From Shelburn, IN to Possum Kingdom Lake

So we're sitting on  porch at the lake cabin the other morning, sipping coffee and enjoying life in general, when I notice that my coffee cup has "Shelburn Auto Sales, Shelburn IN" printed on the side. Being a normally curious sort of guy I remarked, "How did a coffee cup from Shelburn Auto Sales, Shelburn IN get here at the lake?" So we created the story of that cups journey. Sort of like a Flat Stanley in reverse.

To be honest, I cannot remember the exact story we concocted - Rob made up most of it - and we thought it was hilarious, but that may have been one of those geographical moments. Nevertheless, I thought I would share a slightly embellished version of the cups journey. It goes something like this:

The cup was originally one of 144 that Roland Mayhew, owner, manager and sole employee  of the Shelburn Auto Sales, Shelburn IN ordered as a sales promotional tool. Truth be told, it didn't motivate that many buyers and Roland had half a case left, even after those he scattered around the office and the 8 he took home and the 12 he donated to the 4H garage sale. This particular cup, however, left in the possession of Wilfred Karp, who bought a like-new 2001 Dodge Ram pick-up truck from Shelburn Auto Sales, Shelburn IN. Wilfred worked at the Conagra-Peavey grain elevator over the other side of Hymera and needed a good heavy-duty truck.

Wilfred was not a coffee drinker, however, preferring those refreshments that were derived from grain (he was in the business, after all), so he left the cup in the truck and forgot about it. Six months later, Wilfred loaned his truck to his brother-in-law, Cooter Harris (recently dis-employed from the grain elevator after an unfortunate incident with 1000 bushels of U.S. Number 1 Sorghum, Smutty, and the boss's convertible) who was going to move with his wife Gladys and their two boys from nearby Farmersburg to her mothers place outside of Clarksville, TN, where he was hoping to get on at the aluminum chair factory.

When Cooter unloaded the truck and the 6X12 U-Haul, naturally the cup got carried in with all the other stuff and there it sat in Clarksville, TN until 3 months later Lester - younger brother to Gladys and Roland - grabbed up the cup in all the gear he and two friends were putting together for a fishing trip at Lake of the Ozarks over in Missouri. At the State Park cabin #12, the cup performed admirably as a coffee cup, but alas, it got left by the fish cleaning sink when Lester and his friends ran out of money and had to return to Clarksville, TN.

However, less than a week later, Louise Stanger and her husband Fred showed up for their annual week of fishing at Lake of the Ozarks and Louise quickly put the cup to use as a flower vase for the little wildflowers she illegally gathered on the nearby walking path. Louise wasn't all that crazy about fishing,  but Fred had been coming to the Lake of the Ozarks for 13 years and he wasn't going to stop now.

The day they left for home, Louise put a fresh batch of flowers in the cup and put in the holder in the console of their Jeep Wagoneer, thinking that they added a certain homeyness to the vehicle. But by the time they stopped for lunch at a particularly colorful roadside park (painted like the Texas flag) near Flower Mound, TX a day and a half later the flowers were totally wilted (and smelling somewhat - well, dead), so Louise dumped them in the red, white and blue trash barrel, and so smitten was she with the decorating scheme she left the cup on the solitary table when she and Fred departed for home in Hico, TX.

No more than 2 hours later, a family member who shall remain nameless, stopped at the very same rest stop to unlawfully deposit some household trash that he had been carrying around in his van, saw the cup, and never one to leave a bit of flotsam or jetsam behind, picked it up and brought it to the lake.

And that, dear hearts, is how it came to pass that I drank coffee from a cup labeled "Shelburn Auto Sales, Shelburn IN" sitting at the lake cabin in north-central Texas.

Or not.

The Lake Cabin

In the early '60's my parents began work on "The Lake Cabin" - a simple getaway located among the cedar trees on  Possum Kingdom Lake. It's more creek-side property than lake-side property, but it's on the water and there's a dock and some boats and kids can fish and swim and grownups can sit and watch and what more do you want?

