether you are in Arkansas, Mississippi, or Louisiana, and it identifies more with Mississippi and Alabama than with Northwest Arkansas. Southwest Arkansas, northern Louisiana (Ruston and west, including Shreveport), and East Texas are essentially the same people, and they all consider Dallas the hub of the universe. Northwest Arkansas identifies more with the Midwestern Tulsa than it does with, say, Lake Village.

Arkansas is neither true Deep South, nor true “Southwest” (a la Texas and Oklahoma), nor "Midwest”. It’s a border state with a strange divergence of people, that has always been a route for people traveling from one world---the east---to another world---the west.

A visionary coach by the name of John Barnhill realized that he was sitting on a gold mine of recruiting talent and fanbase support (read: money). If he could somehow unify this conglomerated mass of dissimilar cultures, he could “circle the wagons” and make the state of Arkansas “one thing” for the purposes of college football. He could make HIS team (the Razorbacks) the team for the entire state. Barnie knew that Ole Miss had Mississippi State with which to contend; Alabama and Auburn’s rivalry was already legendary; Georgia and Georgia Tech were a scant 30 miles apart. Only Tennessee, with its reach from Memphis to Mountain City, and LSU, which owned the entire state of Louisiana, were similar. Barnie took a page from their books, and added a few notes of his own.

The predecessor of the Arkansas Razorback Sports Network was born, led by the state’s flagship radio station, KAAY, the Mighty 1090 out of Little Rock. KAAY was one of the oldest radio stations in the US, and like WOAI in San Antonio, WBAP in Ft. Worth, WLS Chicago, WWL New Orleans, at dusk it went to 100,000 watts/clear channel. All the smaller, local stations shut down at dusk, and the big guns could then broadcast radio across vast distances using the skip. Accordingly, the entire state of Arkansas, from Lake Village to Bentonville, from Texarkana to Paragould, from Mountain Home to El Dorado, could get the broadcasts of the Arkansas Razorbacks games from the illuminated War Memorial Stadium.

For Barnhill had come up with another brainstorm: he convinced the “powers that be” to build a stadium in Little Rock, the geographic center of the state, and put lights in it. There were no lights at tiny Razorback Stadium until 1985, and as late as the early 1960’s (personal testimonial here), it was a 6 hour drive from Malvern to Fayetteville (think of US 64 with all of Interstate 30’s traffic on it; speed was about 30 mph). The Little Rock stadium (as unfashionable as it is now to say it) made the Razorbacks accessible to the whole state—but if you couldn’t afford to travel to Little Rock to see the game in person, you could listen to it on The Mighty 1090. Barnhill, George Cole, and their ultimate successor Frank Broyles, traveled the state, starting the local “Razorback Clubs”, so you could meet locally with a group of like-minded fans (and cough up some cabbage to support the team).

>>o<<

So, what you have is this:

Unless you travel to other states, other schools, and experience their traditions, their stadium, their hospitality (and they really do extend it); unless you can see the greater world around you and how YOUR piece fits in, you become very insular. If you’ve never left Little Rock, you might think, “I sure love our cool local restaurant, P. F. Chang’s!” when there’s one in every city in America.

Many Arkansans live and die having never left the state. Most of them love their little corner of heaven, and see no reason to go elsewhere---why would you go somewhere else when you’ve got everything you need right here?

Thanks to geography, and the efforts of Barnhill, Cole, Broyles, and their successors, there is literally a bubble around the State of Arkansas. In many places, there’s a time warp (you can literally be transported to another time in Old Washington or Pea Ridge or Arkansas Post). In almost all cases, the bubble lets “filtered” news through from the outside, but Arkansas folks are singularly insulated---because of geography, because of history, because of tradition---from the “outside world”.

This is both blessing and curse. It’s very cool to be in one’s bubble---but then, one can become stagnant and insular to the point of ignorance. Striking the balance is the trick. Those of us with experience in other areas owe it to our friends who stay home to tell them about the world outside the bubble.

>>o<<

Therefore, it’s not surprising that a state like this would have a radio network dedicated to one football program. It’s all Arkansas has. There are no pro teams (and, in typical Arkansas fashion, for the NFL, the majority of Arkies are Cowboys fans, while for MLB it’s the St. Louis Cardinals). There’s one unifying factor, carefully honed over a period of 60 years now. Whether you’re in Crossett or Mountain Home; Russellville or Pine Bluff; Stamps or Osceola, you’ll see the sign of a large, red, running boar and hear the siren song of a call echoing down from the Ozarks:

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, PIG!!! SOOOOIIIIEEEEEE!!!

RAZORBACKS!!!!

(How did I do, Nay?)

(I used the old Hog because I didn’t want the Trademark Police after me….).

Shameless Baby Pictures

2010-08-21T23:44:00.002-05:00

Let the spoilage commence!

(In my last post, I posted her name as "Peyton Rangel". We had explained the family tradition of the middle name "Virginia"--we're on the 6th generation of "Virginias"--to Rachel (that's Rachel Virginia...), but she was wavering on whether to use it or strike out in another direction. However, she was looking at Peyton and Peyton smiled...and, as Rachel told me, "OMG, it was GRAMMIE! I couldn't believe it, but it was Grammie! I knew right then it was "Peyton Virginia!” So I--as custodian of the family history--am DELIGHTED to report that the name is, indeed, Peyton Virginia Rangel.)

