Borderline

A New Website!

2012-02-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

Friends: I have launched a new website today using a WordPress blog template (and a lot of help from Meghan Viers). It features my weekly columns, which will still be posted on Thursday evenings, lots of new photographs, links to buy my books (please!) and longer-form essays. I'm excited about the site, which allows me to add much more content. Sometime soon, the site where you're now reading this will go away, though I don't know how these web things really work.

Go to garyborders.com/pages to see the new site. And yes,the deer walking on the sidewalk is an unmanipulated photo. I shot it at Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains, Washington, last summer.

Cheers, and keep in touch. And spread the word if you like what you see and read.

Gary Borders

I Guess I Am a True Patriot

2012-02-02T18:31:00.000-08:00

According to a recent poll conducted by a blog site whose credentials are likely suspect but anecdotally ring true enough, the New England Patriots — playing in their fifth Super Bowl in 11 years — are the most hated NFL team in America. In fact, of the top dozen disliked sports team — both professional and collegiate — three of them are Boston teams — the Patriots, Red Sox and Celtics. The Boston Bruins didn’t make the list, probably because too few people watch hockey these days to affect a survey. All four comprise my favorite pro teams. It is an inherited trait, because I grew up in New Hampshire with my mother’s French-Canadian family. They brooked no discussion on which teams to follow. Besides, our snowy black-and-white television only picked up Manchester and Boston channels, and only a couple of them at that.

Technically the New England Patriots are no longer a Boston team since building a stadium in Foxborough, about 30 miles south. But that’s close enough, especially for an old-timer like me. I have been a Patriots fan since pre-Super Bowl days, when they were genuinely a Boston team playing at Fenway Park. I was a tyke devouring the sports pages of the tabloid Boston Record-American and the Concord Monitor. My godparents’ son, a fellow named Burton Nault, was the Patriots’ team physician. He occasionally provided autographed photos of the team stars — folks such as running back Jim Nance, quarterback Babe Parilli, and my favorite, wide receiver and kicker Gino Cappelletti. (I think I just liked saying his name.) The team had limited success before the merger of the American Football League with the NFL and the creation of the Super Bowl, appearing in just one league championship and getting whacked, 51-10 by the Chargers.

In fact, for the nearly 13 years I spent in New Hampshire, the only Boston team with consistent success was the Celtics, with its cigar-smoking Coach Red Auerbach on the bench, and legendary stars such as Bill Russell and Johnny Havlicek on the court. The team won seven NBA championships in the 1960s. I remember lying in bed with my transistor radio at age 9 during Game 7 against the hated Philadelphia 76ers, listening to the gravelly voice of Johnny Most screaming hoarsely, “Havlicek stole the ball! It's all over... It's all-l-l-l over!" Johnny Most could make a cribbage game sound exciting over the radio, but this truly was an electric moment.

But the Red Sox and Patriots? Not so much. Both teams only started winning championships after the turn of this century, though both occasionally got to the title game. Even the once-mighty Celtics went 22 years before winning a championship four years ago. The Bruins skated and traded punches for nearly 40 years before winning the Stanley Cup last year. Generations of Red Sox fans, including my kinfolks, went to their graves unfulfilled as the team went 86 years before winning a World Series. The Patriots bumbled from birth for 42 years before winning a Super Bowl.

Now Boston pro teams have seven championships among them in the past decade, so envy likely explains their high rankings in the “most hated” category. No longer are Boston teams the lovable losers of the past, underdogs always, whose team slogans were invariably, “Wait until next year.” Unsubstantiated rumor indicates that epitaph graces a few tombstones of diehard Boston fans, which is too good a story to ruin by actual research. But now Boston fans are considered a bunch of whiners when we bemoan the embarrassing collapse, for example, of the Red Sox at the end of last season. Of course, the report of millionaire pitchers eating fried chicken and drinking brewskis in the locker room while the game was underway is hardly geared to elicit sympathy.

Which brings us back to the Patriots seeking revenge Sunday in Super Bowl XLVI. This massive sporting event is one of the few places one finds Roman numerals being used. I can decipher Roman numerals just fine, but this seems to be a vanishing, admittedly rather useless, talent. The last time the Patriots were in a title game, the team had won all its regular season games as well as two playoff games and headed into the Super Bowl with an unprecedented 18-0 record. And they lost to the Giants, those spoilsports, to the delight of Patriots haters everywhere. This is one of those rare times when I actually was depressed over the results of a sporting match.

I will be watching Sunday but have no intention of allowing this game to affect my mental health, though there will be some cheering and talking to the television involved. I will wear the Patriots sweatshirt my mom gave me after the first SB win. It is well-worn and soft. She forgot that she had bought it for me and bought another a month later, so I have two identical sweatshirts. This allows me to always wear one in the winter once home from work. I had to explain to my Beautiful Mystery Companion that I owned two identical sweatshirts and wasn’t wearing the same clothing article for months on end.

She has no intention of watching the Super Bowl. But if I’m nice I’ll bet she’ll make some nachos.

A Year of Absent Birthdays

2012-01-26T17:35:00.000-08:00

My mother would have turned 82 this week. My dad would have turned 80 this summer. Both are gone now, so this is the first year both of their birthdays are being noted in absentia. As executor, I am wrapping up their affairs and disbursing the estate’s assets, with the able assistance of an attorney. My parents were not wealthy, but they were thrifty. Of course, I would much rather have them back — living independently well into their 80s or 90s as most members on both sides of the family have done — but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead both declined over years until their deaths, just more than two years apart, were sad blessings. And I write checks to the heirs, gifts that are a legacy to my mom’s handling of their nest egg.

It was an honor to be their primary caretaker in those final years. The journey began five years ago this month. My father had long been disabled by a botched medical procedure. For 17 years my mother cared for him at their home on South Twelfth Street in Longview, but it had become clear to me that couldn’t continue. The house was no longer clean, and she fired each housekeeper I hired. The doctor’s office called to say my mom had lost her car in the parking lot, hunting in vain for a white Maxima (she owned a champagne Altima), and didn’t have an appointment that day anyway. I drove to Longview from Lufkin on a Sunday to try once more and talk them into going into assisted living in Lufkin, at a fine facility down the street from my house. This time, in fact, I was going to insist upon it, though I really didn’t want to play the legal card and force them. But their safety clearly was at risk.

My dad was alone in the house when I arrived. He calmly informed me that an ambulance had taken Mom to the emergency room. He didn’t know why. She nearly died that day from insulin shock, received the last rites, and was taken off all artificial support as she had requested. Once again, my mom bounced right back among the living, but her collapse took the fight out of her as far as staying in the house. The journey from assisted living, then to nursing care, finally to hospice began. The house and most of the contents were sold, except for what remains in a storage unit in South Longview.

My brothers and I still haven’t been able to bring ourselves to go through that storage unit, which contains the remaining physical possessions — my father’s paintings and hundreds of prints of his pen-and-ink and pencil drawings, dozens of photo albums, boxes of knick-knacks my mother collected, a few modest pieces of furniture. We will have to do it soon, before summer returns and diving into those boxes becomes physically unbearable.

We used to joke that my mother would photograph anything that moved, and we own the photo albums to prove it. Exactly what we will do with all this stuff is one reason we haven’t yet tackled the project, eight months after my mother’s death. Luckily there are six grandchildren to share in the dispersal. It’s going to take the whole clan to empty that storage unit of photo albums accumulated over a half century.

I have since learned that it is common for the adult children, left behind when parents die, to delay — often for years and even decades — the hard task of cleaning out the closets, going through the photographs, sifting through the personal items that once marked the lives of those who raised us. For my brothers and me, this is a process we already went through once when getting the house ready to sell. That is likely why we show little enthusiasm for doing it again.

My mother used to say in her declining years that, “Growing old is not for the faint of heart,” a phrase not original with her but certainly apropos. Another dear friend who died a year ago used to have a pillow on his couch with “Screw The Golden Years” embroidered upon it in gold thread. I told my mother about the pillow once, and she laughed and said, “Amen.” I’m hoping for a better voyage, but understand now better than ever that dying is seldom pretty or easy. My parents did so with courage and grace. I learned a lot from that, though they’re lessons I’m in no hurry to put into practice.

Cruising Longview, In Search of Vanished Landmarks

2012-01-19T19:37:00.000-08:00

I was cruising around South Longview and the downtown area the other day, whiling away time on Memory Lane before a dreaded appointment with an MRI torpedo tube. Dreaded, not because it hurts or I’m particularly worried about the results. The deal is I’m decidedly claustrophobic and have to get legally stoned on Xanax to keep from climbing out of that contraption before the scan is completed. I have abandoned ship before, much to the dismay of the medical staff. So to keep my mind off the impending test, I drove around looking for long-gone landmarks from my youth— until it was time to enter pharmaceutical la-la land.

We moved to South 12th Street in the fall of 1968 from New Hampshire, after spending a summer living in Greggton with my grandfather, while my dad found work and a house to buy. By fall I was a 13-year-old kid with a banana-seat bike, operating a paper route through downtown for the afternoon edition. Most of the stores, bars and businesses I peddled papers for a dime through downtown are long gone or moved. There was Riffs, a hoity-toity women’s clothing store; Hurwitz, clothing for men, now out on Judson Road; Dillards, now in the mall but for years downtown at Tyler and High streets; Kelly Plow, whose furnaces conjured up visions of Hell as I tiptoed past; the Arlyne Theater and Brass Rail up the street from the paper. The latter was my favorite den of inequity and failed dreams. Both are long demolished.

A magnolia tree towers still on the corner of Tyler and Court streets. It was once the centerpiece of a ramshackle bar on Tyler Street. The tree is more than twice as tall now, the building long gone. I believe it was called the Tree Top Inn but don’t trust my memory. It could have been the Magnolia Saloon. But I am certain the tree grew out of a hole cut in the tin roof, and the bar had a hard-packed red-dirt floor. It catered to workers from Kelly Plow, once located a couple blocks away in the parking lot where a Farmers Market sprang up last year. I have a hand plow from the factory that my late mother got at a rummage sale somewhere. Someday I need to build new handles for that plow.

Traveling down Mobberly Avenue, I try to figure out where Tony’s Sporting Goods exactly stood. Tony was quite the character, with the most impressive set of nose and ear hair I have witnessed. His store was near the old Gibson’s — later a Howard’s store — a precursor to Walmart. I loved going to Howard’s as a teenager, pining over the selections of guitars, wondering if I should spend my paperboy money for the latest Steppenwolf LP or take a chance on Three Dog Night.

One Christmas, when I was 14, I saved my money and bought my parents a new stereo system from Howard’s. It was solid plastic and medium fidelity, but it was a step up from what they were using. It probably set me back $75 or so. I remember my parents were flummoxed I had spent that much money on them. I recall simply wanting to do something nice for them. Now they’re both gone, and that is one of my fonder memories of growing up, so it was certainly money well spent.

Howard’s didn’t survive the onslaught of Walmarts, of course. Not much did. Certainly the S&H Green Stamp Store, once on High Street near Birdsong, didn’t survive, though I don’t know if Walmart is to blame. My Beautiful Mystery Companion and I attempted to explain the green-stamp concept to our 14-year-old daughter recently. You shopped at Brookshires, which was the grocery store in Longview in the 1960s, and received a certain number of green stamps depending on how much you spent.
As you saved, you spent months poring over the S&H catalog, which in the 1960s was the largest-circulation publication in the country. When you had saved up a sufficient number — about 82,800 stamps or 69 books, if memory serves — you would head to the S&H store to redeem the stamps. I remember my mother buying a table lamp with green stamps. Green Stamps are long gone, though the name survives under the concept of online points.

On to the old site of the River Road Drive-In, now occupied by an apartment complex. My buddies and I used to cut through the LeTourneau University (then college) campus and peek over the fence at the racier movies being shown. Finally, back down Mobberly to where Burger Chef stood, at the intersection with Birdsong Street. I would ride my bike down there after supper and buy three little cheeseburgers for a buck. Like most teen boys, my stomach was a bottomless pit that needed to be replenished every few hours.

By then it was time to head home, get zonked on Xanax, and allow my wife to drive me to the clinic. Inside that tube I dozed fitfully, daydreaming about those little cheeseburgers and Tony the Sporting Goods guy, trying to ignore the clanging and banging that goes with an MRI.

Buzzards, Sno Balls and American Pie

2012-01-12T06:38:00.000-08:00

The New Year has gotten off to an inauspicious start, though I remain optimistic. The Hostess company, maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Sno Balls, is about to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in the past 10 years. (To steal a line, I guess that makes it Chapter 22.) Hostess products have been staples of vending machines in newspaper break rooms where I’ve toiled over the last 30 years. They appear to remain popular, with 36 million packages of Twinkies consumed in 2010. The fancy-pant equity investors who own — and owe — for Hostess are trying to shed debt to hold on, all the while blaming the rising price of sugar and flour. Whatever. Bunch of greedy muffinheads, far as I can tell.

I gave up eating Sno Balls after conducting a science experiment while working in the newsroom of the Lufkin Daily News, circa 1989. I bought a package of Sno Balls, with that sickly pink coconut covering. Then I formed a betting pool with fellow ink-stained miscreants on when the Sno Balls would develop the type of mold one finds on normal bakery products, such as bread. You know, the type of green stuff that spawned the invention of penicillin. If memory serves, the city editor had the most absurd prediction, something like nine months.

The Sno Balls sat on a shelf for the equivalent of the human female gestation period, never actually looking the worse for wear. The city editor won the pool, though nobody had the nerve to actually take a bite out of the cupcakes to see how they tasted. I concluded that unless it is beef jerky, dried fruit or red wine, one should avoid consuming anything that can survive nearly a year sitting on a shelf. So I have not eaten a Sno Ball, Ding Dong or Twinkie since. I reserve my empty calories for chips and salsa. They are essential to survival in these harrowing times.
|———|

I spent the first full weekend of the New Year apart from my peeps. My wife and I both needed to work, so I stayed in Austin while she prepared for classes in East Texas. We don’t like to do that, but there you go. On Sunday morning, after my morning walk and a light breakfast (actually it was two burritos from McDonald’s, but don’t tell her), I showered and prepared to spend the day in front of a computer screen.

While toweling off, I idly glanced out the second-story window over the tub at the sky, wondering if it was going to rain. (Not to worry. A curtain hides me from chin down.) My neighbor’s roofline is visible from that vantage point. Perched on the roof were three turkey buzzards, two of which seemed to be staring at me. I could see into their bloodshot eyes, practically smell that carrion cologne.

Hoo boy. Here I am feeling sorry for myself because I’m away from my family, as our lives seem to pass at warp-speed, and a trio of buzzards is peering into my bathroom window. And I’m in the middle of reading a Stephen King novel to boot!
|———|

In between bouts at the computer, I continued my quest to learn how to play Don McLean’s “American Pie” on my resonator guitar. I have discovered what most everyone who cares already knew — that one could find the chords to just about every song published on the Internet. I don’t know what possessed me to try to learn “American Pie.” It was a fine song the first 7,000 times I heard it, all 12 minutes of it.

At least that is how long it takes me to play it, since my chord-changing abilities are still at the rank-beginner stage. My fingers now have calluses, which allows me to play longer than 10 minutes before the pain becomes too much. And it is fair to say that I have improved 200 percent in the past four months of near-daily practice and biweekly lessons that just ended. I now am approaching the level of most 10-year-olds who have been playing for about a month.

A friend asked me what I planned to do once I became adept at playing. I told him I played guitar and banjo — albeit badly — at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor while in high school in Longview. You never know when a career change is in order.

Actually, there is probably a reason Shakey’s Pizza Parlors disappeared from Texas and can only be found in California and a few scattered spots in the South. They kept hiring doofuses like me to sing and play badly as the bouncing ball skipped over the lyrics up on the screen. I was doing karaoke way before karaoke was cool.

No, I will confine my guitar playing to the privacy of the home and only torture the family with my caterwauling and missed notes. I actually played “American Pie” all the way through last weekend. I had to take a nap afterwards to recover.

When I awoke, the buzzards were gone.

Crape Myrtle Mutilation Continues Unchecked

2012-01-05T07:58:00.000-08:00

A harbinger of the New Year unhappily but inevitably arrived when I was back in East Texas over the holiday break. I headed with my wife to jointly risk our mental health by shopping at the Big Box Store during the Dead Week after Christmas, when sales abound. We were not shopping for bargains but simply trying to find a holiday six-pack of bottled Coca-Colas to give to someone. No luck. When Christmas ends, for the big-boxers it is out with the old before the eggnog has been digested. Gone are the decorations, cards and artificial trees. In place by New Year’s: Valentine’s Day cards and candy. These days in retail America, merchants uneasily lurch from one holiday to another, imploring folks to “Buy, buy buy!”

But I digress.

What caught my eye, as we pulled into the asphalt wasteland, were landscape workers busily mutilating crape myrtles planted in the strip of dirt bordering the fast-food restaurants near the Big Box Store. Perched on stepladders and armed with lops, they happily hacked away at these lovely trees, cutting the past year’s growth back. What remained was an ungainly skeleton. Most people apparently continue to believe that, for this loveliest of Southern ornamentals to bloom in summer, it must be pruned in January.

Most people are wrong. At least about crape myrtles.

Crape myrtle mutilation is a Southern tradition from Georgia to Georgetown, Florida to Floydada. Google “crape myrtle mutilation” and dozens of links arrive, most from conscientious arborists and landscapers who decry this barbaric practice. I once belonged, by virtue of slapping a bumper sticker on my Jeep, to a loosely formed organization led by a Deep East Texas landscaper and freelance gardening columnist for the paper I published in Nacogdoches, aka the Oldest Town in Texas. Pink and green “Stop Crape Myrtle Mutilation” bumper stickers soon graced, well, dozens of vehicles. Thousands of words were published in various newspapers and elsewhere, begging people to quit hacking away at the myrtles. I contributed my share of commentary to the cause. Talk about a tree falling in a forest. The hacking continues unabated Behind The Pine Curtain.

Crape myrtles come in various sizes. Folks who want mini-myrtles should buy the variety bred to remain modest. Left unchecked, most crape myrtles over years will become stately trees reaching upwards of 40 feet in height. Their blooms are luscious yet hardy, able to thrive in 100-degree summers with little water. And yes, they can survive an annual mutilation, but the end results are trees with thick trunks and spindly branches.

I admit that I am a recovering crape myrtle mutilator. I lived in Nacogdoches at the time, and as a single man had purchased a modest house. January arrived, and I hacked away at the half dozen large crape myrtles in the backyard, as instructed by a couple of my buddies who were trying to be helpful. I spent most of a day risking a spinal-cord injury perched on a rickety stepladder, snipping off branches. Then I had to haul the detritus to the curb. While complaining later that week about my sore back, our gardening columnist — the originator of the famed bumper sticker — overheard me.

This is the way I remember it, acknowledging he might have a different version:

“You don’t have to prune crape myrtles,” he said. “You can just let them grow. Pruning them doesn’t help them bloom; it just makes them look ugly.”

I was delighted to discern that I had spent my last weekend sweating in January while carving up crape myrtles. The gardening columnist had a convert, and over the past 15 years or so I probably have convinced perhaps 10 other kindred souls to stop this insidious practice. That leaves the vast majority of Southern landscapers still whacking away, along with the non-believers and those who just haven’t yet learned the gospel: No pruning necessary.

As for the landscapers, not to be uncharitable, but there isn’t a lot of landscaping work to be done in January. The grass isn’t growing, leaves have quit falling, and it’s too early to plant for spring. Mutilating crape myrtles provides an excuse to keep hard-working folks on the payroll during those slow months. I appreciate the need to keep money flowing for workers, to buy gasoline, etc. I just wish landscapers could think of something else to justify their pay other than turning tens of thousands of crape myrtles into ugly stumps until spring arrives. As for the homeowners out there who own crape myrtles, I hope you read this before spending hours engaged in a totally unnecessary activity. Just think. You can use that time to head back to the Big Box Store and check out what is on sale.

Or you could read a book. That’s my plan. Our front-yard crape myrtle might reach the roofline by this summer. At least I hope so. No trimming necessary.

Please, Do Not Send in The Clowns

2011-12-29T14:49:00.000-08:00

I began reading Stephen King’s latest novel, “11/22/63” over Christmas break, having requested and received it as a gift from Abbie, my youngest daughter. I have not read anything by King in years after a phase in the 1990s plowing through “The Stand,” “It” and others in short order — often scaring myself past sleeping soundly.
King belongs to the genre of writing that a colleague terms “booger tales.” I don’t know where my coworker came up with the phrase, which refers to books or movies designed to scare the bejeebers out of the reader or viewer. But it stuck. I assiduously avoid booger movies, a habit that began after watching “Psycho” many years ago. Real life is scary enough without paying money to be frightened witless.

I’m not as squeamish about books, since one can put down a booger book at any time and skip the scary parts if desired. The printed word, no matter how adept the writer, simply doesn’t have the shocking effect as watching on the big screen when someone jumps out of the bushes to attack the teen couple strolling after dark in the park. Or whatever.

King’s “It” features the scariest, evilest clown in modern literature. The novel is set in Derry, Maine, a favorite King locale that doesn’t actually exist. (There is a Derry in New Hampshire, the state where I was raised until nearly a teenager.) The Derry that King describes is broadly reminiscent of the small New Hampshire town in which I lived, near Concord, the state’s capital. Enough strange and sad events occurred there during my youth — a girl strangled on Good Friday, 1964 by her insane aunt in her home on the next street over from ours, a suicide by shotgun a block away, another classmate gone missing and found murdered months later — that “It” resonated in that place deep within, where we try to keep our childhood fears buried. Besides, I have never liked clowns, so King’s novel only reinforced my antipathy.

King, who lives in Bangor, Maine, once did a fine favor for my middle daughter, Mere. When she was in high school she wrote King a fan letter. Weeks later a box showed up at our house, postmarked from Bangor. The box had previously been used, with the original recipient’s address marked out in black. Inside was a limited-edition publisher’s copy of the fourth Dark Tower book, “Wizard and Glass,” and a personal note from him. It was obvious that King had found a used box, packed this personally and trudged down to the post office to send it to a 16-year-old fan. Mere had written King that she lived in Lufkin and loved to drink Orbitz, which she describes as a strange fruit drink with little floating tapioca balls in it.

King wrote:

“Dear Meredith Borders, there's still plenty of the magic in the world. Your letter proves it. From a fellow Orbitz junkie, Stephen King, 2/3/98.” King later mentioned my daughter’s hometown in his next two books, in one describing a fellow “mucking out horse stalls in Lufkin, Texas.”

Where was I? Oh, “11/22/63.” That, of course, is the day President Kennedy was shot, news I received while in Mrs. Mahoney’s third-grade class in Allenstown, N.H. In King’s novel, a recently divorced English teacher in —yes — Derry, Maine, discovers a way to travel back in time and possibly change the outcome of certain events, such as a father in Derry killing several members of his family, and the death of a young president. I couldn’t spoil the ending for you if I wanted, since I’m only about one-fourth of the way through this 850-page turner. King can spin a good yarn, so this is a needed break from dense histories and biographies.

Early on, King mentions Moxie, a Maine-based soft drink that I tried and failed to enjoy as a child. It’s a bitter carbonated concoction invented in the late 19th century. Moxie might explain why Maine residents have a reputation for being a bit curmudgeonly — unlike the sunny folks of the great state of New Hampshire. I’m kidding about all that, of course. Moxie, from what I recall, tastes somewhat like root beer without sweetener. The beverage is still produced, though the company website admits Moxie is an “acquired taste.” Sort of like Orbitz, I suppose. Floating tapioca balls?

My daughter Mere is now a full-time writer and editor. She got her start writing reviews of horror movies for her own blog. She clearly did not inherit her love for booger movies from her dad. She now gets paid to write and edit for Badass Digest, an Austin-based website that reviews pop culture. She works very hard. I’m obviously quite proud.
I believe Stephen King played no small part in her success, though he likely will never know that. That’s why returning to read one of his books, set in a place so eerily similar to where I grew up, is a fascinating, if somewhat scary, ride.

I just hope no clowns show up.

Yard-Art Santas and Paperboys

2011-12-22T06:17:00.000-08:00

My favorite Christmas card each season doesn’t come from a store. It is a photograph, printed on 4x6 paper, of a yard-art Santa Claus somewhere in East Texas. The photograph is invariably, wonderfully weird. For nearly two decades, by my count, O. Rufus Lovett has been distributing these photographs to his friends and colleagues. Someday I will gather them up from the various boxes where they are stashed and frame them into a single display.

Rufus and I have been friends for nearly a quarter-century. We met when I spent a year at Kilgore College as yearbook adviser and college photographer. Rufus has been the photography instructor there for more than three decades. His work is in museum and gallery collections throughout Texas. He is a contributing photographer to Texas Monthly and a number of national magazines, and has published two fine photographic book collections. (Google him to find out more.) I look forward to receiving Rufus’ cards each year.

This year’s offering features the torso of a blow-up Santa, with just his beard and belt visible, a pair of twine keeping him upright. Past versions include a Santa who appears to have been lynched on a front porch, the photo shot from behind; a forlorn decapitated Santa head hanging on a white-washed wooden fence with “God Bless America” painted across the pickets, a deer stand visible in the background; and a Santa mask fastened to a chain link fence guarding an electrical substation.

My friend Rufus has a keen eye for yard-art Santas. There is bound to be a book somewhere down the road.
|———|

As of this writing, three days before Christmas, I have received two other Christmas cards. (I suppose this should sadden me, but since I never send out cards it would be presumptuous to expect any in return.) One is from my attorney, the other from my newspaper carrier. The former told a few funny family tales. The latter wrote a thank-you note and included his address.

I suspect my carrier would not be opposed to a Yule stipend, which will be mailed to him forthwith. He is an excellent carrier who tosses a copy of the Wall Street Journal in the exact same spot on the driveway every morning. I have a soft spot for newspaper carriers, of course. Selling papers launched my checkered newspaper career.

A photo hangs in my office showing me and two other teen-aged boys standing next to a bicycle loaded down with a canvas satchel crammed with newspapers. It was taken in the fall of 1968, when I was 13. Downtown Longview was my oyster, especially at Christmas. The week before Christmas was a time of anticipation as I rode my route, peddling papers downtown, from the Brass Rail to the Bramlette Building, down Cotton Street to the car dealerships along Spur 63, back up the hill to the black neighborhoods hugging the south side of the city’s center back then.

At Christmas I was hoping for tips, much like the carrier who chunks my paper here each morning. The Brass Rail was the mother lode, a smoke-filled bar on Methvin Street, filled each afternoon with men playing 42 and spitting sporadically at the brass spittoons on the floor. One florid-faced fellow wearing a snap-button cowboy shirt gave me $20 once, a few days before Christmas — my best paperboy tip ever. But even the folks who struggled to come up with a dime a day for the paper kindly tipped the paperboy at Christmas, a quarter here, a buck there.

The memories of being a paperboy stick with folks of my generation and older. I have talked to people running for the U.S. Senate, for governor, men who are now successful in the corporate world. Nearly every one of them at one point had a paper route that they remember fondly. (Gender note: I know there were female youth paper carriers. I just didn’t know any, nor have I met any since. As adults, yes, but the afternoon paper route job was definitely male-dominated during my tenure.)
|———|

These days, my thoughts around Christmas are invariably reflective. Another year is about to pass. Lately, I ponder how best to spend my remaining years, however many or few that turns out to be. I can’t tell you I have come up with an answer, but it lays heavily on my mind.

Clearly, I am blessed, with my bride, children, family and friends. I need nothing. I want to know how to give back, how to make a difference. To me, that is part of the spirit of Christmas, discerning what admittedly small contribution I can make to our part of the world in the time I have remaining. It’s not just giving money, though that doesn’t hurt. It is figuring out how best to serve.

Friends, I hope you have a truly Merry Christmas. God Bless.

Blessed Rain, And Landmarks on Road Home

2011-12-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

I sat in my office this morning and gazed out the window at a rare sight. Rain came down in gentle sheets. The live oak trees across the avenue seemed to be smiling. So was I. For the first time in the six months working on campus, I had to use my oversized comic-strip umbrella to walk from the parking garage to the office. Hours earlier, in the pre-dawn darkness I happily got soaked on my morning walk.

Perhaps the drought is over. We can only hope and pray that the experts predicting a second year of cracked earth and barren pastures are wrong. For now, gray skies and a soaking rain are a treasure — after nearly a year of incessant blue and the most brutal summer in memory. In Austin, the temperature topped 100 degrees one out of every four days in 2011. Now that’s just absurd.

It is startling ¬— and heartening — to see how quickly things begin to green up — as we say in East Texas — once a bit of rain arrives. The small city park down the street from my house looked like a dust bowl when I moved into the neighborhood in mid-October. Brown patches of grass and expanses of dirt lay below the live oak trees clearly in distress. Now, though winter is knocking on the door, grass is sprouting all over the park. One has hope, at least temporarily.

I was walking to work in the rain and heard one student complain to another about the inconvenience, that her feet were soaked. “Hush, child,” I was tempted to say. “Don’t you know what a precious gift rain is these days?”
|———|

Driving back to East Texas, as I do most Friday evenings, I look for the landmarks that mark my four-and-a-half hour journey, up to Waco on 1-35 where I cut across on state Hwy. 31, bordered by pastures, and furrowed blacklands awaiting the spring crop. If it is still daylight, there will be two horses tethered to a fence post on the north highway shoulder, somewhere near Kerens. The owner has taken advantage of the state’s grass for at least a couple years, since I have been regularly making this trek. Apparently, alarmed motorists have called the sheriff’s office, thinking the horses have gotten loose because recently a crudely painted plywood sign appeared at the gate stating, “Horses are tied up!” Good to know.

I always look for the four toilets filled with faded plastic flowers at the driveway entrance of a ranchette outside Hubbard; that marks the halfway point back to Longview from Austin. The pond in the front yard of the ranchette has nearly disappeared in the drought, but the toilets have held up well. I have been tempted to stop and inquire about the provenance of this commodious yard art.

A few miles west of Corsicana on the south side of the highway lies a small white-frame house with a detached garage and a chain-link fence. “DIVORCE,” reads the sign planted at the driveway’s edge, along with a phone number, and the attorney’s name nailed on a board beside the front door. I wonder if he gets much drive-by business, an unhappy spouse whizzing by, seeing the sign and whipping into the driveway ready at last to split the blanket. Probably not.

On the loop in Athens, two old Metropolitans cars are parked in a pasture occasionally populated with cows or round bales of hay. They have been there, advertised for sale by a sign on the fence, for at least a couple of years. I keep threatening to take a photo of them when the light is right. The combination of pasture, cows, cars and aesthetically accommodating sky might make an interesting photo. So far, I haven’t found the perfect light. I hope I capture that scene before the cars are sold.

By the time I get off that loop and turn left to return to Hwy. 31, I’m just over an hour away. It’s tricky driving from here to the other side of Tyler, speeding up and slowing down as I pass through the small towns of Murchison, Brownsboro and Chandler — watching out for the local law invariably lurking about, trying to nab someone who forgot the speed limit just dropped from 70 mph to the double-nickel.

I will make that trip again after work Friday, music playing, my mind meandering, heading back to the family I love. I hope it is still raining.

With Blackbirds On The Wires, He Dances Alone

2011-12-08T17:38:00.000-08:00

My commute to work is no longer arduous, for which I’m grateful. However, much of it capably vies with similar stretches in Texas metropolises — for the ugliest urban landscape not yet declared an EPA Superfund site. I will put far North Lamar Boulevard up against any ugly roadway in Texas. Its unrelenting parade of failing strip centers, garish signs, tilting utility poles and potholed parking lots has little to recommend it aesthetically. Pawnshops abut Indian restaurants, which nudge up against auto parts stores, which share a wall with a wig salon, next door to a discoteca. And so forth, for miles.

At night, the lighting resembles a poor man’s Las Vegas or Times Square, garish and jarring. North Lamar would be a fine location to shoot scenes for a film noir, featuring a hard-bitten sleuth who spends too much time eating bad Chinese food and drinking cheap whiskey neat at bars with names like Mike’s Stay Awhile. Some signs displayed on the hodgepodge of freestanding buildings along the boulevard were sloppily painted by amateurs over the signs of the previous and doubtless now-broke tenant. They advertise transmission repair, fortunes told, money loaned, fortunes lost.

I travel this route twice daily during the workweek, at dawn and dusk in these pre-winter solstice days. Lamar Boulevard is congested both ways, but it beats taking MoPac or I-35, the two main arteries. Of the latter, the late and sorely missed columnist Molly Ivins once said, “The key to happiness in Austin is to never, ever drive on I-35.” This, indeed, is sound advice that I follow faithfully. The only reason I get on I-35 is to head back to East Texas, and that is only because there is no other route, at least starting out.

The most intriguing intersection on the North Lamar route is at Rundberg Lane. Spindly Bradford Pear trees line the patchy grass between the concrete sidewalks and asphalt road. The grass is turning green again after a few welcomed bouts of rain, but the trees look diminished by the heat and drought. Who isn’t? Two corners contain seedy strip malls. The ubiquitous Sonic Drive-In and Walgreens anchor the other two corners. At 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., when I am passing through, the sun is either barely peeping over the nearby interstate horizon to the east, or sinking below the modest subdivisions that begin a few blocks west. The line of taillights waiting to get through the traffic signal invariably stretches in both directions for hundreds of yards to the next set of signals. So I have had plenty of time to study this intersection.

Dawn and dusk are when the blackbirds hang out at Rundberg and Lamar, literally thousands of them darkening the trees, lining the utility wires, streaking the pole signs with their droppings. Roll down a window, and the air is filled with the unmelodious conversations the blackbirds are having among themselves. I worry about the folks sitting at the bus stop benches. “Look out below,” I’m tempted to shout, “Incoming!”

In the evenings, the birds — and the motorists stuck at the light — often are entertained by a young thin black man wearing earbuds, dressed in a brightly colored tracksuit. He spends evening rush hour dancing and singing exuberantly, smiling and gesticulating at the drivers, most of whom look straight ahead with that “Ignore the Panhandler” gaze big-city dwellers learn quickly to adapt. There is a panhandler at most every urban corner here, with a cardboard sign, battered backpack and a defeated look about them.

But this man isn’t hip-hopping for money, not that I’ve observed. He doesn’t approach cars with his hand out but simply dances along the sidewalk quite adeptly, smiling broadly all the while. Some days the man dances in front of the Sonic; other days he gyrates near the store on the opposite corner. Every day, he is harmonizing with the blackbirds as he dances alone at Rundberg and Lamar. I wonder what he listens to, what type of music gets his feet to tapping, his hips shaking.

I have tried to figure out why the blackbirds gather at this spot. Web searches indicate the birds gather en masse at promising sources of food. But this intersection contains the barest remnants of nature, a sad, dying display of trees and grass strips. The air is foul with vehicle exhaust. Sirens blare, horns are honked, and a man dances alone to music only he can hear.

I’ll likely never know why the blackbirds gather at Rundberg and Lamar, each dusk and dawn. Or why that man dances as we all head home after work, both providing a few seconds of entertainment to the appreciative few. That’s OK. Some mysteries are best left unsolved.

Black Fridays and Blue Laws

2011-12-01T17:54:00.000-08:00

“So this is Christmas, and what have you done,”
— John Lennon.

Indeed.

Black Friday recently passed with multiple violent incidents, including a woman pepper-spraying people in order to forge ahead in line to buy a heavily discounted Xbox gaming device. A West Virginia man died after collapsing in a Target. Frenzied shoppers stampeded past the man as he lay on the floor. Elsewhere, folks got in a tussle over $2 waffle makers. Across the country, people began lining up on Monday for openings of big-box retailers with limited offers of big bargains. Spending several days in the elements in order to save a few hundred bucks on a big-screen television is a catalyst for bad behavior, I’m thinking.

Thanksgiving used to be a shopping-free zone. Sure, restaurants opened to serve those unwilling or unable to cook. Convenience stores sporadically opened their doors, usually by late afternoon, to sell beer, Tums and cigarettes. But for the most part, the merchant class took a break. That seems to be rapidly becoming a quaint, unobserved tradition.