I'm not sure of the exact date the cabin was moved onto the property but it was probably about 1962. The original structure was a railroad section-hand house. Very sturdy, interior clad in asbestos panels, and fairly small. Pops added the front porch fairly quickly, and then later added the beds room. Plural. Sometimes it's referred to as the sleeping room, but honestly there's not much sleep goes on in there when there's a full house. There are beds for 18 people in the beds room - two more on the porch, and at present two futons that can sleep 4 more and a roll-away or two. There's even a guest house now - an outrider building that sleeps 4 more. Why so many beds? When the family gathers at the lake there's the grownups, and the kids, and the grand kids and now great-grand kids. You've got to put them somewhere.

Over the years the folks added this and that - a car port on the side, a rock path to the walkway to the dock, a rock patio in front for sittin' and talking. There have been tree houses and slides and a cable ride stretched between trees. Closets on the front porch, propane heaters on the porch and beds room, windows across the entire screened porch. There's no way to measure the amount of work that Mom and Pops put into the place. There was always help from others - I think my brother did a lot if not all of the rock work. Someone rebuilt the front steps in recent years. Bill recently re-planked the walkway to the dock.  But it was a labor of love for Mom and Pop throughout the retirement years.Their fingerprints (and notes of instruction) are still very, very evident.

The Lake Cabin has been a focal point for our family for nearly 50 years. We've gathered for big events and small, in warm days and cold. We've often waked to a cold, cold room until some brave soul started a fire in the stove; then huddled around that until someone ventured out of doors and found that it was a lot warmer outside than it was in the cabin. Christmases, Fourths of July, Labor Days and just getaway weekends. It is a great place to gather.

When Mom and Pops died, the Cabin passed to my sister; I often think we did her no favors in doing so. It's a lot of work and expense to keep every thing working (and the Brazos River Authority happy). She has put a ton of work into the property (hooray for city water!) and the family continues to gather there regularly.

Truth be told, however I stopped going there for a while. It was partly because of the memories. There's not a square inch of that property that does not have my father's imprint all over it. And it's partly because it has become harder and harder to persuade me to go anywhere. I'm getting crotchety in my old age; I like my bed and my couch and my recliner. But we did come for a Labor Day get-together a couple of years ago. And while it was bitter-sweet, it was fine. They are good memories.

And we were there again last weekend. I came for the reunion and Barbara was kind enough to come with me. Rob and his family came, too and it was a gorgeous weekend to be at the lake. The kids fished and played in the water, we breakfasted on eggs and sausage and cinnamon rolls; Rob grilled hamburgers and we graded papers and read books and worked on the ever-present jigsaw puzzle, and we played Sorry and we loved every minute if it.

 Thanks, Mom and Pops. Thanks Sis. Thanks all of you.

Monday Meanderings - Oct 26

A sign in a front yard in Comanche, Texas. Don't you wish you knew the story behind this?

And here's something else unique that we ran into on our travels. An automated flagger.

We've all encountered the pair of flag persons at the road construction sites - holding traffic until it's all clear one way or the other. This is a traffic light that senses and stops all oncoming traffic and then waits for either a signal from the companion light at the far end that traffic is stopped there or that there is no traffic coming. from the other direction. It then turns green and signals its partner to turn red.

I have commented about Leslie before. Arguably Austin's most iconic citizen, he was found on the street with a traumatic head injury about a month ago. Doctors held little prospect for a complete recovery, but he surprised everyone and is back on the street (technically he lives in a Home Depot-type portable building - not the street) . Good to know that my tax dollars are helping keep Austin weird.

Rob was here for the weekend, participating in the LiveStrong Challange 5k run and bike ride, and hanging out with Lance and other famous celebrities. Check his blog for his take on the event. So, Saturday night  they were showing the 5k start on the news; I said, "Hello Rob, wherever you are" and Mom said, "He's right there!.