^^^^Naah, I really can’t stand her.

^^^^Neither can Grandma Marla (don’t my sister and I have such a strong family resemblance? ;) She looks like the Jones’s, I look like the Tarkingtons).

^^^^Great Grandpapa can’t stand her either….

^^^^I really like this one. When this picture was made (8/21/2010), Peyton was 14 hours old and Dad was 86 going on 87.

^^^^Uncle David

^^^^Grandpa Phil

^^^^She’s going to kill me for posting this, but I love this one. 2 pretty girls!

^^^^Ok, so the 8x10 of this one is going on my desk Monday morning.

^^^^Grandma Peggy takes a turn

^^^^…and Grandpa Orlando…

^^^^Peyton, there’s no place on earth as safe as Daddy’s arms. Good job, Patrick.

^^^^I dunno, maybe this one for my desk….

(P. S. Looking at those pictures of me: MY GOD, I've turned into my uncle!!! I look just like him! When the hair goes all the way white I WILL look just like him!!! When did THAT happen?!?!).

Ask about my grandbaby!

2010-08-20T22:57:00.006-05:00

Ok, so she's my great-niece, but since I'll never get to have my own grandbaby and she's obviously cute as a button, I'm stealing her. I can be "Grampy" if I want to be.

Peyton Rangel

8 lbs 2 0z

8:02 pm

8/20/2010

San Antonio, Texas

Mother's birthday was August 6th. Another Leo to terrorize me. I wish Mom could have seen her.

Spoilage will begin immediately. It's my job and I plan to do it well.

Bad news; prayers/kharma for Cameron

2010-08-18T13:20:00.002-05:00

It's kinda different when it's yours, right?

Many of y'all will remember me talking about my old partner and dear friend, George Goode, formerly of Little Rock, now of Springdale. George has a daughter, Melissa, with whom he moved in following the death of his wife. Melissa has two sons, Brandon (college) and Cameron (Senior in High School).

Last Saturday, Cameron and his buddies had been to the country home of one of the buddies' grandparents; they swam, tubed the river, etc. Typical stuff. No booze, no drugs. They were coming back on 412 from Siloam Springs to Springdale. They were on that big curve up the hill and to the left; like all teenagers, they were going too fast.

The buddies in front were in an Acura and easily handled the curve. Cameron, in his old pickup, apparently got off on the soft shoulder, overcorrected, and flipped his truck multiple times at high speed.

He was taken to Washington Regional Hospital where he remains. He has lung damage of unknown extent and is on a vent. No head injury of which anyone's aware. The bad part is the legs. Both are severely fractured; when he came in, the docs immediately considered amputating both at the hip. They are trying to save the legs; one had venous damage which was repaired surgically. Although the repair was successful, about 20% of the leg muscle necrotized and had to be removed. The other leg has compartment fractures and is still iffy at best. Both knees were twisted/ripped from sockets, the worst kind of knee injury.

If he walks again unaided on these legs it will be a minor miracle. (Docs told the family he'd never run again; they told him (gallows humor) that the only place Cameron ever ran was to the dinner table...like so many of us, Cameron's a big ol boy). He's receiving excellent medical care but could use all the prayers/kharma he can get (of course the family appreciates them as well).

Cameron McCall is his name, aged 17 years

My Mother Taught Me How to Brown Hamburger Meat

2010-08-01T01:02:00.001-05:00

It’s so odd, when you’ve lost someone close to you, how they come to you in the strangest ways.

Mother liked her hamburger meat well done. She didn’t want any hint of rawness getting in there. So, when she fixed ANYTHING involving hamburger meat (frequent, since we were usually broke), she browned the heck out of it. In fact, some of it was just this side of burnt. She left the grease in, too; it cooked up into the meat.

When I became an adult (having listened to none of her efforts to teach me to cook), the one thing I could fix was “spaghetti gunk”. I named it; it was basically Mother’s combo of hamburger meat, pasta (any kind), and sauce she made herself. Mine, somehow, never turned out like hers, though.

I was home one time and asked her to show me how she made it (since I was going exactly by her recipe and it wasn’t working), and she did. She stood there at the stove and almost burned the meat. I was shocked; I’d been browning it till it was gray (all the pink gone).

The next time I fixed “spaghetti gunk” at home, I did as she did---and mine turned out almost like hers. Amazing!

>>o<<

My friend West lost his father a couple of weeks ago. My friend Keith lost his step-mother this week.

Once the initial pain goes away, it’s so funny, the ten million small ways in which you see them. Of course you remember the big things---but it’s the little things that get you.

Things you’d like to say in public (but can’t)

2010-07-30T20:58:00.001-05:00

Just got back from the semi-monthly re-distribution of my paycheck (Dandy Cleaners, Spec’s, H-E-B; Costco tomorrow). Random things you’d like to say but probably can’t---or at very least, shouldn’t: (Warning: this is as far from politically correct as it gets. But don’t worry, liberals and conservatives, women and men alike should be equally offended. We’re an equal-opportunity operation around here!). (My buddy Keith has a word for what I’ve become: a Crank. I’ve become a Crank in my old age…).