Black Friday was named because the cash registers ringing — or more accurately these days, beeping —put merchants into the black, profit-wise. Now Black Friday is sliding backward into — I don’t know — Gray Thursday Night?

What a terrible name to start the holiday shopping season: Black Friday. Yeech. It conjures images of evil acts, sorcery, even vampires, which seem to be all the rage these days. Perhaps this poor choice in capitalist marketing partially accounts for the increasing incidents of bad behavior. Or maybe there is a growing segment of the population that cares more about getting a good deal on a DVD player than making someone sure someone doesn’t get trampled to death.

So much for peace on earth and goodwill toward men. Don't be surprised to see Santa in the mall armed with pepper spray.

When I see some poor sap bundled up against the elements as the temperatures plunge into the 70s in Texas (to steal a line from KUT, the local NPR station), talking to a television reporter for the annual story on how long he has been camping out to be first in line at Best Buy, I wonder, “Do these people not have jobs? And if they are unemployed, why are they spending their money on a big-screen television?” Maybe this is how they spend their allotted vacation days. Personally, I would rather go hiking in the mountains or alongside a white-capped river. I also wonder about bathroom breaks, the need to shower more than once every four days (at least for me and everybody I hang out with), and other weighty matters.

These violent incidents breaking out across America over Christmas shopping make me grumpy and inclined to keep all the decorations in the closet. My wife and I already have pledged to keep spending modest and try to find a place to serve others on Christmas Day. Not because we are wonderful people — at least I’m not — but because all this spending and hoopla just don’t seem right anymore. There is a reason for this season, and it sure isn’t standing in a mob outside a Walmart at 3 a.m. waiting for the doors to open, standing along with several hundred other testy shoppers, hoping not to get trampled.

The trend this year is for stores to open on Thanksgiving evening, after the Detroit Lions have been clobbered in another Turkey Day tradition: The Lions lose while a nation snoozes after overdosing on tryptophan from all that turkey. Then we’re all supposed to wake up and head to the stores.

Not me. I am old enough to recall when many stores in Texas had to stay closed on Sunday because of blue laws. (I had hoped to provide the etymology of blue laws, but Snopes.com said to fuggedaboutit. Nobody really knows.) Somehow we managed to survive no-shopping Sundays unscathed and rarely felt deprived that we could not shop ‘til we dropped after church. Sure, sometimes it was inconvenient, like when one had to buy Pampers at triple-price at Circle K because we didn’t make it to the grocery store on Saturday. But I don’t think we’re any better off as a society, now that stores are opening on Thanksgiving, before the turkey and dressing have cooled enough to put the leftovers in the fridge.

As for me, I’ll just stay home Thanksgiving night and watch UT play Texas A&M. Whoops. Forgot that isn’t going to happen anymore, at least for a while.

Another tradition crumbles. What’s next to tumble? One shudders in nervous anticipation.

Thankful For Family, Fried Okra & 28 Other Items

2011-11-24T15:55:00.000-08:00

One of the Facebook diversions floating around lately is “30 Things
For Which You Are Thankful.” Being grateful for one’s blessings is critical to happiness, so I am happy to provide my own modest list. Just don’t ask me to join Farmville or any of those other silly FB games. (For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, in this case ignorance is, if not bliss, at least the wiser route.) So here goes.
I am thankful for:

• My bride of five-and-a-half months, Julie, newest daughter Abbie, and my two “grown” daughters, Kasey and Mere. I am constantly astounded that these four really smart, beautiful females put up with my ways — at least most of the time. They always give me joy and love, and I would be lost without them. Talk about blessings.

• The family I joined when marrying my Beautiful Mystery Companion on a warm June afternoon out in the East Texas countryside. Recently, they have experienced great loss with the death of one of the clan, 20-year-old Cody Norris, while serving our country in Afghanistan. The service in La Porte, southeast of Houston, three days before Thanksgiving was both heart-wrenching and uplifting, the support from the community amazing. Still, tough times remain in those quiet days when the hubbub has ended, the flowers faded, the embraces fewer and far between.

• That I was able to be at my mother’s side, along with my brother Gregg and daughter Mere, when she passed away in mid-May. I did not want her to go out of this world alone, and will forever be grateful that we could all get there from out-of-town and ease her passing. I miss her.

• My faith, a terrific pastor, a friendly church, and a peace about what happens next, whatever it might be. I guess part of finally growing up is learning to ride that roller coaster. Most days, I’m good with that.

• Good health, few aches and pains, and the ability to walk three miles daily. You quit taking such things for granted as one ages.

• That I have a dog. Well, technically my BMC has the dog since we still have a commuter marriage. But Rosie the Wonder Dog loves me as unconditionally as the rest of the peeps. Sometime soon, I will tell you the story of how this little dog vanished for two weeks, and the adventures she faced until we got her back. I forgot how much joy a little creature can bring to a family. Rosie is a fine little dog and a leading candidate for Cutest Dog in the Universe. Just saying.

OK, gonna start devolving into the less weighty. Fair warning as to what else I am grateful for:

• The Republican presidential debates. These have provided considerable entertainment and an excuse, besides football, to keep up my cable subscription. I was an eyewitness to Rick Perry’s forgetting that third federal agency he wants to eliminate. It is the first time I have felt sorry for the man. I watched yet another debate two nights before Thanksgiving. Bless their hearts. That’s all I have to say.

• There won’t be any Democratic primary debates. Whew.

• Rain. We haven’t had nearly enough, but at least the skies have opened a bit.

• I have gotten old and hardened enough to not mourn more than five minutes if UT loses a football game. I have bigger fish to fry.

• The ubiquitous presence of excellent breakfast tacos in Austin and in my alternate domicile, East Texas. I will not prejudice you by naming favorites, because new ones pop up constantly in both locales. The rise of breakfast tacos in popularity provides me hope that Western Civilization indeed will survive. But that’s just me.

• Affordable GPS devices. Man, talk about saving this middle-aged
soul some angst. I’m thinking this is the wisest $100 I ever spent.

• That I watched in person as the Boston Red Sox won Game One of the 2007 World Series. The ticket was expensive, but the way last season ended, I might be pushing 80 before they’re back in it. Besides, now it’s off the bucket list.

• Wolf Brand turkey chili.

• Satellite radio, even though I only listen to about three of the
gazillion choices.

• The Geico commercials. They make me laugh.

• None of my children turned out to be Aggies. At least not yet. (Kidding. I couldn’t care less.)

• Summer has finally left Texas.

• Owning more books than I could ever hope to read before dying.

• People with a sense of humor, like the anonymous soul who added an extra letter with duct tape to a sign I saw: It then read: Futility
Work Ahead. We can all relate.

• I can still do math in my head.

• Fried okra from Chicken Express. It’s the best in the nation. We
get the okra and skip the chicken.

• Clint Eastwood.

• Dolly Parton.

• Gimme caps that effectively hide my receding hairline and bald spot.

• Not having to wear a necktie every day.

• Never having had the urge to wear a bowtie. I’m not dexterous enough to tie one properly.

• Plumbers. I’m dangerous with a pipe wrench.

• Automatic transmissions. I am over my love affair with stick shifts.

• Comfortable shoes.

Finally, and seriously, I’m thankful for those who take the time to read these modest offerings and send comments, critiques and kudos. Thank you, and God bless.

Old Darkroom Sparks Memories

2011-11-18T06:51:00.000-08:00

I visited an old photo darkroom recently. It hasn’t been used in at least a decade, maybe longer. Digital cameras began replacing film in the early 1990s, as newspapers and other print media figured out it was a way to both save money and speed up the process of producing a photograph. At the small daily newspaper where I worked in East Texas, we plunked down $20,000 in 1992 or ’93 for our first Nikon digital camera. A similar model today might cost $500 at most. An entire generation of photographers has arrived, never knowing the thrill of watching a print come to life in a tray of smelly chemicals, the image illuminated only by the faint yellow glow of a safelight.

All the tools necessary to develop rolls of film and make prints were still in that old darkroom, stacked in piles and on cabinets. Stained plastic trays gathered dust on a shelf. An enlarger was perched on a shelf in the corner, 8x10 print boxes stacked on its base. Film reels lay abandoned on the floor, along with yet another enlarger for making color prints. The desiccated crust of photographic chemicals clung to the vats in which chemicals were once mixed: Fixer, D-76 for developing film, Dektol for prints.

The place still possessed that darkroom smell, which I was first introduced to more than 40 years ago in the basement of the Longview newspaper. There I developed sheets of 4x5 film and rolls of 120 negatives shot by other photographers, and learned how to make prints. For the next 20-plus years, I held jobs that required at least a part of my workweek was spent in a darkroom, until digital arrived. Sometimes I miss having a darkroom in which to retreat, music playing in the background as I methodically cranked out prints for the next issue of whatever newspaper I toiled for. It was a form of therapy, an escape from the world. But I can’t say I miss have fingers stained a subtle tinge of yellow from the chemicals, or the inevitable bleached spots on my clothes from sloshing prints from tray to tray, even though I always wore an apron. I finally sold my personal darkroom equipment in the mid-1990s, when it became obvious digital was here to stay, and film was largely confined to art photographers.

As mentioned, I recently moved once again, buying a house in a quiet subdivision in North Austin. I methodically unpacked a couple of boxes stuffed with three-ring binders of photo negatives, boxes of prints, even a half-dozen carousels of slides. If you remember slide carousels, then like me you’re eligible to join AARP, not that I recommend it. Nobody gets out alive when they join AARP. Just saying.

As I dutifully stacked a yard-long collection of three-ring binders on my closet shelf, accompanied by a couple dozen old print boxes filled with photos, I thought of my children. If I can’t figure out what to do with all this stuff, they will have to deal with it at some point.

I’m loath to chunk those negatives, contact sheets and boxes of prints. They represent the modest contribution I have made to capture a slice of East Texas in those pre-digital decades. So, I will likely keep carrying around these shelves of old negatives and prints until I can talk some archival collection repository into taking them.

At long last, the old darkroom is slated to be cleared out in the next few months. The negatives and photographs will end up in the university’s collections, the enlargers and other darkroom equipment hauled to surplus. A couple coats of fresh paint should eliminate that darkroom smell. I will continue to spend nights at home making prints the modern way, on a big-screen Macintosh attached to a photo printer. I manipulate the images in Photoshop with lights out, to better see the true tones on the screen.

So in a sense I’m still hanging out in a darkroom, just without the smell.

The War, Tragically, Comes Home

2011-11-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

I met Cody Norris a couple of times at holiday gatherings of my wife’s extended family, most of whom live in Northeast Texas. He was tall and thin, clearly in shape. Cody was my sister-in-law and brother-in-law’s nephew. He grew up in the Houston area and clearly loved the chance to spend time in the country. For simplicity’s sake he was considered one of the cousins. Cody usually showed up with his dad, Reese, at the East Texas farm that serves as our outdoor gathering spot when the weather is tolerable. These throw-downs invariably involve a fish fry, a bonfire if there is even a hint of chill in the air, an impressive display of weaponry to fire at targets and soda cans, four-wheelers — and, for some, deer hunting when in season and wild hog hunting any time someone spots one of those pests.

Cody was a polite young man who enjoyed hunting there with his dad and brother, firing off weapons, and hanging out with his extended family. His older brother, Michael, is enrolled at West Point. Cody chose to join the Army in October 2010 and became a 240B Gunner stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas and deployed to Afghanistan, according to his Facebook page. That page consists of a number of cell-phone portraits of Cody in his battle fatigues, with an Army-prescribed shaved head, even a few close-ups of a mashed fingernail, the result of getting it caught between a tripod and a rocky surface. The comments about that photo are clearly from peers, asking when he’s going to be deployed to Afghanistan, and for how long. He says it will probably be for a year, according to his paperwork.

He left for Afghanistan in April, about six months shy of his 20th birthday. On Nov. 9 he was killed while on patrol. As of this writing, that’s about all I know. Except that another family is heartbroken. This time it is a family that I have joined, and it is people that I love who are grieving. A grandmother, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, are all mourning the loss of one who died too young. Cody was killed not quite a month after turning 20 years old, serving in a war that has lasted more than half his life.

I am writing this on Veterans Day, early in the morning because I can’t sleep, haunted by how Cody’s death forever will change the lives of these folks to whom I’m now connected. They will survive this loss because we don’t really have much choice when tragedy shows up uninvited. We deal with it best we can. And they surely will take solace that Cody died in the service of his country. I think the term “hero” is used a bit loosely these days, but surely it applies to those who volunteer to serve our country in combat and die doing so. No matter the political arguments flying back and forth on whether we should continue to fight that war or not. The soldiers do what soldiers do — obey orders and fight for our country.

NPR ran a week-long series of stories in October about the terrible losses taken by one platoon, and the effect it had on the families of those killed or wounded. A young wife who gave birth to the couple’s child a few weeks after her husband died in Afghanistan. A soldier who came home maimed and unable to find work. It was nearly impossible to drive down the road, heading home from work, and listen to these stories, eyes welling with tears.

Now the war has come home hard to people that I love dearly. I have no words other than the usual condolences they have already heard far too often in these early days. We all tend to say the same thing, because we don’t know what else to say. I just hope it provides some comfort. All I know to say is that I am heartsick this has happened, but I am glad I was privileged to meet a fine young man who volunteered to fight to protect this country.

Finally, I pray for peace, for our soldiers to come home out of harm’s way, the sooner the better.

On Firewood and Fried Catfish

2011-11-04T05:51:00.000-07:00

The first fire of the season was exceedingly modest, just one fat log buttressed by a couple of sticks of kindling in my BMC’s fireplace in East Texas, fired up with the natural-gas pipe starter in a quick attempt to warm up the living room before we headed to church. More than anything, it was our announcement that summer had at last been banished. Autumn was finally in the house, a tardy arrival but still welcomed. We have been pining for cool weather for many months. Who hasn’t of those who survived this Summer From Hades?

We spent most of Saturday trekking through Northeast Texas, pulling my brother-in-law’s trailer up to my father-in-law’s farm to load up a season’s worth of firewood. Here’s a pleasant surprise, given the terrible drought (which has eased a bit in East Texas but still has us Austin-dwellers by the throat). The fall foliage is certainly muted this year, beaten down by a lack of moisture and unrelenting heat, but patches popped up along the 90-minute drive to the farm near Texarkana. Mainly it’s the scrubby trees, bushes really, whose leaves have taken advantage of a smattering of moisture combined with cool weather to show off a bit, flash a panoply of plumage despite the depredations of summer.

I have inherited a gaggle of in-laws, whom I love dearly for many reasons. They are a hilarious bunch who love to cook, fire off massive amounts of ammo, play practical jokes on each other, root for the Longhorns and are always there when you need a hand. Plus, this family has stockpiled enough filleted catfish caught on a trotline on Wright Patman Lake, and chain-sawed up enough firewood from deadfall on their acreage to survive the Revolution. We might have a difference of opinion on exactly who’s going to be spearheading that Revolution, but I know I’m welcome at the fish fry — and there will be plenty of firewood to stoke the hearth.

It provides my battered soul some balm to take a drive through the country, meandering along winding ribbons of asphalt ringed by trees, only occasionally meeting an oncoming vehicle. Better yet is actually tromping through the woods, to the cache of firewood stored under a pole shed my wife helped build years ago, next to the long-abandoned forest-green Atlanta ISD school bus. There is a window unit air-conditioner stuck in the engine well of the bus, which once served as the family camping retreat. We quickly piled up a load of firewood on the trailer, being careful to balance it over the axle and not overload the SUV. I have no way to hook up brake lights on this borrowed trailer, since the connector is different. So, in time-honored East Texas tradition, I’m hauling this back to Longview — 90 minutes away — by the backroads, hoping a DPS trooper doesn’t notice, and trying to beat darkness at the same time.

Before we leave, I help my father-in-law take his flat-bottom boat to the lake. I back it into the water under his watchful and skeptical eye. Luckily, I have learned how to back a trailer even if I’m not worth a darn on checking trotlines. Once the outboard is in the water, he starts it to run the gas out. Fishing season is over until next spring. He appraises the fall harvest as modest, says he pulled in a couple of 40-pounders, no big deal. My father-in-law is 80 and tougher than shoe leather. I am a quarter-century younger and would rather not face a 40-pound catfish no doubt highly irritated at being hooked to a piece of rope and hauled overboard.

But I sure do love eating that fried catfish.

My father-in-law goes his way, and we go ours, taking a plastic sack filled with jalapeño, banana, Tabasco and cayenne peppers from his brother’s garden, on the farm across the road. At 85, Brad says he’s slowing down. Yeah, well, I should slow down as much. The man still works the land as if his livelihood depended on it, with an amazing organically grown garden that provides a bounty of produce. He and his brother are like the two old coots in “Secondhand Lions,” always grousing at each other but working together nonetheless, whether it’s plowing the garden in preparation for spring, or trying to figure out how to run off the feral hogs.

A day in the country, doing a bit of physical work while enjoying the smell of pine trees, red dirt and a fine fall breeze. That’s just what this reluctant big-city boy needed.

It Was A Moving Experience

2011-10-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

My move from the City Where All The Houses Look Somewhat Alike (aka the Town With No Downtown) into North Austin is finally complete, about seven weeks after it began. It truly is less trouble to move cross-country than cross-town. One must pack up everything and ensure that it all goes on the big truck when moving a significant distance. Cross-town moves involve, at least for me, a few dozen trips pulling my utility trailer, climaxed by hiring movers to haul the heavy stuff. I probably spent $100 on tolls hauling my stuff down Hwy. 183A.

I itemized the other day, during a moment of idleness, each time I have moved since becoming an alleged adult. This latest trek was the 33rd time I have moved in 38 years. Now that’s just ridiculous. The excellent news is that we now co-own (with the mortgage company) a lovely house with huge oak trees. The lot backs up to a greenbelt. Well, it is a brownbelt actually, given the drought. Maybe someday it will be green again. Still, it’s pretty sweet for city living.

Other than having my trailer twice come off the hitch and nearly make this move truly my final trek, things went fairly swimmingly. After nearly three dozen moves, I have the routine down — unlike moves in my misspent youth. I once tried to move a revolving bookrack with the books still on the shelves, figuring if I went really slow everything would be fine. I still have some of those paperbacks with road rash speckling the covers. In addition, after a certain age, one realizes that your friends really don’t want to help you move in exchange for beer, though I did lean on one buddy to make a few trips.

The movers I hired showed up on time, both slugging down fat cans of energy drinks. They were about half my age, twice as tall (OK, not twice but considerably) and three times stronger than I was at that age — and I thought I was in shape back then. I own a futon sofa for guests that had to be carried down an L-shaped stairway. The previous mover took it apart to get it upstairs, then put it back together. These guys lifted it up over the banister to clear the first hurdle, then one of them put the sofa frame — now in bed position — under his arm and carried it out to the truck. I tried to get my cell phone out to take a photo and send to my Beautiful Mystery Companion, but he was too fast.

These guys ran back and forth from the truck to the house. They had my possessions loaded in just a couple of hours. I left a minute or so before they did, pulling my haunted trailer filled with boxes. About halfway down 183 toward the new house, the movers blew by me, most of my worldly possessions packed in their gooseneck trailer. That is a strange feeling, watching your stuff fly by in a truck driven by a guy with way too much caffeine in his bloodstream. But they arrived safely at the new house and in 30 minutes had the trailer unloaded. The rest was up to me, with help on a couple of weekends from my BMC, who remains in East Texas.

It took a bit longer than usual for me to unpack everything, hang dozens of photos and artwork, and sell the used boxes. Perhaps it is a sign of optimism that I sold the boxes, which have been used for three moves in the past 18 months. But my moving days are hardly over. Over Christmas break I hope to retrieve my shop equipment from my son-in-law and commence to making sawdust once again. And someday, my BMC, daughter Abbie, and Rosie the Wonder Dog all hope to live under one roof. Whether it is the roof under which I now live during the workweek, well… I have learned to take life one day at a time these days.

Birthday Wishes to The Abster

2011-10-21T05:51:00.000-07:00

In just a few days my youngest daughter turns 14, going on 20. Anybody who has raised a teenager knows what I mean. One moment they’re still kids, giggling while rolling on the floor with the puppy, complaining because we’re making them take a bath. Moments later, they’re trying on massive amounts of makeup and spending hours primping in front of the mirror, wearing out the hair straightener while adding a sawbuck to the electric bill.

Teens’ heads can spin on a dime, ala Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.” Suddenly your IQ has dropped below freezing, in their estimation, because you won’t let them do what the mysterious “Mr. or Ms. Everybody” are doing. As in, “But Mom, everybody is going to the midnight showing of “Zombies Eat Their Young.”” If I ever meet this Everybody Duo, I’m going to chastise them for making the responsible parent’s life such a challenge.

This isn’t my first foray into raising teens, so not much surprises me in my dotage. The Abster, as we call her, became my daughter when her mom — the Beautiful Mystery Companion — and I married last June. It was a package deal and quite the bargain for yours truly — a woman I adore, another daughter to love, and Rosie, the World’s Cutest Dog. Seriously. We could rent Rosie out to single adults looking for a mate. Take her down the jogging trail, and folks just swoon over that pooch.

Abbie is smart, gorgeous, has a huge heart and will likely serve on the U.S. Supreme Court after a distinguished legal career — unless she decides to become president instead. The girl can argue with a rock— the material that at times she believes comprises the space between her parents’ ears. I look forward to hearing her first trial summation, if she chooses that path. The other side doesn’t stand a chance; her parents rarely do.

She remains our compass — literally. It remains a tossup which of us alleged adults is worse at finding our way around. We rely heavily on our two GPS devices — both named Gretel because she leaves electronic crumbs for us to find our way back. The GPS isn’t much help when walking unfamiliar streets on vacation, trying to remember where we parked. Abster has rescued us from meandering any number of times, shaking her head in bemusement at her directionally challenged parents.

In the nearly four years we have been hanging out, Ab is the go-to girl when it comes to all electronic gadgets. Her mom and I will be poring over the owner’s manual trying to decipher instructions written by someone for who English is not a native language, while Abster just grabs the device and starts figuring out how it works. It doesn’t matter what it is: iPhone, digital camera, new television, the aforementioned GPS. She will have it up and running before we have managed to find the index in the owner’s manual.

It will not come as a shock to parents or grandparents of teens reading this to learn that our daughter would prefer to spend every waking moment on Facebook, while clutching her phone in anticipation of the next text message, the iPod’s earbuds implanted in her skull. It is a grave injustice, in her view, that we don’t let her do that, that there are limits to electronic use. Tough turkey. This ain’t my first rodeo listening to teenagers complain about how mean I am as a dad. She will thank me someday when she approaches middle age and hopefully can still hear and see without glasses or hearing aids. Of course, I will be decrepit or dust by the time Ab is middle-aged. Best not dwell on that.

We have had some grand times together, the three of us, with lots of laughter as well as holding on to each other during times of loss and sorrow. I feel blessed and privileged to be Abbie’s dad and to do whatever I can to help her grow into the fine young woman she is certain to become. It’s been a wonderful journey thus far, and God willing it will continue for many years.

Happy Birthday, Abster. And turn down that iPod.

Monk Left A Lasting Legacy

2011-10-14T05:14:00.000-07:00

Monk Willis would have turned 95 a few days ago. He passed away in January. His many friends — and I was privileged to be one — know that Monk is still with us, just in a different way. For those of us who loved him, Monk is ever-present, his wisdom still whispering through our thoughts, his wit and humor bringing smiles to our faces, that silly giggle he had cracking us up.

We met in July 2008, about six months after I returned to run the Longview paper. Retired surgeon John Coppedge set up a lunch. I knew John from his bringing around Republican judicial candidates to the various East Texas newspapers I ran during the last couple decades. He called one day and requested I meet him at the Summit, a private dining club downtown.

Coppedge said, “There’s someone you need to get to know. He’s 92 (as Monk was at the time). He is one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, plus he’s a damn liberal like you.” We three met, Monk and I hit it off, and in the next two-and-a-half years, Monk became like a second father to me, especially after my own dad died a few months later.

I talked to one of Monk’s daughters the other day. She remarked how hard it was to go back in the house on Noel Drive and see that all the books are gone. Monk and books were so intertwined. I recall going over to his house a few weeks after that first lunch. The dining room table groaned from the weight of books clearly just purchased. Stacks of them circled both the chair in the front parlor and his recliner in the back study. You had to pick your way carefully through those rooms, narrow paths left open through piles of books. I had never seen anything quite like it. I began wondering that I would spend my dotage hemmed in by books. There are worse fates, I concluded.

That day, I asked Monk where he bought his books. He snorted and lit another cigarette. “Well, Amazon, of course. Where the hell else would I get them?”

Soon I was enlisted in helping Monk navigate that confusing online world to order more books, or print out articles that he wished to share from newspaper websites.

Monk clearly had a testy relationship with the computer that his daughters bought him. He cussed it regularly, pecked on its keyboard one finger at a time with a belligerence that just dared that machine to malfunction, clicked the mouse as if he was snapping a trap on a real rodent’s neck. He would yell at me regularly as I tried to figure out what electronic rabbit hole he had sent his website bookmarks down — as always cracking me up.

The computer for Monk was just a means to an end, a way to get more books to read, articles to peruse and disseminate. He truly was a man of letters, who could recall stanzas of poems he had memorized when Hoover was president. He once borrowed from me two volumes of Will and Ariel Durant’s “Lives of Western Civilization,” when he realized I owned a set bought at rummage sales over the years. He had been, as he put it, “thinking about the Greeks.”

We talked after he had finished reading about the Greeks, about memory and history. Monk was skeptical about accounts of events that had occurred three thousand years ago, of the level of minutiae that Herodotus and others provided. How could they possibly have remembered what happened in such detail, he asked me. Hell, you and I can’t remember where we ate lunch last week, he pointed out. I wanted to reply — but didn’t — that I could remember because we either ate at Sally’s (Man, I miss that place) or Jack’s Health Food Store, with an occasional venture to Rodriguez or Hu Pei 2. He loved Jack’s because women were constantly coming up and hugging him. One day, I was giving him the raised-eyebrow look after the fourth well-kept woman squeezed him.  

“One of the few fringe benefits of being older than Methuselah,” he said, cracking that grin.

Monk to his death remained a sharer of ideas, of books and policies, politics and even sports. But he was more than that. He was a doer and a fixer, someone who was more interested in making life better for the least among us than personally enriching himself or his family. He loved politics not just because of the action, though he clearly loved that, but for what could be accomplished to make this part of our world a better place to live. I remember picking up a 4x6 snapshot of the library at North Texas on one of my first visits, which he kept on a table by the front door. In the photo, students are walking by a nondescript building with a sign out front, and you had to hold it close to read what the sign says.

I looked at Monk and asked, “They named the library for you?” Usually you have to be dead or filthy rich for that to happen with a university building these days.

“Yeah,” Monk said. “And I never gave them a damn dime, either.”

He gave far more to North Texas, of course. Eighteen years as a regent, a dozen as its chair. Monk gave of his talents, his energy, his passion and his money, until the very end.

He left his friends and family some very precious gifts. Mainly was the gift of serving others selflessly, of loving largely and with great tolerance, and of being humble. My days with Monk on this earth were not that numerous, compared to many. But the lessons I learned, the wisdom he imparted that resonates still today of an examined life, the friendship we shared, all that will remain as long as I’m around.

Looking back — which always is easier than looking forward — there seem to be three reasons God brought me back to Longview for a brief and tumultuous time. First was to be able to bring my parents home to live out their final days, to care for them until they too passed away. Second was to meet the love of my life — my wife, Julie, and our daughter, Abbie. Finally, it was to be able to share the joy of being able to call Monk Willis a friend and a mentor.

Losing My Car A Common Calamity

2011-10-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

I lost my car in the UT parking garage the other day. It was bound to happen. The fact that it took nearly four months for this unhappy event to occur counts as a minor victory. Perhaps I am making progress in the Not Losing One’s Car In A Parking Area department.

Still, it was annoying. I left at lunch to run errands, which meant I sacrificed my choice spot on the second level, always on the left side on the first ramp. (Parking in this garage is first-come, first serve.) I get to work early and park in the same area every morning, which is why I haven’t lost my car to this point. Upon returning, lost in reverie and in a hurry to get back for an appointment, I zig-zagged up the ramps until I finally found a spot in the nosebleed section of the garage. When work ended, I trudged back to the garage and realized I had no idea where I had parked, except that it wasn’t on the second level. Third maybe? Fifth? Seventh?

I climbed to the fourth level and hit the alarm button on the key fob, a trick that a fellow auto-amnesiac taught me. Sure enough, my car started honking, but I couldn’t tell if the sound was coming from above or below. I went up a level and tried again. Nothing. I went down a level and hit the red button once more. No response. I returned to the third level and walked the entire area, looking in vain for the oval “HR” sticker I put on the back window to help me find my car. That stands for Hurricane Ridge, in the Olympic National Forest of Washington state — one of the prettiest places on the planet. I suspect most people who see it think I work in human resources.

Fifteen minutes later I found my car on the fourth level. I have no idea why the car alarm would not go off when I was actually on that level, but it did when I was below. I was just glad it only took 15 minutes. My personal record is two hours, when I parked on a side street and walked to the football stadium to meet my daughters. After the game, in darkness I searched for my car down one street after another. I was about to take a cab back to the hotel and wait for sunrise to begin the search anew, when magically my vehicle appeared on a street I was fairly certain I had searched a half-dozen times already.

My inability to remember where I park appears to be both inherent and inherited. My dad was a dreamy, absent-minded guy who would often forget why my mom had sent him to the store. Bread? Milk? Cigarettes? What? Back then, in the Paleolitic era of my youth — before cell phones, GPS or car alarms were common — there weren’t any Big Box stores either, so he could usually find the car in a small lot. I have learned to park in the same general area in the sea of asphalt that fronts most stores I frequent, whether it’s the grocery store or a home-improvement establishment. Facing the store, I always park to the far right, as close to a shopping cart-return bin as possible.

A few Christmas seasons ago, I lost my car in the parking garage of the Austin Convention Center after going to the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. Again, I could make the car alarm go off, but it took 45 minutes to pinpoint the sound. Several years ago, I parked at the Houston airport in an outdoor lot because it was cheaper. Aware of my handicap, I wrote down the location. Upon returning, my car was not where I had so diligently recorded the location. Finally, in utter bewilderment, I asked the attendant at the pay window for help. She laughed and said several rows of cars had been moved while I was gone so the parking lot could be repaved. She pointed, and far in the distance I spotted my car. This did nothing to bolster my confidence. Even writing down the location didn’t help.

My wife and about-to-turn 14-year-old daughter are well aware of my malady and carefully note where we park when we go somewhere. When I’m parking solo, all bets are off here in the big city. I guess I’m just a country boy at heart.

There's A Hitch To It

2011-09-29T19:04:00.000-07:00

I have a checkered history with pulling trailers that continues unchecked. To wit: I recently hauled another load to the new house and decided to make a quick trip to the Big Box Home Improvement Stores nearby — one decked out in orange, the other in a red-and-blue motif. I figure you have shopped these establishments if you live in America. I prefer the mom-and-pops, with my current favorite being Breed & Co. near the UT campus, and Zenger Hardware, further north off Burnet. Both remind me of my all-time favorite hardware store, now greatly diminished, which was Cason Monk & Co. in downtown Nacogdoches.

In the day that was such a lovely store, with a distinctive smell emanating from the merchandise and hardwood floors, kept clean with Murphy Oil Soap. At least that is how those floors smelled to me. I search for places in Austin that remind me of Cason Monk. Someday after retirement I might end up working in a hometown hardware store, if there are any left. That’s how I think these days, post-crash, as do many folks of my age. We scheme about what our post-career job is going to be, not what we will do with all that leisure time in retirement. Fine with me. I have learned through a few brief periods of joblessness that idleness is definitely not my strong suit. I need to work to stay healthy and just this side of wacko.

That’s all I’m asking. Just keep me on the skinny side of sane.

Anyway, to get on task, I was aisle-shopping at a Big Box, making plans on what type of plastic storage unit to store lawn implements. I had taken a trailer-load to the new house and hauled it empty to the stores. As I cruised down Parmer Lane at about 50 mph with that unloaded trailer, I noticed it was bouncing more than usual. Loadless trailers bounce a bit, so it took a few hundred yards for me to realize my trailer was whip-sawing about. Somehow it had come off the trailer ball and was only connected by the safety chains. The tongue was bouncing off the road at 50 mph, likely kicking off sparks on the pavement. Other drivers gave me a wide berth as I pulled over on the shoulder. The trailer slid under my Ford Escape. Fortunately the hitch ball stopped it from plowing into the back of the vehicle. Even more fortunately, I wasn’t on MoPac going 70 mph when this occurred, which is where I had been an hour earlier.

Luckily the trailer was light enough to pull out from under the car and put it back on the ball. I drove slowly back to the new house and figured out that the latch that keeps the hitch locked on the ball had broken. I rigged it by wrapping a 6-foot bicycle cable around the hitch and ball and padlocking it, then slowly drove back to find someone who could fix the trailer. The fellow I found has tattoos on top of his tattoos, including his forehead, cheek and neck. I am hopeful he gets my trailer fixed before his parole is revoked.

It galls me a bit that I appear to finally have learned how to properly tie down loads — and the dang trailer breaks, potentially causing a pileup on Parmer Lane — a six-lane ribbon of traffic that evokes none of the pastoral feelings that the label “lane” implies. I once lost a load of one-by-six pine lumber — about 500 boards — on Highway 59 in Nacogdoches while helping my builder haul it to my shop on his 16-foot trailer. Hoo boy. I foresaw a criminal trial for negligence, as 18-wheelers bore down the hill. Providence played a role in that mishap not becoming a tragedy.

Some months later, I headed to the lumber yard one Saturday morning to buy a sheet of plywood, got home and realized with horror that the plywood was no longer in the trailer. Who knew a gust of wind could flip that sucker out of a trailer and me not notice? Thank goodness a motorcyclist wasn’t tailgating at the time. I found the plywood on the side of the Lufkin loop about a mile from where I bought it.

Now I carry two jugs of bungee cords in the back of the Escape. When loaded, the trailer looks as if it is ensnared in a giant spider web, with both jugs of bungees deployed.

My trailer is still being held hostage by the tattooed guy. Motorists in the Austin area are safe in the interim.

Unpacking A Passel Of Books

2011-09-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

So, it turns out I have two copies of “The Corrections,” by Jonathan Franzen, a popular contemporary novelist who I’m still trying to decide whether I like or not. I have no clue how I ended up with two copies but learned long ago not to spend too much time trying to cipher such matters. I simply put the pair together on the shelf with his latest novel, “Freedom,” the other day while unpacking books. Again.

This is the fourth time in less than four years I have gone through the arduous process of book unpacking. Job moves have sent me hurtling around Texas and the Midwest, a middle-aged pinball zinging about — grateful for a job in these wacko times but flung about by the flippers of fate. I’m so grateful and optimistic, actually, that my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I just bought a house in North Austin.
Hence, the Moving of the Books once again, from the place I leased last fall.

I am in the midst of one of those ugly cross-town moves that last for weeks and involve sloppy packing. The last three moves were company-paid and traversed considerable distance. This trek is self-financed, meaning I will move everything I can myself. My friends are grateful I have become, like them, too old to risk back injury moving the really heavy stuff, like appliances and couches. I’ll hire a crew for that. But the books are my bailiwick.

Unpacking boxes of books soothes me, somehow, though lugging them upstairs to the bedroom where roughly half will reside puts a strain on my legs. It invariably takes far longer than it should. I become distracted by this title or that, happen across old friends that I forgot about owning. This probably explains why I possess two copies of “The Corrections.”

I always come across books that I have not yet read — a result of years being mailed unsolicited review copies at newspapers where I worked, gifts from friends and family that haven’t made it into the “need to read soon” pile, books I bought but never got around to delving into. Having lots of books still unread bothered me when I was younger. Now I realize that I will croak without having gotten around to reading this or that book that has been on my shelves for decades. As the T-shirt on the rack down at Book People, my favorite bookstore on the planet, puts it, “So Many Books, So Little Time.”