He's a little fuzzy because I shot this off the TV, but we have proof that he was in the race.

And an article in the Statesman said that someone had lost their 6-foot monitor lizard in the neighborhood where Mom delivers Meals-on-Wheels. The article said the lizard was not aggressive or dangerous, but one should not try to handle it or corner it. Mom wants to know what about running over it?

Breckenridge High School - Class of '59 (Part 2)

In the period from 1951 to 1959, the Breckenridge Buckaroos football team won four State Championships outright and tied for a fifth. Throw in the 0-0 tie back in the oil-boom days (1929) and that's at least a share of 6 State Championships. And we regularly beat power-house teams such as Abilene High, Wichita Falls High and Brownwood in the process.

True, this record was eclipsed in the '60's by the Gordon Woods-coached Brownwood Lions and Southlake Carroll is way past that number in the modern era. But a little perspective is needed -  Brownwood's population in the '60's was about 16,000 people. The high school had nearly 800 students. Southlake Carroll today has more than 1,300 students - they have more full-time teachers than we had in my graduating class!

In the '50's  there were never as many as 400 students enrolled at BHS. Only 27 players suited up for varsity football in 1958 (the season of my senior year). Eight of those 27 were named as All State players. Eight of them!


Is it any wonder that any reminiscing about BHS in the '50's is going to focus on football? Organized football started in the Elementary schools back then. Go South Ward Wildcats! The High School coaches carefully supervised the Junior High program. The JV games had solid attendance as folks speculated over the next Varsity starters. Emory Bellard's Wish-bone formation - later introduced to UT - was developed here. The whole town lived and breathed football back then. The gym was full of townspeople for pep-rallies; on home-game Fridays school was over by 2pm and the band, the team and the entire student body marched up the hill to Walker street, then down to the  Breckenridge Avenue intersection and we blocked that intersection - the crossroads of the town - for an hour for another pep rally. Saturday playoff games? The town was literally closed for business.

But there was a dark side to football at BHS. High schools normally don't get to recruit players; they take the ones in their district. Need a player not in our district? No problem - just get some local businessman to offer daddy a job good job in town. Need a house? We can help you there. Still won't come? Let's send the banker who has the mortgage on your farm to discuss the situation with you. There were no transfer eligibility rules back then. You could play for Moran Consolidated one week and Breckenridge High the next. And at least one All State player did. I once thought these stories were exaggerated.  I learned during the reunion - from some of the players themselves - that they were not.


Another example of Football as King: there was a long-standing rule back then that if you married before you graduated, your high school career was over. Until Jerry Gibson and Judy Wright married. Jerry was the quarterback, you see. The rule got changed. A classmate who previously had been told she could not return was suddenly back in school. Only her husband could not sign her report cards - her mother had to do that. Go figure.

And my contribution to this little bit of history? I wrote the lyrics to the fight song. I'm confident that's what inspired the team to achieve such greatness. Back then, the Buckaroo fight song was to the tune of "On Wisconsin." as it was for about 2000 other high schools. "On you Buckaroos, on you Buckaroos, fight for victory." The movie "Giant" was released in that era and one day the band director passed out the music to the theme song from "Giant." I scribbled some inane words to the song, gave them to one of the cheerleaders, they taught the students the song at the next pep rally, and as they say, the rest...

Fortunately, I can't remember the words to my song, but if you go to a BHS pep rally today you can still hear them.

Breckenridge High School - Class of '59 (Part 1)

I previously mentioned (several times) the upcoming 50th class reunion. I also suggested that I had mixed emotions about attending it. Well, the reunion was this past weekend and I did indeed attend, and I'm still processing  everything in my mind. However, some things are pretty clear at this point:

• Those folks are getting old! Thank goodness for name tags.
• Grand kids, health, operations and Medicare are the primary topics of conversation.
• There's still no one in Breckenridge who can cater a decent meal.