1. Ma’am, here is a handy instruction guide for the operation of your automobile:

Upon exiting the store, have keys in hand.
Walk quickly to auto.
Unlock door (electronic clicker optional but nice)
Open door.
Enter auto.
Close and lock door.
Insert key (which is still in your hand) into ignition.
Turn key to start engine.
Using shift lever, place car in “Reverse”.
Applying gentle pressure to accelerator pedal, back out of parking place.
Drive away so THE 90 YEAR OLD LADY WHO HAS BEEN BLOCKING TRAFFIC FOR THE LAST 10 MINUTES WHILE YOU FIDDLED WITH YOUR MAKEUP, YOUR HAIR, YOUR NAILS, BALANCED YOUR CHECKBOOK, REARRANGED THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF YOUR PURSE, CHECKED HAIR/MAKEUP/NAILS IN MIRROR AGAIN, THEN SEARCHED FOR CAR KEYS, THEN FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO OPERATE THE GODDAMN CAR, CAN PARK HER CAR UP NEXT TO THE DOOR, FREEING THE DRIVE LANE FOR THE 20 CARS THAT HAVE STACKED UP BEHIND HER. SHE’S 90. YOU’RE 30. SHE’S ENTITLED. YOU’RE STUPID.

2. Sir, at our store there are four varieties of regular cow’s milk: Whole, 2%, 1%, Skim. There are two brands: Borden’s and H-E-B. The fact that you have stood there staring at the milk (with your buggy blocking the next 3 compartments) for the last 6-7 minutes indicates a rather disturbing lack of decision-making ability on your part. SELECT ONE AND MOVE ON.

3. Ma’am, I’m delighted you’ve found a friend! Would you two ladies kindly take your conversation to the in-store coffee shop AND GET YOUR FREAKING BUGGIES OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF THE AISLE WHEN 20 PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO USE IT?

4. Ma’am, we now have this marvelous, amazing, astonishing invention called the DEBIT CARD. It takes the money RIGHT OUT OF YOUR CHECKING ACCOUNT! It’s easy! It’s fun! You simply grasp your card firmly, swipe it through the little swipe thingy, enter your PIN, and –PRESTO!- your groceries are paid for! Accordingly, it’s no longer necessary to stand there while the checker rings up (ancient term) your buggy full of groceries, then have him/her announce the total damage to you, THEN dig in your purse for your checkbook, then dig again for a pen, then open the checkbook, then carefully write in the amount in your check register, then write the actual check, then hand the check to the cashier (who looks at you suspiciously), then fumble in your purse again for your ID, then have the cashier write 20 things on the check, then run it through her machine---TWELVE MEN (and/or intelligent women) COULD HAVE ALREADY CHECKED OUT AND GONE BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT AFRAID TO USE THEIR GODDAMN DEBIT CARDS! Checks have gone the way of the buggy whip…LEARN HOW TO USE TECHNOLOGY AND KEEP UP (if you just MUST keep careful records, the cashier will still hand you a handy RECEIPT showing the total, which you can later enter into your computer. You do have a computer, right?).

5. To anyone for whom English is not your native language: This is America. We speak English here. It’s preferred that we do it QUIETLY and POLITELY. JABBERING IN FARSI, SWAHILI, VIETNAMESE OR ANY OTHER LANGUAGE AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS IS JUST PLAIN RUDE.

6. To all Mommies and Daddies: Yes, your moppets are, in fact, adorable---NOT. The fact that you are used to their screaming does not mean the rest of us are. SHUT THEM THE HELL UP! (My Dad would have worn us out if we’d have acted that way in the store.)

7. Similarly, running up and down the aisles while shrieking is never permissible. It is the grocery store, not the playground.

8. Similarly, the fact that you are BOTH a young family with kiddies AND from somewhere other than here does not mean you should fail to observe our social customs. Repeatedly ramming someone from behind (in the behind) with a shopping cart is unacceptable behavior from shrieking moppets; it is UNFORGIVABLE when it is YOU doing the bumping. It’s called “personal space”, look it up. My personal perimeter is about 4 feet; I realize my posterior is large, but it is not for use as target practice for the bumper car range. Trust me, Amatullah---this is not the bazaar at Mecca. It is H-E-B in Houston. Nobody is going to try to cut in line or steal stuff out of your buggy. It’s ok for you to leave a couple of feet between my behind and your buggy.

9. White dude my age: that T-shirt you’re wearing must have ROCKED in 1984, dude! You were a slender dude with a ‘tude then, weren’t ya? Well, sir, let me tell you, at this point you’re at least 75 - 100 lbs heavier than you were then, and that T-shirt is about 3 sizes too small. Your belly is correspondingly much larger and has sprouted a rather amazing amount of hair. Since the T-shirt is too small to contain it, your big hairy belly is hanging out from underneath. This is –less than appetizing- to most of us (not to say there’s anything wrong with that if you like that sort of thing).