A dear friend who died last January at age 94 was an inspiration to me, in more than one way. He loved books with a greater passion than anyone I have known. He bought them by the armload from Amazon, pecking out his order on a computer given to him by his daughters. His dining room table was covered with new purchases, stacked to near-toppling height. Shelves everywhere creaked under the weight of books, with other stacks on the floor creating a maze in his study.

Unlike me, however, my friend had an incredible memory for what he had read, able to quote entire passages from books read a half-century or more earlier. I have a terrible memory that is getting worse. For self-improvement, I have been reading a fascinating book about memory and people who are able to train themselves to remember long lists of items, random number sequences, etc. I was telling a friend about it at lunch the other day but couldn’t remember the title and had to Google it from my phone. There is something ironic about forgetting the title of a book about memory. It’s called, “Moonwalking With Einstein,” by Josh Foer, a hilarious young man I met at a recent literary conference. Good thing it is sitting in front of me in the study, or I would have forgotten the title again.

I am about halfway through unpacking books, which comprise most of what I own. My kitchen-related possessions take up about two boxes, the books about 50. As always, a few volumes have made it onto the designated shelf for books on my reading radar, as a result of unpacking. That has meant relegating a few back to the stacks, where they will likely sit unattended until the next move — which I hope isn’t for a long time.

The best thing about unpacking books is it recalls the memory of a similar column I wrote nearly four years ago. A few days after it was published, a woman emailed me, asking if I would like to go to coffee, that she enjoyed my writing. Perhaps we would become friends, she wrote.

She is now my wife, the Beautiful Mystery Companion. She has a lot of books, too. I will be happy to haul them here from East Texas when the time comes.

Just A' Pickin' & Grinning

2011-09-16T05:53:00.000-07:00

Mississippi Delta was shining like a National Guitar.
— Paul Simon

My Beautiful Mystery Companion kindly gave me a resonator guitar for my birthday, the result of an offhand response to the annual question: “What do you want for your birthday?” It is a modestly priced knockoff of the classic Sunburst National Guitar, with the silver cone in the middle of the body. My Rogue sounds and looks great. Now I just have to learn how to play it.

I am not a total newbie, having hacked around in high school. I even played and sang briefly at the Shakey’s Pizza Parlor where I worked in high school — as the words to songs flashed on the screen, me wearing a red-and-white striped shirt and a straw boater. There are clearly other reasons that is now difficult to find a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor, but I suspect my utter lack of talent and musicianship drove away more than a few customers munching on anchovie and mushroom pizzas as I flailed away. That was nearly four decades ago. I gave up trying to play after college.

Every time I have watched or heard someone smoothly sliding a bottle neck down a slide guitar, or banging out a 12-bar blues progression, it made want to try again. I have no illusions, at 56-years-old, of rising to anything approaching mediocrity. I just want to amuse myself and stretch my creative boundaries a bit. In that vein, I have signed up for eight half-hour lessons at a local, venerable guitar school in North Austin. I paid for the lessons in advance to force me to follow through for at least that long.

My instructor, who I will call Ted because that is his name, is roughly my age. He looked vaguely concerned when I told him I remembered no more than five chords. And that I am preternaturally stiff-jointed, utterly without rhythm, have no instinct for picking out tunes, and might possibly be tone-deaf. Plus my fingers hurt from practicing a few minutes a day since receiving the Rogue. A lot.

Ted patiently taught me how to properly place my fingers on the fret so the tips hit instead of the sides of the digits. He noted that I was clenching the neck with enough strength to choke a squirrel and pointed out it is actually easier to pay with a lighter touch. Once, when enthusiastically strumming the E7 chord, he stopped me with a pained expression and asked, “Can’t you tell that one of your fingers is on the wrong string?”

No, actually I can’t. That’s why I’m taking lessons, I thought but didn’t say.

Meanwhile, through the wall I could hear the sound of someone running through a nice blues riff flawlessly. Probably some 12-year-old kid who has been playing since he was not long out of pull-ups, I figure. The waiting area consisted of teens, tykes, one young woman twirling a pair of drumsticks, and some old guy wearing flip-flops and a UT cap. That would be me.

I try to practice at least 15 minutes a day, first going through the finger loosening exercises Ted suggested, than monotonously strumming a sequence of three chords over 36 bars. At least I think that is what I’m doing, judging from the handouts received.

The printer was on the blink, so I just took home two sheets, which is plenty at this point. Ted assures me it will get easier as times passes, and that learning this blues progression allows me to play most any blues tune — just as the major chords of C,D, and G will get one through a bunch of country classics.

I bought a brass slide at the music store for $8 or so. I enjoy sliding it up and down the neck, making goofy sounds — but I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. First time I put it on my ring finger, I didn’t think I was going to be able to get it off. I didn’t tell that to Ted. He might fire me as his student, and there are seven lessons to go.

So Much, Yet So Little, Has Changed

2011-09-09T09:25:00.001-07:00

Most Americans who are now adults remember where they were on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I was sitting in front of a computer laying out the editorial page for the Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center — broadcast by CNN on a television hanging from the newsroom wall. Like most, what was taking place didn’t sink in for a minute or two. Only when the second plane hit did it become apparent our country was under attack by terrorists. I spent the rest of the day marshaling the newsrooms of the Lufkin and Nacogdoches newspapers to produce a four-page extra edition by that evening.

People actually lined up to buy the extra, though frankly it contained nothing they couldn’t glean from television or the Web, save a few local reaction-type stories that added little to their knowledge. I think folks just wanted something to hold in their hands to remind them. It was the last “extra” I will help produce. The media climate changed radically not long after. Just 18 months later, the Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over East Texas. As pieces rained down upon the Piney Woods, we opted to devote our efforts to getting the news online first rather than producing another extra. Today, I’m not sure many folks under 30 even know what an extra edition means.

So much has changed in those 10 years, and yet so little. Facebook and Twitter, smart phones, hybrid vehicles have all entered the marketplace — to name a few ways how we communicate and get around have evolved. Those items are important, but that’s with a little “i.” The biggest change seems to be diminished expectations. The housing crash, the recession, more than a tenth of Americans unable to find work — all have combined to create an America that is either unable or unwilling to get back on track. We have gotten used to taking our shoes and belts off at airports and being groped. Has that made us safer? I don’t know. I have my doubts.

It is simply impossible to fathom the grief the families of those who died in the attacks must still bear. No memorial, remembrance or service can do much to assuage that. I suspect grieving survivors take solace in being with their families or with the kin of others who died in the attacks or in the rescue attempts. Time dulls the pain, but nothing can erase it. We all have suffered losses of loved ones. That provides a small window into what they must feel. I pray their pain lessens, and that on this 10-year anniversary we as a nation remember with respect those families who lost loved ones. I hope cable television doesn’t inundate the airwaves with footage of that horrific day. We know what happened, what it looked like.

I can’t help worrying that we have not adequately honored those who died by how we have behaved as a nation. Instead of being asked to sacrifice, we were told to go shopping, that it was time to return to our normal lives. We did so with abandon until everything came crashing down around our ears. People bought houses they couldn’t afford, aided and abetted by mortgage lenders who knew better. They racked up credit card debt betting on pay hikes, increased housing values — or, most likely, not really thinking it through. Too many folks wanted their piece of a perceived American Dream right now. We have fought in wars for nearly a decade now, but for the vast majority of Americans that is an abstract concept. Only those who have actually been deployed, or their family and friends, understand the sacrifices that have been made. The rest of us just go about our business. At least we did until the bottom fell out.

I am not much different, so this isn’t an exercise in finger-pointing. I thought the good times would just keep on rocking along, though a natural Yankee frugality saved me from serious financial hardship when I began a bumpy road from job-to-job, after more than two decades climbing up the media ladder. I am blessed with a great job once again. Many of my friends and colleagues in the media business are not.

It seems to me now that as a nation we blew it after 9/11. As Thomas Friedman points out, previous generations used such crises as World War II or the Cold War to require national sacrifices, to embark on bold initiatives that would keep our country strong and competitive — the space program and interstate highway system, to name two. The Baby Boomers and their younger ilk maxed out credit cards, bought McMansions with little money down, didn’t save squat and assumed the good times would never end. Well, they did.

Our leaders failed us in the past decade, both Democrat and Republican. But we also failed ourselves. I hope we get a mulligan, a chance to make it up, to take the hard steps to put this country back on a firm financial footing. It means, for one thing, remembering what is important: faith, family, friends. It also means realizing happiness doesn’t lie in more stuff bought on credit. It means learning to make do, living within our means, both individually and collectively.
It means making the sacrifices we should have started making a decade ago. At least that’s how I see it.

Peanuts Floating in Coke, and Other Culinary Foibles

2011-09-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

The cracker crumbs floating in a bottle of Diet Coke took me back 40 years, to after-school shifts in the dungeon darkroom of the Longview News-Journal, etching Fairchild engravings of photographs. That is how photos were produced on newsprint in 1971, at least in plants not up to the latest technology. The News-Journal still used Linotype operators to create metal slugs of copy, ink-spattered pressmen running massive machines, turning ink crews and adjusting water fountains by hand to produce the daily miracle, as we called it.

The Fairchild engraver copied the photograph onto a piece of plastic, both of which were wrapped on a cylinder that rotated slowly, translating the whites, blacks and grays of the photo to a muddy amalgam of halftone dots on the plastic. My job was to adjust the dots produced by the red-hot stylus by peering through a scope, to make reproduction as clear as possible given the medium. Once done, I dismounted the plastic engraving from the cylinder, trimmed the edges and scrubbed off the soot with Ajax. After that, I would get a chance to take a swig of the Dr Pepper bottle filled with a bag of salted peanuts, once enough soda had been swallowed to allow space.

So the other day I was bolting down some stale peanut butter crackers from the basement vending machine — my breakfast of champions. If vending-machine peanut butter crackers are carcinogenic, I best settle my affairs. A 16-ounce bottled Diet Coke accompanied the crackers, setting me back $2.75 in total. Sheesh. I hope this money goes toward a good cause here on the Forty Acres where I toil. Anyway, I looked up and saw cracker crumbs floating in the Diet Coke, which reminded me of intentionally sending a bag of salted peanuts swimming in soda every weekday afternoon after high school.

Several years ago — being memory-addled, that means it could have been 5 or 15 — I recreated the peanuts-and-soda concoction. In a nod to my advancing age and waistline I used a Diet Coke. Bleahh. I can’t believe I used to consider that gloop a key part of my daily nutritional requirements. This wasn’t the first time I have dived into a piece of pre-packaged food convinced I was about to enjoy a trip through my childhood of dining delights — only to conclude that my tastes during adolescence must have been guided by a spirit that has long since left the building. Some years back, I made my all-time favorite sandwich back in college —mayonnaise and banana on wheat bread.

Oh my goodness, I thought as I bit into my final M&B. This is nasty. I must truly have been on drugs to enjoy this repast. I now eat my bananas ala carte and view mayonnaise as something only used in conjunction with meat-filled sandwiches. There are several other foods that, upon reflection and re-tasting, are to be avoided. Moon pies, DQ banana splits, RC Cola, Sweet Tarts, Peppermint Patties, Swizzles, beef jerky — these are a few of the items gobbled greedily in youth that I have since tried and rejected in the supposedly sage perspective of adulthood.

A few comfort foods remain on the playlist: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups top the category, now relegated to a few times a year. (Older you get, the more one reserves empty calories for key occasions, like drinking several beers with buddies.) My wife’s pecan pie with chocolate chips renders me helpless and eager to propose once again. The bread pudding at the Fredonia in Nacogdoches had a similar effect.

I was headed back to Austin the other day from a long weekend in East Texas, having endured an extra couple of days spent being poked and prodded by medical folks, which is an unpleasant part of passing the double-nickel. By the time I hit Corsicana — which, with its recent sewer and waterline construction, has solidified its status as the most annoying small town to traverse in Texas — I was starving. OK, I decided, with boring self-rationalization. I have been a good toad nutritionally, and just received a glowing bill of health. I will indulge in a quick Arby’s roast beef sandwich and fries.

The fast-food world is engaged in a caloric arms race. The chains compete for offering the biggest, baddest, heart-slowing, artery-clogging sandwich possible. One chain offers a slab of fat where two pieces of meat sub for the bread. Several chains now insert fries and onion rings inside the bun as well as offering them as a side. I have often sneered and commiserated with my skinny and nutritionally adept wife about such foolishness.

I sidled up to the counter of Arby’s. A poster advertised a roast beef, mushroom and swiss cheese sandwich. Sounded good and not ultimately lethal. I ordered one with curly fries and unsweet iced tea. I figured I would skip supper in penance.

Turns out I should have examined the poster more closely. I bit into a sandwich into which curly fries had been stuffed between the bun. I managed to eat about half before giving up. I mean, seriously? A side of fries plus fries stuck between two buns and a half-inch of meat, cheese and mushrooms? I felt like jogging back to Austin to shed the calories. OK, not really.

This new trend of stuffing cheeseburgers with onion rings and fries between the buns must stop before people start exploding. At least that’s my take.

Abercrombie & Fitch, And Abs

2011-08-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

News item: Abercrombie & Fitch has offered to pay Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino of the “Jersey Shore” reality show to not wear its merchandise. Sorrentino is said to be highly insulted by the offer from the racy teen retailer.

I have never watched “Jersey Shore” on MTV. From what I have read, that is a wise decision for anyone hoping to not destroy any more brain cells than necessary. At my age, I figure I don’t have a lot of margin for error. Speaking of age, I have resigned myself to accepting the senior discount at movie theatres, though I’m drawing the line at joining AARP or getting the early-bird special at Luby’s. As of a few days ago, I am now closer to 60 than 50, though I have no plans to rush it.

Anyway, apparently Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino is fond of showing off his stomach muscles, which from the photo I saw in the Wall Street Journal are tight enough to bounce a nickel off. I believe the term is “six-pack abs.” Like most American men, though I am nowhere near obese, the only time “six pack” is said in direct association with my abs is when I bring home some brewskis from the grocery store. The work required to have abs like Mr. “The Situation” is far more than I’m willing to undertake. Even if I did, I am too modest to walk around in public with my shirt pulled up. For that, my unadoring public is grateful, I’m sure.

Apparently, A&F feels that Mr. “The Situation” is not a great role model for its brand. It issued a statement saying, “We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans," the statement read. In the interest of research I read a synopsis of Season 4, Episode 3 in an online post from the WSJ.

I quote: “Brittany comes out of Mike’s room and wants to know what’s keeping him. So this leaves Snooki to panic to JWOWW about Jionni breaking up with her. JWOWW counsels Snooki, saying she won’t lose Jionni over this whole Mike thing. Snooki seems genuinely upset. So is Mike just claiming they got together because he got burned? Or did Snooki give in? We’ll never know!”

Hoo boy. Thank the Lord for C-Span.

My only encounter with A&F came last year, when our daughter attended a Justin Bieber concert in Houston, accompanied by my Beautiful Mystery Companion while I watched a football game in the hotel room 20 stories above. The next day we went to the Galleria. They wandered off while I sat on a bench and read a book, there being pretty much nothing in the Galleria that I’m interested in spending too much money to purchase. (Actually, my wife feels the same way. We were indulging the new teen for her birthday.)

I looked up from the book and saw this impossibly sculpted young man, maybe 18, shirtless and talking to some teen girls outside a mall store. “That boy needs to put his shirt on,” I thought and went back to reading. Later I noticed yet another shirtless male. This one might have owned an eight-pack of rippled muscles. His stomach looked like a series of West Texas mesas turned on its side.

The womenfolk returned to the bench. “Did you see those boys just walking around without shirts?” I asked. “What’s up with that?” They, of course, rolled their eyes and explained the boys were male models for A&F, one of its edgy marketing devices. “They just pay those kids to stand around without shirts and look good?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes, and they sure look good!” both replied. I was rather shocked.

I don’t know how much A&F is offering to “The Situation” to not wear its line of clothes. This is likely just another edgy marketing ploy, since A&F carries a shirt called “The Fitchuation,” and another that just says, “GTL.” That stands for gym, tan and laundry, which apparently take up a lot of the “Jersey Shore” cast’s time.

Regardless, here’s my offer. I’m willing to not wear A&F’s line of clothing for, let’s say, $9. That’s enough to buy me a six pack of a decent micro-brewed beer, including sales tax. Further, I promise to never go shirtless in the mall. That alone ought to be worth the money.

For Forks, 'Twilight' A Temporary Boon

2011-08-18T17:55:00.000-07:00

FORKS AND LA PUSH, WASHINGTON — Lovers of the “Twilight” series of books and subsequent movies will recognize that dateline. Author Stephanie Meyers set her highly popular teen vampire/werewolf series in the town of Forks and along the Pacific Coast beach near La Push. We’re here on a side trip at Abbie’s request. Our 13-year-old daughter is a huge fan of the series. I can survive just fine without watching a vampire movie or reading a similarly themed novel, but that’s just me. We all have our passions.

We wind our way through the Olympic National Park, past the stunningly clear Crescent Lake, through the forest of massive Douglas firs for about two hours, from our cottage on Discovery Bay near Port Townsend. A handcrafted wooden sign welcomes us to Forks, the raised carving showing inside a circle a logging truck, tree, mountains, and a fish swimming in the nearby Pacific. No vampires on the sign though there is a symbol of one on the outhouse downtown.

Forks is a town of about 3,500 folks who mainly work in logging. It’s home to a large number of Native Americans and mobile homes, has an unemployment rate of about 12 percent and, to be frank, is one of the least picturesque places we visited in Washington. A sad little town, is what I kept thinking as we drove around snapping photos at Forks High School, where Bella met Edward, or the Cullen family home (which in real life is a charming bed-and-breakfast), and the modest but neatly kept home where Bella lives. Edward turns out to be a vampire with a James Dean hairdo, though one with benign intentions — for a bloodsucker. (My wife and I did see “Twilight,” the first movie, with Abbie.)

The “Twilight” boom seems to be piddling out in Forks, though plenty of Twilight merchandise is on sale, and signs abound. “Dazzled by Twilight” had several customers when we visited on a weekday morning, but not much merchandise was moving in the shopworn store. The guided tours have been discontinued. It looks as if the Twilight movies have done about all they will do for this rain-soaked town, which gets more than 70-plus inches annually. Please God, send some of that to Texas. Just saying.

Down the road to the southwest about 15 miles from Forks is La Push, home to the Quileute tribe and First Beach, where Bella meets up with Jacob Black, a childhood friend. From him she learns the history of the Cullen family. Long story short, Edward is a member of the “cold ones,” aka a vampire. In a following book, Jacob finds out he is actually a werewolf. Man, I hate when that happens. Talk about bad-hair days.

First Beach is located down the road from Second Beach, both hanging off the Pacific edge of Washington. The sand is gray and gritty, the beach ringed with trees and branches too large to be classified as mere driftwood. The forest comes right up to the edge of the beach, where the dead trees have piled up. Large rock islands jut out of the ocean a few hundred yards offshore. On this day, the sky is cloudless, the weather a San Diego-like 70 degrees. But it is easy to imagine this beach as an autumn storm sweeps in, wind howling, werewolves and vampires doing battle — the modern movie version, with impossibly great looks but in need of orthodontic care. It is just as easy to imagine Edward and Bella living in Forks under leaden skies and a forest canopy, not much to do except take an occasional bite out of a luscious neck.

One sticking point: the films — three so far — were not filmed in Forks, or First Beach for that matter. According to the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), Oregon and British Columbia provided the bulk of the locations. That is not unusual. Think of all the Texas cowboy movies filmed in Arizona, for example. The difference, which I find fascinating, is that the good folks of Forks actually designated sites throughout the town as places where the characters lived, so that tourists could visit — and not one scene of the movie was filmed there.

It’s not a secret. Anyone with Internet access can quickly find that out. An enterprising chamber-of-commerce fellow enlisted fellow townspeople to scout locations where the movies could have been shot. Signs were posted. So we have joined thousands before us, wandering around Forks snapping photos of homes, the high school, hospital, police station, etc., places that weren’t actually used in the movie — but serve as stand-ins for those making the pilgrimage.

To her credit, Stephanie Meyers came to Forks a few years after her first novel and returned for a day in her honor last year. Daughter Abbie says the book accurately describes the town and area. You can’t blame the good folks of Forks for trying to cash in on their town’s unexpected fame in a vampire series. Right now, I might even welcome a vampire, as long as he brought some rain along.

Taking A Hike On Hurricane Ridge

2011-08-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

HURRICANE RIDGE, WASHINGTON — A cartoonishly cute furry animal the size of a morbidly obese housecat sits perched on a moss-splattered rock outcropping near the crest of Hurricane Hill in the Olympic mountains. Minutes before, we stopped on the trail to catch our breath — my bride and I both feeling the effects of thin air — and read a sign describing the cute critters. This particular species is called the Olympic marmot. It has kinfolk across the continent, including the woodchuck and even squirrels. The Olympic marmot, which is a darn fine name, is a protected species because numbers are dwindling — possibly because of an influx of coyotes.

Moments after reading the sign we spotted one in real life, as if he had been hired to hang out close to the display. He gamboled about in the prairie that improbably grows here just below the tree line. As we walked along the crest, Rocky (as I silently named him) sunned himself on the rock, nonchalantly staring at me. I walked close enough to capture a National Geographic-style photo with a telephoto lens.

About this time a very nervous deer skittered out from a grove of trees and also came close to us and the half-dozen other folks scattered on the ridge. She kept a wary eye on a small group of mountain goats grazing nearby — two pairs of adult couples, two kiddoes. The goats charmed us, until two guys from the area also up on the ridge warned us to watch out. A nearby resident and hiking aficionado was killed last fall by an aggressive mountain goat on an adjacent trail. He was gored to death. The goats are acting rather territorial, and the deer is spooked enough to get closer to us than one usually experiences. We keep our walking sticks at the ready. I am prepared to sacrifice my telephoto lens as a bludgeon if necessary. It wasn’t. The goats moved on, and the deer finally calmed down.

I have published news items at least three times in my newspaper career about folks getting trampled by deer they thought were tame. None were killed, but flying hooves in panic mode injured all. So I was watching that deer and counseling my Beautiful Mystery Companion to do the same. My words of warning rang hollow, however, when we hiked back down to the visitor’s center. A deer came out of the pasture and walked down the parking lot, ending up on the sidewalk as if it were a two-legged pedestrian. I shot a photo of this deer, maybe 30 feet away at the time, walking down the sidewalk as if it were headed to the snack bar for lunch.

The hike up to the top of Hurricane Hill and back is a bit over three miles, a distance at which initially we scoffed since we both walk that far daily here in Texas — albeit before sunrise during the dog days. But the elevation rise of 500-plus feet after starting at about a mile high sent our lungs into hyper-drive. This “hill” tops out at 5,767 feet, which in Texas would be defined as a nice-sized mountain.

Oh, the scenery. This is seriously one of the prettiest places on the planet, especially to lovers of trees, mountains, blue sky, rapidly changing cloud formations, wildlife, the smell of unsullied air. Back at the visitor’s center, we sat outside and ate homemade turkey sandwiches with chips on the side. That ranks as one of the best meals I’ve eaten in years, gazing out as my BMC sang out, the “purple mountain majesties, across the fruited plain.” She’s a nerd like me.

The lone deer skirted close, maybe looking for a handout. At the next table a ranger who specializes in educational talks, described how global warming is affecting the park: snow melt, animal behavior and their habitats. The young woman was earnest and articulate, and I hope at least a few of the dozen folks listening paid attention. She is preaching to the choir as far as we’re concerned. Anybody who doesn’t accept the fact that the earth is getting warmer is both anti-science and hasn’t stepped outside this summer.

Sorry, had to preach a bit. I have fallen in love with this place and don’t want to see it change. My affection likely will remain an occasional dalliance, but this piece of America has captured my heart. Besides, those marmots are adorable. I love those little guys.

Stepping On Snow In Late July

2011-08-03T10:08:00.000-07:00

DISCOVERY BAY, WASHINGTON — The tide rides in twice each day, slides out twice as well. On this day, first high tide was at 1:17 a.m., an event I missed. By then the sleepy waters of Discovery Bay covered the crunchy layer of shellfish and the cedar-shingle-covered sand. It lapped close to the wiry grass. By 8:56 a.m. the tide had receded out nearly to the white buoy placed to mark the lowest edge, a linear distance of about 45 feet and a height difference of more than nine feet. By 5:29 p.m. the tide was at its highest level of the day at 8.1 feet, and by 9:24 p.m. had receded again, but only to 6.5 feet.

Be patient. I’ll get over my nerdiness in a moment. It’s a deeply ingrained trait.

We have neither wireless internet nor cable television in our lovely cottage on the bay. My bride is fine with that, being naturally opposed to the wired world. Her new husband and our daughter — hers from the get-go, mine officially since mid-June — are having withdrawal symptoms. We keep scamming wifi off the landlord’s line by perching ourselves just outside his back door, or using my iPhone to acquire in painfully slow fashion a connection to the online world.

In defense, I get online to fulfill minor work obligations, reply to emails and knock out a couple editorials, as well as this piece. I can live without the news while vacationing in paradise. The 13-year-old, however, believes we have brought her to this place as a form of punishment: no malls, no wifi, no television. Access to Facebook is sparse. I hope her friends survive not learning her status for hours at a time. It’s iffy.

I head out for a walk along the beach. A family of sea otters lives behind a row of pilings placed to keep the hillside from eroding further. They venture out each day to gambol about in the bay. One fellow suns himself on a small floating dock; others appear briefly before diving back down for a breakfast treat. Herons line the shore like sentries, moving systematically as we approach on a morning walk, keeping their distance as ducks and seagulls fly overhead, squawking. To the south, the tallest mountains of the Olympic range still have snow above the treeline. We can see the peaks to the south across the bay depending on the cloud cover.

I never tire of watching the light change over Discovery Bay from early morning through the day, unto dusk. Fog floats across the water some mornings, returning as the sun sinks. My wife saw the eagle that lives here the other day. I’m still looking as I trudge down the beach, early morning or as dusk falls. Light reigns in these parts, at times sunglasses bright, and minutes later turning the world into a miasma of gray.

The other night we sat outside as darkness crept in, warming ourselves by a firepit. On July 28, we Texas refugees built a fire and reveled in the fact we could do so. A fire wasn’t exactly needed to stay warm. Just the fact we could build one without being arrested for violating a burn ban — or not being adjudged insane for wanting to do so — was simply lovely. Earlier that day we had hiked along Hurricane Ridge and walked across giant snowpiles that obscured the trail.

Snowpiles! Just three days before August begins! It simply doesn’t have to get any better than this.

Like all vacations, this one must end eventually. But for now, I’m sipping coffee on the deck while wearing a light jacket, keeping an eye out for the eagle. The clouds are rolling in over the mountains once again. It might rain. I hope so.

(Still more to come.)

Buskers And Beautiful Blooms in B.C.

2011-07-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA — The Inner Harbour downtown is lined with sailing ships, seaplanes, whale-seeking boats and the massive ferry that brought us here from Port Angeles, Wash. The walkway along the harbor’s edge is replete with vendors and street performers, commonly called buskers. Flowers abound, bursting out of hanging pots on the streetlamps, spelling out “Welcome to Victoria” in blooms on the bank opposite the province’s stately parliamentary building. The temperature is in the 60s on a late July afternoon. I am plotting, thus far unsuccessfully, how to stay here until first snowfall. Summer in Texas is about to kill all of us.

We are here on our family honeymoon, staying on Discovery Bay near Port Townsend, Washington — my bride, brand-new teen daughter and me. Rosie the Wonder Dog is visiting in Houston with my daughter. Early in the morning we drove to Port Angeles, parked for $6 and walked aboard the M.V. Coho for the 90-minute ride across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Victoria.

The Buchart Gardens are the primary destination in Victoria — 55 acres of breathtaking gardens created in a former limestone quarry more than a century ago by Jennie Buchart, the wife of the quarry owner. He dug. She planted. The result attracts nearly a million people annually to the garden, on the Saanich Penisula just north of Victoria. My bride, the Beautiful Mystery Companion, buys a packet of bachelor button seeds to plant in East Texas. She doubtless will wait until it is not so blamed hot.

Even the jaded teen-ager is impressed by the size and vigor of the blossoms, which thrive on cool weather and bright sun. Everything is not bigger and better in Texas. Flowers, for example.

Back at the harbor, buskers perform. There’s Dave Harris, a veteran musician and singer who sets up shop on the sidewalk with guitars, fiddles, harmonicas, a mandolin, and even a small drum set that he plays with his feet while picking on a stringed instrument and blowing on the mouth harp. Harris looks like a mountain man, with a flowing beard and matching hair vaguely tamed with a leather wide-brimmed hat. Harris has performed as a one-man band for 25 years and made a number of recordings.

Then there is Plasterman, a human statue whose clothes and visible skin are encased in white paint. He stands utterly still on a small crate with his stage title lettered upon it, on this day wearing a white visor and workingman’s clothes. Sometimes he wears a suit. Plasterman is the creation of Clark M. Clark, a former educator and “part-time thespian,” according to his website. He comes alive when money is dropped into the till, dispensing handshakes and hugs to the generous-minded. I must confess I don’t give money to Plasterman. Clowns and mimes make me uneasy. Plasterman is a mime, albeit one with a different schtick.

Speaking of different, we happen along Alex Elixir, a juggler and unicyclist with an edge that, on both occasions in which we watched, turns a bit sour. The first time, he abruptly ends his act after a couple tosses a couple of Canadian quarters in his box as they leave. He tells the nonplussed audience that he must save his voice and felt insulted. We all wander off in search of other entertainment. A few hours later Elixir sets up again with the same result. The finale is supposed to involve an actual axe with which he is going to sever the arm of a young boy.

This makes me even more nervous than the mime. I don’t think Elixir is terribly great at the power of illusion, though he is an adequate juggler and can crack wise with the best of them. The boy is willing to play along, so willing that I wonder if he is a shill for Elixir. The routine ends with Elixir glaring at the audience, dropping the axe and lying down on the asphalt. The boy follows suit. The crowd disperses after a couple minutes. End of show.

Maybe this is an example of that vaunted Canadian humor that brought us Lorne Michaels and Dudley Doright. All I know is I have no plans to get near a highly strung busker wielding an axe. We won’t be back.
|———|

The temperature is in the 50s in the mornings, rarely reaching 70 at night. It has rained a few times. For a time at least, we have escaped the baking of Texas.

More to come.

Goose Turns 30, and I'm Getting Old

2011-07-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

My daughter Meredith turns 30 in a few days. I have a hard time with that statement. Goose is 30? No way. Way. The child who arrived while I slogged through graduate school in journalism at The University of Texas at Austin is now five years older than I was when she was born.

Did you get all that? I have a nerdish way with numbers, dates, etc. Sorry. To simplify, I was not-quite-26 when she was born. Now she’s 30, a graduate of this same university along with her older sister. I work a couple hundred feet from where I was attending classes back then. If I could impart one piece of wisdom to you who are on the road, as the song goes, it is to never be surprised at how things turn out. Savor the trip, folks — good, bad or just plain ugly.

When Mere was born in Austin, we lived in one of the final houses on Guadalupe Street where it tails off north of town. That used to be the boonies, near the end of the bus line. Now, well, those who live here know. The boonies are miles away in all directions. They tore down the old Brackenridge Hospital where she was born, a squat, red-brick building just west of I-35 near downtown. I used to tease Mere that she was the building’s demise.

I rarely call her Goose anymore, she being 30 and all. I have a hard time explaining why I started calling her that in the first place. It just fit when she was a wide-eyed baby examining the world. Then my mother shot a photo of her being chased by an actual goose at Teague Park in Longview. My artist dad turned that into a colored-pencil sketch entitled “Wild Goose Chase,” which now hangs in my house. Thus are sobriquets born and legends made. Mere is still scared witless by geese. I’m not crazy about them either, at least the chasing kind.

That’s just one thing we have in common, along with a love for books and writing. We walk alike, as anyone watching us coming down a sidewalk can attest. I have had people say, “That must be your daughter” after watching us both walk, feet splayed to the outside, a slight bounce to the gait. Folks say we look alike as well, though she’s obviously much cuter than me. We’re both short with brown eyes. I once had brown hair; now it has turned gray or turned loose. Her hair was once purple. I think she has outgrown that phase, save for Halloween, one of her favorite events.

Mere is a naturally gifted writer who has a great day job at a museum but really lives to fill empty spaces with words. She had her first poem published at age 8, sent in by her big sister Kasey, who fibbed and told Teen magazine that the author was 13. The poem went:

Hand in hand across the beach
Looking for something out of reach.
The moonlight shines upon the sea
Looking for something called destiny.

These days she writes a blog about horror movies and another that covers all types of entertainment and is part of a popular Austin blog called Badass Digest, sponsored by Alamo Drafthouse. Her piece on that site is called Borders Line and covers all sorts of genre. Google it some time. Parental-advisory warning: Some times she uses words not often found in family newspapers, or in this blog. It’s a generational thing. But her style is breezy and crisp, her ability to rattle off plotlines and character names is phenomenal, and I’m thrilled she semi-stole her blog title from the old man.

One of the most enjoyable exercises of my adult life was when we watched an advance screening of “Charlie Wilson’s War” together a few years ago, and each wrote separate reviews for the Lufkin newspaper. Hers was better.

Like me, Mere makes no money filling her space. She does it because she has to write, or her world doesn’t feel right. I know the feeling. That is why I continue writing a column each week, 29 years after I first started. Several featured a wide-eyed toddler with a goofy nickname. I was then and am now a proud father of all my daughters.

But this one is for Mere. Happy 30th, Goose. Love, Dad.

A Blow Struck for Plain Writing

2011-07-14T12:26:00.001-07:00

I was scouring websites for editorial ideas the other night, for my stringer work opining for the small newspaper in Kansas where I worked last year. Writing three editorials weekly keeps my skills sharp and provides eating-out money. I’m pretty fast at writing editorials after 29 years of doing so.

The key is finding a topic on which I can provide an opinion. With subject in hand, I can pound out 350-400 words in a half-hour at the most, thanks to the boundless resources of the Internet. There is really nothing on which I can’t find background material, stories, quotations and whatever else I need to put together an editorial.

I’m thinking this whole Internet deal is here to stay…

I ended up on the website for the federal Office of Management and Budget, reading a report on how environmental regulations are a net benefit to the economy because they save lives and cut down on pollution-related illnesses. Another topic caught my attention as I waited for my printer to spit out the executive summary. (Try as I might, I am still a dead-tree person when it comes to reading anything of substance.) I hit the print key again and soon had in hand the “Final Guidance on Implementing the Plain Writing Act of 2010,” from the OMB.

With all that was going on last year — midterm elections, UT’s lousy football team, Texas Rangers in the World Series, the Deepwater Horizon disaster — somehow we all missed passage of this crucial piece of legislation. No matter, since it took six months after passage to get the document now before me, which is the federal government’s game plan for encouraging government officials to write in plain English. Unsurprisingly, it takes six pages of 12-point text set at 1.5 line spacing to outline the plan. However, I must add that the document is written, well, in plain language.

The deadline for each federal agency to pick a Senior Official for Plain Writing and create a section on the website devoted to that topic just passed. Each agency was required to publish a plan for swearing off bureaucratese and writing plainly. I am happy to report that your government dollars have indeed been hard at work. I spot-checked the websites for the justice, agriculture, commerce departments, plus threw in the EPA for good measure. All have dutifully created such sections on their websites, swearing fealty to plain writing.

This is welcomed news. Anyone who has attempted to read the federal tax code, for example (My advice: Don’t), knows that the feds need a healthy dose of plain writing habits. Unfortunately, Internal Revenue Service apparently didn’t get the memo, since I couldn’t find any mention on its website of a new commitment to plain writing. Since I would prefer not to be audited again, I will withhold judgment on exactly what that means.

On the same site on which I found the Plain Writing Act of 2010 was a 171-page document, which I did not print, entitled the “2011 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and Unfunded Mandates on State, Local and Tribal Entities.” This report obviously was written before implementation of the Plain Writing Act, so I have taken the liberty of reinterpreting a few passages.

The report states: “As discussed elsewhere in this Report (see Appendix A) as well as previous Reports, the aggregate estimates of benefits and costs derived from estimates by different agencies and over different time periods are subject to significant methodological inconsistencies and differing assumptions.”