Twenty-six of us gathered - out of a class of 70, 74, 100, 107 or 115 students. Take your pick; we couldn't ever agree on a number. A half-dozen or so still live in the area. Everyone else was pretty scattered geography-wise, with Texas the primary state of residence.

Part of my reluctance to attend was based on the fact that I no longer have anything in common with any of those folks. I thought it would be about like the business seminars I used to attend where you were hooked up with a small group of strangers and forced to work together to achieve the seminar's goals. I was right. A small group of people met with the goal of rehashing old times. I'm sorry, those were not the good days - these are the good days.

But there were some interesting aspects to the weekend. Like one of the guys in the band (and part of the group I hung with) showed up with his life partner. Back then, we sort of knew he was different, but we simply chose to ignore it. In truth, he may have been ignoring it at that point, as well. He and his partner were not flaunting their relationship, but if you engaged them in conversation for long it became obvious (I sat by them for both sessions). Even so, I suspect many in the group this weekend never realized the friend was anything but that. I think this because I frankly think there were some there who would have made a big deal - a very big deal - of it had they realized the situation, I base that on the very liberal use of the "N" word and other racial pejoratives I heard over the weekend. Racism and homophobia tend to hang out together in small Texas towns.

It was also interesting to focus on that era and realize what a unique and different time it was. In a real sense it was an age of innocence; not because my classmates didn't know about sex and booze and larceny (they did!), but because we led sheltered lives. Most of us enjoyed relatively the same socio-economic status. There were very few students that we considered to be "rich kids" and they didn't act any different than us - they just had cars and bigger houses. There were no blacks in our school (and only 3 Hispanics) and we didn't interact with blacks in any other circumstance (such as church). Only one football team that we played regularly had black players (and a big deal was made of that at the time, and this weekend as well). Interestingly, the 2000 census listed just .01% of the population of Breckenridge as black. The tradition continues.

We listened to Rock and Roll on radio stations from Dallas and Oklahoma City, and occasionally New Orleans. We bought records at a local record store and occasionally by mail-order from Sam Goody's in Nashville. Almost no one had after-school jobs; few had their own cars - we borrowed the family vehicle. Doors were never locked and with a few notable exceptions the worst crime we were acquainted with was drag racing the family sedan.

Fort Worth was the "big city" in our world (though we did go to Abilene for shopping and doctors), and our lives were largely circumscribed by a loop of Walker street between the Dairy Delight (now the defunct Anchor Drive In) and the western edge of town about even with the infamous water tower - a loop known as the drag. How many times did I drive that loop? There were side roads, of course, that ended in hopefully lonely and sparsely populated parking places (one of the trivia questions passed out to the attendees at the reunion was "Can you name at least one place used for "necking"?). Rob pointed out that the correct answer to this question is "No."

In general, it appeared that those who went off to college found their mates there; those who stuck around Breckenridge married their high-school sweethearts. Sort of like a Dixie Chicks song:

Mary Anne and Wanda were the best of friends
All through their high school days.
Both members of the 4H Club
Both active in the FFA.
After graduation Mary Anne went out lookin'
for a brand new world.
Wanda looked all around this town
and all she found was Earl

It was a small world in Breckenridge Texas in 1959. A very small world.

Next - Football in the 50's. Go Buckaroos!

Monday Meanderings - Oct 19

Stood with my hands under the faucet in a restroom  for a good 30 seconds before realizing, "This faucet has a handle. I will have to manually turn the water on. How quaint."

Saw about 20 people - most of them teen-aged -  walking up and down Cameron Road in the Reagan High area, sitting at bus stops, going into the tiendas and bodegas in that area. They all had on vests with some writing - I finally got close enough to see that the vests said, "May I pray with you?" Interesting.

Watched the OU-UT ballgame Sunday night. We were out of TV range this weekend, so we decided to tape the game. Then when we found out the score we would know if we wanted to watch it or dump it. Loved it that we got to watch it, even if it wasn't a thing of beauty. Got to fast forward through the commercials and anticipate the good final result. We may be on to something here.