BTW, tell your “kiss of flame” who was with you at that concert, now your wife (or “old lady”, whichever applies): the item is called a brassiere; they are available at many stores in an astonishing variety of styles, sizes, and prices; their purpose is to assist those monster ta-ta’s that in 1984 must’ve been great, but at this point are trying to visit their friends the knees down in Sagville. Sad but true: just as your “size medium” T-shirt days are behind you, so her white-halter-top-with-no-bra days are behind her.

10. 20-something frat guys at Spec’s with 2 shopping carts full of cases of brewskis: Dudes, this time in your life rocks! Unfortunately, continued use of the brewski in that quantity leads to #9 above. Trust Uncle Nicky, he knows. He was once as slender and good looking as you. Now, at least, he knows that if the T-shirt is not “XXX” or better, he should not be wearing it.

11. It’s sad to feel slightly dirty for standing behind the young dudes in #10 above while holding a bottle of Jim Beam Black, a bottle of Canadian Club, and a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, all big enough to have built-in HANDLES. Beer is a fun little beverage for fun young adults. The booze mentioned above smacks of middle-aged despair and incipient alcoholism.

12. Dear H-E-B: If your Managers know that Blackberry devices set off your alarm, therefore let guys like me walk right through there (while the alarm is shrieking) without stopping them---what’s the use of the alarm at all?

13. I don’t know what it is about Costco, but in Houston, it’s an Asian paradise. I literally look around and ask, “Am I on Bellaire Blvd?” (Chinatown here). I don’t know what it is about the Asian culture that makes them drive and walk so s-l-o-w-l-y. Maybe they’re right and I’m wrong; maybe I should learn to slow down. I just don’t get the allure of spending hours in Costco. I go there for toilet paper, paper towels, and dog food.

14. Ted the Barber is great. He does an amazing job of cutting my hair, best I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, he also likes to get paid for that service….

And finally:

Will the day ever come when I remember to buy ice on the first go-round? I don’t like ice out of the icemaker, it tastes funny. All of it. I like ice from a bag (it’s made with distilled water, which has no taste). Accordingly, I buy ice. I just never remember to do it while actually in the line in the store; I then have to go back in and buy it.

I actually love our H-E-B, it’s got tons of variety, tons of great things to eat, amazing specials, good low prices, and the friendliest cashiers/management team I’ve ever encountered at a grocery store. I love Spec’s; my God, they’ve got EVERYTHING! I love Dandy Cleaners (though I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m paying for Song’s (the uber-nice proprietress) new Mercedes…). I love going to Ted the Barber; Ted has led a fascinating life starting with his life on the streets of Mexico City as a child, then pulling himself up by his bootstraps, then finally making a successful business in the US (and becoming a citizen).

And now I have about $50 left in my checking account (after CitiMortgage gets through with it, not to mention the vet for poor little Bessie-boo’s heartworm treatment and the State of Texas, which has this annoying habit of taxing me every August for tags for my autos; we have smog inspections here, too, much like Los Angeles). Oh, well, come on, August 15th!

Damn.

Why we don’t like hurricanes

2010-07-05T14:26:00.001-05:00

I knew this was out there somewhere, just found it.

To get an idea of what the oil-spill-cleanup people are dealing with, look at the pictures of the surf hitting the Seawall in Galveston as Ike approached. Alex was a Cat 2 and Ike was a Cat 2 at this stage (except Ike actually hit us, while Alex went to Brownsville…

Surf

Link to Hurricane Ike aftermath pictures:

We did NOT like Ike

And now there are two more brewing in the Gulf. Will they come get us? Who knows? But it can (and may) happen.

Stay tuned.

HURRICANE!

2010-06-28T20:02:00.001-05:00

No, no, no, not THAT kind of hurricane! The OTHER kind!

I’ve been fascinated with hurricanes ever since Hurricane Carla came to visit. We lived in Dallas, and even THERE the hurricane winds were howling and the water was high enough to come in our sliding glass door.

Nathan and I rode out Hurricane Ike (run from water, hide from wind!). Overall, it wasn’t bad. The damage to the city was shocking, and it was a relatively “tame” hurricane.

These amazing storms are fascinating in their intensity. What causes them to form? Why do they move so unpredictably?

A great book on the human effects of a hurricane is Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson. If you’ve not read it, pick it up and do so (his other book, The Devil in the White City, is equally riveting). The Great Storm of 1900 forever changed Galveston and the southwest. Until then, Galveston was the foremost city in Texas, vastly eclipsing the sleepy Mexican village of San Antonio; the tiny capitol, Austin; the frontier trading post of Dallas; the cattle-driving Ft. Worth, and the malarial swamp called Houston. Galveston was educated, erudite, classy, elite. “The Wall Street of the South” existed on The Strand.

The Great Storm drove the Gulf of Mexico over the sandbar on which Galveston sits, to a depth of 15 feet at the shallowest point. The only survivors clung to the tops of trees or the top floors of the few remaining buildings. The official death toll (laughable even then, put forth by city leaders anxious to maintain their city’s supremacy by downplaying the danger) was 8,000, which makes it the most fatal natural disaster in history. The figure was probably much higher; there is no way to know but the usual guess is 20,000 people of a total population of 42,000. There weren’t enough living to bury the dead, so the bodies were placed on rafts and towed out to sea. Two days later, they washed ashore. They were then placed in funeral pyres which burned for weeks. A true human tragedy, and one rich with the stuff of drama: hubris, arrogance, greed, a natural disaster, a great loss, and the aftermath. Again, riveting stuff.