In other words: Actual results may vary.

Also: “A possible approach to the potential difficulty of advance assessment of costs and benefits involves rigorous experimentation with respect to the likely effects of regulation; such experimentation, including randomized controlled trials, can complement and inform prospective analysis, and perhaps reduce the need for retrospective analysis.”

Translation: It is possible to predict benefits before a regulation goes into effect.

Finally: “In order to promote data-driven regulation, OMB continues to be interested in public suggestions on how to use retrospective analysis to improve regulations, perhaps by expanding them, perhaps by streamlining them, perhaps by reducing or repealing them, perhaps by redirecting them.”

Translation: We need to hear what the public thinks about our rules.

Once the Plain Writing Act transforms gobbledygook into plain English, let’s start working on all those acronyms. If I were in charge, I would allow CIA, FBI and IRS, but that is about it. The less alphabet soup the better.

Sex With Chickens, and the Leander Police

2011-07-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of the Sex With Chickens story while eating at Cowboy Chicken the other day. That’s a new franchise in Longview of which the Beautiful Mystery Companion — aka my bride — and I have become quite fond. Cowboy Chicken sounds like an unhealthy food choice, but actually the bird is roasted and the side dishes are fresh vegetables. What a concept: Fresh, healthy food in East Texas, no less.

Anyway, seeing all those naked chickens spinning their way on a spit through the ring of fire to land on plates of hungry people reminded me of a fight I had with the Leander Police Department early this year over releasing police reports, at my last newspaper gig. After several weeks toiling in suburbia, I finally noticed that we were not publishing police reports from Leander, but we regularly ran the Cedar Park department’s list of miscreants. I asked our able editor, who said the department wouldn’t turn them over, that he had banged his head against the wall trying to get them to see wisdom, to no avail.

To an ink-stained, Freedom of Information stalwart like yours truly, those were fighting words. This is public information, by gosh, and no small-town department is going to keep us from what anyone has the right to obtain — the so-called first page of incident reports. Besides, police reports make for some really excellent reading. People do the dumbest things to end up in the blotter.

Just the other day a woman was arrested in Cedar Park for stabbing her husband because he was snoring. I must say I am entirely opposed to such behavior, out of a sense of self-preservation. We don’t want this type of response to spread. At least I don’t, having pleaded guilty to sawing logs on more than one occasion.

Anyway, I started out slowly in my quest to force the Leander police department to obey the law — a novel concept, admittedly, them being peace officers and all. I had a pleasant conversation with the city manager — a really nice guy who sadly has since passed away. As always, he was affable but made it clear I would have to work it out with the chief.

“It’s that chicken story,” he said. This was not the first time I had heard that rationale for why the Leander police department didn’t want to release police reports. The newspaper, long before I arrived, had supposedly run a police item describing in graphic detail a complaint about a man having sex with chickens. The words used were considerably more graphic. It was told as gospel truth that the newspaper had actually dropped the F-bomb in describing what had occurred.

I found this a bit hard to believe. Community newspapers — even mediocre or badly run ones — shy away from using profanity in their pages. The F-bomb generally tops the list of Words You Won’t See in a Family Newspaper. Of course, what can get into a small newspaper by accident is Katy-bar-the-door. I once single-handedly saved the Lufkin Daily News from running a photo caption that said, during the first Gulf War, “A soldier returns to base after sitting in a bunker for 12 hours.” That’s what the writer intended. An extra “h” in “sitting” gave a whole new meaning to the caption. There is little doubt this typo would have ended up in print — and probably on “The Letterman Show” — if I hadn’t just been walking by. Pure serendipity.

I went sleuthing, with help from the newspaper’s staff, and we found the offending Sex With Chickens story, written in 2005. It reads, in whole:

“June 6
At approximately 6 p.m., a 50-year-old woman came to the police department and told an officer that she wished to file a complaint regarding a man in the 300 block of North Brushy who she saw having sex with chickens.

According to the complainant, who lives next to the subject, two men live in the home, an older man who owns chickens, and a younger man who is stealing them and having sex with them, causing them to die. The woman refused to give further information and is not willing to work with the police department. It is undetermined whether the information is accurate, as there is no evidence supporting this charge. The case has been forwarded to investigators.”

First off, there is no way any self-respecting newspaper humanoid is going to keep this out of the paper. This is pure gold, folks. Every one of you, I predict, went “Oh, my gosh” upon reading that squib. It is what we used to call a water-cooler story, folks standing around talking about the piece. Today’s edition might have broken a major scandal at City Hall, or published a prize-winning thumb-sucker about sewer collection issues. No matter. The story that folks would be talking about is some crazy dude having Sex With Chickens.

We filed a complaint with the attorney general over the Leander PD’s refusal to release reports. I wrote the usual impassioned editorial, pointing out that if crime reports are secret, then residents don’t know if they’re living next to someone just arrested for child molestation, or if there has been a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood. (“Rash” is one of those newspaper terms we pundits love. “Mull” is another one.)

Readers largely yawned, though a few attaboys came our way. The Leander PD, after a few more weeks of obfuscation, saw the light and began releasing reports. Another small victory for sunshine in government, I suppose. I am simply thankful we did our small part to make neighborhood chickens safe from sexual assault.

Joining the Seemingly Endless Commute

2011-06-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

I have recently become a big-city commuter. I live in the exurbs of Austin — in a land of cookie-cutter houses — and drive daily to the University of Texas campus to draw a paycheck working a dream job. I’m a lucky guy.

The prospect of this commute worried me. I am not good with traffic issues, generally. It makes me crazy when I am headed back to East Texas on I-35, and everything just stops for no apparent reason. The most frustrating aspect of those sudden stoppages is that one has no idea why it is taking place, or how long it will be before things loosen up. Sometimes it is caused solely because a DPS trooper has pulled someone over, so everybody is shifting to the left lane as law requires. Other times it is a grisly wreck, at which passersby feel compelled to gawk, slowing down in the process.

I had to give myself a Patience Pep Talk upon moving back to the Big City, which is a far cry from driving Behind the Pine Curtain. So far it has largely worked, though the new job and commute will be a test of my ability to keep my cool. I estimate that 90 percent of the profanity I use — and this is an area where the older I get the choosier I am about letting loose a blue streak — is while driving alone in traffic. Doltish drivers just set me off, though not in a road rage, gonna-get-in-a-fistfight way. I’m too old and small for that type of foolishness.

Thus I confine my imprecations to the car’s interior. Hand gestures are kept below the dashboard. But I must say, there are some goofy drivers on the road, texting and applying mascara at the same time, or popping open a tall boy while smoking a cigarette. At least I think it was a cigarette. I didn’t want to get too close.

Traffic patterns baffle me. I have learned that if I am pulling out of my driveway at 6:50 a.m., then I’m in the office by 7:30. If I leave at 7:00 instead, it could be close to 8 before I arrive. The opposite is true when headed home. If I leave at straight-up 5:00, I won’t be back in this 2011 version of Levittown — where I live — until 6:00. But if I wait until 5:30 or 5:45, the commute time is cut nearly in half.

I occasionally take the train, but discovered it actually means a longer commute — and I’m at the mercy of CapMetro’s schedule. That means I have to leave my house no later than 6:30 a.m. to make it to work by 8:00. Coming home, if I miss the 6:44 p.m. connection — which means I must leave the office by 5:30 to catch the express bus to the station — I would have a very expensive cab ride back to where my car sits baking in the sun. So, even though I’m a bleeding-heart liberal who drives a hybrid and sips red wine, this whole train thing doesn’t work daily for me.

The art of seizing the moment — when a tiny gap occurs to switch lanes and thus gain a few hundred feet momentum on MoPac — is absolutely critical to cutting a few minutes off the drive. Cell phones have made this quite easy, since about half the folks on the pavement are texting or talking during the tortoise-like advance north at rush hour. Thank goodness our fearless governor preserved the constitutional rights of drivers to put themselves and others at dire risk, when he vetoed a bill that would have banned texting while driving. Maybe next, Gov. Goodhair will allow drivers to brown-bag their beer when they hit the road, as in the not-so-good ol’ days.

I’m kidding, of course, though I do find it fascinating that the folks most interested in regulating women’s bodies and what goes on behind closed doors between consenting adults get all constitutionalist when it comes to banning behavior that could kill innocent folks — and in fact already has.

Sorry. I have a lot of time to think about such matters while commuting.

Finally, though I stay calm while stuck in Austin traffic, it is a different story when back in East Texas. I get impatient if I’m stuck at a signal for more than 30 seconds on Eastman Road in Longview. I can’t explain this shift in attitude. At least I have plenty of time to ruminate on the topic while stuck on the Hwy. 183 flyover in North Austin, looking down on an endless river of vehicles.

Teens Perfect Art of Cellphone Self-Portraiture

2011-06-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

My brand-new 13-year-old daughter is in love with my iPhone. One of her fondest wishes is that we buy her one. Well, if wishes were horses, and all that. Both her mother, my bride, and I agree that is an unnecessary expense — considering she has a laptop, iPod Touch and an adequate cell phone on which she can text faster than I can type. And I’m pretty fast.

What she loves to do most of all is take photos of herself. That is an activity that the latest model makes easy, since it allows one to switch the “viewfinder” so that you can see yourself on the screen and aren’t just shooting blind. No more trying to center one’s reflection in the silver apple on the back of the phone.

That was a brilliant move by Apple. Taking photos of oneself with a cellphone is clearly a national obsession with a wide swath of the younger generation, especially teen-aged girls. An added twist to these self-portraits is to use a mirror so that the finished result is an image that clearly shows the cellphone being used as a camera.

Abbie is quite creative in this new art. I admire her ability to shoot really amazing photos of herself, armed only with a cellphone camera and her imagination. The other day I stood in front of a mirror with my iPhone and attempted to recreate some of her interesting poses, with the horizon tilted, phone visible, big smile on my face. Of course, I looked like an idiot and quickly deleted these sad attempts. Do not try this at home if you are over the age of, say, 35. I’m being generous at that.

Girls in their teens definitely view this as the preferred way to create new Facebook profile photos. I confirmed this by checking Abbie’s Facebook page, which I do regularly as part of my parental duties. She doesn’t necessarily appreciate the snooping, but that is one of the rules for her being allowed to have a page. I personally am a minimal user of Facebook, mainly using it to alert folks I have a new column — and to keep up with my daughters.

The reality is that this social networking site has become the primary method of communication among a large portion of the younger populace. I still don’t know what to make of this phenomenon, though with more than 500 million active users, it is a safe bet that Facebook is not a temporary craze. I don’t have the same confidence that Twitter will be around years from now. But I learned some time ago not to predict the future on matters of technology — or anything else for that matter.

At least with Facebook there is a somewhat permanent record of the communication, which isn’t true with text-messaging. Young people have largely shunted aside email in favor of texting, to the point that a colleague told me she has to force students to email their communications instead of texting. It is pretty difficult to maintain a string of conversations with more than one person via texting, something that is straightforward with email.

Sorry, got sidetracked. Someone sent me a text.

I googled “iPhone self-portrait” and naturally was supplied with links to discussion boards and tips for taking better self-portraits. And, of course, there were links to dozens of folks who have posted self-portraits online, even made YouTube videos as they shot a photo of themselves. Now that’s complicated.

I found a fellow named Noah who, beginning in 2000, shot a photo of himself every day for six years, then made a six-minute video showing the results in rapid sequence. Noah is undoubtedly a creative, interesting young man, but after about two minutes I was sliding the fast forward control on YouTube. But it did reassure me that our 13-year-old is simply following a rather innocent trend with her cellphone self-portrait fascination.

Someday I might compile all her efforts into an Andy Warhol-like series on a single canvas and call it art. This might launch a new career, chronicling a pretty teen-age girl’s various poses in front of a mirror, phone held high. If not, at least I’ll have a cool collection of photos of our daughter at a special age.

We Three (And Rosie) Are Now A Family

2011-06-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

We met on a cold February afternoon 40 months ago, at a downtown coffee shop in Longview. Julie had emailed because she liked a column I had written about unpacking boxes of books, the simple pleasure of revisiting those old friends as I set up a new house. She suggested we have coffee and see if we might get better acquainted, possibly become friends. I agreed, intrigued. It turned out to be the most fruitful column I have produced in nearly 30 years.

I walked up the alley from the newspaper office at the appointed hour, reaching Green Street as Julie crossed, wearing a maroon raincoat, curly hair blowing in the winter breeze. She recognized my face from the newspaper mug shot and said my name. I said hers.

Talking about having me at hello.

We went inside for coffee, out for dinner the next night, a long walk the morning after that. We have been inseparable since, hanging on to each other through thick and thin — certainly enduring our share of the latter.

I told anyone who could tolerate listening that I had met my life’s love at that coffee shop, at that moment. Most folks nodded politely, figuring it was merely an infatuation that would eventually pale. It wasn’t, and it hasn’t.

Her daughter, Abbie, then 10, and I quickly bonded as well. The first time we met was at Pizza King. She was reading the fourth Harry Potter book, a beautiful child with porcelain skin and a quick wit. In the three-plus years since, we three have had grand adventures, to Washington, D.C., New England and Longhorn games each fall.

I stunned Julie by proposing on Thanksgiving night while on holiday in Wimberley nine months later. That morning all three of us had leaped into the Comal River, gasping with the shock of the cold water. First Julie jumped, then Abbie — both shivering and squealing about the frigid water. I had no choice but to follow, then quickly realized if I didn’t get out immediately I might suffer what Minny in Kathryn Stockett’s “The Help” called a “Cadillac arrest.” The hot tub never felt better than after that escapade.

When I handed the woman I call my Beautiful Mystery Companion a ring that night and asked for her hand, the day became forever known as When We Took The Plunge. Events conspired to keep us from getting married: a house too small for us that wouldn’t sell, job loss and relocation, yet another move and job change. Finally we concluded that if we waited for everything to be perfect, one or both of us would be returned to dust before we wed.

We married on a hot late-spring afternoon out in the East Texas countryside under a grove of trees, a dozen or so family members in attendance. Abbie, now 13 going on 20 most days, stood beside us. Now she is my daughter as well. Rosie the Wonder Dog carried our rings in a pouch tied around her furry neck, firmly secured with a leash. I happily will carry to my grave the image of Julie walking down the hill in her wedding dress, flowers in her hair, a bouquet in her hands. I forgot to breathe for several seconds. Abbie whispered to me something about how beautiful her mom looked while I nodded dumbly. Our preacher broke the silence. Birds chirped and cows lowed as we exchanged vows.

I’m grateful the event was recorded both on video and still photography. Everything is a bit of a blur for both of us, and it will be lovely to relive the event. Our honeymoon was brief with a longer trip planned later this summer. We still must live apart for a time because of our jobs. But we are a family, at long last.

It is humbling to realize that — at an age when movie theaters and museums give me the senior discount without asking — I get the chance to love again. We will raise Abbie together as best we can. My daughters have joyfully accepted her as their sister. Even Rosie likes me. (Of course, she likes everybody.)

I am truly blessed. We will have a grand life together, we three and Rosie.

A Cute Canine Business Opportunity

2011-06-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

My fiancé and I were walking Rosie, the World’s Cutest Dog, the other day. I am quite certain at least some of you will take issue with me unilaterally bestowing that title on Rosie. Some of you might even be under the misapprehension that the World’s Cutest Dog resides at your house. There surely are a number of dogs owned by readers that are mighty cute. I have two grand-dogs, Zelda and Ernie, who live with my daughters and fall into that category. But both daughters would admit if pressed that Rosie has that cute thing going on in a major way. They want to stay in the will, for one thing.

An unfortunate encounter with an overzealous dog groomer temporarily took away much of Rosie’s cuteness, but after more than two months her fur is growing back as curly and goofy as ever. When in full cuteness mode, Rosie looks like a 10-pound version of Chewbacca, from “Star Wars.” She loves all humans, indeed all animals that don’t make too much noise. Yapping dogs make this puppy that never peeps nervous, but otherwise she loves all creatures great and small. Once my Beautiful Mystery Companion sent cell phone photos of Rosie wrestling playfully on the walking trail with a large tabby cat, who came up to say hello — perhaps sensing a kindred spirit. My BMC finally had to drag Rosie away as the tabby looked on mournfully.

When we walk, Rosie turns heads virtually without exception. She is always smiling, prances on her feet and makes passersby smile and invariably ask what breed. She’s a rescue mutt, a little of this and that. More than once someone has said, “If you don’t want her, I’ll sure take her.” This is an exceedingly strange comment probably meant as a compliment, but weird nonetheless. Why would we not want this adorable dog? Do we look unhappy that we’re out here on a breezy spring day enjoying God’s handiwork while walking the dog?

I often wonder what would happen if we said, “Yes, take her. We’re tired of being licked to death. Best of luck.” Not that we would dream of doing such a thing, but it’s interesting to imagine.

If Rosie could be cloned, and if such procedures didn’t make me exceedingly nervous, I have an excellent revenue-producing idea. We could rent the cloned Rosie (the original is too close to our hearts for crass commercialism) to single men and women looking for a way to break the ice with attractive members of the opposite sex walking on the trail. She is a proven walk-stopper. If a single attractive guy walked down the trail with this pooch, I guarantee women would constantly be stopping him to pet Rosie the Clone, ooh and aah. The rest, as the say, would be up to the couple in question, in terms of exchanging emails or phone numbers. Rosie, as they say, is a surefire chick magnet.

This would work well for women, though long experience indicates that men need the most help. The advantages are considerable. This beats meeting women in bars, which I never figured had a lot of future. We would keep rates low enough to compete with eHarmony or Match.com. Pet patrons would have the opportunity to see their potential match in person and not be at the mercy of an online posting of a photo taken 10 years and 50 pounds ago. Besides, someone that one meets on a walking trail clearly is interested in good health and fitness, which is a good trait.

Single fathers out with their babies or toddlers have long realized that a cute baby is a definite draw for women, who will come up and talk funny to the tyke. Renting out a baby, however, as a dating tool seems fraught with all sorts of legal and moral problems not faced with a mere dog.

I see definite franchising possibilities here, especially in neighborhoods with large numbers of single people who enjoy physical exercise. Hey, weirder business notions have worked.

Golf Is Flog Spelled Backwards

2011-06-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

Golf is a good walk spoiled. — Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens must have never broken 80. That would have changed his outlook. I have shot in the 70s just five times. You remember such momentous events, though the last time I did so was more than 10 years ago. I lost my obsession with this game when I concluded:

• I will never be more than a mediocre golfer, able to shoot in the low 90s most days but perfectly capable of blowing up and busting the century mark.

• The game takes too much time. I should be more productive in my leisure hours.

• A sport where drinking is not only allowed but actually encouraged is not conducive to good health.

Golf has become a semi-annual event at most for me, usually in scrambles held for charity affairs. A scramble, for you non-golfers, is a tourney usually four people play as a team, using the best shot of the quartet. A scamble takes the pressure off hackers like me. Beer drinking is required, which improves neither my game nor my intelligence. Fortunately, it has the same effect on my teammates, so we enjoy ourselves. A nap invariably follows.

A buddy and I indulged in an inaugural 2011 round the other day, nine holes at Austin’s Hancock golf course, which is the original Austin Country Club founded in 1899. The back nine lies below the shopping center across the street. The remaining nine holes consist of hardpan fairways and sketchy greens. But it is cheap to play there, seldom crowded, and is one of the first courses I played after taking up the game 20 years ago.

We rented pull carts and began an unspoiled walk on a windy spring day. My first golf swing in nearly a year results in a soaring, string-straight tee shot that sailed over the par-three green. Five strokes later, the ball rolled into the cup. My short game is shot. Not to worry. I fully intended to enjoy this morning and not obsess over the score. Nothing was going to spoil this walk — even a three-putt from 12 feet away that any fool should make who is worth a flip at this infernal game that ought to be banned before it turns middle-aged guys like me into quivering mounds of anger. Sorry. Had a moment.

Golf courses have their share of characters, folks who play every day wearing attire one doesn’t expect to see on a golf course. Never bet with a golfer wearing overalls; they’ll take your money every time. Avoid toothless guys as well. There was a fellow nicknamed Chicken at the course I played in East Texas. He wasn’t entirely toothless but working on it. Chicken chain-smoked Camels, drank beer nonstop and bestowed free mini-golf lessons on hackers like me, whether you wanted them or not. Chicken would reward a topped tee shot that dribbled down the fairway, barely clearing the women’s tees with the comment, “That was hell for straight.”

I once played on the base course down in Corpus Christi with an older gentleman who early on said he was blind in one eye. He pointed to a tank parked rather incongruously near the teebox on which we stood. “That (expletive-deleted) tank is how I lost my eye.” I thought he meant in combat, but it was an errant tee shot that hit the tank, ricocheted back and hit him square in the eyeball. The fact that he still played golf on the same course where he lost half his vision is testimony to the game’s addictive power. I’m glad I was able to kick the habit before a similar mishap occurred.

I knew another fellow who was bitten by a copperhead while looking for his ball in the woods. He was out of commission a few months while his leg healed. This prompted establishment of the FYOB rule at this course, meaning, “find your own ball.” That rule was invoked by a golfing partner when I hit an approach shot on a par five that landed just short of the green. I was razzing him about the lovely shot, which outdistanced his by a good bit, when a fox came out of the woods, picked up my ball and trotted into the woods on the other side of the fairway. I guess the fox thought it was an egg.

“You know the rules,” he said. “You have to play it where it lies.”

Tough game. Tough crowd.

Saying Farewell To My Mom

2011-05-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

One of my earliest memories of my mom comes from when I was four, or possibly five. I was playing with one of those toys where kids pound plastic objects of different shapes into the corresponding shaped holes. As usual, I was trying to put a square peg in a round hole. My mom came outside to say she was going to the store and asked if I wanted to go with her. Normally I would have jumped at the chance and the prospect of perhaps talking my way into a piece of candy. But this time I said no, I would rather stay home and play.

She looked vaguely disappointed but said OK and left. I’m sure my dad was in the house or perhaps perched over his artist’s easel in the converted barn behind our house that served as his studio. She wouldn’t have left me alone at that young age. And as she turned the corner and started the car, I came to the realization, for the first time that I was separate from my mother, that I would always be me until I left this sphere. And she would always be my mom, until her time came.

Sadly, that time has arrived. My mom passed away at night last week with family at her side, fighting until nearly the very end. As I wrote a few months ago on her 81st birthday, my mom was a tough old bird. But it was time for the fight to end, for her to have peace. Our family came to accept that. After more surgeries than we can recall — heart, hip, tailbone, gall bladder, neck — her body shut down over four days until she just slipped away while unconscious.

My mom was hell on wheels when I was a kid. There’s no getting around that. She was tough and willing to go toe-to-toe with me when I was a smart-aleck teenager. (Short as I am, I still had four inches on her. I come from a long line of short people, including my mom.) I learned to avoid her wrath, and truth be told, I was about half scared of her. So were my brothers.

I became independent financially and personally at a young age, 17, similar to the path my mother took and probably for the same reasons. Neither of us liked being told what to do, though of course you eventually learn someone is going to be telling you what to do the rest of your life — boss, spouse, caregiver. The latter term is what best describes my mom’s greatest achievement. She was trained as a nurse but didn’t work much outside of the home when we three boys were under the roof, though she did teach nurse aides classes in Longview for a few years.

In 1990, my father became disabled at 59 because of a botched surgery. That is when my mom became truly a shining star. For the next 17 years, until I took over and placed them both in assisted living, she cared for my father at home. She took him to doctor’s appointments, cooked, cleaned, and made sure he took the medications that covered an entire shelf in the kitchen. She paid the bills, filed insurance claims and continued to take pleasure in her six grandchildren.

It wore her out. By the time we figured out neither of our parents could safely stay in their home anymore, she had become a brittle diabetic. Worse, she kept losing her car in the parking lot of the doctor’s office. Even worse, she thought she owned a black Maxima. It was a bronze Altima.

In her final years, my mom mellowed tremendously. After my dad’s death a little over two years ago, she lived alone in nursing care, loved by the staff for her good humor and even disposition. Even in the last days, when she could still talk, she invariably answered the question of how she was feeling with, “Pretty good.”

She cared for my dad and lived out her last years with dignity and grace. That befitted her name: Grace Adrian Bourque Borders.

Busking on Sixth Street

2011-05-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

Busking — Chiefly British: To entertain by dancing, singing, or reciting on the street or in a public place. (From dictionary.com.)

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Guy Forsyth said while on stage in Longview a few weeks ago that he started out busking in Austin, a word with which I was just vaguely familiar. I thought I knew what it meant, but I have learned not to rely on guesswork when it comes to words I don’t really know. Such carelessness has caused past problems when I mangle words, using them in the opposite way as intended. Once I used “opprobrium” when I should have used “approbation.” The latter means approval, the former the opposite. If I had good sense, I would have used neither, since I was unsuccessfully trying to pretend I own an extensive vocabulary. An alert reader pointed out my error. It was a humbling experience.

Forsyth is a popular and frequent performer on the Austin scene whose reputation has spread. A friend first alerted me to his music four years ago. He adeptly plays guitar, harmonica, ukulele and the saw, on which he wobbles a haunting version of Gershwin’s “Summertime” at most shows. His voice is his greatest instrument, with a wide range as he sings in a genre his website describes as Americana and blues. He works hard, playing the other night in front of perhaps 75 appreciative folks at the Longview Museum of Fine Arts. The museum in my hometown hosts a fine music series that features folks one often sees in Austin — including in the past few years Jimmy LaFave, Eliza Gilkyson and Slaid Cleaves. It’s quite a treat to see such stellar artists in a cozy venue, so I make a point of catching these shows when possible.

Guy, his band and I share a couple of bathroom experiences. The last time I saw him before Longview was three years ago at Antone’s in downtown Austin. I was with a group of friends and family. Guy and I ended up in the bathroom together. I recognized him, of course, as we both stood facing the wall. “Good luck, tonight, Guy,” I said. He said thanks. That seemed to be stretching the limits of conversation one should have in a men’s bathroom with a stranger, even a semi-famous one, so I stopped at that, not wanting to violate men’s bathroom-conversation protocol.

|———|

I headed toward Longview early on a Friday afternoon, figuring I would make it to Guy’s concert with 90 minutes to spare. Just south of Belton traffic suddenly stopped on I-35 in that sickening way that anyone has experienced, if they have traveled this “Highway From Hell,” which is what I would call this interstate if it starred in a movie. Drivers go from 75 mph to zip in seconds and for the next 30 minutes crawl along. I had no idea why and how long the delay would be, so began plotting an escape route by cell with help from my fiancé and her brother, who works for the highway department. If I could just get to the exit, I would cut across on a different highway and avoid I-35, which could be a parking lot all the way to Waco, where I start heading east.

Before I got to the exit I came upon the wreck, which involved a couple of 18-wheelers — one of which was hauling carnival rides and ended up upside-down, straddling the median and tying up both sides of I-35. I arrived about 45 minutes later than planned but still made the concert in time.

As it turns out, Guy and his two band members, traveling in a white box van, were stuck in the same traffic jam. He apologized while tuning up just minutes before showtime. There was a terrible wreck on I-35. Later, during a break, I end up next to his drummer in the dual restroom line and ask her if it was the same accident that waylaid my journey. Turns out we were likely within a few hundred yards of each other. We should have saved gas and shared a ride.

|———|

A few weeks later I wandered Sixth Street on a hot Sunday afternoon during the Pecan Street Festival and happened along a world-weary busker. He was a one-man band, sweat-soaked and wearing a fedora, a drum and cymbal contraption strapped on his back and operated with a foot strap, a banjo in front, a harmonic rack in front of his mouth. He was about my age, I figure, flirting with the double-nickel. Painted on his drum was a caricature of the musician and the words, “MR. TOJANGLES, ONE-MAN BAND.” He did a credible version of “Blue Moon,” and received several dollar bills in the glass tip jar propped in the banjo case.

I joined others in filming his performance with my iPhone and tossed in a buck as well. This is hard work, especially when the temperature is knocking on 100 degrees. My hat goes off to all those street musicians who start out on street corners, hoping someday like Guy Forsyth, to get to play at places like Antone’s. But even Guy has to hit the road and play modest-paying venues like the Longview museum. For that, I’m grateful.

Originally published in The Hill Country News, (Cedar Park, Texas), May 19, 2011.

Trot-Fishing In America, East Texas style

2011-05-11T12:34:00.001-07:00

WRIGHT PATMAN LAKE, ATLANTA STATE PARK — A soft drizzle falls across the lake as the wind blows out of the south. Everything is a uniform shade of gray on this unseasonably cool final day of April in East Texas, as my future father-in-law and I whiz across the placid water in a flatbottom boat. We are running two sets of trotlines, each containing 50 hooks with plastic jugs bobbing on either line. We hope to have landed a mess of catfish.

H.K. Teel will turn 80 in October. He complains about having slowed down in old age, that he is not as strong as he used to be. That certainly is true, but he’s still tough as the skin on an old Appaloosa catfish. Most mornings, during the two-week period in May and October that he runs lines, he is out on that lake by himself. A few years ago he hauled in a 60-pound App (not the computer type) while running the lines alone. As he tells it, “One of two things was gonna happen. Either I was going to get that fish in the boat or y’all would find me at the bottom of the lake, my arms wrapped around that sucker’s throat.”

He got that fish in the boat.

I have been on the mouth-stuffing, food-cycle finale of the fish harvested from this lake for more than three years. Both H.K. and his son, George, love to deep-fry fish, hush puppies and fries for family gatherings — of which there are many, this being a big family. These are hands-down the tastiest catfish I have ever eaten — light, flaky meat that melts in your mouth, especially if you grab a piece right after it is pulled out of the fryer. This is about the only time I eat fried foods. At least it is cooked in canola oil. You have to live it up occasionally, right?

The rain covers my eyeglasses, casting everything in a gauzy haze. H.K. heads to the first trotline, marked by two white bleach jugs. How he can find a gallon jug barely bobbing in this mass of water escapes me, but he goes right to it and hands me a plastic jug with the top cut out. It is filled with chicken hearts, which he is using as bait today. Yesterday he used bream. It depends on the weather, wind, moon and air temperature as to what bait is used. My job is to pull up the line and spear a chicken heart on each hook, while hoping we’ll come across a mess of catfish as we reload.

Someone apparently ran over the first trotline, knocking it down. H.K. is not happy about this development and mutters a few imprecations. There isn’t a single catfish on the trotline. With tutoring I learn how to pull up the line and in so doing pull the flatbottom from one buoy to the other. By the time I’m finished baiting 50 hooks my hands are sore. We head to the other trotline, a few hundred yards away.

A few tugs and chicken-heart baiting later, a blue catfish has swallowed the hook. H.K. hands me a small net to get the fish into the boat. With some effort I finally get the hook of its mouth and toss the fish in the five-gallon bucket.

Several more about the same size — maybe 24 inches long — follow. I put on gloves after getting cut by a fin. H.K. does not approve of this, saying he has never seen anyone wear gloves to unhook a fish. I know it’s wimpy, but I need all ten fingers to type and would rather not sustain injury.

We hook a big one, about 12 pounds and at least three feet in length. I get it into the boat with no problem, but the hook just won’t come out. H.K. is getting a bit impatient, so we trade places. I’m secretly relieved that it takes him a few minutes and a pair of needle-nose pliers to get the hook out. The 12-pounder is too big for the bucket and flops about on the boat’s bottom.

We finish running the lines, head to shore. I redeem myself by successfully backing the truck and trailer down to the ramp. I may not be worth a flip at unhooking catfish, but I can back up a trailer with the best of them. We head to his farmhouse. I take more photographs of him cleaning the fish and carving out fillets. I don’t volunteer to help, and he doesn’t ask. When he is done, there is a large bowl of fillets, enough to feed at least a half-dozen people. He kindly offers to fry some fish up for brunch (my term, not his), but I need to get back to civilization.

I keep thinking about H.K. wrestling that 60-pounder into the boat. I bet that was a sight.

Originally published in The Hill Country News, (Cedar Park, Texas) May 12, 2011.

Good Memory? Fuhgeddabout It

2011-05-06T07:02:00.000-07:00

My middle brother Scott and I got into a mild argument the other day about what our phone number was when growing up in Allenstown, N.H. in the 1960s. That is where we lived until June 1968 when my parents came to their senses and came to Texas. They hired a mover to load up most of our possessions and pulled a U-Haul trailer with their 1964 Mercury Comet containing the immediate necessities — clothes, etc.

It was a grand adventure, three sons and the parents leisurely winding our way south, stopping at Gettysburg, in the Smokey Mountains, finally arriving in Longview — where I learned that I talked funny. Further, I had no idea how this nearly 13-year-old Yankee kid was going to survive an East Texas summer. It felt as if the world was on fire, and it was only June. Forty-three years later, I still wonder as summer begins — about two weeks ago here in Central Texas, just before Easter for Pete’s sake — how I’m going to survive the next six months. But I always do.

Anyway, I think our phone number was Hunter 4-3656. He thinks it was Hunter 4-8898. We both agree on the area code — 603. New Hampshire still has only one area code, which is part of the state’s charm. I do love visiting my native state and try to do so annually, though job responsibilities and economics have kept me away for a couple of years. But the Granite State is always on my radar when perusing the news. I would love to live there from July through September and then come back to Texas. I’m just one winning Lotto ticket away from being able to do so. Scott, who used to teach math, says the lottery is gambling for the mathematically challenged. He can be a bit of a spoilsport.

Anyway, this was a peculiar argument. For a number of years both Scott and my youngest brother Gregg have served as my institutional memory. Since Gregg is nearly nine years younger than me, and Scott and I are just 29 months apart naturally I lean more on Scott for childhood information. Both have a greater grasp of what actually happened when we were all too young to shave than I do.

I don’t know why my memory is so bad. This is not a recent development though it clearly is getting worse as I age. My one claim to memory fame used to be a better-than-average recall of phone numbers. Hence, my contention that I accurately remembered our New Hampshire home phone number. I know the phone numbers of every newspaper for which I’ve worked, and dumb things like the main line for the Ford dealership in Nacogdoches, which I haven’t patronized in nearly 10 years.

Cell phones have ruined that talent, useless as it was. Neither my daughters nor my brothers or most of my friends have landlines. Their cell phone numbers are plugged into my iPhone, so it isn’t necessary to memorize numbers anymore. Like most of you, I just scroll down until I find the name of the person I’m calling. So now I can’t even remember phone numbers.

I worked for a couple years running the Longview newspaper, where I went to junior high and high school. I was constantly being stopped by folks who said, “Hi, remember me? We went to high school together.” I would truthfully recall about one out of every 10 people who asked that question. Quickly I brought my high school yearbook to work so I could look people up and try to jog my memory. Most times that didn’t work, either.

It’s not just people that I can’t remember. I have gone to used-book sales at the library and come home with copies of books I already own. Worse, I’ve actually already read them. I have rented movies only to realize about 30 minutes into it that I have already watched this flick.

Oliver Sachs is a neurologist and writer for the New Yorker. He wrote in August about his personal struggle with prosopagnosia, which is the inability to recognize faces or locations. It’s a fascinating piece. Sachs can eat dinner with a colleague and meet her on the sidewalk 15 minutes later and not recognize the woman. There are times I wonder if I have a minor form of that malady.

I emailed a buddy in New Hampshire, my childhood friend with whom I still stay in touch and asked if he remembered our home phone number. Amazingly, he did. More surprisingly, I was right. A small victory but one that I will remember.

At least I hope so.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), May 5, 2011.

Signs of the Times

2011-04-28T19:39:00.000-07:00

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign.
— Five Man Electric Band ( I think)
|———|
Have you noticed the number of people standing along carbon monoxide-choked highways and at busy intersections, holding signs, prancing about in front of businesses? They are trying to entice drivers to pull in for a Mexican-food meal, a massage, vitamin supplements, or a car wash, to name a few I have seen. These were called sandwich boards back in the Depression when folks paced sidewalks with signs strapped over their shoulders covering both sides of their body in an a-frame fashion.