Yes, this weekend was the 50th reunion of the Breckenridge High School class of 1959. I'll have a lot more to say about this later. Suffice it to say all those people sure look old! But the best part of the weekend was perfect fall weather at the lake with some of my favorite grand kids!

Monday Meanderings - Oct 12

Mom shared an incident from one of her classes at Austin Grad. During class, a cell phone began playing a merry jingle. Everyone immediately checked their phone, if only to be sure it was on vibrate, but the melody played on. And on. The owner of the phone acknowledged that she had an incoming call, but did nothing to silence it. Meanwhile the song continued until finally the instructor, Jeff Peterson said, "(students name), we have a long tradition of valuing acapella music in the churches of Christ. In keeping with that tradition, please turn off your phone."

Saw a photo online - one of those church reader-board signs. I think (hope?) it was one of the signs where you can make up your own stuff. It read:

New and Improved
Starbucks Coffee and WI-FI!
More Cussing and Sex Talk
Pastor Wears Jeans and Gel

Mom went to the coast this past weekend. I stayed home. Someone at church asked me why I didn't go. I told them "Because I wasn't invited." That's not entirely true, but there has been a lot of togetherness lately and more to come.

But she brought me back a picture from the beach.

Monday Meanderings - Oct 5

The other morning in Fran's parking lot, we encountered an elderly, well-dressed gentleman who politely asked me if could  give him $1.50 for bus fare. I'm not prone to respond to panhandlers, but this man did not look like or talk like your typical street-corner citizen so I gave him the money. Afterward, we were wondering just how much bus fare was in Austin these days and Mom mentioned that she didn't know, since she never had to pay while busing down to class near UT. That's because Seniors ride free.

I thought about that as I watched the elderly, white-haired gentlemen walk down the street after conning me for "bus fare" he didn't need.

I'm currently engaged in a small struggle with AT&T over their incessant reminder notices that it's time to renew the Pay-as-you-go balance on our cell phones. You may recall that we changed to that phone plan some time back after deciding it was the least-cost plan for our cell phone usage. I typically add 90 days use at a time, and all is well for about 60 days. Then AT&T begins sending daily text messages that it is time to re-up. That's not so bad, but at about 75 days, whenever you try to use your phone a recorded message jumps in to tell you it is time to renew and you can do that right now from this very cell phone, or you can be a kill-joy and press the # key to go ahead and complete the call that you set out to make in the first place.

In the first battle, I spent quite a bit of time with Juan Gonzales, the friendly AT&T Customer Support representative from El Salvador or wherever the call center is located and after a number of pauses while he spoke with someone who might - or might not - know more than he did, he assured me that we would no longer get those messages. It took a little time to get across to him he only had two options - stop the notifications or lose our business, and he seemed fully on board with that.

Too bad that I got a text message reminding me to renew my minutes a few hours after my conversation with Juan - as did Mom, WHOSE MINUTES WERE RENEWED ALREADY.

So the score currently is Bob 0 - AT&T 1. However, I will win the war.

As I sit here typing, we are enjoying a delightfully cool day with a steady rain. I'm sorry for the 65,000 people at the ACL Festival who are getting soaked at the moment. If they are true devotees to their music they won't mind. Besides, we need the rain.

A friend sent me a collection of Senior bumper stickers. They include:

"Cremation?
Think outside the box"

"I'm retired.
I was tired yesterday and I'm tired again."

"I'm in the initial stages of my retirement.
SS, CDs, IRAs, AARP..."

"I asked my wife if old men wear boxers or briefs.
She said Depends."

"Sometimes I wake up grumpy...
and some days I let him sleep."


And I'll bet you don't have one of these in your neighborhood.

A neighbor up the street owns a rental place where you can get your bouncy houses and water slides for your party. He quite often has his inflatables set up on his driveway, but this is the first time we've seen the caterpillar. Hmmm. Maybe that's what ate all the leaves off our tomato plants.