Galveston never recovered.

Unlike San Francisco a year later, which rebuilt from the ashes of the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1901, Galveston was unable to regain its supremacy. The town finally decided to build a 17 foot seawall. They scraped the debris from the storm to the beach backfilled it, and lifted the remaining structures to a height of 17 feet. The dead are buried beneath the modern city. The damage, however, was done; Houston became the center of commerce and Galveston withered; no one was willing to risk their lives (even with a 17 foot seawall) to repopulate the island. Today, it’s a pleasant, quirky island community of 85,000, while greater Houston is over 6.5 million. People from Galveston have a fierce pride; the term “B.O.I.” (Born On Island) is a badge of honour.

>>>o<<<

The most vivid images of Houston during “hurricanes” occurred not during an actual hurricane, but during a Tropical Storm. Allison came ashore as a “water storm”, dumping inches of rain on the city. She then moved inland a bit, but was pushed back by an oncoming cold front and stalled directly over the city of Houston. The photos of the city are amazing.

>>>o<<<

It was during one hurricane, Rita, that I discovered the evils of Potts Camp, Mississippi. We were coming back from Alabama, traveling at around Warp 8.5, traveling through the bands of hurricane Rita. Hurricanes put off bands of showers; huge deluge of rain, followed by a period of sunshine, followed by another drenching. We had just come through a band and out into the sunlight; the pavement was still wet but the sun was shining. Suddenly, we were doing 360’s down the middle of US 78; we wound up landing nose down in the ditch. In Potts Camp, Mississippi.

>>>o<<<

What brought all this up today? The sky. South Texas skies are very expressive, as I wrote about here. Today’s spoke volumes.

Today’s sky was a hurricane sky. Huge thunderheads; clouds at all levels; a general sense of foreboding; extremely hot and humid but no sun. Hurricane clouds.

Tropical Storm (soon to be Hurricane) Alex is churning up the Gulf, complicating the job of the people trying to contain the oil spill. We’re much too far north for it….aren’t we?

So yes, today I gassed both of the cars, rechecked my hurricane kit, made sure to buy fresh batteries. Alex may not come get us---but note that it starts with an “A”. The season’s just beginning.

Hurricane!

For hurricane information and tracking, go to the National Hurricane Center website.

The Malvie Plan For Arkansas football, and some correspondence between old friends…

2010-06-19T11:34:00.001-05:00

During the Conference Realignment Crisis (you know, the important crisis, not that oil thing down in the Gulf…), I had several thoughts, which I share forthwith.

>>>o<<<

After all the dust had settled, the Big 12 – 2 writers started speculating about bringing Arkansas back into the fold, following remarks from “a certain billionaire former all-SWC offensive lineman turned oilman turned NFL owner” that he missed the old rivalries, and would like to see the Big 12 – 2 add Notre Dame and Arkansas, I hereby present “The Malvie Plan” for Arkansas:

Let's go! Big 12 - 2, here we'uns come!!!!

Jerry, here's the deal: We need a guarantee of whatever texass u (spit) gets in TOTAL REVENUE FROM FOOTBALL----Conference payouts, bowl games, private TV network, etc---plus an additional 50%.

So, if texass u (spit) gets, say, $30M from football (ticket sales plus concessions plus parking plus merchandising plus conference payout plus bowl payout plus TV network), then Jerry guarantees us the $30M plus $15M = $45M for that year, + an additional $5M automatic bonus each for beating texass u (spit) and chokela U (spit).

So, let's see, we have two tough games in texass u (spit) and chokela U (spit). We split it, beat texass u (spit) (insert mental orgasms here), but lose tough to chokela U in Norman. Jay-ree owes us $5M bonus plus our $45M payout = $50M. Oh, and we get to keep our own Bowl Money. We then, having lost that one game (having put tears in the eyes of Touchdown Jesus in South Bend), are 11-1 and play texass u (spit) again in the Big 11 + ND Championship game---and lose, sadly. So, we cry all the way to the Big 11 + ND's auto bid BCS bowl, while texass u (spit), with one defeat, gets clobbered by Alabama in the MNC game.

I think this is a very reasonable scenario; Jerry makes some serious bucks off the Cowboys, he can spare this small amount of "chump change" for dear old Mother of Mothers (we sing unto YOUUUUUUU!!! ---points toward F'ville). We make Petrino our $lave for life; we pay off everything in sight (including razing the Broyles Complex, bowling in the stadium to total of 92k, raising the Pigscreen over the NEZ Upper Deck (where sit the students in free seats), buy the band new uniforms, fire Opie and hire Mike Anderson, renovate the newly revived BWA, bring seating capacity at Baum to 25k, and throw in some payola to keep the wimmins ~~quiet~~ competitive in Big 12 – 2 + ND and Arkansas action.

Meanwhile, for devising this master plan, I receive S EZ Outdoor Club tickets for life, plus tickets to all the away games in scenic Waco, Ames, Norman, Stillwater, Lubbock, et al.