Hoo boy. I know people need jobs. The unemployment rate is still far too high. McDonalds just held its widely publicized National Hiring Day with the goal of adding 50,000 new workers. As of this writing, I don’t know if the burger behemoth was successful. I am quite certain I would rather work at Mickey Ds than stand out in the hot sun, eating exhaust while waving a sign at passersby.

Admittedly I am biased when it comes to what type of advertising I think works best. I have been in the newspaper business since Lyndon Johnson was about to leave office, most families had black-and-white televisions, and newspapers were about four feet wide when spread open. But I’ve never believed that newspapers are the only place folks should advertise. I always tell folks who ask that a mix of different media likely work best, depending on the type of business.

But there are some goofy places that folks spend their advertising dollars, and hiring some poor soul to stand out and wave a sign doesn’t seem a terribly efficient way to reach one’s target market.

I guess I’m glad it provides jobs for folks who probably would not be working, since the skill level required isn’t terribly high. But the economics don’t make much sense to me. I saw four guys holding signs along Highway 183 and 620 the other day for the same business. Let’s say the business is paying each only minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. And let’s assume those poor souls are out there eight hours a day, five days a week. That totals $1,160 a week being paid out to people holding signs on street corners, which can barely be read by motorists whizzing by at 50 mph while talking on their cell phones. Give me that $1,160 a week and I’ll put together a nice ad campaign in the newspaper and even let you have a little — not much — left over to run some radio spots.

A search online using “holding signs in front of businesses” led me to
bumvertising.com, which uses homeless people to attach advertising placards to their panhandling signs. If you go to the site, it shows photos of folks who are down on their luck holding their crudely-lettered signs — “Need Food. Please Help,” and the like. Attached to the bottom is a professionally printed sign for “Strategic Domination.com. The Game of all Games.”

The now 28-year-old Seattle entrepreneur who came up with this idea didn’t return my e-mail, so it isn’t clear to me if bumvertising.com is still in existence.
The last post was in 2005 so probably not. I’m always glad to see folks down on their luck make money, but “bumvertising?”

Again, that doesn’t sound to me like a great business plan, especially since calling someone a bum isn’t exactly a compliment.
And a placard attached to a poor homeless fellow’s “Need change for the bus stop” sign isn’t exactly going to entice me to visit a website.
I also don’t understand buying ads on park benches or restaurant tabletops.

Be honest. Have you ever decided to buy a product or use a service because you saw an ad plastered under your basket of fries? I think not.
And if someone is using the park bench as intended, you can’t see those ads either because they’re obscured by somebody’s backside.

I know everybody is just trying to get by these days best they can. And I do admire some of the dance routines displayed by the more energetic placard holders.

Some of them know some pretty slick steps.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), April 27, 2011.

Keep Packing Pols Out of Pubs

2011-04-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

God bless the Texas Legislature. School districts are laying off hundreds of teachers and other school employees as the state grapples with a massive deficit, which was caused by the shortsighted actions of that same august body. Meanwhile, legislators who possess a concealed handgun license may soon be able to legally pack heat in places where the rest of us common folk can’t — bars, schools, churches, football stadiums, even Six Flags. Now that’s important stuff.

State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, is sponsoring the measure out of what he said is a question of logistics. Legislators have to go from one place to another, often five or six places in one evening. If the stops include either a watering hole or a place that distributes holy water (the former is considerably more likely, especially at night), then legislators would have to unholster and leave their weapons in their vehicles — or back at the office.

Well, cry me a river.

Let me establish some credentials lest I be branded an anti-gun, bleeding-heart liberal. I belong to a not-so-elite group known as gun-toting liberals. I’m fiscally conservative, socially progressive and a strong believer in both the First and Second Amendments. Further, I have owned a concealed handgun license for nearly five years. In fact, this summer I will have to suffer through taking the daylong class to renew my license so I can upgrade to legally carrying a semi-automatic. I originally qualified only with a revolver because that was the only type of handgun I owned.

I own several handguns, a 20-gauge shotgun, and a really cool pellet rifle with a scope. I revel in firing off rounds from my brother-in-law’s .223 machine gun out in an East Texas pasture, shooting clay pigeons (or trying to, anyway), and generally engaging what is referred to in the Piney Woods as “blowing stuff up.” Some folks substitute a different word for “stuff,” but this is a family newspaper. I once watched a young woman obliterate a discarded porcelain toilet with a single round from an SKS that a buddy owns. It was a thing of beauty.

However, I have never cared for hunting, though I have nothing against it. I’m just not enthusiastic about shooting and skinning an animal. That is messy work, so I prefer what little meat I consume arrive already shrink-wrapped and USDA approved. I’m not that crazy about eating wild meat anyway, such as deer or dove. I am willing and capable of shooting a wild hog. Feral hogs are a dratted nuisance. I have killed a couple of snakes, operating under the premise that any reptile dumb enough to take up residence in my garage deserves to die. This did not involve gunfire, since the threat of ricochets gave me pause.

I am firmly opposed to a lawmaker being able to carry a .357 into the Texas Chili Parlor or Scholz Garten if the rest of us can’t. Besides, why should they be able to do so when the mayor of Cedar Park or a Leander city councilwoman can’t do the same? So if we allow state legislators to pack a Glock into Gueros, the next logical step is to allow all elected officials to do so. Pretty soon county commissioners from East Texas will be in Austin for a convention, getting tanked up at the strip bar. Gunfire could erupt over a discussion about the unit road system. Do we really want an Upshur County commissioner bringing a gun into the Yellow Rose when visiting the big city? I think not.

OK, be honest. How many of you reading this even know what your state representative or senator’s name is, let alone what the person looks like? I do, but that’s a job requirement. So the notion that these folks need the added protection of being able to pack heat while drumming up early voting mail ballots at the nursing home is just a bit far-fetched.

I saw the play about Molly Ivins last month down at Zach Scott Theatre. The late columnist is one of my heroes. In the play, the woman playing Molly quotes a story from Ann Richards, our late governor and another very funny woman. Seems the ACLU was complaining about a crèche constructed on the Capitol grounds at Christmas. Violation of church and state and all that. Personally, as long as the state allows folks to put up a statue of Buddha on his birthday, I’m good with a crèche at the Capitol.

So was Ann. She said, “Oh, honey, leave them be. That’s the closest three wise men will ever get to the state Legislature.” Bills like Patrick’s only confirm that sentiment.

Originally published in The Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), April 21, 2011.

An Ill Wind Blows This Spring

2011-04-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
- Bob Dylan

Apparently, the answer would be pollen. At least that's all I see blowing in the Central Texas wind, which lately never ceases. I'll wake up at night and glance out the second-story bedroom window, on the miniscule chance that it might actually be raining. What a quaint notion, April showers. There will be no raindrops lashing the windows, but the treetops sway as if dancing to an celestial salsa band. Night and day they swing, shaking off oak pollen by the wheelbarrow load in the yard.

This is my first spring living in Central Texas in nearly 30 years. I have spent virtually all the past three decades in Deep East Texas, where pine trees dominate. Spring in those parts means a fine coating of yellow powder on every outdoor surface. One quickly learns to give up washing the car for a month or so, to never leave a vehicle's window open - and never, ever raise the windows of one's home. That is, unless, one enjoys a patina of golden dust on every surface.

Most years a gullywasher will sweep through those piney woods, washing yellow rivers of pine pollen down gutters and into the storm system. A good thunderstorm might leave some branches to pick up - pine trees being rather brittle - but at least the pollen would disappear. All would once again be bright and clean.

Fortunately, I developed an immunity to pine pollen as a callow youth growing up in the land of virgin pines and tall women. Or maybe it was the reverse. Sorry, old East Texas joke. The season was aesthetically annoying but didn't cause me sneezing fits, watery eyes or a runny nose. I did not suffer as so many do, until arriving here in the land of cedar, live oaks and prickly pear. I discovered a few months after moving here that cedar fever is indeed as foul a malady as others have described it. It took me a while to figure out that I didn't have a common cold, that the winter pollen from cedars was kicking my behind.

Considering I live in Cedar Park, and my back yard contains five trees of that species, one would have thought this diagnosis might have occurred to me earlier - but no matter. I loaded up on over-the-counter drugs and hobbled through, taking comfort in learning that cedar fever ends at springtime.

Then oak pollen season arrived. I honestly had no idea such existed. I lived in Austin during my last stint here, attending graduate school at The University starting in 1980 - a year marked by a Gil Scott-Heron song titled the same, which we played incessantly. Maybe the grackles distracted me. Or oaks were scarce in the yards of the cheap houses we rented, trying to elude burglars who seemed to follow us. Seriously. We were burglarized twice in two years and narrowly escaped a third attempt. That's enough to distract one from pollen. Now I seem to have more time on my hands and have noticed a yellow coating on everything outside.

And inside, at least briefly. I revel in fresh air and open windows when possible. As the cool spring air (which lasted about a week) arrived, I flung open second-story windows. (I learned my lesson about leaving first-story windows open). An hour's worth of vacuuming and dusting after work coupled with a grand mal sneezing attack convinced me there is a reason God invented air-conditioning and ceiling fans.

Finally the pollen is beginning to abate, but the wind shows no sign of settling down. The paper had a booth at the Cedar Park Heritage Festival recently, which I manned on a Saturday afternoon. I spent a half-day getting ready, mounting photographs on a tri-fold display board, gathering bound copies of old papers for folks to peruse, ordering a new banner.

The wind howled across that park, tossing canopies about. Luckily, we were under an industrial-strength cover installed by city workers who pounded rebar into the rocky soil. I would likely still be trying to hang our banner if not for the help of a kindly volunteer with the Austin Steam Train Association. I had to abandon the notion of displaying photographs on the display, some of which would have ended up north of Leander before sunset. Instead, I settled for only showing the bound books, the pages of which had to be carefully turned in the wind.

But I met lots of nice folks, who mainly remarked on the wind. One person noted that we would be missing these gales come August.

Well, there's that.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), April 14, 2011.

Keeping the Home Fires Burning

2011-04-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

t was the last fire of winter, burning on a night that teetered on the cusp of being cold enough to justify going to the trouble. I stoked the small hearth with post-oak logs and put the lighter to the gas pipe that tends to singe my hands when it ignites. My right hand has been hairless since late November, the skin occasionally reddened from the whoosh of pent-up gas combusting. The fireplace in this suburbia rent house bears watching.

Despite the epidermal damage, I have enjoyed burning real wood once again after four years of living with a gas-log fireplace. There are merits to both, the latter providing low maintenance but an antiseptic flame, the former being messy — requiring purchases from men peddling stacks on highway corners and shoveling out the ashes every few week

I left East Texas on a cool gray Sunday afternoon — my lovely fiancé, aka the Beautiful Mystery Companion — about to stretch out in front of a roaring fire I had built. She planned to catch up on reading as I headed back to the Hill Country. My only consolation for leaving was that I could build a similar fire here once I finished the 4.5-hour drive. And so I did, our parallel home fires burning.

Disaster was narrowly averted in East Texas when I piled red-oak logs — split by my BMC’s nearly 80-year-old father and hauled to town for his only daughter — into her fireplace and lit that gas pipe, which isn’t as prone to blowing up, since the hearth is much larger. After about 30 seconds I asked, “Is the damper open?” Admittedly this question is best asked before putting flame to gas, igniting the shards of lighter pine and kindling at bottom. It was getting a tad smoky, but you never know. Sometimes damp heavy air discourages wood smoke from heading upward.

“I’m not sure,” she replied. Time to grab a flashlight and peer upward, trying not to singe eyebrows and read the “Open,” and “Close” markers her landlord had written with a Sharpie on the metal insert. Sure enough, the flue was closed. I quickly flipped it to the left and with flashlight made sure the damper truly had opened. My BMC was none the wiser of my near-doofishness. Until now.

Twenty years ago, in a house outside Lufkin where I relied heavily on wood to heat in winter because the alternative was an expensive and balky propane tank, I blithely built a fire. I was keeping my daughters on a divorced-dad weekend. After igniting yet another gas pipe, I went outside to do manly things, such as spit and gather more firewood, perhaps even indulge in a bit of Skoal before I gave up that nasty habit. I re-entered the home to discover smoke alarms screeching and a viscous cloud of smoke that reminded me of following the mosquito-fogger truck on a bicycle during an East Texas summer. The damper was closed, so the smoke took up residence throughout the house. It took a while to get oxygen levels back to a breathable status. My children were so busy playing with Barbies in the back bedroom that they barely noticed the commotion.

My favorite fireplace was in a house owned in Kilgore, a few blocks north of the college. It was the home of a family that owned a funeral home next door. They are still in that business but have since moved both their business and residence. It was a fine old house, built in the 1940s with pine-knot paneling in the family room, which contained a double fireplace. One side was for building a fire for warmth. The other side contained a smoker and an electric spit, so one could, for example, slow-cook a pork loin on one side while enjoying a crackling fire on the other. I plan to have a similar arrangement again someday, though I’ll probably put the cooking portion outside.

The fire is starting to die down as I write this on a laptop, listening to Jackson Browne on the stereo, the television on mute as I watch occasionally scenes of tragedy and sadness in the world beyond. It has gotten warm enough, and a bit smoky, so I have to open the windows. I’m almost certainly the only fellow here in suburbia burning a fire on the next-to-last day of March.

Originally published in The Hill Country News, April 7, 2011.

How I Learned to Curse in French

2011-04-01T06:28:00.000-07:00

Spring means a change of wardrobe. I trade button-down long-sleeved shirts for short-sleeved polo style shirts. Gone are the sports jacket worn in winter. It feels foolhardy to wear a sports jacket when it is more than 90 degrees outside, unless attending a funeral or similar formal event. And I only wear a tie under duress.

It also means switching hats, literally. Spring means that, when not working, my bald spot will be covered with a Boston Red Sox cap purchased at Fenway Park two years ago. Major League Baseball season is about to commence. Life is good.

I became a Red Sox fan in the womb, up in Concord, N.H., where I lived the first 13 years of my life. I had no choice in the matter of which team I followed, though my dad — not a native New Englander — rooted quietly for the Cardinals. He was outnumbered by my mother’s French-Canadian family, which had immigrated from the Quebec province into the Granite State in the 1920s. They promptly took up rooting for one of baseball’s most star-crossed teams.

I learned a wide array of profanities seated near kinfolks, watching the Red Sox on television during the 1960s. These included French phrases that comprised my only foray into that language. I have since learned how to curse in Spanish but forgotten nearly all the French imprecations learned at the knee of my grandfather and uncles. My grandmother, who outlived her husband by more than three decades, didn’t curse. She would just cluck her tongue and talk to the television as the Sox blew yet another lead.

That all changed in 2004, when incredibly, the team came back from a three-games-to-zip deficit to the hated Yankees to take four straight and win the American League pennant. They next dispatched the Cardinals in four straight. The 86-year-old Curse of the Bambino, so named after the team traded Babe Ruth to the Yanks in 1918, had finally ended.

I have attended games sporadically at Fenway Park since 1967, when my dad bought tickets to the next-to-last game of the season. That was the year of the Impossible Dream. The Sox won the pennant on the last game of the season. We sat in the bleachers the day before, watching our team win to tie the Twins for first place. My best friend Bruce Courtemanche and I held up a banner in hopes of getting on television. My father was our hero for having bought tickets back in the spring. None of us suspected our ragtag Sox would be vying for a World Series berth in autumn. (This was when there were just two leagues, no divisions or playoffs. The Sox lost in seven games to the Cardinals. The Curse continued.)

I visited Bruce in New Hampshire a couple years ago. He still lives a couple of blocks from our elementary school and confessed that he still has that banner, more than four decades later. As for me, I acquired a baseball a few years ago signed by my boyhood hero, Carl Yastrzemski. Yaz won the Triple Crown in 1967, leading the American League in batting average, runs-batted-in and home runs. No player has repeated that feat since. My baseball, perched in Lucite, has his signature and “TC 1967” inscribed. It’s part of the Red Sox décor that makes up my upstairs bedroom and study, along with a large black-and-white photo of the famed scoreboard at Fenway and a 1967 photo of Yaz leaping to catch a line drive in left field.

The photo I shot in Fenway of the first game of the 2007 World Series between Boston and the Arizona Diamondbacks also hangs in my bedroom. It shows Josh Beckett throwing the first pitch as the crowd watches. It is framed together with my ticket to the game. Naturally, I’ve since changed my mind but at the time thought the Lord could go ahead and take me now. I’ll die a happy man. Since then I’ve conjured up other events, goals, etc., to keep me plugging away on this planet. But that was a moment of pure happiness.

Like spring, the opening of baseball season is a time of hope and renewal. There are 162 games to be played — starting on April 1 for the Sox against the Texas Rangers. The latter is my second-favorite team, though a distant second. I’ll never trade my affection for a team that’s been part of my life since I was old enough to know what the phrase, “You *@**@&@& bums” meant.

In French, no less.
Originally published in The Hill Country News, March 31, 2011.

On a Train Bound for Somewhere

2011-03-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

On a train between two cities, I knew that I had gone wrong. I was headed east when I should be going west. — Jeff Talmadge

|———|

Singer-songwriter Jeff Talmadge dug through his repertory of songs last week while performing at Opal Divine’s on West Sixth Street in Austin to come up with a train tune. He was marking the one-year anniversary of Capital Metro launching its rail service from Leander to downtown Austin. I had e-mailed him of my plans to ride the rail for the first time, for a story and column, plus see him perform live — also for the first time.

I’ve been a fan of Jeff’s music for several years after being introduced to it by his wife. She was my boss in a former life. Jeff gave up practicing law in Austin in 2003 to pursue a musical career. His seventh studio recording, “Kind of Everything,” was just released. Check it out at jefftalmadge.com. He’s a fine writer, and the latest CD has some strong support from veteran session musicians.

|———|

SXSW, the massive music, film and high-tech conference recently concluded in Austin, attracts tens of thousands of folks to downtown. Riding the train in from Leander meant a one-hour trip with seven stops between there and downtown, where the line ends next to the Austin Convention Center. That is where much of SXSW was taking place. Literally dozens of other venues were within easy walking distance, which explains why the train I boarded in Leander at 8:30 a.m. had standing-room only by the time it stopped near the moribund Highland Mall.

The train was big-city subway crammed by the time we got downtown. A one-time round trip ticket costs just $5.50 — far less than paying to park, if one can find a spot. I doubt I could have driven there and found a parking space in an hour, even if I avoided rush hour. Not to mention the gasoline it takes to get there.

Cap Metro in March as an experiment extended hours into Friday night and also added a couple of Saturdays. It seems to me that the service is going to have to run permanently during those times to attract a significant ridership. As someone who loves both trains and not having to drive into the city, I’m rooting for the system’s success and expansion.

The trip into town was stress-free and on time. For the first few stops, it felt like taking a leisurely drive through the country with someone else at the wheel. My oldest daughter, Kasey, joined me at Lakeline, the first stop south of Leander. Passengers spent their time fiddling with cell phones, texting or Googling. A few actually read books. We showed up exactly as scheduled and began trekking toward Opal Divine’s, about 10 blocks away.

|———|

I spied Jeff and introduced myself. He was the second act performing on the front porch of this bar/restaurant. Jeff walked around for a time with guitar strapped to his shoulder, warming up. He graciously introduced us to other musicians playing that day, including Patterson Barrett and Ray Bonneville. Look them up. They’re legends, consummate musicians, writers and singers who rarely crack commercial radio’s limited playlist. Patterson accompanied Jeff on his brief set, one friend helping out another — neither likely making much more than tip money for the effort.

I read earlier that 2,000 or so bands were in town for SXSW. Kasey and I wandered around until early evening sampling the offerings. At one club with an outside garden, we listened to Brite Future, a dynamite band from Seattle, formerly known as Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. Seriously. I can’t make this stuff up. The lead singer pointed at me and said, “You in the sunglasses over there, what’s up?” I had no clever rejoinder, just gave a thumbs-up. Kasey asked, “Daddy, was he talking to you?” Yep, the aging hipster in the back badly in need of a haircut, wearing the beret. That would be me.

|———|
We reluctantly headed back north. The train’s last departure from downtown on a weeknight is 6:34, but we caught the next-to-last one at 5:30 to be safe. The train started out full and stayed that way again until about halfway north. By the time it stopped in Leander, about a dozen passengers remained. I dozed a bit during the 15 minutes after my daughter got off and the last stop.

Sure beats driving. Just saying.

|———|

It’s not the wrong train that you’re on. It’s just another way to go. It’s not the wrong train that you’re on. You’ve found another way back home. — Jeff Talmadge

Originally published in The Hill Country News, March 24, 2011

Hurtling the Highway on Spring's Cusp

2011-03-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

ON THE ROAD — Spring appears to have commenced earlier in East Texas and now is making its way toward the Hill Country. At least that is the impression left as I travel the highways most weekends, headed back to the Pine Curtain to visit both my mother, in failing health, and my lovely fiancé and future daughter. I’m again grateful I bought a hybrid Ford Escape four years ago, as gasoline prices shoot ever upward.

Once again, I’m flummoxed that prices rise here instantly because of turmoil in Middle East that may or may not permanently affect oil production. It is not as if the gasoline in the storage tanks here just arrived from the refineries. No matter. I’ll just grit and bear it — grateful the Escape gets 30 mpg. We have tried to write gas prices stories at every newspaper I’ve drawn a paycheck from, with dismal success. Trying to get a straight answer out of the folks who actually have something to do with prices — not the convenience store managers but the actual suppliers — is about as fruitful as trying to pin down state officials on how they propose to balance a state budget that is $25 billion out of whack without raising taxes.

But I digress. We were discussing spring. East Texas begins, by my definition, just east of Corsicana, with I-45 serving as the dividing line. Folks living in Corsicana might consider themselves to be in East Texas, and that’s fine. I bear a grudge against that small city because it takes so blasted long to drive through it. I once wrote that I would vote for anyone for governor who built a loop around Corsicana. There is still no loop, and Rick Perry is still governor. Those two facts might not be related, but there you go. With the budget crunch, I’ll probably be too infirm before a loop is built to drive this route and avoid the 9.6 miles of stop-and-go traffic that defines the home of Collin Street Bakery.

East of Corsicana, the grass is greener now. Ragged rows of daffodils carpet old home places, planted decades earlier on plots where the houses have long turned to rot. The various trees sporting white blossoms — dogwoods, Bradford Pears, and others — are in full regalia. Redbud trees add a purple accent to the sights as I whiz down the road, listening to the Simon and Garfunkel station on satellite radio. Yes, there is a station devoted entirely to Simon and Garfunkel, another for Bruce Springsteen, Elvis (of course) and others. For three hours I hurtle down the asphalt without hearing the same Paul and Art song twice — singing along as the lyrics return from deep within the memory bank. It has always baffled me how I often can summon and sing lyrics when a song is playing that I haven’t heard since Jimmy Carter was president — but can’t remember where I ate lunch yesterday.

Sorry, I keep getting sidetracked. We were discussing spring, which arrives officially on March 20 this year. In East Texas that means sometime before April Fools’ Day every outside surface will be covered with a sickly yellow pollen that will take a gullywasher of a thunderstorm to dissipate. You learn early to not open windows during the Yellow Tide period there, tempting as it might be for that welcomed breeze. Here on the edge of the Hill Country, so far my windows are open much of the time with no deleterious effects — save a sneezing bout from what is likely a mild case of cedar fever. I can’t wait to take a bluebonnet tour down toward Brenham when the time is ripe.

I spent the last weekend of winter here and not on the road for a change. The peeps are headed this way on Sunday since it’s spring break. I mowed with the blade low to capture the dead grass, used the bagger and filled seven biodegradable sacks with clippings. The rye grass my landlord planted out back to fill in until he can have sod planted had neared hay-baling height. I sneezed and wheezed my way through a pleasant and breezy morning of mowing, trimming and stuffing sacks. The sun was warm on my back, and the cold beer with which I celebrated completing this task sure went down well, washing dust and such down the gullet.

It won’t be long until such lawn cleaning requires gallons of iced tea and a towel to wipe off the sweat. I’m enjoying the early days of Central Texas spring, no matter how brief the season.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Par, Texas), March 17, 2011.

Still Just a Paperboy

2011-03-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

What do Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Warren Buffett and yours truly have in common? Not much, since they are all geniuses in some manner, a title never bestowed upon me except sarcastically. The shared heritage is that we all were paperboys as kids, a job that is fast going the way of the slide rule and cassette decks.

A recent Time article says in 2008 paperboys (and girls) made up just 13 percent of newspaper deliverers. That number likely has dropped in half in the past three years, as paid newspapers shrink, and fewer afternoon papers remain. The shift away from afternoon delivery means adults now dominate when it comes to delivering newspapers, since it is done in the wee morning hours.

So it was heartening to learn that at the , near Allentown, Pa., publisher Fred Masenheimer still relies on an all-youth carrier force to deliver that paper to 14,000 subscribers. As the Time article put it, these kids still fill a canvas bag with papers, stretch the straps across a bicycle handlebar and head down neighborhood streets.

A photo hangs in my office, taken in the fall of 1968. It shows four solemn-faced boys standing next to a bicycle loaded down with newspapers in a pair of rear-wheel baskets. I’m one of those paperboys, the short fellow with the bad haircut and thick glasses — a 13-year-old entrepreneur with a canvas satchel strapped on my shoulder. My first job was peddling the afternoon edition of the Longview newspaper throughout downtown.

The paper cost a dime, and I got to keep a nickel. On a good day I cleared $5 by selling out 100 papers, plus maybe a buck or two more in tips. At Christmas, the oil wildcatters playing “42” at the Brass Rail, a smoky saloon near the old Arlyne Theater — both long gone — might even slip me a sawbuck if they were feeling flush. It was good money for a kid not old enough to drive, dependent on my cheap Sears version of a Sting-Ray bike for transportation from our home on South Twelfth Street to the newspaper plant downtown.

Like the Time article points out, just about everybody who worked as a paperboy has fond memories of those times. I have heard it for years when folks learn what I still do for a living, which is at its most elemental still peddling newspapers. “I used to be a paperboy,” they’ll say with a smile. “I threw the (insert name here) in my hometown.”

For me, the memory is different. I never outgrew being a paperboy. I loved that job, delivering the news to customers, many of whom I had to persuade to fork over a dime by recounting that day’s headlines. My route did not have subscribers as such but consisted of folks who decided daily whether or not to buy the paper. An ancient black woman who lived on Green Street, just south of Highway 80, was always a tough sell.

She usually could be found in the rocker of her front porch, a wad of snuff in her cheek. I once attempted to sell her an extra announcing that American astronauts had landed on the moon — July 20, 1969. Miz White, as I have decided to call her since she was black and lived on Greet Street, was having none of that foolishness.

“Ain’t no man landed on the moon,” she said. “They done rigged that up in a television studio.” My arguments to the contrary, being a huge space buff, had no effect. An extra edition cost a nickel and I got to keep all the money. In desperation, I tried to just give her the paper. That didn’t work either. She recoiled as if I was handing her a water moccasin.

More than four decades later, I’m still in this business. Looks like I’ll be peddling papers in one form or fashion until I get booted out the door. I like to think that at least a couple of those boys and girls delivering papers up in Pennsylvania will also catch the bug and decide to work at a newspaper. After all these years, I still can’t think of a more interesting way to make a living. For that, I feel blessed.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), March 10, 2011

A Silent Toast to a True Texan

2011-03-03T17:38:00.000-08:00

As occurs each Texas Independence Day I drank a silent toast to Sam Malone on March 2. Not the fellow on “Cheers” but the real Sam Malone, as we called him back in the day. Sam was the archetypal country newspaper editor with a bottle of cheap whiskey (Evan Williams preferred) in his desk drawer, a loaded shotgun in the corner of his office, and a foul-smelling cigar constantly lit.

Sam was born on Texas Independence Day in 1920 and died in 2000 just a few weeks short of turning 80. He packed a lot of miles into those 79-plus years, all of it spent in newspapering from West Texas to Deep East Texas. His dad, Big Sam Malone, taught him as a kid how to set type back when a newspaper page was created literally one metal letter at a time placed inside a frame. You see the wooden typecases for sale at antique shops and bazaars. People buy them to hang on the wall and fill with knick-knacks.

He was particularly proud of his birthdate, which he shared with Sam Houston — along with the aforementioned fondness for whiskey. That confluence of events all occurring on March 2 explains Sam’s love for Texas history. He devoted untold hours to reading about it, reprinted a couple dozen arcane titles of Texana in his print shop, and infected me with the same fascination.

I first heard of Sam in the late 1970s, when Texas Monthly writer Richard West featured him in a story about San Augustine, in Deep East Texas, where Sam had founded a feisty weekly called The Rambler. West recounted how Sam took on the entire school board in his paper and managed to get a reform slate of candidates elected. A losing member cold-cocked him with her purse, an event that Sam duly recounted in the following issue.

A few years later I was quickly going insane working as a bureaucrat for the state in Austin. On a whim I called Sam Malone and asked if he needed any help. He told me he had sold the newspaper but the new owners were looking for a managing editor. A few weeks later we were driving a U-Haul to San Augustine. Several months after that I ended up buying the paper and stayed five years. Sam owned the building and still ran the print shop next door. Thus began a friendship that lasted until his death, more than a decade after I had left San Augustine.

For a few years I leased the public access channel from the cable company in vain hopes of making some extra bucks. There were two weekly newspapers in a town of 3,000, so making a living was tough. Sam conjured up the idea of us producing a weekly 30-minute show on Texas history, especially since the state was in 1986 celebrating its sesquicentennial. So every Wednesday afternoon at 3:30 we would sit behind his desk, piled high with papers, cigar ashes everywhere and Ventilator the Cat usually perched on the chairback behind Sam’s skull. We each held coffee cups. I tried to keep mine from clinking since both contained ice cubes, Evan Williams whiskey cut with tap water. Sam didn’t care whether his clinked or not.

Rambler Channel 2 was almost certainly one of the worst-produced cable-access stations in the state’s history. A video camera was propped in the corner, and Sam’s ancient mike was held together with duct tape. (He also did a morning radio show each day for 15 minutes.) We rebroadcast the Wolves’ football games each Saturday morning, using the grainy tape shot by the coaches in the pressbox. Sam would do the play-by-play, and I was the “color” commentator. Sam actually knew what he was doing, having covered football since the Giper suited up for Knute Rockne. On the other hand, I didn’t know a tackle from a guard, a tight end from a wide receiver. I still don’t.

But I learned a lot of Texas history in those weekly shows, enough to actually get a modest book published a few years back on a small slice of East Texas’ past. I wish Sam had been around for that event.

Texas celebrated 175 years since independence on March 2. I toasted a glass of whiskey in Sam’s memory after work, though it wasn’t Evan Williams. I never could develop a taste for that stuff.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), March 3, 2011.

Recalling My Days As a Cattle Baron

2011-02-26T06:08:00.000-08:00

Bouncing around in a pickup with John Brite last week was a welcome diversion. It brought back a rush of memories of afternoons spent in East Texas honking a horn on the pickup to call up the cows. Usually I was hanging out with one of my buddies who had decided to see how much money he could lose in the cow business. A few times they were my cows. I have gotten the “disease,” as John Brite calls it with a grin, and bought cows on separate occasions each of the past three decades. I jave learned to never say never, but I do believe I have permanently retired from raising cattle. Few people are more inept at it than me.

My first foray was in San Augustine, where an ill-fated decision to plant rye grass over a few acres, in order to make it look pretty, inspired me to buy a few cows to eat the grass. I went to the sale barn with a buddy who actually knew what he was doing when it comes to cows.

We bought a half-dozen or so heifers and a couple of momma cows that were supposedly bred. Rather, my buddy did. The auctioneer ran cows, horses and donkeys through the ring so fast that I had no idea what we were bidding on. If it had been me actually raising the numbered placard, I likely would have gone home with a broken-down mare, a bull, couple of donkeys — and feeling like a jackass.

We loaded up the cows and took them to the holding pen on the land I leased next door to my six-acre tract. One of the momma cows immediately climbed up and over the corral, tore through the barbed wire fence beyond and hightailed it for the distant woods.

My friend was unfazed, having raised cows all his life and familiar with their unpredictability. “We’re gonna call that one 30-30,” he said. I asked why. “Because the only way you’re ever going to get her back is with a rifle and scope.”

I had adequate grass and water, but it’s always greener and all that. The third time Sheriff Nathan Tindall called in the middle of the night to say my cows were out on the farm-to-market road at the back side of the property, I hired a couple of cowboys with ropes and cow dogs to round them up and take them back to the sale barn. I was several hundred dollars poorer, since prices had dropped. Besides, we never did find 30-30.

My final foray was about eight years ago. Again, I enlisted a friend to help me pick out a modest herd, which came from a young man getting out of the business. All of the cows were bred, he assured us. I later concluded the previous owner was relying on immaculate conception, since only about half the mommas bore calves. The other half of my herd just kept looking pregnant, while they gobbled up sacks of range cubes and creep feed by the pickup-bed load. Turns out they were just fat cows.

Of course, I acquired another fence jumper in this herd. My buddy dubbed her Francis the Fence Jumping Wench. My neighbor complained because Francis kept courting his bull by clambering over the fence. Since she weighed somewhere north of 1,200 pounds, her ardor usually busted a few wire strands in the process. So again I hired a cowboy to take her to the sale barn. Through a minor miracle we managed to get her in the corral with the squeeze chute. That is when Francis performed a bovine Olympic stunt. She climbed up and out of the chute and made yet another break for freedom. The cowboy ended up roping her and dragging her to the trailer, with the help of a couple of curs nipping at her heels.

I decided again to retire and sold the herd. I almost broke even since cattle prices were up. That’s if you don’t count time, gasoline or buying a tractor. Man, I love driving tractors, cutting grass with a bushhog, pulling a box blade behind it to smooth a road. I may never get in the cow business again but hope someday to have an excuse to buy an ancient tractor. You can get a lot of good thinking done while driving a tractor.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), February 24, 2011.

Visiting The Big Apple and the Little Apple

2011-02-17T13:22:00.000-08:00

MANHATTAN, N.Y. — I didn’t expect to visit for the first time both the Big Apple and the Little Apple within the past year, but there are lots of unexpected events in my life these days. The Little Apple is what Manhattan, Kansas calls itself. It is home to Kansas State University and the closest city with shopping and decent restaurants to the town where I ran a small daily newspaper for several months. Y’all know about the Big Apple, of course.

My Beautiful Mystery Companion and I are here for a book-signing for a famed educator. My BMC contributed a piece to the book, a tribute to Maxine Greene — who at 93 is still philosopher-in-residence at the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education. I wouldn’t mind being philosopher-in-residence somewhere, preferably warmer than Manhattan in February.

We decided to make a three-day trip out of it, stay in Times Square and take in some sights. Some random observations:

• There appear to be more Yellow Cabs on the streets of Manhattan than private vehicles. That is likely not true, but the cabs stand out with their distinctive color. Online research indicates there are more than 13,000 Yellow Cabs in New York City. Getting a medallion to legally operate the cab isn’t cheap, averaging $644,000 last year. That’s what the owner of the cab paid; the vehicle is then essentially leased to the drivers, who make an average of $130 a shift.

Many of the cabs we hailed were Ford Escapes with the exact interior of the hybrid Escape I’ve driven for four years. All are equipped with video screens and credit-card swipers; mine isn’t. The prices aren’t exorbitant, but I’ll be eating sandwiches at home for a while to recover from paying for cab rides.

• Speaking of prices, that was a pleasant surprise. Visiting this city is nowhere near as expensive as I’ve been led to believe. Food prices were reasonable, and the hotel was excellent for the money and less than I’ve paid to stay in Austin, for example. Of course, actually living in Manhattan requires a bundle for rent, for example. A New York Times article I read while there described a couple searching desperately for a one-bedroom apartment under $2,500 a month. Whew. I also noticed parking rates of $56 a day in some garages. I would sell my Escape or have it painted bright yellow and turned into a cab before paying those rates.

• At least in our experience — which admittedly was dealing primarily with people who are paid to be nice to tourists — folks are as friendly here as anywhere else I’ve visited. We did the usual touristy things — visiting museums, taking in a Broadway show, gawking at the huge signs on Times Square — and solemnly, visiting the site of the World Trade Center. It is now a vast hive of construction. From the atrium of the nearby World Financial Center one can see the size and scope of the project, which will include a memorial to those killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That memorial will consist of two large pools with water cascading down the sides, created within the footprint of the Twin Towers and ultimately surrounded by seven new office towers.

• On the day we walked through Central Park after visiting the Metropolitan Museum, snow was piled high but the walkways were cleared. It was actually colder in Texas that day, a heavy snowfall shutting down schools and highways at the same time we walked through the vast park. It has been a topsy-turvy winter.

I learned that Yankee squirrels survive winter by burrowing tunnels into the snow, like miniature four-legged Eskimos staying warm in ad-hoc igloos. I watched as a couple scampered about the bare trees, across the snowdrifts and then disappeared. Took a moment to figure out where those tricky little buggers had gone.

Finally, on our final morning there we got to witness the famed New York Fire Department in action when the fire alarm in the hotel went off at 6:15 a.m. We were told it was not a drill. Guests stumbled groggily outside. I brought my wallet, camera and cell phone and shot a few photos as four trucks arrived within minutes. Soon the lobby filled with firefighters in full regalia.

Happily, it was a false alarm.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), February 17, 2011.

Recalling The Shuttle Columbia Disaster

2011-02-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

An explosion rattled the windows of my home in Nacogdoches on Feb. 1, 2003. I went outside on a brilliant Saturday morning, wondering if there had been a tanker explosion on nearby U.S. Highway 59. A contrail in the sky reminded me the space shuttle Columbia was about to pass overhead. Just a really loud sonic boom, I thought, and headed to town to drink coffee with friends.

The television delivered dreadful news. Contact with Columbia’s crew had been lost. Then the phone rang at the store. Pieces of the shuttle were raining down all over town. I was then editor and publisher of the Nacogdoches newspaper, so I bolted out of the store and headed to the office, calling staff members on my cell as I raced down Raguet Street. Among those answering and coming to work was Johnny Johnson, now the editor of the newspaper I now publish outside Austin.

Johnny reminded me the other day that one of the first two NASA astronauts on the scene in Nacogdoches — just a few hours after pieces of the shuttle landed downtown, in folks’ backyards, in pastures and forests across Deep East Texas, were Greg Johnson and Mark Kelly. There’s a widely distributed photo of Johnny following the astronauts as they look for pieces of shuttle debris and the remains of their colleagues. Kelly is the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman shot recently in that horrific attack in Tucson — now making what appears to be a truly miraculous recovery.

I was mainly glued to a computer screen those first several hours, taking dictation from our reporters and cobbling together stories for the wire and our sister newspapers’ websites. It soon became bedlam in our building, as other news organizations arrived and asked to borrow space. The phone rang unceasingly, reporters from all over the world calling to get information. Our small city soon was filled with television satellite trucks. I looked up once from my terminal to see the mayor, a golfing buddy, being interviewed on CNN.

When I finally was able to leave the office to drive around town, the scene was surreal. National Guard members stood watch over pieces of the shuttle cordoned off by yellow caution tape. Every hotel parking lot was filled. The Exposition Center became a staging ground for the recovery efforts. Besides the media, hundreds of volunteers had arrived literally from all the country to help in the sad, grim effort to help NASA not only recover the remains of the seven astronauts who died, but to find as many pieces of the shuttle as possible, so that the effort to determine why this had happened could commence.

Our small newspaper staffs, in Nacogdoches and Lufkin, worked horrendous hours those first several days, feeding the websites and our sister newspapers across the country. I think that event really crystallized, for me at least, the power of the Web to get information out nearly instantly to folks across the globe. We had folks finding our site from everywhere from New Zealand to Norway. All of us working the story felt that strange mix of exhilaration and deep sadness that comes with covering a tragedy of such magnitude. We were doing our jobs as best we could, with no real time to mourn or reflect on this horrific event. That would come later, when the satellite trucks had left.

A few weeks later I went out to a pasture where I ran some cows. Crews of Native American firefighters who worked usually fighting forest blazes out west had been deployed to scour the East Texas countryside, marking any spot they found shuttle debris, no matter how small. That 10-acre pasture was dotted with small blue flags, dozens of them. That’s when I wept and prayed for the Columbia seven, whose lives ended on a beautiful, sunny day in the skies over Deep East Texas.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), February 10, 2011.

A Storyteller Visits Gruene Hall

2011-02-02T16:53:00.000-08:00

All the Federales say they could have had him any day.
They only let him slip away out of kindness, I suppose.
“Pancho and Lefty,” by Townes Van Zandt

GRUENE, TEXAS — The power of story told in song resonates with many of us. We can recall song lyrics learned three decades or more ago — while forgetting the name of a co-worker one happens along at the grocery store, or where you laid the car keys.

Most of us can only regurgitate the chorus of memorable songs without the prompting of actually hearing it played. Somehow, though, if a song is playing on the radio, or being sung in Gruene Hall, the words return to even the most involved of songs — those that deliver a narrative, as does “Pancho and Lefty.”

That’s why an overflowing crowd at Texas’ oldest dance hall stood and sang the chorus to “Pancho and Lefty” at noted troubadour and writer Rodney Crowell’s direction, as he sang the stanzas in his final encore. Van Zandt’s song, first recorded in 1972, tells the tale of a Mexican bandit who is betrayed by his sidekick Lefty and killed. Lefty manages to escape into the United States and live out his life quietly in Ohio, though possibly with a guilty conscience.

A few folks there might not have known the chorus, but darned few. Crowell encouraged the crowd to sing and remained silent, praising the increasing volume of each rendition. It was a sweet ending to a memorable night of storytelling, both in song and prose, by the 60-year-old southeast Texas native.

Crowell is not famous, not in the pop-radio way of younger stars like Keith Urban or Alan Jackson. He has written many songs that others have made famous — “Shame on the Moon,” a hit for Bob Seger; “Til I Gain Control Again,” which topped the charts of Crystal Gayle, to mention two. In the late 1980s he posted five straight No. 1 singles and was widely known for his marriage to Rosanne Cash, the Man in Black’s talented daughter. Since then Crowell has had a respectable if unspectacular career, if measured by records sold. By any other measure, he is one of America’s songwriting icons, as he proved Saturday night.

Gruene Hall was built by town founder A.D. Gruene in 1878 and has only modestly changed since. The dance hall is legendary for its raucous concerts, dusty ceiling fans vaguely stirring the air as boots scoot on a battered wooden floor. There is no air-conditioning. The ceiling fans are woefully inadequate, leaving patrons at the mercy of whatever breeze wafts in from the Comal River through the screened windows. I have ineptly danced here to some fine bands, usually holding on to a longneck beer to give me balance.

This night folks sat in folding chairs on the dance floor, crowded into the benches and tables further back — or they made do with standing. Up on stage perched a table lamp like you would see in someone’s living room, sitting on a tall end table. Tonight, Rodney Crowell would perform solo, playing one of two acoustic guitars, and read from his just-published memoir of growing up in Jacinto City. It’s called “Chinaberry Sidewalks.” He had to wear sunglasses when reading because of the spotlight’s glare.

Since Gruene Hall has been around since Rutherford B. Hayes was president, it is possible this is not the first time someone has conducted a book reading there interspersed with belting songs, while the hall’s patrons sat quietly with none of the usual back-channel chatter and beer-bottle clinking of most concerts — even of the sit-down variety. But it probably hasn’t happened often. Several hundred folks listened as Crowell told of his parent’s legendary fights, one of which sent them both to the emergency room; of stupidly following the mosquito-fogging truck on his bicycle, a memory we East Texas transplants share; of being smitten in sixth grade with the beautiful girl who ignored him — and the disastrous results that followed when he crashed his bicycle into the rear panel of a teacher’s prized vintage vehicle.

Then Crowell, a skinny guy with curly gray locks and a face sporting some mileage, would sing a few songs, weaving together a narrative of his childhood, of loves won and lost, of battling personal demons — performed deftly with wit and grace. Two hours later, the journey ended. Crowell sauntered through the crowd, shaking hands and smiling. He was headed to the table set up by Book People to sign copies of his books in a corner near the bar.

A book-signing in Greune Hall. Wonder when that last occurred? And who was president?

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), February 3, 2011.

Remembering Monk Willis

2011-01-27T17:27:00.000-08:00

LONGVIEW, TEXAS — We came to remember Monk Willis on a cold January day, the First Presbyterian Church filled with friends and his extended family. Monk’s service was handled by four Presbyterian ministers and included eulogies from two federal judges who considered him a mentor. He planned the entire affair, I’m told, down to picking the hymns and coaching the distinguished jurists on what to say.

Achille Murat “Monk” Willis Jr. died at 94 on Jan. 14, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer in early August. Unlike most of those attending his funeral, we were friends for just a short time. We packed a pile of friendship into the 27 months we knew each other.

A retired surgeon — who was active in Republican politics and brought judicial candidates around to meet me at the sundry East Texas newspapers I ran over two decades — served as matchmaker. “There’s someone you need to meet,” he said. “He’s 92 and another damn liberal like you.”

At lunch that day, Monk regaled me with stories about running Lyndon Johnson’s political campaigns in East Texas, going to four national Democratic conventions, working in Washington D.C. as staff director for the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and what books he was reading. We became friends that day — eating lunch at least once a week, spending hours talking about politics, philosophy, history and even football. I even drove him to the tobacco store to buy cigarettes before he finally gave up smoking not long after turning 93.

Monk gave himself that nickname when he moved to Longview in 1946 to open an insurance business. He was the scion of a prominent Virginia family, product of exclusive private schools and held a master’s from Harvard Business School. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he decided that his new bride and he should make their own mark. They picked East Texas because of the pine trees and rolling hills, he said. But he feared nobody would be able to pronounce his given name of Murat, which sort-of rhymes with “hurrah.” He said his mother never forgave him for taking the moniker of Monk. But it stuck.

Monk read more than any human I’ve met. I’m quite certain Amazon.com is going to have a sluggish first quarter since his death. He bought books by the case, adding them to the stacks heaped in his study, since the shelves had long been filled, and sprawled across the dining-room table, more piles arrayed around his easy chair in the front living room. His tastes inclined to history and political analysis, though on occasion he would delve back into Greek mythology or philosophy. He subscribed to the New Yorker for more than 70 years, along with an armload of other magazines, from the New York Review of Books to Mother Jones and Texas Observer. An insomniac, he would read into the wee hours, then go online to read newspaper Web sites.

He would grow exasperated when I didn’t finish a book he loaned me quickly enough to suit him. “What in the world is taking you so long, Borders?” he’d growl with that Virginia drawl. Pointing out I had a day job only slightly mollified him.

Monk’s circle of friends included anyone who interested him, from the mechanic down the street to the wealthy, powerful and aging lions of Texas politics from the 1960s and 1970s. His connections got him appointed a regent at the University of North Texas for 18 years, under four different Texas governors. The main library at UNT is named after him. Nothing likely pleased this modest man —who never made much money but instead accumulated the wealth of knowledge, friends and good deeds performed — more than having a library named after him.

My father died two years ago this February. After his funeral, I received a card from Monk with a quotation I learned he often used to comfort the grieving. In his punctilious handwriting, he wrote: “All that we can know about those we have loved and lost is that they would wish us to remember them with a more intensified realization of their reality. What is essential does not die but clarifies. The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.”

Monk’s note ended: “I’m sorry we didn’t meet sooner, but let’s try to make up for it in the time I have left.” I believe we did our best to do so. Like so many folks whose lives he touched, I’m a better person for having known Achille Murat Willis Jr.

Thanks, Monk.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), January 27, 2011.

Despite Odds, Mom Keeps Trucking On

2011-01-19T18:18:00.000-08:00

My mom turns 81 in a few days — a fact that when mentioned to her brought a look of incredulity.

“Damn, I’m getting old,” she said. My mom can be salty — a trait she passed down to her three sons, with considerable assistance from our late father. He was a sailor in his youth so had an excuse, at least to his way of thinking.

This conversation took place as she was holed up in the cardiac unit of Good Shepherd Medical Center in Longview on New Year’s day. My mom has a litany of medical problems, including a heart that is wearing out. She lives in a nursing home in Longview that provides good care. Our plan is to move her to Central Texas as soon as we find a suitable place with a vacancy.

Four years ago, I became my parents’ primary caregiver when a medical emergency made it clear that they could no longer live on their own. Many of you middle-aged folks reading this also serve as parents of your parents — or if not yet, you likely will at some point. My parents went into an assisted-living facility near where I lived at the time. Most of their possessions were sold — furniture, car, the house. The bulk of their personal items — my dad’s artwork, dozens of boxes of photographs and knick-knacks — are in storage. Someday, when my mother is gone, the family will have the hard task of figuring out what to do with all that stuff.

My dad passed away two years ago next month. Since then, my mom — who spent nearly two decades caring for him after a botched medical procedure left him largely an invalid — has lived a tranquil if not terribly stimulating existence. Until the latest bout, she had not been hospitalized in nearly two years. We went out for lunch at the Cotton Patch every few weeks, where she invariably ate fried catfish and French fries — largely forbidden food for a diabetic, but what the heck. You gotta live it up occasionally.

We headed for lunch on Christmas Eve. It became clear she wasn’t feeling well. Usually, she can leave without toting her oxygen bottle but not this time. The short jaunt from the car to the front door required stopping a couple times. A few days later someone from the nursing home called to announce my mom was going to the emergency room because she was having trouble breathing.

Within a few days, her condition appeared dire. The cardiologist told my brother he was concerned that she would not recover. When I visited, she was barely able to talk, curled up in the fetal position. I began to mentally prepare myself that her time had come, called my daughters, prayed for either a recovery or a painless passage into eternity. My mom has been adamant about not being placed on life support. All the proper papers are on file.

Since I was back in Central Texas, my fiancé paid a visit later that day and called. “Your mom looks fine to me,” she said. “She’s talking my ear off about how rambunctious a kid you were, telling jokes and watching Court TV. I don’t think she’s going anywhere.”

Three days later I drove back to East Texas again to check on her. We walked in her hospital room to discover a teenage boy in what had been her bed, flanked by a glaring mother wondering who these intruders were. I backed out and headed to the nurse’s station to discover my mom had been discharged the day before. Someone forgot to call me.

We drove to the nursing home to find my mom back in street clothes, propped in her recliner and watching an NFL playoff game. Once again she had bounced back. I’ve watched my mother receive the Last Rites from a priest three times during the past 15 years. It’s become a whistling-past-the-graveyard joke in our family, that the surest way to ensure her recovery is to call in the priest to perform that ceremony. As we all like to say, she is a tough old bird.

I know the outcome will be different someday. But for now, she’s back home watching Court TV and football. And I’m thrilled to be able to wish her a Happy Birthday, against all odds.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), January 20, 2011

Facebook Finally Discovers Cedar Park

2011-01-13T18:40:00.000-08:00

Not long after moving here I went to my Facebook page to change the name of the town where I hailed from Junction City, Kansas to Cedar Park. I am thrilled to be back in Texas and wanted my “friends” on Facebook to know of my return.

I’m not a heavy user of the social networking site, but it’s a great way to keep tabs on family and friends. I am fascinated by the amount of time some folks spend letting others know arcane details from their everyday lives, such as:

• Just went to Starbucks.
• Going to bed now. Long day.
• Had a great pizza for lunch.
• Just filed a paternity suit against my ex-boyfriend.

OK, kidding about the last item. At least it has not been on my Facebook page by any of my 151 friends.

A few statistics gleaned from the site’s media page. There are 500 million active users of Facebook in the world, 70 percent of whom live outside the United States. There are 151.7 million users in this country. That includes individuals, businesses, and organizations, etc.

Our newspaper, for example, regularly sends breaking-news updates on hillcountrynews.com via Facebook to our 300-plus friends — a number growing each week. More than two million websites are similarly linked to Facebook. Hey, the price is right, as in free.

You ought to sign up by “liking” us on your Facebook page. Sorry, couldn’t resist the plug.

There are 308 million people in the United States, according to the latest census. So even if half of American Facebook users are not actual people but instead are businesses and such, that would still mean one out of every four folks in this country uses Facebook. No wonder Mark Zuckerberg was Time’s Person of the Year.

Until Dec. 30, however, Facebook apparently did not know Cedar Park existed. I realized that when I tried to change locations. I typed in Cedar Park, Texas and it would disappear from the screen after offering choices of other towns with “Cedar” in their name. After about a dozen attempts, I gave up and typed in Austin instead.

This offended my commitment to accuracy. I don’t really live in Austin. I really do live in Cedar Park. The first thing I see when I walk out my front door each morning to walk in the dark is one of the city’s water towers, the words “Cedar Park” faintly visible in the starlight. But I forgot about it until someone mentioned on Facebook to my oldest daughter, also a resident of this town, that she was frustrated the site wouldn’t let her list Cedar Park as where she lived.

I put a bug in editor Johnny Johnson’s ear. Let’s find out what Facebook has against Cedar Park. After all, it allows users to list Leander as where they live. Is this yet another example of the alleged lack of neighborliness between the two cities that Leander Mayor Cowman and other council members alluded to at the December meeting? Could there be some skullduggery going on here, a deliberate attempt to keep Cedar Park from being the place of residence for folks using the most popular social networking site in the world?

Likely not. Still, I thought we could have some fun with this, call Cedar Park’s city manager and get a reaction, maybe even involve the chamber folks in expressing their outrage over Facebook’s dissing of the city.

Johnny e-mailed Facebook on Dec. 30. Approximately 20 minutes later, a city spokeswoman called to say she didn’t understand our question —she was able to put in Cedar Park as where she lived with no problem. Whoever got Johnny’s e-mail at Facebook fixed the problem in minutes.

So, you Cedar Park Facebook users have us to thank. At least that’s my story. You can now list CP as where you live and not have to choose Austin, or Round Rock, or Pflugerville as an alternative. That will leave all of us more time for the important items, like telling our friends on the site what television show we plan to watch tonight.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), January 13, 2011.

Revisiting a Favorite Haunt

2011-01-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

I should have mentioned this earlier so that those interested could have made it to the photography exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center at UT. But I forgot about getting there myself until it nearly was too late, and now it is.

The HRC is one of my favorite haunts in Austin. I spent hours as a graduate student in photojournalism at UT three decades ago, doing grunt work in the bowels of this vast repository. As a teaching assistant, I helped catalogue photographs from the morgue of the New York Journal-American, a dead newspaper whose 3 million photographs are part of the HRC’s holdings. There were black-and-white photos of murder scenes, tens of thousand of mug shots, grip-and-grin check-passing photos — a visual history of that city from the 1930s through the mid-1960s.

The exhibit, “Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection,” highlighted one of the HRC’s most famous acquisitions and provided a rare glimpse of photographs from the media’s early history — including the first photograph taken by Joseph Nièpce in 1826. It is a courtyard scene in a small French village. The exposure took eight hours. The photograph is barely visible from its pewter surface when one views it from an angle. Its value, of course, is that it is the first photograph.

I wandered the exhibit, hung throughout several spaces. Several photographs are so rare and sensitive to light that they hung draped with a velvet cloth that one lifted in order to view the image. Some of the stars of the show included Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson — better known as Lewis Carroll, author of “Alice in Wonderland.” Dodgson was an avid photographer. Down the wall is a study by Eadweard Muybridge of a nude man swinging a baseball bat in 1887. Muybridge used photography to study motion and eventually proved through multiple photographs shot in time sequence that at some point when a horse gallops all four hooves are in the air. Leland Stanford, the namesake of the famed California university, paid him to prove it. Stanford, a former governor, owned horses. I figure he was trying to win a bar bet.

Since I was already there, I took a quick look at the Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed on a press. The University’s copy is one of just five complete copies in this country. UT bought it in 1978. I never tire of looking at this magnificent piece of art and history, printed more than 550 years ago. Johann Gutenberg launched the information revolution with his press. I still love to hear a press starting up, ink flying on to paper using essentially the same principle.

Other exhibits in recent years that have drawn me to the HRC include one drawn from the papers of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story and brought down a president. Their efforts and subsequent fame — especially from the movie, “All the President’s Men” — spurred an entire generation of now-middle aged folks to enter journalism, including me. Of course, with a bachelor’s in philosophy, English and history I was unqualified for anything else.

The manuscript to “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac, typed on a continuous scroll of paper and stretching 120 feet, was the centerpiece of “On the Road With the Beats,” a 2008 exhibit. As the HRC’s website notes, the end of the scroll — and thus Kerouac’s original ending for the book — is missing. Kerouac blamed a cocker spaniel owned by a friend for the missing pages. The dog indeed ate his homework.

The next exhibit, “Culture Unbound — Collecting in the Twenty-First Century,” starts on Feb. 1 and runs through the end of July, showcasing material from some of the country’s finest contemporary writers. A companion exhibit celebrates the life of playwright Tennessee Williams.

Visiting the HRC, which is just north of Dobie Mall on Guadalupe, only costs the gasoline required to get there. Donations are appreciated but no admission is charged. There are darned few things that are still free these days. (Getting one’s eyeglasses adjusted at an optometrist’s office comes to mind.) Keep the HRC on your list if looking for a pleasant few hours soaking up some culture. Park either in the Blanton Museum’s parking garage for a few bucks, or in the Bob Bullock State History Museum’s lot for free and get a bit of exercise hiking up the hill. It’s worth the trip.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), January 6, 2011.

Damn That Autocorrect!

2010-12-29T09:13:00.000-08:00

Nearly everyone in my family uses an iPhone. So when I gathered with family at Christmas, we all were being nerds, checking our iPhones for text messages, e-mails, playing games, etc.

Well, I wasn’t playing games, but I am guilty of incessantly checking for e-mails and reading stories from various newspaper websites when I should be paying attention to an actual human being sitting across the table. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to soften my addiction to the digital information overload.

Anyway, over brunch at Kerby Lane on the outskirts of Cedar Park recently, all four of us were playing with our iPhones, which is when the younger folks told me about a couple of websites devoted to the goofy — and often profane — messages that result from not paying attention to the iPhone’s autocorrect feature when text-messaging. As always, I thought, “Dang, wish I had thought of that.” Story of my life.

I know there are some folks out there reading this who don’t text message. Good for you, seriously. The reality is that for people under, say, 35, this is preferred to actually talking on a phone or e-mailing. I have learned that I am far more likely to get a response from one of my adult daughers if I TM them. If I leave a voice mail or e-mail, it could be days before they respond.

For those who barely know what an iPhone is, yet alone own one, it is a mini-computer/phone that allows you to do lots of cool stuff. This is no endorsement of Apple’s products. That will require a cash payment that is to date not forthcoming. I’m not holding my breath. Here’s the deal. When you type a text message on an iPhone, it suggests words when the software thinks you have misspelled something. If you are typing quickly, the suggestion takes the place of what you have typed, and you quickly could have sent a message that contains words and phrases utterly unintended.

This is not a problem for geezers like me, who attempt to ensure whatever we write is as grammatically correct as possible. I self-edit everything, even TMs. Not to say I don’t mess up, but it’s not from a lack of effort. Turns out, lots of folks who TM on an iPhone don’t bother to see what autocorrect has done to their messages before they hit the “send” tab. The results are hilarious.

Parental Discretion Note: These sites contain scads of adult language, either because of the inadvertent conversions by autocorrect, or the irritated reactions from the message senders. I had to work at finding family friendly messages to post below. Way I figure, life is funny and at times a bit profane, though I draw the line as usual at putting anything in print that my mom would find offensive. Or your mom, for that matter. But here are several samples of some funny auto-correctiveness:

• Are you feeling OK?
No just feel sick to my stomach today.
Take some ammonium
Immodium*
Lol
Lol. Damn autocorrect. You prob think I’m trying to poison you.
I was gonna say I’m not drinking windex

• Only time will tell if we incested wisely.
I mean invested oooops lol
Haha what a typo gonna face book that

• I’m getting my loin charged.
Loon charge
OIL CHANGED!

• Grandpa bought me a corndog from the devil.
From the devil?
Wow…deli haha
Lol…nice

• Can you come over tonight?
I can’t. I have to feed my hostages.
*grandparents. Jeez
Wow, sorry I asked. Haha
You can come eat if you want. I’m cooking ham. Promise I won’t take you hostage

• Momma, I have baked pot if you haven’t eaten.

• I just wanted to say: I love you.
Oh, babe. I love you too. So much.
If I could, I’d buy you a casket.
Gah! A castle! Damn auto correct. Way to ruin a moment.
I definitely do not want you in a casket.
Hello?

• Are you on your way?
Yep! I’ll be home in about 15 mins with the LSD!
Aaaah! Kids! Not LSD!
That would have made for an interesting night, babe.

As Art Linkletter used to say, “Kids say the darndest things.” Especially if they’re TMing.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), December 30, 2010.

Wishing You a Merry Christmas

2010-12-22T16:44:00.000-08:00

My favorite Christmas display this season isn’t found in any of the homes and yards bedecked across the neighborhoods here, though there are many lovely sights. I am a sucker for big ol’ Texas-sized Christmas light displays.

These decorations are on a half-dozen or so scraggly cedar trees out Farm Road 1431 a few miles north of town, on the left. First there were just one or two trees on the shoulder decorated in bright garland — red, green and silver. Then a few more joined the crowd, then a couple more, so now at least a dozen cedars wave Merry Christmas to vehicles passing along that busy highway. I salute the elves responsible.

Memories of Christmases past, stories I’ve told before:

There was a Christmas tree lot in Nacogdoches I passed each day on the way to work in December 2001, the first Christmas after 9/11. About 50 trees perched on an asphalt lot, each nailed to a wooden cross of one-by-fours. Each day I would make a silent bet to myself how many trees would be standing after the winter wind blew through. Each morning the owners would trudge out from their well-used motor home to right the fallen trees.

One day, just one tree was standing. I silently named it the hero tree. I would have bought it except I already had a tree. That season, the Elton John song, “I’m Still Standing,” kept running through my head as I passed that lot — with the lone tree still standing. We were knocked down, as I wrote back then, but we got back up. We are still standing still.

Christmas afternoon of 1984 I headed to town, which was San Augustine, a tiny place in Deep East Texas where I ran a weekly for five years.The presents were opened, lunch eaten, wife and children napping, so I decided to see what was going on around the square. As usual, Sheriff Nathan Tindall was present, meaty hands perched on his ample belly. Christmas was just another workday for him. I walked in, and he said, “C’mon, let’s go. We need to check on somebody.”

We headed down one red-dirt road, then another, finally arriving at a shack in the middle of the woods. A gap-toothed man came to the door, which was open despite the bitter cold. Tattered plastic flapped from the windows. The cracks between the boards were wide enough to slip your fingers through.

The old man's face was blackened from hovering over a sooty wood stove. He was trying to warm a cup of frozen coffee, brown sludge in a dirty cup. The man didn't seem to be terribly unhappy about his fate this Christmas afternoon. Clearly he needed help.

The sheriff hauled out a kerosene heater from the patrol car’s trunk that a hardware store owner had donated. He lit it, and we left. I asked why the man didn't check into a nursing home or something. He didn't want to, the sheriff said. Several folks had tried to get him to, and he fought them tooth and nail.

I took the old man’s photograph as he stood out on the porch, talking to the sheriff, a skinny dog watching the exchange. The photo still hangs in my office, a constant reminder. The old man died a year or two later. They found him frozen to death in that shotgun shack.

My earliest memory of Christmas is from a half-century ago. We always spent Christmas Eve at my maternal grandparents’ house outside of Concord, N.H. The tiny house was filled with cousins bedded down most everywhere. I was lying in my grandparents’ bed, looking out the window, which was narrow and near the ceiling, so you could see the stars if you were on your back looking up.

I saw Santa Claus streaking across the sky and realized I had better get to sleep, or the old man might skip this house. My cousins would really be upset with me. Sure enough, in front of the fireplace the next morning were gifts from St. Nicklaus. The plate of cookies held only crumbs. The carrots for the reindeer were gone.

I know. I didn’t really see Santa Claus. Probably it was an airplane headed to Boston, or perhaps a meteor shower. But it’s a powerful childhood memory that has stuck with me for a very long time.

Here's hoping you make some memories this holiday season. Merry Christmas to all of you, and God Bless.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas). December 23, 2010.

Another Granddog Arrives

2010-12-16T15:34:00.000-08:00

The third granddog unexpectedly arrived last weekend while I was peddling books at my hometown bookstore in Longview. Barron’s hosts book-signing events for area authors a few times each year. Its owners, Jim and Julia Barron, have been in business since 1972. I perused the shelves of their original Golden Hour Book Store on High Street while in high school. Now located across from the mall in a strip center, in order to keep selling books they now sell all sorts of stuff — fancy china and glassware, jewelry, cool kitchen gadgets. They even run a successful café in the store that is quite popular. Jim and Julia are two of my favorite hometown folks. They work hard, love books, and are kind to writers.

I was peddling my second collection of columns alongside five other authors. Since this is my hometown, and I wrote for the paper for more than 15 years, Barron’s is one of the better venues to unload some copies before Christmas. (Note from the Shameless Commerce Division: “The Loblolly Chronicles” is available from my Web site — garyborders.com — on Amazon.com, or from Book People. Or at Barron’s, of course, if you’re in East Texas.)

After a time my Beautiful Mystery Companion and her daughter, the 13-year-old Abster, arrived for moral support. They disappeared after a little while. I would like to say I was so busy signing copies that I didn’t notice their absence, but I’m not Stephen King. Or even Rick Perry. He has better hair. Actually, they both do. Every 10 minutes or so someone would show up and buy a copy, for which I was grateful. But I had plenty of time to wonder where my peeps had gone, until they knocked on the window and motioned for me to come outside.

They were accompanied by a smiling woman and a ball of fur wrapped in Abbie’s arms. My newest granddog, a poodle-Yorkie-mix rescue puppy, had arrived from the pet store down the sidewalk. I was being pressed for approval, allegedly because of my vast experience with dogs. The smiling woman, who volunteers much of her time housing abandoned dogs until homes can be found — what my BMC rightly calls God’s work — learned I once was a dogcatcher.

“Animal control officer,” she swiftly said in correction. I knew then she was a fellow alum. I spent six months in Nacogdoches in college driving a smelly van, wearing a blue uniform with a cheap badge — no weapon — and looking for stray animals. It is a necessary job, but I hated it. My friends and relatives weren’t happy with me having the job, because I became a dognapper. By the time I landed a job at the newspaper, I owned five dogs and had foisted dogs on most of my friends. Even my mom, who said she couldn’t stand dogs, ended up with a cocker spaniel named Susie. Whatever it took to keep them from the needle.

So what to do? I was staring into the brown eyes of a an adorable fluff-ball, trembling slightly but calm in Abbie’s arms. “Go for it,” I said. “This puppy looks like a keeper.”

Of course, it was easy for me to say this, since it’s a granddog who lives five hours east of here. But someday that dog will — with luck and good fortune — be part of my household as well, along with the two-legged folks. My brother, who accompanied me on this trip back home, and I did what we could to provide dog advice before returning to Central Texas.

There have been some mishaps, being a seven-week-old puppy. The pooch, tentatively named Rosie — which allows me to call her Rosalita after the Springsteen song — is not a fan of American history. I drew that conclusion not long after we left to trek back and got a text message that the puppy had peed on Abbie’s history final study guide. Maybe science is more to Rosie’s liking, I suggested.

Expect some sleep-deprived nights, I warned. But lots of love will follow. There’s likely no purer love than a dog for a child. So I’m glad to be a dog-father once again.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), December 16, 2010.

Hanging Christmas Lights, Working Up a Sweat

2010-12-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

I spent the Monday night after Thanksgiving stringing up a few modest strands of Christmas lights around the front door and porch. Sweat was pouring off my scalp and into my eyes. It’s great to be back in Texas where the Yuletide season can mean wearing shorts and flip-flops one day — and the next bundled up after a blue norther howls through.

Living in Central Texas means winter is just a concept — an event we briefly encounter before it is once again 70 degrees and T-shirt weather. I never want to live anywhere that playing golf in December or January isn’t at least a possibility —though I rarely play anymore.

For the first time, I bought an artificial Christmas tree. Upon arriving in mid-October I leased a house with carpet because that was the lone downside to the place. I am not a fan of carpet and especially not of vacuuming Douglas Fir needles out of its pile for the next month. So, though my oldest daughter voiced her objections that I was rebelling against family tradition, I went to the Big Orange Box Store when the post-Thanksgiving sale hit and bought a tree in a box. Made in China, of course.

If it had not been for a broken light bulb that kept one strand of lights from working and took 10 minutes to discover and replace, the tree would have been up and working in at most five minutes. In years past it has taken me five times longer than that just to get a natural tree upright in the stand. The nadir in my tree-mounting career came a quarter-century or so ago. This was before smart people went to work designing tree stands that actually worked. Remember those metal, three-prong stands that were barely stable before one put a tree inside? That’s what I was using on the day I hammered the stand through the carpet and into the wooden floor with three shiny #10 nails.

I ended up buying new carpet after Christmas.

The Tree in a Box, lights already interwoven among the branches, is a big hit, though I was a bit annoyed that it shed artificial needles while putting the three pieces together. But that only happened once. At least I don’t have to worry about keeping the stand filled with water.

The ease with which I was able to dispatch with Christmas decorating has left time for my other December pastime — mowing my backyard. Besides carpet, the other minor drawback to this house, which I immediately noticed, was that the backyard had been planted in rye grass. The previous tenant owned large dogs whose ramblings left large bare patches, which the landlord feared would wash out in the winter rains — if they ever arrive.

So he had rye grass planted and set the sprinkler system to come on every few days. In the spring he promises to re-sod the backyard. In the meantime, since I’m a conscientious tenant, I both pay the water bill and mow the rye grass — whether it’s 40 degrees or pushing 80. This conjures up memories of the time I seeded a half-acre yard in San Augustine with rye grass, figuring it would look pretty in the winter — as indeed it did. But after realizing I could actually witness the grass growing as I sat on the porch drinking a beer in January — having just finished mowing — I bought a couple of cows.

That house was in the country on six acres, so this was an option not available to me in this Cedar Park subdivision. I checked; no goats allowed, either. Heck, you can’t even have chickens! When it comes time to buy a place, I’ll have to find somewhere the rules are a bit looser.

I’m not complaining, honest, though mowing while wearing a sweatshirt after the cold front blew through is, well, not a common Central Texas experience. The rye grass looks just lovely after being mowed. Thank goodness the front yard didn’t need the rye grass treatment. The backyard can be ignored to just short of requiring a hay baler, since nobody can see it. Thus the homeowners association hasn’t come calling.

Besides, it sure beats shoveling snow, which is what soon awaited me if I had stayed in Kansas. I prefer mowing any day.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), December 9, 2010

Finding Sanctuary in the Woods of Oklahoma

2010-12-03T10:58:00.000-08:00

Come away to a secret place and stay for a while.
— Mark 6:31

HOCHATOWN, OKLA. — That quotation from the Gospel of Mark was on a kitschy sign titled "Sanctuary." It was on the end table in the living room of the log cabin where my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I retreated the weekend after Thanksgiving. The sign is hokey though the message certainly isn’t. I discover that, at least, the sign is made out of recycled newsprint that has been pressed into a wood product. I’m always happy to see newspapers recycled into something other than fishwrap. Plus, the sign is made in the USA. I was shocked to not spot the ubiquitous "Made in China" label on the back. Nope, the sticker says the sign was made in Siloam Springs, Arkansas — not that far from where we're staying. Something kitschy made in America; imagine that.

Hochatown skirts the Ouachita National Forest, bordering Beavers Bend State Park in southeastern Oklahoma, a few miles from the Arkansas line and maybe 30 miles north of the Red River. With Broken Bow Lake next door and whitewater streams abounding, it is a popular outdoor recreation spot — especially if you live in East Texas, as my BMC does. In just two hours we can be hiking trails in hilly terrain while watching fly fishermen in hip waders cast their luck into the current. Log cabins for rent are scattered throughout the area. We're holed up in one on this holiday weekend, enjoying a respite from our busy lives, asphalt and work.

As I write this, the only sound besides my finger bouncing off the iPad is the hissing of the gas logs in the fireplace. It got close to freezing last night, so even the birds seem to be sleeping in this morning. But it promises to be a lovely day for hiking, admiring the foliage, which is in its last week or so of showing off, maybe snapping a few photographs.