What's wrong with this plan? Nothing, I say, nothing.

I rest my case.

(or, Jerry keeps his millions, ND eventually goes to the Big 10-or-so where they belong, and we stay in the SEC where we belong. Makes no difference to me, as long as the financials are as outlined above, especially the part about free tix for me).

>>>o<<<

I had to swear off Baylor when they hired kenneth starr (spit) to be their President.

I only swore off Arkansas football (well, actually, never really swore off football...just stepped back, losing interest) the last couple of years that Rooty Tooty Fresh and Hooty was our football coach, when Petrino came on board I was satisfied and dropped it. Right now, Arkansas basketball is dead to me until they get rid of Opie; once they do that (and please, this time, Long, can we get a REAL basketball coach to return our storied program to the greatness it deserves?), I'll be back on board.

I'm surprised nobody likes the reasonableness of my plan above....I mean, come on, Jerry, if you're going to stir the pot, put some freaking coins in it. Otherwise, STFU.

Serious note: Arkansas' joining the SEC was the best thing that ever happened to it (1964 and 1994 aside). There were games in Fayetteville in the early 90's with 25,000 in attendance in a 50,000 seat stadium. The stadium has been expanded to 76,000 and is solidly filled, even with rain or other weather conditions, for everything except possibly "no-name State" in the rain on the first day of deer season. Arkansas is better off in every single way in the SEC.

THE BIG 12 NEARLY EXPLODED 5 MINUTES AGO. YOU REALLY WANT TO JUMP SHIP FROM THE SEC TO THAT????

Further: IF TEXAS' LIPS ARE MOVING, THEY'RE LYING. IF TEXAS' LIPS ARE MOVING, THEY'RE LYING. IF TEXAS' LIPS ARE MOVING, THEY'RE LYING. I say again: IF TEXAS’ LIPS ARE MOVING, THEY’RE LYING. We put up with that shit for 90+ years, for chryssake. Why willingly jump back into bed with them? "Oh, baby, I didn't mean it, I won't do it again." Yeah. Ok. Sure. W-E.

I have had a hilarious time around here (Houston) listening to all the talk shows talking about how Arkansas "regrets" its decision to move to the SEC. BTW, in almost every case, the person calling and saying such things is either (1) a Longhorn or (2) from Baylor. You found very few Aggies who thought that, really nobody else.

I really don't know of ANY Arkansas fans who really regret the SEC. Now, many of us might regret that it's so far to Florida or Georgia or Tennessee that we can't drive there in a weekend. Some of us (those old enough) miss the rivalry with Texas---but truly, the last time we played them, I thought, "WTF are we doing playing these people?" I tried to get the old hate back---and failed. I don't care about them any more, at least not as a rival. Given the choice of beating Texas or beating Alabama, I'd rather beat Alabama. Fuck Texas. They're a non-con game when we schedule them. Who cares?

This entire scenario (the whole thing) was brought to you by Texas. They did it. They started it. They did as much as they could to set it up so that, if the Big 12 DID break up, it was Nebraska's or A&M's fault, certainly not sweet, innocent Texas, who only wanted to keep the conference together (sheds tear here), trying diligently to save as much as possible, while "OUTSIDE FORCES" were working to break them up! (They have been saying the same thing about Arkansas for 18 years; they -innocent Texas- did nothing wrong, it was mean old Arkansas that caused the breakup of the SWC. It's astonishing to listen to the tripe coming out of Austin. TEXAS COOKED THE WHOLE THING UP SO THEY COULD GET MORE MONEY.

I was impressed with the Aggies, who stood up and told Texas "No". I was also surprised at Oklahoma (Oklahoma! As in, 11 National championships or whatever they have! One of the storied programs in college football, for real) saying "Yes, we want to be Texas' little bitch! (flaps eyelashes at Texas)".

Arkansas has the best thing it could possibly have going for it in the SEC. We've been there *18 YEARS*. We're not "new" any more. There are full-grown humans who do not remember Arkansas ever being anywhere else.

The answer for Arkansas is not to bolt to somewhere else; the answer is to do exactly what Petrino is doing: build a winner on the Hill and everything else will fall into place.

Arkansas is where it belongs.

>>>o<<<

Correspondence between old friends:

Berry Tramel in The Oklahoman, "Why the Big 12 Conference Should be Calling the Hogs"

Dear Arkansas,

I know it’s been almost 80 years since we talked (other than that trip to the frozen Cotton Bowl in ‘02), really since we left the original SWC for the Big 8.

As you recall, I used to be a prominent national powerhouse, and had a premiere game with Nebraska that was watched by millions. That was great and things were going well for me; I did have the Red River Shootout thing going with Texas, but that was about the limit of my involvement with them. Then you up and divorced Texas, and I screwed up and let them (and their little minions A&M, Baylor, and Tech) into my conference, and that’s when the trouble began. Texas moved in, took over my and Nebraska’s nice little private home and sucked the life out of it. They moved our headquarters to Dallas, stole our name, and bossed us around no end. We had fun for a year or two, but then Nebraska got to where they weren’t feeling well. Finally, they just packed their bags and left town, and it was just me and Texas. I beat them on the football field, but now in every other way I’m just Texas's little bitch.

Of course, if YOU would come back home and be a little bitch for Texas too, then I wouldn't feel so lonely. It would validate my mistake. It would make me feel all better that I had somebody else in the conference to commiserate with about how horrible Texas is. That way, I won't be the only one complaining about being hosed by the Texas refs and the Texas way of pushing me around, I'll have the first wife to commiserate with. Of course, the little whiny pants outfits are still around, but you don’t need to worry about them, just come keep me company.

(Oh, your old friend Oklahoma State says, “Hey”. They told me to tell you they missed your annual game, where’ve you been?)

Best regards and please respond soon,

Your old pal,

Oklahoma

>>>o<<<

Dear Oklahoma,

Sorry I haven't written in a while, I've been really busy competing with Auburn, LSU, Georgia, Tennessee, Ole Piss (spit), Moo U, Florida, and assorted other outfits; oh, and Alabama, too (and you know how they are…).

Listen, I appreciate the sentiment in your last letter, offering to have me come back, but here's the deal: after I left Texas, I wound up moving into the best neighborhood in town. Now, granted, I don't live in the biggest house, and I'm kind of at the end of the block, but the move allowed me to really fix up the house I have nicely. Plus, I was able to fire the no-good hired help (the last one I had wound up going down the street to Ole Piss (spit), but then they never could manage the help after Vaught...) and now I've hired some really top-notch talent.

The streets here are made of gold (!) and I'm surrounded by the finest mansions in the country. All I'd have to do at my age is sit here and let the royalty checks pour in, but I've hired a top-notch personal trainer who is whipping me back into shape so I can beat up on ANYBODY on the block.

I don't want you to think badly of me, but there's no way I'm moving back to that shanty by the river you're occupying with Texas. You made that bed, now you'll have to lie in it. I hope you and your friend A&M can some day find the strength you need to stand on your own and kick Texas to the curb---like I did.

Sincerely,

Arkansas

(P.S. Tell Oklahoma State “Hey” for me as well. Ask them if they’re still hanging around with that crazy oilman/windmill fella….).

Four “P’s”…

2010-05-23T17:58:00.001-05:00

My weekends are usually boring…in a good kind of way.

Pink

My friend Kathy Beaumont often does a “pink” page on her blog. I’m not much of a “pink” person, so I decided that “pink” is the color of Bessie’s tongue hanging out in the 93 degree Houston “springtime”.

“So…got any treats?”

How hard is it to get three Border Collies to pose for a picture? You be the judge….

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Patio

I love hanging out on my patio. It’s one of my great “simple pleasures”. It needs repair; it’s falling apart; I don’t much care, it’s comfortable.

The entire 30 years they lived in Malvern (the last time), Dad always had red geraniums in the two urns in front of their door. As they were walking out to get in the car to leave forever, he grabbed the last one. Last year, he gave it to me.

This is today:

The mother-in-law tongues (a.k.a. Sansevieria) have a history as well. The variegated one was Mother’s. I don’t know how long she had it, but she gave me some of it when I lived in Houston the first time (1979). The solid green was given to Mother by an elderly relative, who had gotten it when she was a housewife in the teens or twenties, to go on the front porch of their new bungalow in Dallas. She bought a pot for it at the dime store and potted it. She was 90 when she gave it to Mother. Mother repotted, gave away, repotted again, split, gave me some, gave my sister some, gave all her relatives some. When they moved, the pot remained on the back porch in Malvern from August to February, when Nathan and I went to get the rest of their stuff. It looked dead. I cut the tops off and replanted the live bits. So, this is like, “great grandchild” of the original plant, but I know for a fact that the lady who gave it to Mother did so in 1970; she was 90 then; the pot was purchased during the teens or 20’s sometime. So arguably the green one (with a little help) is 80-90 years old, give or take. I must be doing something right; they’re both blooming.

Push

Two Saturdays ago, I said goodbye to an old friend. I bought the first Craftsman mower at the Sears store in Hot Springs. Mowed my and Dad’s yard for years with it. Like me (and like many things at my house), it became old, decrepit, and worn, with frequent breakdowns. Two weeks ago, my neighbors had a garage sale. I rolled the old lawn mower over there and said, “If someone will haul it off, I’ll be happy.” They got $25 for it!

So, off I went to Sears (Bank of America threw a fit because I used my debit card; it’s a relatively small purchase; I got a great deal on a big sale. I hate Bank of America, but they’re all just as bad…). Say hello to my new friend! I took the pic because it will never look this good again (and it doesn’t now, it’s dirty ;-). So Saturday, I got up at 6:00 and fired it up; it did a beautiful job (with a little help from me).

Pork:

Two items. One, H-E-B had pork loin the other day for the amazing price of $2.00 a pound, so I bought two and froze one. I’m using this easy Crockpot recipe from Allrecipes.com, and the smell is unbelievable!

Not having it tonight, because I have a steak left over from the other night (I really love H-E-B, they always have terrific prices on their “meat special”; the T-bones were cheaper than the hamburger). My friend Debra gave me her East Arkansas Delta Grannies' recipe for Kale. I’d never cooked Kale before but was intrigued, and the price is sure right ($0.99 a bunch), so I tried it and it’s great. So tonight I’m having Steak and Kale (and yes, I miss the late, great Steak and Ale).