Both of us crave a few days of solitude at least a few times a year, with no Internet access or newspapers, just narrow hiking trails and God’s beauty to wrap around ourselves for too brief a time. A wraparound porch with ceiling fans and rocking chairs are also appreciated. We walk, read, nap, watch movies at night in the glow of the fireplace, eat simple fare, mainly Thanksgiving leftovers.

I mentioned hiking. Our favorite spot here is the Beaver Lodge Trail because it parallels fast-flowing Beaver Creek, which provides a lovely musical background as the water flows over the rocks. Surprisingly, Oklahoma state parks don’t charge anything for day use, though campers pay a modest fee. Perhaps as a result, the state has a laissez-faire attitude about hiking its trails, which aren’t terribly well-marked. At least the Beaver Lodge Trail isn’t. The brochure warns that it is challenging. It doesn’t mention that it wouldn’t take much of a misstep to tumble a couple hundred feet down a steep, rocky hill with one’s descent only halted by either a tree or a boulder before one ended up in the icy water of Beaver Creek.

That is such a refreshing attitude. I don’t know about you, but that whole nanny state approach gets old sometimes. I tire of being warned of the dangers of, well, just about everything from what we eat to standing on the top rung of a stepladder. Out here in Hochatown, we’re walking on a narrow rocky trail that at several points forces one to concentrate on each step one takes — or face the consequences. That does tend to clear the mind of extraneous thoughts.

The area is aptly named after beavers — the park, creek and trail. We pass several fresh examples of the buck-toothed creatures’ handiwork, hardwood trees five or six inches in diameter felled by persistence. Most places curse beavers for the havoc they wreak. Here, they have been turned into part of the tourist industry, which is what fuels this part of the state, where there is little industry or much else to bring in money.

I kept thinking about the sign in the cabin. Sanctuary: A secret place to stay for a while. We all need that from time to time. For a brief time, we found ours.

Originally published in the Hill Country News, (Cedar Park, Texas) December 2, 2010

There is Plenty For Which to be Thankful

2010-11-24T17:06:00.000-08:00

Suddenly it is Thanksgiving. How did that happen? It seems like yesterday we were dressing up in our Easter finest. The day before that I was perched on a ladder, taking down the Christmas lights and making a set of largely unfilled New Year's resolutions. Months fly by now. Middle-aged folks like me look up to find their middle daughter reminding you that she will turn 30 next year.

Whoa. Goose, as I nicknamed her as an infant, will hit three-oh next summer. I am officially and inexorably on the path to geezerdom. There are no grandchildren, nor none on the horizon, just a couple of granddogs whose company I enjoy. No hurry on the grandbaby gig, girls. I’m just sayin’ — as the young folks are fond of uttering.

It has been a topsy-turvy year. I joined many of you in the jobless ranks in late winter, for the first time in more than three decades. Luckily, that didn't last long. Soon I was headed to Kansas to run a family owned small-newspaper operation there. But being away from loved ones proved wrenching, so I jumped at the chance to come back to Texas. For that, I am truly thankful this season, indeed every day.

Even in the midst of my worries over jobs, separation from loved ones, what the future holds, all those niggles that awake me in the night, I have always held strong to a faith that things eventually turn out. Maybe they don’t turn out quite as we hoped or even prayed for, but even the thorniest of life’s calamities have a way of working themselves out. At least they have so far. Thus I remain truly thankful for the many blessings in my life, both large and small.

Here are just a few of the things for which I’m thankful. I hope you have a list as well, and that you share it with those you love — if not on Thanksgiving Day, then soon. Learning the art of being truly grateful for small acts of grace and beauty is a lesson hard-earned and worth holding onto, because it will help you get through those days when things seem to be falling apart. And we all have those days.

• Watching the sun rise over the roofline of the elementary school where my oldest daughter teaches, as I walk just a few blocks from the house I have leased. Lately, the awakening sky has put on quite a light show, iridescent streaks of orange and purple. I never imagined a few short months ago that I would end up working and living minutes away from family and friends.

I looked on my iPhone the other day to check the weather forecast for Kansas, from whence I escaped just more than a month ago. The low temperature today is predicted to be 14 degrees. That was a close shave. As one Texas friend put it upon learning I was returning, “Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again, buster,” by trying to leave the state. I won’t.

• Still being blessed with great health at the double-nickel of years. I work at it with daily exercise and a fairly healthy diet, but I know much of it comes down to chance, or whatever one wishes to call it. I know, as we all do, that good health doesn’t last forever. But I’m deeply grateful for being able to jump up at 6 a.m. and walk three miles, hop on the Bow-Flex, and feel great with minimal aches and pains.

• Books and magazines, the vast universe that they open up to us. That T-shirt one sees in Book People in Austin and other bookstores — “So Many Books, So Little Time” — would not be a bad epitaph to put on the park bench I have instructed my Beautiful Mystery Companion to buy a plaque upon at Lady Bird Lake upon my passing. That’s as close to a tombstone as I want, with my ashes scattered to the winds along the shore. (That is probably illegal, so y’all watch out for the law.)

• Speaking of my BMC, I’m always thankful she decided to e-mail me nearly three years ago, after reading a column I wrote in another newspaper about unpacking my books. She suggested we have coffee because she thought we might become friends. That is my favorite column. Someday soon, we’ll be married.

Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you count your blessings, hold on to your friends and family, and extend a hand to someone less fortunate. See you next week.

Originally published in the Hill Country News, (Cedar Park, Texas), November 25, 2010

Bleeding Burnt Orange During A Rough Season

2010-11-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

I bleed burnt orange and have since James Street led the Texas Longhorns to the 1969 national football championships, as well as pitching two no-hitters for the baseball team. Street graduated from Longview High School — as I did, though he was seven years ahead of me. He spoke at an assembly at Foster Junior High in Longview when I was in the ninth grade, after the Horns beat Arkansas 15-14 to take the Southwest Conference title and then beat Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl. I was hooked after hearing him speak and have been since.

In the ensuing decades, I managed to get a master’s degree in journalism from The University. My middle brother received his degree there, as did my two older daughters. In the course of researching a book I wrote a few years ago, I spent hundreds of hours on campus doing research at the Center for American History and in the Perry Castañeda library. I love walking around that campus and do so every chance I get. I buy tickets to at least one football game each season and rarely miss watching the rest on television when possible.

As it turned out, the game I picked this year was last Saturday night’s against Oklahoma State. Worse, I bought the tickets a couple months ago when I learned I was coming back to Texas and escaping Kansas before snowfall hit. So I paid premium prices for a quartet of tickets. Texas was ranked fourth in the nation at the time, undefeated at 3-0. I am embarrassed to admit how much I spent for the tickets, compared to what they’re selling for these days.

But you know what? I’m really not particularly upset the Horns are having a lousy season. We fans are long overdue a dose of humility. The success of this team in the Mack Brown era since 1997 has led most of us to expect Texas to vie for the national championship every year. After all, until this year the team has appeared in two national title game in 13 years and come close a number of times. Until this year, Brown had led the Horns to at least nine wins in each season and completed six seasons with 11 or more victories. That’s pretty darned impressive.

This has led to a sense of entitlement that borders on arrogance. I read blogs and have heard folks in the stands talking about players in ways that is just cruel. These are kids, for goodness’ sakes. They’re big kids, to be sure, playing in a first-class program in which they are treated like royalty. But many are still as young as 18. Those of us who have raised children of that age know how immature they often still are.

I don’t have as much sympathy for the coaches. They make a boatload of money — a ridiculous amount, in fact. Mack Brown now makes $5.1 million a year, which might end up being about a million bucks or more per victory this season. Defensive coordinator and heir-apparent Will Muschamp pulls in $900,000 annually. Sheesh. That seems excessive even for a program that makes a healthy profit.

All that aside, I still had a good time last Saturday night, watching the pageantry of a big-time college football game, singing the “Eyes of Texas,” and — for a short while — holding out hope that Texas might actually beat OSU. That hope was gone by halftime. Texas simply doesn’t have a very good football team this year. But the sun will still rise in the east tomorrow, and the world will keep spinning on its axis. I have never lost any sleep over a football game.

The highlight of the night was halftime, when the Show Band of the Southwest performed three John Philip Sousa marches to honor our veterans — a number of whom were present and recognized.

As my old buddy, the late Sam Malone — a hard-drinking country editor who kept a bottle of whiskey in the desk drawer and a shotgun in the corner — used to say when the home team got beat badly, “Well, at least we won the halftime show.”
Even the best football programs have bad years, and this is ours. Hope we don’t make a habit of it.

Originally published in the Hill Country News, Cedar Park, Texas, November 18, 2010.

Beware of Folks Seeking Money Via E-Mail

2010-11-13T21:03:00.000-08:00

I received an e-mail a few weeks ago from a former newspaper colleague with whom I’ve corresponded a few times in the past year. I haven’t laid eyes upon him in probably a quarter-century. It went:

I'm writing this with tears in my eyes. I came down here to London, United Kingdom for a short vacation, unfortunately we were robbed at the park of the hotel where we stayed, worse of it was that our bags, cash, credit cards and cell phone were stolen of us at GUN POINT, it's such a crazy experience for us.

We need help flying back home and the authorities are not being 100% supportive but the good thing is that we still have our passports but don't have enough money to get our flight tickets back home and pay for the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave. I'm just gonna have to plead with you to lend me some funds right now, i'll pay back as soon as I get home. We need to sort the hotel bills and get on the next available flight home.

Forgive the run-on sentences and typos. I cut-and-pasted this straight from the e-mail box. Having been the recipient of my share of missives informing me I won $18 million in the Nigerian lottery and could claim the prize if I would just provide my bank account number — and mail a $3,000 check for “handling” to the Deputy Ambassador of Lagos at a post office box in Toronto — I was naturally suspicious.

For one thing, my former colleague would never write a sentence such as the second one. It is actually four sentences connected by commas, a double run-on sentence, if you will. Even if he had been robbed and was destitute, his knowledge of proper grammar hadn’t been stolen. We old-timers have our standards. I won’t knowingly even send a text message with improper punctuation.

Second, if my colleague needed money to get home from London I surely would be way down the list of people he would hit up for a loan. As I said, I haven’t seen the fellow since Reagan was president.

Last, my friend provided no way to contact him except by hitting the “reply” button on my e-mail account — no phone number or where he was staying. Naturally I was loath to hit reply, worried what type of computer sorcery I might be setting loose. Instead I found an older e-mail from my colleague and typed in that address to e-mail him. I told him I figured this was a scam but added the caveat that if he truly needed money to get home I would do what I could.

He replied quickly that many of his old colleagues had gotten the same bogus e-mail. The best thing about it, he said, was that he heard from folks with whom he had lost contact. The worst thing, and I wonder if he has figured this out yet, is his e-mail account has been hacked, because it came from his exact e-mail address.

I cut-and-pasted the original message into Google’s search window. Up popped hundreds of examples of the same scam played on other folks. A number of news articles have appeared both here and in the UK about the scam. The United States embassy in London advises folks to not send money to anyone claiming to be one’s friend in distress. It further points out that any American citizen in London, for example, can go to the embassy for help. No American citizen is ever turned away.

It is upsetting to think folks actually fall for this ploy, boneheaded as it sounds. What most often happens is that people whose accounts are hacked — these are usually Web-based accounts, such as Yahoo or G-mail — often waste hours having to recover their accounts by setting new passwords, talking to tech support, etc. Often, from what I read, they have to get a completely new account.

My fiancé, aka my Beautiful Mystery Companion, and I were talking about hackers the other day. They spend untold hours writing viruses to bollix computer systems for no discernible reason than to do so. Imagine if they used that energy to do good deeds, my BMC said. The world would be a better place.

Probably not going happen, I replied. Like Springsteen sings, “I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.”

I wish it wasn’t so.

Originally published in the Hill Country News, Cedar Park, Texas, November 11, 2010.

Driving The Box Truck to Buda

2010-11-06T06:17:00.000-07:00

The Friday before the election I spent a half-day driving the battered box truck from our Cedar Park office to the company printing plant in Taylor, then down to Buda. We had a commercial printing job that needed to head south — to be trimmed and collated, and our regular driver was out of pocket. We have a small staff. I was the only one available. Besides, it was a lovely autumn day for a drive, especially since the toll road is open.

This trip would not have held any allure before the opening of Texas 130, which takes motorists from north of Georgetown and neatly deposits them at Cabelas in Buda. Eventually it will end further south, in Seguin. Of course, it costs money. On this afternoon, I wasn’t paying, the toll being recorded electronically by the TexTag on the windshield of this bug-spattered Mitsubishi.

Before, driving to Buda from Cedar Park via Taylor would have been a nightmarish trip down I-35 through Austin, a highway most of us have learned to avoid traveling through the city whenever possible. It would not have been possible to avoid before the toll road when traveling to Buda from Taylor. I suppose I would have tried going down MoPac and cutting across or some other alternative.

The toll road turned this into a pleasant drive — stress-free, windows down, driving the speed limit, the only downside being that this truck will rattle the fillings from one’s teeth. After 120 miles on this trip, I was sorely in need of a masseuse and possibly a neck cracking from a chiropractor.

No matter. I enjoyed traveling a sparsely traveled road thus far. It reminds me of when MoPac first opened, back when I was in graduate school at UT in the early 1980s. Man, I would get on that vast expanse of pavement in my 1974 Austin Healy and feel as if I had the road to myself — because I did. Most everyone else was still stuck on I-35, either out of habit or because they were skeptical this route would be faster.

I arrived in downtown Buda past lunchtime, my stomach growling but with no time to revisit Casa Alde, one of my favorite Mexican restaurants. Along Main Street there were more political signs packed into a few blocks than I have ever seen. Folks were handing out leaflets on this last day of early voting. I’ve read there have been some hot races in Hays County.

Glad to see the two-party system is still alive in some parts of Central Texas, which leads to one of my biennial rants. Why in the world do we require county commissioners, county judges, and other local elected officials to run under party labels? It’s silly. When choosing someone to represent a given precinct, for example, mainly you’re trying to find a person who won’t steal, has some common sense, cares about helping folks and has a sense of humor. I could care less whether that person is a Republican or Democrat, at the local level.

OK, I’ll step off the soapbox now.

The drive down the toll road reminded me of my several trips to and from Kansas, during my five-month stint working there. I never got a K-Tag. Fact is, I never changed my driver’s license or plates. Kansas and Oklahoma have hundreds of miles of toll roads, which means I would set off on each trip with a couple of rolls of quarters. My happiest trip was the one I made about three weeks ago. I knew, as my pile of quarters grew smaller, that I was that much closer to being home.

I took in the Texas countryside as I drove to Buda and back, watched firefighters battle a grass fire alongside the toll road, enjoyed the distant view of the Austin skyline about halfway down the highway. I didn’t expect to spend half of Friday driving a beat-up box truck to Buda and back, but it was a nice way to spend an autumn day in Central Texas.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), November 4, 2010

Without Gretel I Would Stay Lost

2010-10-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

I have a constant companion since moving here recently. She’s bossy and speaks in a monotone that grates on me. She doesn’t always know what she’s talking about, but I literally would be lost without her. Her name is Gretel, and she is a GPS. Gretel spreads electronic breadcrumbs along whatever trail I’m traveling, saving me lots of time backtracking, printing out Mapquest directions, or trying to use Google maps on my iPhone while driving — not the safest of practices.

I bought Gretel a little over a year ago after getting hopelessly lost near the DFW airport, trying to find a hotel in the dark in an area where one shopping center followed another. At one point I pulled into a Hilton hotel. I was staying in a Hilton, just not that Hilton and tried to talk a cab driver into leading me to the right hotel. He was willing to do it for money, of course, but convinced me finding the hotel I sought was a simple matter. An hour later and three more desperate pleas for help later, I found my hotel. First thing I did upon returning home was plunk down a C-note on a simple GPS.

This likely is the best investment I’ve made in saving my sanity, always a tenuous affair. I come from a long line of short people who are directionally challenged. My late father once headed down a highway, the car loaded with three tow-headed sons in the back — my mom in the front seat telling him he was going the wrong way. As usual, cigarette ashes were being flicked out the front window and flying into the back seat, which we unsuccessfully tried to dodge as they argued back and forth. As usual, my mom was right. My dad finally acquiesced when the road — under construction and not actually open, petered-out in the middle of nowhere.

My middle brother Scott, who lives in Four Points, bought his first GPS back when they were novelties and cost several hundred dollars. I made fun of him back then. To be fair, the boy could get lost in his own apartment, while I lived in East Texas in a town where I hung out off and on for nearly two decades. I didn’t need no stinking GPS.

Well, times and circumstances have changed. I can get to work here without turning Gretel on, though it took a few days. The route to the post office and the grocery store closest to my house still requires a quick check with my constant companion, just to make sure I head from home the right way. Scott suggested I use the water tower looming near my house as a landmark. I pointed out there are two Cedar Park water towers within sight. Taking directional advice from any of my family members is fraught with peril. My daughters aren’t any better at finding their way around than me. We all should have bought stock in Garmin.

Sadly, I can’t use Gretel when walking at 6 in the morning in the dark. I purposely devised a simple route that looped around the elementary school where my oldest daughter teaches, with minimal twists and turns. I’ve already gotten lost once while walking this year, on a foggy morning in Kansas — an experience I’m loath to repeat. I use Kasey’s elementary school as my beacon point, because I know how to get to my house from there, just three blocks away.

The other day I became distracted while listening to something on KUT, missed a turn and became uncertain of my bearings. Not to worry. I could see the school in the distance, so I hoofed it over there. Dang. It was the wrong school, the elementary campus on the other side of the subdivision. It took about 15 minutes to figure out my way back in the dark.

I know I have to wean myself from Gretel at least for daily basic travels. Codependency is a terrible thing. For now, though, I need this crutch. Otherwise, I’m liable to head down a highway to nowhere, just like my dad did all those years ago.

Originally published in the Hill Country News (Cedar Park, Texas), October 28, 2010

A Tale of Two Governors

2010-10-23T17:40:00.000-07:00

Outgoing Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson shares a few superficial traits with Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Both are tall and thin. Parkinson’s sandy hair can’t compare, hirsute-wise, to the man dubbed Gov. Goodhair by the late Molly Ivins.

Both governors switched political parties after a number of years in elective office. Perry, then a two-term state representative, became a Republican in 1989 before taking on and defeating Jim Hightower for agriculture commissioner the following year. Parkinson, seven years younger than the 60-year old Perry, served first in the Kansas House and then the state Senate starting in 1990. He switched to the Democratic Party when he became Gov. Kathryn Sebelius’s running mate in 2006, as she sought a second term. When Sebelius was appointed HEW secretary in 2009, Parkinson became governor.

That’s where the similarities end. I recently completed a five-month stint running a small daily newspaper in northeast Kansas. I was the paper’s sole editorial writer and had to quickly educate myself on state politics. The legislature was in the middle of an epic budget battle. The gap was smaller in scope, certainly, than the up-to-$20 billion shortfall Texas legislators will face in January. But the task of coming up with a balanced budget was formidable in a state whose legislature contains as generous sprinkling of right-wing nuts, no-new-tax, slash-and-burn politicians as one finds in Texas.

Parkinson, an attorney who owns a string of assisted-living facilities with his wife, Stacy, announced not long after being appointed governor that he would not seek election to a full term. In an interview just more than a month before the general election, in which right-wing Sen. Sam Brownback was widely expected to win, he told me that choosing not to run freed him to work with a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans to come up with a package of spending cuts. That budget also relied on a one-time federal extension of jobless benefits that nearly cratered after the session. He ended up lobbying hard in Washington for its passage and in Topeka for passage of a three-year, one-cent sales tax increase.

The result: Kansas passed a balanced budget that, as long as economic growth stays in the 3-percent range, can easily continue to educate its children and fund a new, ambitious 10-year transportation program. (Kansas was recently touted by Reader’s Digest as having the best highway system in the country. I can tell you that it has surpassed Texas. No longer does Molly’s joke about Texas being “Mississippi with good highways” hold true. We don’t even have that to brag about anymore.)

The budget passed largely because of Parkinson, who avoided ideology and worked hard at coming up with a package that didn’t gut education, kept the state’s infrastructure in reasonable shape, and laid a groundwork for future governors and state leaders to continue along that path.

Contrast that with what likely will occur in Austin starting in January. I have recently returned to Texas, where I’ve worked for newspapers for more than three decades. I’m glad to be back home. I have been writing editorials since 1982, including a few dozen opposing the election of Rick Perry to any higher office he sought, as well as regularly criticizing his performance as governor. I have talked to him in editorial board meetings a few times, and last year even introduced him at the Texas Daily Newspaper Association convention. I was outgoing president, and he was the keynote speaker. Talk about irony. The man may be the World’s Luckiest Hack Politician. He is, after all, probably about to be re-elected to govern the nation’s second-largest state, setting a record for longevity.

Perry has sagely adopted the Tea Party rhetoric and declared War on Washington. It will probably work in November, since voters are just pissed at the world. Why these same pissed-off voters would put back in office a professional politician who hasn’t held a real job in a quarter-century is beyond me, but there you go. The real ugliness begins in January. I read Paul Burka’s piece in Texas Monthly the other night, with his not-quite tongue in cheek proposal on how to close the budget deficit. Even after shuttering the Texas Railroad Commission, Texas Department of Agriculture, the Public Utility of Commission and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, even after that, plus some other draconian cuts, Burka was still forced to raise fees by 20 percent, legalize casino gambling and tap in to the state’s rainy-day fund for $4.5 billion.

None of this will happen, of course, though I don’t disagree that we could probably get by just fine without a toothless TCEQ (let the EPA run the state’s environmental program) and the hidebound RRC. But the chickens are coming home to roost in Texas come next session. Damn, it is going to get ugly. I’m glad I’ll be back here to watch, sort of like watching a car wreck.

I asked Parkinson if he regretted not running for a full term. In the two occasions we talked over five months (it’s a small state), he struck me as someone with no BS about him, who tried to figure out the best course of action and then took it. He paused for a moment before replying. The Democratic nominee is a nice guy, an obscure state senator with virtually no chance of beating Brownback. Kansas soon will have a governor who governs, well, like Rick Perry. Wing-nut ideology will matter more than actually trying to achieve meaningful results. Parkinson said he hoped things turned out OK, that the groundwork he had helped lay would hold. He was being, well, politic.

Parkinson said on the record that giving massive amounts of bucks to industries to persuade them to come to your state was almost always a waste of money. Best to spend that money shoring up the state’s educational system, highways, providing a safety net for the state’s poorest. And this man used to be a Republican! I can’t imagine Perry, who used the Texas Enterprise Fund like a piggy bank to benefit projects that also brought him political largesse, saying something so heretical.

Meanwhile, I’m back in Texas, where Gov. Goodhair will likely slip by former Mayor No-Hair in November. That’s depressing. The upside is that the next session is going to be so gruesome it’s likely voters will run the whole lot of them out in 2012.
Maybe there are some Mark Parkinson-types out there in Texas, just itching to run. Let’s hope.

I'm Not in Kansas Anymore

2010-10-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

WAMEGO, KANSAS — It seemed fitting on my final weekend to live in Kansas to attend a stage performance of “The Wizard of Oz” in the historic and exquisitely restored Columbian Theatre, in downtown Wamego. The Columbian’s auditorium is festooned with six huge paintings from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, which banker J.C. Rogers bought when the fair ended and hauled to Wamego to decorate his new music hall.

This Mayberry-like town about 14 miles northeast of Manhattan has ably profited from J. Frank Baum’s creation — with the Oz Museum, Oz Winery and even Toto’s Tacos — not to mention the recently concluded OztoberFest. I wanted to say a silent goodbye to this place, since I’ve been publisher of the weekly Wamego Smoke Signal as part of my job description — an easy gig since the paper has an able editor.

An additional incentive: Someone had told me the Wicked Witch of the West actually flies across the stage. Actually, there were several flying characters, from Glinda the Good Witch, those infamous Flying Monkeys and even Dorothy Gale. A company called D2 Flying Effects, based out of Johnson City, Tenn., was in charge of rigging cables to actors and actresses up in the air and sending them floating across the stage smoothly and safely. The grumpy Miss Gulch even floated across riding a bicycle. Hey, I was impressed. It looked like fun.

Area children of varying sizes, in this all-volunteer production, portrayed the Munchkins and Winkie Guards. The main cast members appeared to be college-age students. A well-behaved Yorkshire terrier named Rupert — though two dogs appeared at the curtain call — played Toto, according to the program. Maybe the other dog was an understudy. Before the show started, we sang “Happy Birthday” to two patrons with 10/10/2010 birthdays. Little kids comprised a goodly portion of the audience, unsurprisingly. It was a happy afternoon as clouds gathered outside, and it threatened to rain.

I sat on the third row, taking occasional notes, reflecting on the strange turn of events that brought me to Kansas in the first place, and the equally unexpected change of fortune that is propelling me back home to Texas. A change in ownership at the newspaper company for whom I worked for more than 20 years in East Texas meant I was out of a job earlier this year. I found the ad for this job running a family owned newspaper and soon came to an agreement with its owner. Our relationship has been wonderful. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer boss or a better group of folks to work with here at the paper. But the transition from Texas to Kansas, leaving a fiancée and her daughter, my grown children, Mom, siblings, etc., behind has been wrenching.

So, like Dorothy — only in reverse since I’m in Kansas while she was in Oz — I concluded that this isn’t home. I’ve tried hard to make it feel like home, but it hasn’t worked. I’m too used to living in Texas. That state has plenty of flaws, but I’m used to its idiosyncrasies. When the chance fell into my lap to run a newspaper in the Austin area — well, you have to listen to that sort of answered prayer. It’s where my oldest daughter teaches school, my middle brother lives, where we’re about to move our mom, and where most of my friends from high school and college long ago settled.

When Dorothy laments, “I’ll never see Kansas again as long as I live,” toward the end of the play, I thought about the long nights I’ve spent wondering how long I could live this split life, flying back to Texas every other weekend to see my family, loved ones and friends. The Flint Hills is a beautiful piece of country, with good people, but it’s been a lonesome existence for this Texas expatriate.

So it’s goodbye after just five months. I am confident that my successor will be able to build upon the work that this paper’s fine crew and I have done in my short time here to make this newspaper better.

As Dorothy says at the close of the play, “There’s no place like home.” It is time for me to go home.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union on October 16, 2010.

A postcript: As I pulled out of Junction City Friday morning with a utility trailer filled with yard implements and other items the mover wouldn’t take, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World,” performed by the late Hawaiian singer and ukulele player Israel Kamakawiwoʻole came on the satellite radio. Talk about providential.

Note to readers: I start in a few days as publisher of the Hill Country News in Cedar Park, in the Austin metroplex. I’ll continue to post this column here each weekend. Thanks for dropping by.

Vibrating Cell Phones and Small Planes

2010-10-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

I headed back to Texas last weekend for a reunion with my peeps in Austin, a chance to savor the second weekend of fall in our favorite city. The weather actually behaved like autumn, a rare event in Central Texas — where fall usually doesn’t arrive until mid-November and leaves in early February.

Winter: Fuggedaboutit. It doesn’t actually exist in Austin.

But the air was crisp enough in the mornings that my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I were scrambling for outerwear for our morning walk, reveling in the fact that we were forced to do so. I had flown there, while she had driven the five hours west from East Texas.

I’ve been flying more often this year than ever before, because the BMC is still in East Texas, and I’m in Kansas. I am grateful that a well-run and convenient small airport is 15 minutes from my house in Junction City, meaning I can print out my boarding pass the night before and show up 30 minutes before the plane takes off. Plus there’s free parking at Manhattan Regional.

I have taken this trip to Dallas and then either to East Texas or to other rendezvous points roughly a dozen times in the past six months. The folks who work at the airport are familiar faces. The ruddy-faced fellow who operates the scanner gives out stickers to little kids after everyone is seated in the sole gate area. The young woman who checks baggage when I’m forced to do so — and I try not to since it’s $50 for one bag on a round trip — also waves the orange traffic directors on the tarmac as the jet backs out to head to Dallas. She has double duty.

Most flights are at least one-third filled with soldiers from Fort Riley. Some soldiers coming back to Manhattan are met with excited spouses and children, greeting a soldier coming home on R&R. They’re invariably holding digital cameras and signs inked on poster boards, held by the children. It’s a humbling sight to see those families, waiting for their loved one, home for just a little while.

The small jets have a single flight attendant to attend to the 50 or so passengers. Most flights are full, or close to it. She (so far it’s always been a female) plays a recording with the standard safety message about emergency exits, buckling up, using the seat cushion as a flotation device, to turn off all electronic devices.

I check and make sure the iPhone in my pocket is off. Yep. For some reason, I always get sleepy as the jet prepares to pull out and take off. I doze off until we begin hurtling down the runway. Then I say a silent prayer and watch out the window until we’re safely in the air, enjoying the top-down view of the terrain. On this trip I think I finally figured out when we were crossing over the Red River as it snakes between Texas and Oklahoma, though it could have been another ribbon of water seen from 26,000 feet.

I started to doze again, then jerked forward. The Blackberry. I had completely forgotten about the accursed second cell phone in my briefcase, stowed beneath the seat in front of me, my feet propped upon it. It’s my work phone and rarely rings on weekends away. Out of sight, etc. What to do?

The phone was buried inside a bulky canvas Land’s End briefcase. There would be no subtle way to pull it out and turn it off, especially seated in Row 5, Seat A. I would be outed as a miscreant. For the next 45 minutes, every time the plane bumped in the turbulence, I imagined it was my cell phone accidentally left on that was fouling up the plane’s electronics.

We landed safely, of course. Just seconds after we touched down, I could feel a vibration beneath my feet. The Blackberry had found a tower and was relaying a voicemail from a few hours earlier. Since we were now allowed to turn our phones on, I listened to the message, which of course was of no consequence.

I went online to judge the risk at which I had put my fellow passengers. Little or none, it turns out. The prevailing wisdom appears to be that airlines figure there are always a few doofuses who forget to turn off their phones. It’s the fear of 50 disparate cell signals seeking towers that make airlines nervous.

Lesson learned, though. I will turn off all phones well before getting on a plane. I can’t take the guilt, and I’m certainly not important enough that a phone call can’t wait.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, October 9, 2010.

Former Pop Star Has Junction City Roots

2010-09-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

The e-mail garnered my attention. “This is Frankie Valens, the former pop singer.”

Frankie Valens. Didn’t he die in a plane crash? No, that was Richie Valens, who died in a snowy Iowa field in 1959 with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. Frankie Valens is a Kansas preacher’s kid who became a modest pop sensation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, covering tunes such as “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

The confusion comes because Bernard Franklin Piper adopted Valens’ stage surname some years after that plane crash. He admired his music and needed a stage name, according to a Wichita newspaper interview a decade ago. Folks used to confuse him with other Frankies, such as Frankie Avalon and Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons. Frankie Valens faded from the music scene in the early 1970s in part due to a bitter dispute with his agent. He went back to work as an accountant, according to his Web site. But a decade or so ago he began performing again. His concerts are a combination of spiritual and secular songs performed with his wife, Phylis, as his partner.

Both Frankie and Phylis developed back problems from lugging around heavy musical equipment, so they “retired” from performing in 2008. They still perform if asked but don’t seek bookings. Sierra Scott, who produces “It’s All Good” for Kansas public television stations, is about to film a piece on Frankie and Phylis. Listening to links on the Web site (frankievalens.com), it’s clear that, even in his late 60s, Frankie still has a set of well-tuned pipes. His wife, a concert pianist, accompanies him when they perform. They use prerecorded tracks for the rest of the instrumentation.

In a phone interview, Frankie recalled the years he lived in Junction City, where his academic career can be described as uneven. He missed so much of first grade due to illness that he was held back and repeated. By then his parents had moved to Kansas City, where his father was foreman of a lumberyard. Then, in eleventh grade, Bernard Piper returned his family to Junction City so he could attend a bible college in Manhattan. Frankie, as he was always called, attended the last two years at Junction City High School. But academic disaster struck. The principal had warned that passing the final exam was necessary to graduate, no matter how good one’s grades.

“Five seniors flunked (the exam), and I was one of them,” he said. The principal came to his house on Tenth Street to retrieve his cap and gown. Frankie repeated the 12th grade in Kansas City in order to graduate.

While here, he dated a girl whose mom worked at the Plaza Truck Stop on the east side of town, a business owned by his aunt and uncle. “I was pretty stuck up back then,” he admits, more interested in spending his money on records and clothes. “I became the best-dressed kid in high school.”

Valens attended college in New York City, studying accounting, which is where he was discovered and joined a New Jersey group called Eminent Domain. That launched his career, though he was never comfortable with much of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

“I never did drink, smoke or do drugs,” a philosophy that accounts for his work in recent years with anti-drug programs and churches, in his concerts and in the ministry he and Phylis operate.

The reason he e-mailed is that Frankie is working on an autobiography and hit a brick wall, trying to find out the first name of his great-grandmother. She died somewhere in this area in the early 1890s. I agreed to help and soon headed across the street to the Geary County Historical Society to enlist the help of the good folks there.

Frankie’s great-grandmother’s last name was Nickell. Her daughter married Charles F. Day in 1909. Day helped build the municipal pool here, according to Frankie. I found their wedding announcement in three different Junction City newspapers, including the one you’re now reading, back in the good old days when even small towns like this had three or four papers. Of course, the editors were starving to death, but at least there was plenty to read.

Hazel Nickell Day, Frankie’s grandmother, is buried in Highland Cemetery. She died in 1971 at age 80. But her mother’s name, and where she died, remains a mystery. It’s nearly certain she didn’t die here, because the crack volunteers helping me look in the basement of the historical society building have indexed obituaries from that time period, know all the places to look for the information. They spent a couple of hours helping, to no avail.

As it turns out, Frankie has kin still in town, including a cousin who works here at the paper. Another cousin lives in Wamego, about 40 miles east of here; his wife is editor of the weekly Smoke Signal there, of which I’m publisher as one of my other hats. They’re all intrigued by the story and interested in trying to solve the mystery of the first name of the mysterious Mrs. Nickell.

There are a few more rabbit trails to follow. I haven’t given up yet.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, October 2, 2010

I Am Surrounded by Gadgetry

2010-09-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

I recently attended a conference on how technology will affect newspapers. The session I chose to participate in dealt with how people are likely to receive their news in the future.

Truth is, I alternate between wishing I had been born 10 years earlier and could watch this revolution in our business from retirement on the front porch rocker, to being amazed at how the business in which I have spent my entire adult life has changed so radically — and how fascinating earning a living during this upheaval will be.

It also provides me an excellent excuse to buy lots of gadgets. Already I’m thinking about upgrading to the new iPhone4, though it is totally unnecessary since my iPhone3 works just fine. But there is a nearly 13-year-old future daughter in Texas just salivating over the possibility of inheriting my older iPhone. So that’s an incentive, since I do love to make that child happy.

The dark side of all this gadgetry is I am not particularly adept at learning how to use it, being 55 years old and someone to whom learning such skills does not come naturally. I never learned how to program a VCR, for example. I keep the instruction booklet to my Nikon D9 digital SLR in my 30-year-old Domke camera bag for frequent referral — when I forget how to change the ISO settings, for example. If the almost-teen is within reach, I usually just hand it to her and get her to figure out how to use whatever gadget we’re talking about.

Her mother received an Apple iPad as part of her professor job. The child, of course, within minutes had taught me all I needed to know about using it, which isn’t terribly different than the iPhone, though it is larger and cooler — except you can’t make calls. But it is one of those devices that would be lovely to have for reading Web sites, newspapers online, even the occasional movie while on a long airplane flight. But I would never shell out $850 or so for one.

Take the Blackberry. Please. Moving here required inheriting a second cell phone, this Blackberry. That’s what we use at the paper. I’m under indentured servitude for the iPhone along with my Beautiful Mystery Companion and aforementioned child. So I now carry around two cell phones.

We just upgraded cell phone plans at the paper. At first my boss and I opted for a “droid,” which is Google’s version of an iPhone. Thank goodness the boss hated it, and we opted to just get a newer version of the Blackberry. I was dreading trying to figure out how to use yet another device just when I had learned enough about how to use the Blackberry to answer calls and view e-mails.

The other night, the new Blackberry decided to lock its keypad. I had nothing to do with this event. But it said I would have to unlock the keypad to use the phone. I could find no button that said lock, tried turning the phone on and off, began randomly just pushing keys without success. Finally in frustration I shoved the phone back in its leather holster while muttering imprecations to the technology spirits and longing for the days when my life wasn’t tethered to a cell phone.

That did the trick. I don’t know what the heck I did, but shoving it into the holster somehow unlocked the phone. I was back in business, though I have no idea how I locked the phone or unlocked it. One of my life rules concerning computers or anything related to them is to never question when something that wasn’t working starts behaving again. Just be grateful and go on about your business. Leave the analysis to folks better qualified than me.

Back at the conference, I learned folks would increasingly get their news on their phones, iPads and devices we haven’t even imagined. Fine by me. I figure as long as we keep reporting the news, it doesn’t matter how folks receive it.

The conference organizers were giving away an iPad at the conference’s close as an incentive to keep folks sticking around on a Friday afternoon in downtown Kansas City.

Yep, I won the iPad. Thanks to the tutelage from the almost-teen, I even know how to use it. It is pretty darned cool. Guess I will stick around the business and see what this brave new world will bring, after all. Besides, I need the paycheck.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, September 25, 2010

New Season Promises New Beginnings

2010-09-17T06:35:00.001-07:00

Summer officially departs in a few days. Good riddance. It is my least favorite season, finishing a distant last to the other three. My favorite time of year is about to commence — autumn with the changing leaves, cooler temperatures, football season, pumpkins, Thanksgiving celebrations, and the chance to wear sweatshirts while walking in the morning.

My modest porch garden is about to give it up, leaves withering, produce growing ever smaller. There are a few tomatoes left on the vines, but it is doubtful whether they’ll ripen before the birds or other critters get them. Still, I’m satisfied with the yield from these container-raised plants, which kept me in tomatoes, peppers and herbs for a few months.

The jalapeño plants have gotten a second wind for some reason, certainly through no gardening prowess on my part. I barely remember to water. Still, a third round has appeared. Each crop is smaller and hotter, as if the capsaicin contained within becomes more concentrated the smaller the pepper becomes. I long ago adopted the credo that one can’t eat enough jalapeños in a given day, fresh or pickled. Some folks claim it drives away potential cancer cells. Others say they’re good for the heart.

I have elected to be a jalapeño guinea pig in the name of science, and thus eat them with virtually every meal save breakfast. And if breakfast ends up being a brunch at a Mexican restaurant, say a steaming plate of huevos rancheros, then you can be sure there’s a bowl of peppers on the side. I’ll miss my fresh peppers picked off the three plants on the front porch.

The basil plants are still flourishing, though a single grasshopper is bent on chewing up as many leaves as possible. We have an interesting battle underway. I refuse to use poisons. If I wanted to do that, I could just go ahead and buy the produce in a grocery store. So my battle against the grasshopper consists of thumping him in the head and knocking him out into the front yard, in the vague hope he’ll get the hint he isn’t welcome. Grasshopper head-thumping hasn’t worked so far, but the basil is hardy enough to survive a single member of the species. If he starts inviting friends and family, the basil plants are in trouble. Considering I only pick leaves to use every few weeks, usually in a mouth-watering mixture of mozzarella balls, olive oil, tomatoes and warm ciabatta bread, I can afford sharing basil leaves with a solitary grasshopper.

The lone rosemary plant is doing fine. Past readers will be pleased to know I finally learned the purpose of this lovely spice, which I bought for its intoxicating smell. Rosemary is an excellent accompaniment to both oven-roasted chicken and red potatoes drizzled in olive oil. I’m glad I only have one plant, since I end up pruning the plant to keep it fresh without using much to cook.

Turned out that the rabbits weren’t the voracious predators I feared they would be. They hop about, oblivious to the rich pickings nearby. One little fellow the other evening was nibbling grass practically at my feet until he figured out I was a human and not a statue and hopped away. I envisioned plants rapidly denuded by Bugs Bunny’s kinfolks, eager to feast upon my foliage. It never happened.

Some of the trash bushes, as I call them, along my walking route are already turning color. The sun rises later in the morning and will do so until the time changes. I look forward to that, because I’m someone who wakes with the light. Thus it’s hard to force myself out the door walking in the dark of current early mornings, at 6:15 or so. There is a slight chill in the air most days, a harbinger of the change to come. Fine with me if it is dark not long after work ends when it’s too cold to do much outside anyway, as long as there is a bit of light in the morning.

A new season invariably promises a fresh start, in one fashion or another. We’ll see what autumn brings.

Originally published in The Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, September 18, 2010.

A Newspaper Celebrates Its Birthday

2010-09-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

The newspaper for which I toil began its existence 149 years ago this weekend, on Sept. 12, 1861, as the Smoky Hill and Republican Union. George W. Kingsbury was its editor and proprietor. Its slogan was, “We Join Ourselves To No Party That Does Not Carry The Flag, and Keep Step To the Music Of The Union.” The state of Kansas had joined the United States only eight months earlier as a free state and sent more than 20,000 soldiers to fight for the Union cause in the Civil War that began just two months later.

So it is no surprise that the Union newspaper supported both that cause and the party of Lincoln in its nameplate, though of course those are also the names of the rivers that meander through our town and join to form the Kansas River.

I downloaded a copy of the first issue from the Library of Congress, which has digitized the first three years of the newspaper’s existence as part of its Chronicling America project. That means anyone can go online and read or print copies of newspapers from all over the country. I am constantly amazed at this modern world, and how it allows researchers access from a computer screen and Internet connection to material that one once had to travel thousands of miles to peruse.

Kingsbury set out his political views in his opening issue, making it clear he was in the Union camp. He wrote, “It is clearly our duty to rally around the Constitution, and the glorious old flag of our country, in our common cause for the preservation and perpetuation of our glorious Union…”

Putting out a newspaper a century-and-a-half ago was tough sledding even under the best of circumstances. And producing a weekly in Junction City during a Civil War must have been brutal. For Kingsbury, this was his second attempt to put out a paper here, having been involved as the printer of the Sentinel a couple of years earlier.

For nearly 30 years, off and on, I’ve ruined my eyesight looking at microfilm of old newspapers, for a master’s thesis on an 1840s-era Republic of Texas newspaper, and years later for a modest book published by University of Texas press. (Advice to aspiring book authors: Keep your day job.) I’ve had a hand in producing centennial issues for two different newspapers. Next year, Lord willing, our staff will produce a sesquicentennial issue to mark the 150th year for this newspaper. I’m a newspaper nerd from way back.

Only two newspapers in Kansas have stayed in business longer than this publication: the Troy Chief and the Leavenworth Times. That is quite a legacy. The Montgomery family for whom I work have been associated with the Union since 1888. It is still a family operation in a time when most newspapers are owned by corporate chains with distant ownerships. There isn’t necessarily wrong with that, but there is something comforting in the longevity, the commitment that comes with family ownership of a company over well more than a century.

I’m grateful to have come into this line of work a bit more than a century after the Union sprang into existence. Newspapering back then truly was brutal work. Type was set one character at a time, the character placed in a wooden case. Payment from both subscribers and advertisers was always iffy. Newspapers particularly in small towns like Junction City, popped up and disappeared with regularity.

Folks are predicting the demise of newspapers once again. No doubt the landscape is changing. How you get your news, even about this town, will evolve eventually. What won’t change is that nearly 150 years later, we’ll still be the place readers go to find out what happened in the chunk of the Flint Hills that we cover. Nobody does it better or more thoroughly. We’re not perfect by any means. But we plug away every day, with a small crew of folks who are trained to get the story and explain it best as they can.

That’s a family tradition the folks at this paper are proud to continue, just as they do at small papers all across this country. Next year we’ll really celebrate.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, Sept. 11, 2010

Cooler Weather Means It's Time to Start Building

2010-09-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

Woodshop season is about to commence. Summer’s dog days are slinking away, at long last. A few folks here have blamed my migration from Texas for the unusual heat wave. I apologize, though my powers are vastly overrated. Heck, I can’t even get my kinfolks to vote right.

But it appears that summer is truly headed out the door, which means I’ll be able to use the woodshop that was a large enticement for leasing this house up on the hill. Woodworking isn’t much fun when it’s 100 degrees, and the shop has no air-conditioning. I’m not so dedicated to this hobby of building mission-style furniture — primarily to give away to friends and family —to sweat profusely for hours on end.

I spent several hours last weekend, which wasn’t terribly hot, perched on a stool in the shop, flipping through a decade’s worth of woodworking magazines. When I took up this pastime a dozen years ago, I taught myself the necessary skills by subscribing to a half-dozen different magazines, plus buying an armful of books on different aspects of the craft — cabinet making, building chairs, how to set up a proper shop, and so forth. After a decade, I figured I had enough magazines to last a lifetime and canceled all the subscriptions. Each contains plans for several projects, so when I decide to build something I flip through the magazines and find a number of projects on which to embark.

First, though, I had to drive back to East Texas, an event that took place over the Labor Day weekend, when you likely are reading this piece. That’s where my cache of lumber remains, in a storage unit. I ran out of time to move lumber up here, so I’ll be hurtling back to Kansas early next week with my utility trailer filled with as much rough-cut black walnut and red oak as my dinky hybrid SUV can pull.

I’ve been hauling this lumber around for a while, but it’s worth it. Over the past dozen years, I’ve bought piles of lumber from folks who kept it stored in barns or covered with tin, and finally decided to sell it for next-to-nothing. I would write a column about building furniture and somebody would holler at me, offering to sell me a trailer-load of black walnut for $100 or so. I never said no — in fact, anybody reading this who wants to unload some decent hardwood lumber knows where to find me.

Anyway, by the time I get back early next week, I’ll have enough lumber on hand to get busy as the nights get cooler, as well as on weekends. I am ridiculously slow at building furniture. It’s one of the few parts of my life where deadlines don’t dictate. Accordingly, I refuse to build anything for money. If I charged by the hour, this prairie sofa, for example, where I take a 20-minute nap after work in the study most days, would have to sell for — well, let’s just say I’m not that good a furniture maker.

This is what I do instead of fishing. Thus I have all the tools and gadgets one needs to build anything out of wood. Part of the joy of woodworking for me is relearning how to set up, say, the biscuit joiner, which is used to join two pieces of wood together for a desk or table, for example. Or how to tune up the bandsaw, so it will cut through a four-inch piece of red oak without breaking a blade.

Soon I’ll have to plane some rough-cut lumber. That process is extremely noisy and messy, creating barrels of shavings that work well as flowerbed mulch. Luckily, though I live in town, my house is pretty isolated. It backs up to a cemetery, so nobody behind me is likely to complain about the noise. The rest of the neighbors are far enough away that it shouldn’t result in any police calls for disturbing the peace.

Using power equipment that can slice off fingers in a flash if you’re careless does force one to concentrate. It takes your mind off the worries of the world. I enjoy knowing that I’m building pieces of furniture that will outlive me. I seriously doubt anybody other than the occasional curious descendant years from now will be reading any of the few thousand columns I’ve written over nearly three decades. But somebody — though they probably won’t know who made it — probably will appreciate that coffee table made out of recycled tongue-and-groove two-inch thick red oak with a black-walnut frame, long after I’m gone. It’s sturdy and built to survive lots of beer cans spills and chili-bowl sloshes.

I’m ready to fire up the planer and start making some noise.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, September 4, 2010.

A Phone Call From Deep in the Heart of Mexico

2010-08-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

Jaìme called my cell phone on the eve of my birthday to wish me feliz cumpleaños. At least I think that is why he called. As usual, he was speaking Spanish so rapidly that I only caught every fourth word. We got cut off after only a minute or so. My phone said “unknown number” so I couldn’t return the call. He never called back. Most likely he lost reception in the tiny village of Paso del Correo — which means post office — deep in the interior of the Mexican state of Veracruz, where he owns a small farm below the pyramids of El Tajin — a pre-Columbian archaeological site more than 2,000 years old. Someday I wish to visit Jaìme and see the site. Someday I will.

I was greatly relieved to hear from Jaìme, however briefly, since it is the first word I have gotten in 15 months that he made it home safely from East Texas, driving the 1997 Ford Ranger he bought the last year he lived in the United States. Until that purchase, I would pick him up at the rundown trailer park where he lived with three other men without air-conditioning, each paying $50 a week for the privilege.
My Spanglish — the Tex-Mex Spanish I learned largely while working with him — has gotten rusty since Jaìme returned to his home in Mexico after more than a decade of working in East Texas and sending money back home to support his wife and two children. For more than nine years, Jaìme worked for me on weekends — painting, doing yard work, building fences, hanging Christmas lights, whatever needed done. We spent hundreds of hours together over those years, discussing politics, sports, music and immigration reform. He called me his patròn. I called him my compadre.

Jaìme is now 50, a round little fellow with a full head of black hair and a matching moustache. He is always smiling, no matter how unpleasant the job. He possessed a Rain Man ability to remember dates that always floored me.

“Meester Gary, the shuttle blew up four years ago today,” he would say, recalling that horrific morning when pieces of Columbia rained down on Nacogdoches and East Texas, where we both lived at the time — and I ran the newspaper. Or even more mundane items, such as “Two years ago, we painted that rent house of yours.”

Jaìme only has an eighth-grade education but is as an addicted news junkie as I have known. He only learned enough English to get by, so most of his news came from the Spanish-language television networks and newspapers. We talked politics all the time. Jaìme will talk the bark off a tree, whether one understands what he is saying or not. As I once wrote, Jaìme apparently believes that if he speaks Spanish long enough the person to whom he is talking will learn it by osmosis. I actually did learn quite a bit of Spanish hanging around with him for nearly a decade. My most-common expression with Jaìme: Habla despacio, por favor, which means, speak slowly, please.

My favorite and oft-told story stems from several years ago, when I introduced him to two junior-high Japanese exchange students. Of course, Jaìme began speaking rapidly to them in Spanish.

“Jaìme,” I protested. “These girls are from Japan. They don’t know Spanish.” He replied rather haughtily, “Well, I can’t speak Japanese,” and continued his machine-gun patter en Español.

Jaìme was much in demand as a handyman in East Texas. He was an excellent painter, decent carpenter and plumber, and knew how to string barbed wire. Most importantly, he is the hardest, most honest worker I know, someone you could leave alone for eight hours and know that he if finished his appointed tasks he would find something else to do. That work ethic is a rarity these days, sad to say.

Jaìme proudly showed me photos of his home over the years. With the money he made working in East Texas, seven days a week for a circle of people doing whatever needed to be done, it was transformed over the years from a squat cinderblock structure to a story-and-a-half adobe-surfaced house, with a gleaming cedar door, ceramic-tiled floors and marble counters in the bathroom. And air-conditioning.

I hope Jaìme and his family are doing well and that he calls back soon. I didn’t get to ask about them, in that brief minute we connected. As usual, I could barely get a word in edgewise with my compadre. He doesn’t even know I live in Kansas now. I was trying to explain that to him when the phone went dead. I’m sure he’ll have a lot to say about that.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, August 28, 2010.

Reflections on Reaching the Double-Nickel

2010-08-20T08:31:00.000-07:00

Lately it occurs to me: What a long, strange trip it's been.
“Truckin’” — Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead
Such thoughts come to mind when one reaches milestones such as my 55th birthday, which occurs on the last day under the sign of Virgo. Not that I truck with such foolishness as astrology. For years I went through life thinking I was a Leo, born on the last day of the lion’s reign. Then some cosmological shift occurred, and now I’m a first-day Virgo, according to the newspaper feature.

My oldest daughter, Kasey, born the day after my birthday, is firmly in the Virgo camp. She turns 32. That is tough for me to wrap my arms around. I came across a photo of her while at my late grandfather’s house a few weeks ago. I shot it when she was four months old; she’s nearly toothless, bald and grinning for the camera, just adorable.

I am a bit surprised at how this has all turned out, in all aspects: personal life, career, even geography. A year ago if one had said, “Buddy, you’re going to be living in northeast Kansas by next summer,” I would have scoffed. But here I am, grateful for a job and learning new town names and highway routes. I will be interested in what winter is like. I haven’t spent a full season in cold climes since I was 12 and living my last season in New Hampshire.

But I digress. I think that comes with age as well, the tendency to head down rabbit trails. At least that is my excuse. So, with a hat-tip to one of my print heroes — Sy Syfransky, founder of The Sun, an advertising-free literary magazine — here are thoughts from my scattered mental notebook as the double-nickel beckons.

• As long as I have a porch on which to sit after work, a quiet spot outside to read while watching birds flit about the feeders, I am content. One summer evening a red fox ambled by, never seeing me, probably looking for a slow-moving rabbit. Then a few days ago, I heard a racket on the roof in the early morning while I was using the Bow Flex torture-contraption, in my unending effort to stay fit. The house I lease is built into a hillside, so the rear roof can be climbed upon by critters both four-legged and upright. I dashed outside and turned the corner just in time for the red fox and me to scare the bejeebers out of each other. It’s a close call as to which of us leaped higher. If captured on video, it would have been a YouTube hit.

I have since seen the fox perched on the roof, looking around, but he scampers off before I can get a photograph. I’ll keep trying.

• I am most grateful for being blessed with good health. I’ve had my share of bad habits over the years, shed most of them, and thus far have survived nearly unscathed the maladies of middle age. I still bounce out of bed at 6 a.m. each morning, eager to walk three miles while listening to NPR and girding myself for another day at the paper, pain-free and vigorous.

I’m still worried about January and its effect on my exercise routine. Man, I hate treadmills. I’ll probably be the short guy looking like the Michelin Man wandering around the Skyline Drive area. We’ll see.

• In my darker moments, I wonder how this ends. Who doesn’t? I have my faith, the love of my family and friends. So I don’t dwell upon it much, though it has become increasingly obvious that I am no longer infallible — as if I ever were. My prayers these days are simple, in hopes they might be answered, selfish as they may be. God, let me be able to enjoy reading and writing until the end of my days. Let my children outlive me. Let folks keep buying newspapers.

OK, I don’t really pray for that last sentiment, because that seems a bit cheeky an item to ask of God. I am pretty sure, though not convinced, that folks will keep buying newspapers in paper form for another decade, which is likely how much longer I’ll be plying this trade — and online in one form or another forever. Of course, most of my predictions about everything to do with my life, career, and even whether the Red Sox would ever win the World Series have proven wrong.

One thing I know that is true, told to me by someone long ago: What matters most in this life, in the end, is whom you loved and who loved you. In that respect I am truly blessed, here at the double-nickel of life.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, August 21, 2010.

A Final Visit to My Grandfather's House

2010-08-14T06:42:00.000-07:00

I have not stepped foot in my grandfather’s house, at least that I can remember, since his death from colon cancer at 89 in 1995. But my memory is a trickster, as those who know me well often point out. So it is possible that I returned at some point in the 15 years since the Masons helped lower him into the ground a few miles from his home in Greggton, a suburb of Longview. My father’s remains rest in a mausoleum a few hundred yards away, a plaque up on a granite wall.
My mom plans to join him there, name already in place, date left blank. She is definitely in no hurry, which is a good thing, of course.

I have no intention of being the third generation to be interred below or in a third floor compartment above in this cemetery. No way. Those in charge have been instructed to scatter my ashes along Lady Bird Lake in Austin — which used to be called Town Lake, the piece of the Colorado River that winds through the city. It’s home to my favorite hike-and-bike trail with the downtown skyline as a backdrop.

The trail here in Junction City along the Republican River, off the Washington Avenue entrance to Fort Riley, is also quite beautiful — and not a bad place to have one’s remains turned into dust in the wind, to steal a song line that fits, given where I now live. But it would require quite a journey for the few who might want to remember me, so I reckon my ashes will end up back in Texas.

Sorry to be maudlin. Visiting the now-empty home of dead relatives does that to a person.

My grandfather’s widow, his third wife (he outlived the first two — no divorces in his past), died a few weeks ago at 97. She lived in the modest ranch house my grandfather bought in the 1950s until a stroke felled her. Death followed in a few weeks. That’s not a bad way to end a long life, I figure. My aunt — my late dad’s sister — was in town with one of her daughters, Reneé, to settle matters and put the house up for sale. She invited my middle brother Scott, also in town for a visit, and me over to see if there was anything in the house we wanted as a remembrance of our grandfather.

Reneé, my first cousin, and I have never met. Aunt Gail has lived in San Diego all of my life, and that’s where her children were raised. The one time Reneè was in Texas to visit, about 17 years ago, my mother inexplicably forgot to tell me, even though at the time I lived a mere 60 miles away. Our family’s communication lines break down in the oddest ways.

We all got along famously at this ad hoc reunion. Aunt Gail is 75 but neither looks nor acts her age. She generously treated us to a Cajun seafood meal at Johnny Cace’s, a venerable eating establishment in Longview that was a favorite of my grandfather’s, who was buddies with its longtime proprietor. I went to high school with Johnny’s son and daughter-in-law, who now run the place.

Then we returned to 805 Stewart Street, where two worn recliners sit facing the television and the fake fireplace with the gas logs in place. I can picture my grandfather, a gregarious man with a bald head, big belly and a jolly laugh, sitting in his recliner while Lorraine, his new bride, perched in the chair alongside. She was beautiful and vivacious, an excellent cook. My grandfather worked at being an excellent eater, so it proved a successful alliance. I looked forward to being invited to Sunday after-church dinners there, on those special occasions, such as Easter.

The house already has the look of a place looted, which is inevitable. My aunt, cousin and Brent — Lorraine’s only living son — have begun the cleaning-out process. Most of you reading this have been through this before, for a parent, spouse, sibling, someone for whom you cared. It’s a hard task. I know; my brothers and I went through this for my parents a few years ago.

I didn’t really “want” anything. But Brent had saved me a wooden clipboard that was my grandfather’s. It is made of varying strips of hardwood — probably red oak, ash, walnut, maybe poplar. His name is scrawled twice across the back, once in black ink, another in red. The clipboard comes from the Globe Wernicke Company in Cincinnati, a famous supplier of office furniture.

That clipboard will suffice, along with the tiny crescent wrench I used to take down the “805 Stewart St” metal sign my sign-painter dad had created for their front-yard light post years ago, which Scott wanted. I have my memories and a photo of my grandfather in his Boy Scout uniform, when he was in his final years as a professional Scout executive.

That’s plenty.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, June 14, 2010.

There Is No Escaping Summer in America

2010-08-07T13:31:00.000-07:00

The day it reached 106 degrees in Junction City, according to both weather.com and the bank thermometer, I received a $388 electric bill. The house's two air-conditioning units struggled mightily to keep the air at 80 degrees inside while I wore minimal clothing after work and kept the ceiling fans circulating. Meanwhile, my beautiful mystery companion reported that the mercury was at 98 degrees in East Texas, though the humidity certainly made it feel every bit as miserable.

There is simply no escaping summer in America.

Oh, I forgot. My buddy Frank, who showed up here from Austin in time for Junction City's impressive fireworks show — not the one at the park but the unofficial festivities put on by the neighbors living within a couple dozen blocks, which rivaled the soundtrack to ""Saving Private Ryan — reported that his extended road trip landed him in Bend, Ore. His sister lives there. The weather is lovely, he claims. Hang around, buddy, I thought. A heat wave is bound to arrive.

|———|

My kinfolks in New Hampshire, where I spent my first 13 years, endured a blast of furnace air about the same time we were enjoying a cool Kansas evening on the roof, listening and watching the fireworks light up a drizzly sky. Temperatures in early July hit 100 degrees in parts of the Granite State. That is 1,759 miles northeast of Longview, Texas, where my parents moved the brothers and me in June of 1968. It is 1,540 miles from Junction City, though not nearly as far north. (I love Mapquest.com. Just saying.)

My resentment of summer surely stems from that move from New Hampshire to East Texas. If I still lived up among the Yankees it would be winter that riled me. I have never adjusted to the heat, though I endure. Last Saturday, I got a wild hare and once again trimmed down the wild growth in my yard — this time chigger-proofing myself successfully — and then mowed most of the grass.

Big deal, you say. Big deal yourself. This yard is huge and on a hill, and I was using a self-propelled mower that cuts a measly 22-inch swath. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Roughly a gallon of iced tea and a plate of vegetarian quesadillas from El Tapatio were required to restore my equilibrium. I'm done mowing for the season and will speed dial the fellow with the big mowing machine next time the grass needs cutting.

|———|

My parents upon moving to Longview immediately enlisted me in Boy Scouts, because my grandfather was the paid executive in those parts. Just a few weeks after arriving from New Hampshire — where the snow usually doesn't disappear from the dark crannies until early May — I was drafted into a 50-mile hike from Caddo Lake to Longview, to be endured over five days.

I fell out on the third day from heat exhaustion. My parents had to come rescue me, which was embarrassing. I have borne a grudge against summer since. Perhaps I should seek therapy. I used to think I should simply seek cooler climes after the summer solstice, but where? Times are hard and uncertain, even for the luckiest of us.

The first fellow who befriended me at Troop 201 was Mickey Melton, a tall, rail-thin fellow, same age as me. We renewed acquaintances when I moved back to Longview in January 2008 as publisher of the paper, after being gone for 35 years. Mickey by then was a community leader, former school board member, one of the founders of a racial unity organization, a gentle soul. He called me soon after I returned and bought lunch. We talked about that ill-fated hike. Of course, he was kind about my failing to complete the journey — like me, a bit perplexed about my parents' judgment in sending a little Yankee kid on such a trek in the East Texas heat.

Mickey was honored earlier this year with that city's Unity Award for his efforts over many years to promote racial healing. A few months later he died of an apparent heart attack while working on his farm. I will never recall that hike without remembering gentle Mickey — invariably stooped over when we talked because I was nearly a foot shorter.

Summer will soon pass. The seasons soar by when you're my age. I need to do a better job enjoying this summer, though the temperature outside nearly outstrips my IQ. Each day is precious, even the searing ones.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, August 7, 2010.

These Folks Have the Write Stuff

2010-07-31T14:41:00.000-07:00

GRAPEVINE, TEXAS — Near the DFW airport, close enough to examine the underpinnings of the airliners taking off overhead, more than 300 writers and lovers of writing have gathered, as we do each July. Some of us enter an essay or manuscript competition and subject ourselves to an all-day workshop in which we critique each other’s work under the watchful and gentle counsel of a big-city editor, usually from the Dallas Morning News or Texas Monthly. The remaining two-and-half-days are devoted to soaking up wisdom from some of the nation’s best nonfiction writers, eating good food and then renewing acquaintances at the Bonnie & Clyde Bar.

The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, sponsored by the University of North Texas, by its sixth year has emerged as one of the premier events of its type in the country. I recharge my writing batteries each summer by attending, entering the competition, hanging out with folks who love writing as much as I do, and listening to authors whose works fill my bookshelves.

Speakers in the four years I’ve attended include famed novelist and essayist Joyce Carole Oates; raconteur nonpareil and National Book Award winner Bob Shacochis; reporter and harmonica player extraordinaire John Burnett of NPR; and Ira Glass, founder of “This American Life,” one of the quirkiest, most interesting shows on public radio.

This year’s lineup included Mary Karr, memoirist and poet, author of the “Liar’s Club” and her latest, “Lit,” about staying drunk and finally getting sober. Karr, who grew up in what we used to call Deep Dark East Texas when I was running a weekly paper near those parts, has that rare ability to write about a wretched upbringing without being maudlin or self-pitying. She is flat-out funny, both in print and in person. That’s tough to do when writing about a momma who once piled up all her toys in the front yard and set them on fire with gasoline, or once came at her with a butcher knife.

Still, Karr and her mother hung together until her mom died; her sister and she split the cremated remains — Mary’s half coming in a ziplock Baggie marked with a Sharpie: “Mom: ½.”

Another headliner this season was Mark Bowden, who wrote “Blackhawk Down,” the story of the failed attempt to capture a Somali warlord that led to a protracted and unexpected urban battle after two helicopters were shot down and nearly two dozen U.S. soldiers killed. Bowden, then a Philadelphia newspaper reporter, always hastens to explain that he is not a military expert but simply a reporter. In this case, he was trying to explain the images he saw in television in 1993 of this failed mission.

The Pied Piper of this conference is George Getschow, a former Wall Street Journal writer and editor who serves as writer-in-residence for the Mayborn Graduate School of Journalism. We have become friends over the years, because of a mutual love for good writing and stories. George refers to those who attend or otherwise participate at the conference as members of the Mayborn tribe. After four years I’m a member of that tribe. Returning each summer is akin to attending a family reunion, without the drama.

I am one of those poor souls who feel out-of-sorts if I’m not working on a writing project. Besides filling this modest space and writing editorials five days a week, at least a few nights a week I spend time trying to work on something more substantial. It might not amount to anything when all is said and done. But I feel incomplete if I
don’t try, as if a limb is missing.

When I hang out at the Mayborn each summer, I am among people who feel the same way. Plus, I get to talk to folks who are actually getting paid to write books full-time, a relative rarity — sort of like making it in the NBA. Here there are giants, I think.

I listen and learn, both from these literary rock stars and my fellow conferees. I always head home inspired and jazzed. Further, what strikes me is the humility of these writers who are household names, at least among those of us who actually read books. The authors are invariably gracious, self-effacing, funny and clearly grateful to be among the chosen few able to make a decent living writing books.

As for me, I keep slogging away most nights, my bank account a bit lighter after each Mayborn. You can’t go there without buying an armload of books, signed by the authors, after all. I have an entire year to read them before returning to buy another armload.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, July 31, 2010.

Those Pesky Disappearing Items

2010-07-24T07:13:00.000-07:00

I am convinced a malevolent spirit follows me and my peeps around, compelling semi-valuable items to permanently disappear on regular occasions — never to be found. There is simply no other explanation except perhaps that I am losing my gourd. I would rather not go there, at least not yet.

The latest involved a cell phone that belonged to the tween-ager who was visiting. It was charging on the kitchen counter as bedtime approached. Curfew had passed. To eliminate any temptation, I decided to hide the phone until the next day, in my dresser drawer.

At least that is where I thought I hid the phone. That was more than two weeks ago. We ransacked the house trying to figure out where I actually hid the phone. I even picked through the garbage, wearing disposable gloves. I made sure it wasn’t in the freezer or the wine cooler. The tween-ager and her mom, my beautiful mystery companion, have since returned to Texas, sans phone. Luckily, we have insurance to replace it, but I haven’t given up the search. At least once a day I look again. This is a big house with lots of crannies. But hope is fading fast. The tween-ager is miffed but still loves me, luckily.

On the same visit, a few days earlier, my BMC’s prescription reading glasses vanished one afternoon. We retraced her steps, from home to the coffee shop, to the newspaper office, then back home. The glasses are gone, as is her blue-jean jacket, which vanished on a trip a few days later to Wamego, possibly in the Oz Museum, possibly not. She brings it along to battle air-conditioning on steroids. Or she did. Past tense now.

I hasten to explain that we are not particularly flighty people. I have been accused of being positively OCD when it comes to keep things organized and in their place, and plead nolo contendre. I keep things tidy in my house and office, so I can find stuff. Except for the stuff that keeps disappearing.

One afternoon a few months before moving here, I was leaving work and put on my prescription sunglasses. A lens popped out. I was driving the chili-red convertible Mini Cooper my BMC and I jointly own but luckily had the top up because it was hot. No worries, I thought. I’ll find the lens when I get home.

When you have worn glasses for nearly a half-century, such mishaps are commonplace. At least a couple times a year I dig out my tiny screwdrivers and put a lens back in place, or if necessary head to an optician’s shop to let someone perform surgery.

The lens had disappeared. How could a sunglasses lens vanish inside a Mini Cooper? I searched for an hour. My brother and nephew arrived later that day from Austin on a visit. I offered the nephew, a hungry college student, twenty bucks if he could find the lens. He’s borderline brilliant and needs money, of course. No luck. Abster, the bright 12-year-old who was out a cell phone thanks to me, also took a run at finding it. It was gone.

Big deal, you say, except that these were tri-focal sunglasses that cost more than $300 to replace. I couldn’t simply replace the missing lens because I had bought the glasses in another town, before I had moved. Aaah well.

An extra garage door opener that I faithfully kept by the back door at my former home, which had a detached garage, vanished one day. I refused to spend money replacing it, the result being I eventually locked myself out of both the house and garage, which cost me $75 in locksmith fees. That only steeled my resolve not to replace the opener, and I never did.

Then there are the lost socks, books gone missing, bills I swore I mailed that never got there. It’s an ever-growing list of items I imagine are all piled somewhere, to be found someday.

Maybe I am losing my gourd. Nah. At least if I am, I have company. My BMC never did find her glasses or jacket.
Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Union, July 24, 2010.

Slip Sliding Away

2010-07-17T05:51:00.000-07:00

One of the assorted fringe benefits of hanging out with a 12-year-old this summer, my fiance’s daughter, is that I have been slipping down water slides all across Kansas without feeling as if I am some gross geezer pushing his luck. “Hey, I’m with the kid,” I can say if given The Look.

I will turn 55 — the double-nickel — next month, which officially entitles me to a company pension from my previous longtime employer, retiree health insurance and a discount at Schlitterbahn in Kansas City. The latter perk braises my backside, truth be known. Since when is 55 considered a senior citizen? Good grief. I have at least a decade left in the workforce, probably more. Give the discount to the poor folks. Sorry, that’s a sore spot with me.

We checked out the new Schlitterbahn in Kansas City a few weeks ago. The original park, in New Braunfels, Texas, has been an annual pilgrimage for both my beautiful mystery companion and me, since long before we met. The new park has some growing up to do, but it was worth the trip. That’s where both my BMC and Abbie pointed out that after Aug. 23 I could get the senior citizen discount. I responded by getting in line for the scariest water slide whose long line I could tolerate.

As I looked around it was clear that I would have been the clear winner of the Oldest Dude in Line Contest. My BMC is about three years younger than me but looks easily a decade my junior, so nobody ever suspects she has crossed the mid-century mark. Clerks are always trying to give me the senior citizen discount, even though I don’t yet qualify. I have been accused of being Abbie’s grandfather or even my BMC’s father, for Pete’s sake. This is a definite source of irritation to me; they find it hilarious, of course.

I read all the warnings on the sign approaching the ride, mainly there to attempt to protect Schlitterbahn from lawsuits. Don’t ride if you have had a heart attack, have high blood pressure, etc. Whatever. I’ll take my chances. After about 20 minutes my BMC and I were finally at the top. Interestingly, the Abster declined to ride, preferring to watch the aged folks risk life and limb. Near-teens are an interesting breed. They’ll happily accept your money but would prefer, like emergency vehicles, that you stay at least 100 feet back.

I am a sucker for water slides, but that’s as far as my thrill-ride derring-do goes. I am finished with roller-coasters after an unpleasant experience in my late 40s at the Six Flags in Dallas that sent me to a chiropractor for a couple of months. I am opposed to anything that makes me dizzy or sends my head below my feet. But flying down a water slide still is something I can handle, and I enjoyed my trip down the Schlitterbahn slide.

I just wish I had remembered to put sunscreen on my feet. I can’t believe I did this again. I slathered sun block on my face, arms, neck, etc. I tan easily but am old enough to know that sunburns are neither cool nor healthy. But since I was wearing water sandals, I forgot about my feet, which now sport a really interesting pattern, as if I had joined some weird foot-tattoo gang.

A quarter-century or so ago, I sat on the beach in San Diego while my young daughters splashed in the surf. Same foolishness transpired. All body parts were protected save my feet. My trip to Disneyland the next day wasn’t so wonderful, since I was limping badly.

Since Schlitterbahn, I have sampled the slides at the Junction City pool and the newly opened Manhattan pool, tagging along with the peeps. I tried all the slides at both locations. The green slide at the Junction City pool provides the twistiest ride by far. I ended up with a slight ankle limp for an hour or so after that ride. It reminded me of Disneyland.

The good news is that nobody tried to give me the senior citizen discount at the local pool. I don’t think such a discount exists, which is fine by me.

Originally published in the Junction City (Kansas) Daily Union, July 17, 2010.