Kale

Cut stems from Kale (it folds; use sharp knife and it’s fast and easy). Cut to bite-sized pieces.
Place in large pot, cover Kale with water
Two tablespoons black pepper into the water
2-4 slices of bacon (or fatback if you have it)
Boil for 30 minutes
Drain, plate, garnish, salt, pepper, eat.

Garnish

Chop one medium yellow onion
Place in small bowl, cover with white vinegar
Set aside and let those two work while the Kale is cooking

Drizzle the Onion/Vinegar mix over the Kale.

There’s another aspect to the “Pork” bit: SEC Sports has all of last season’s Razorbacks games on their website. I’ve got the Auburn game queued up and ready to go.

So that’s my boring (but pleasant) weekend.

Have a good week everybody!

Since I’m out of ideas right now, I’ll just steal one….

2010-05-16T22:26:00.001-05:00

My friend Joyce over at From This Side of the Pond frequently puts up a “Random Dozen”. This is another blog she follows; some of the questions on some of the pages are decidedly female, so usually I just read. Some, though, are universal.

So, a random dozen:

1.What was the last thing about which you procrastinated?

This blog has space limitations….

2. How long does it take you to fall asleep, and do you sleep through the night?

True tragedy: I generally fall asleep in front of the TeeVee, wake up somewhere around midnight (the dogs always know when it’s time to go to bed, as the TeeVee makes a decided “click” when I turn it off. Aside for those under 40: In the old days, when you did this, you woke up to a “test pattern”, which is what showed on the TeeVee station after it went off the air for the night. When was the last time a station went off the air at night?

Me falling asleep in front of the TeeVee used to drive my Mother bonkers. “GET UP AND GO TO BED,” she’d shout, using her “I’m your Mother and I mean what I’m saying” voice. This was only a few years ago…Me middle-aged and her in her 80’s…

One more thing on sleep: Thank God for CPAP.

3. Which decade would you choose to exemplify your favorite fashion styles?

Hmmm. I’ve worn the same basic outfits my entire life (excluding my dreadful early 70’s brightly-coloured polyester phase. I actually owned a pair of platform stacks; they were wing-tips---navy blue patent leather lower, cream patent leather uppers. And they were my FAVOURITES and I wore them OFTEN. In PUBLIC). Khakis, loafers, polo shirts, button-down oxfords, navy blazers (gold buttons, no crest, that’s ridiculous, but can be single-or-double-breasted), shorts, sandals, Hawaiian shirts, bowling shirts, jeans, tennis shoes, ball caps. Not sure there’s a decade to associate there.

4. What is your personal best dish to feed a crowd?

Spinach dip, steaks, mashed cauliflower (it’s better than potatoes), dessert by House of Pies.

5. Are you an impulse shopper? What was the last thing you bought on impulse?

I have to stay away from DSW Shoe Warehouse. Can’t go in there and come out empty-handed. Call me Imelda.

6. What is one wish you have for your own funeral?

I don’t want one. I used to want a big one with all the trimmings, then I pared it down. Now, I want to be cremated, with half my ashes scattered over my parents’ graves in Malvern, the other half over the Gulf of Mexico. I’d then like my friends (if I have any left by then) to have a party; wine, women, and song, and tell funny stories about me, remembering me fondly. That would be best of all.

7. If it's true that joy is in found in the simple things in life, what does your joy look like today?

Community Coffee, Dark Roast, fresh ground from whole bean, with heavy whipping cream. Best way to start the day.

8. What is your favorite type of bread?
Since I’m a low-carb person, I’m not supposed to have it. I love pumpernickel (really, i do).

9. What trait do you fear developing the most? (Laziness, greediness, grumpiness, etc.)

I’ve already developed them….

10. What trait would you like most to develop?

Self-discipline (same answer Joyce gave).

11. Which room in your house best reflects your personality? Why?

It’s my house. They all do. And they’re all messy.

12. How do you maintain balance in your life regarding, work, family, church, other organizations and activities, and blogging?

I’m not doing very well…..

Happy Mother’s Day

2010-05-08T07:05:00.001-05:00

I really miss Mom.

By hook and crook, Mom wound up with an heirloom rose bush. It’s a fairly old-fashioned double tea rose, but Mother loved it and wound up with it.

It stayed in the back yard (where she could enjoy it), between her shop and the back door, for about 20 years. When we moved them to San Antonio, they didn’t take the planted things, like “Grandma’s Rose”.

Nathan and I went back to Malvern when the house sold to “clean up” and get any remaining items, and I saw that rose bush. I knew the house had sold, but…I went and borrowed a shovel from the neighbors, dug it up, and brought it to Houston.

The first year, it almost didn’t survive. The second (last year), it made a few small but pretty blooms, and the foliage looked better.

Mother died in January. Now, intellectually, I know that it was the particular combination of harsh winter + sudden spring that bump-started it---but I like to think Mother was saying "Hello” to me this year, through “Grammie’s Rose”.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.