Small town churches, shape-note song books and Ross Greenlee - Stories for my grandchildren

 Recently,  Richard Beck, author and professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University wrote  on his blog “Experimental Theology”  about the history of shape-notes and the song books that were so influential in the history of the Churches of Christ. It's an interesting read, and you can find it here.

In his blog, Richard said, “I grew up with shape-notes.” I did too. In Breckenridge Texas, which means I have to talk about Ross Greenlee.

Ross Greenlee was the song leader in the church where I grew up. He was a barber by trade, and I guess the Barber Shop Quartet tradition was a big part of Ross' life; he loved to sing. And every Wednesday night he instructed the high school class in the best tradition of  A Capella singing.

This was the era of all day singing and dinner on the ground, and sometimes there was just singing and no dinner in some nearby community. We sang songs out of the “Great Songs of the Church” song book (song book – not a hymnal), in four part harmony using shape notes.

If it was a new song, we didn’t sing the words at first, rather we sang the name of the note. For example, if we were learning “We Praise Thee O God” we would sing, “so do do do do; do re me me me me; do me so so so la so me me re re re.”  With each part singing different note names, it was often rather calamitous, but we learned to sing every song that song leader knew.

And of course all the boys took turns leading songs, working on that song-leader-hand motion (quickly learning that 4-4 time was the easiest to lead) and when the elders weren’t listening we even had some mixed quartets from time to time.

I don’t know how long Ross taught that class. From before I was in high school till the time my son was in high school at least. I made a trip home for a retirement celebration for Ross when Rob was a Freshman.

And there is a side note about Ross. If you were ever asked to lead singing, you didn’t have to pick out your songs. All you needed to do was pick up a song book in the auditorium – almost any song book - and in the fly-leaf you would find a selection of song numbers that Ross had penciled in at some time or another. Three songs, one for after the prayer, one for the invitation and the final song.

Monday Meanderings - 8.29.2016

The latest issue of Consumer Reports magazine proclaims on the cover, "Secrets to Stress Free Flying." We could have used some of those secrets a few weeks ago when we set out to embark on a cruise.

Our first setback came at the hands of Alaska Airlines. We made the trek out to the airport in time to board a 7am flight to Seattle, only to find that the plane - which at the time was sitting on the tarmac at ABIA - was delayed, first for 30 minutes, then an hour, then 7 hours!. Yes, the 7am plane was now leaving at 2pm - far too late to board the ship in Seattle, and Alaska Airlines couldn't find us a flight on any other airline that could get us there in time.

After a lot of discussion, the cruise line put us on a flight the next morning - again at 7am - that would get us to Juneau by mid-afternoon, where we could join the cruise. So we went home, spent the night in our on beds, and again got up in time for a 7am flight on American, which was also delayed. Long story shortened - after 23 hours of travel - Austin to Dallas to Seattle to Ketchikan to Juneau, we got to our hotel in Alaska, and did board the ship the next morning.

But we're not through. Our return trip was on Delta by way of LAX, only when we got to LA, we were informed that our plane to Austin was not up to the trip, and they would have new equipment in about 3 hours, which put us at home at 2am - just in time to get ready for the first service at church. So between Alaska Air, American and Delta, the only conveyance to leave on time was the ship!

Oh, the Secrets to Stress Free Flying? "Score the best seats." Sorry, when you get re-booked, you get the middle seat. Period. "Board Early." Why? The plane is not going anywhere. "Avoid the crowds." Excuse me? You should see the lines that form when your flight is delayed 7 hours. "Maximize Comfort." In those super-comfortable airport lounge chairs. Check. "Make sure you're insured." The best advice of the lot. We were, and the cruise line and trip-interruption policy covered the cost. Assuming I can finally get Alaska Air to refund my bag fees.

Speaking of travel, I saw an item this week that the nation-wide chain of Howard Johnson Restaurants has dwindled down to... one. Years ago, I joined two other intrepid travelers and drove straight through from Texas to New York. There were HoJos about every 2 hours on our route and I think we stopped at every one of them. Fried clams and a lot of coffee.

Granddaddy Brown's secret - Stories from the Tree

Last week we read between the lines for a glimpse of Grandma Barbara's early life. Now it's Granddaddy Brown's turn.

 Barb's paternal grandfather, Ray Mordella Brown, or perhaps Mordella Ray Brown (there is official documentation for either sequence. For that matter, his name sometimes appears spelled Mordello and sometimes  Mordella), had a secret.

Well, I'm sure some in the immediate family knew, but of all the stories told by and about granddaddy Brown - and there were a lot of stories - neither Barb nor her brother nor her sister ever heard that as a young man Ray left his family behind in Texas and hopped a ship to live in Guatemala for a year.

Or did he?

I came upon this mystery when I found a passport application that Ray Brown filed in late August, 1920 at the New Orleans Passport Office. The stated purpose of the document was to allow Ray passage to Guatemala for a period of a year, where he was to be employed by the Standard Fruit Company as a railroad engineer.

In August, 1920, Ray is three months short of his 29th birthday. He has a wife and two boys, ages 8 and 3 1/2 back in Pleasanton, Texas and in less than 6 months his wife will give birth to Walter Allen, my wife's father. So the first question is, why on earth is Ray headed to Central America?

WWI had ended just a few years earlier, and by 1920 and 1921 the country was in what most termed a depression. Ray had been driving trains for the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad, based out of Pleasanton, The S.A.U. & G. had fallen on hard times and in 1917 had filed for bankruptcy. Like every other US railroad, the S.A.U. & G. was taken over by the federal government on January 1, 1918. It was returned to the bankruptcy receiver in February of 1920, still broke and now without government subsidy. Ray was, in all probability, out of a job, and looking for work wherever he could find it.

Since Ray couldn't come up with a birth certificate, it was necessary for him to go up to San Antonio early in August and get his father, George T. Brown, also a railroad engineer, to prepare a sworn statement that Ray was born in the US of A, in 1891. He also got two other individuals, John Starr and  J. L. Ginn to vouch for him, swearing that Ray was  "...a loyal American citizen and worthy of consideration." Affidavits in hand, he set out for New Orleans.

In addition to the statements vetting Ray, there is a letter in the file from the Assistant to the Vice President of the Standard Fruit Company addressed to the Secretary of State of the United States, the Hon. Bainbridge Colby, urging quick action, as a Mr. M. R. Keller, General Superintendent of Railway Lines in Guatemala,  had already hired Ray to drive locomotives for their company, and they needed him to set sail to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala as soon as he could! The passport was to be hand delivered to the New Orleans offices of Standard Fruit, in order to expedite things.

Standard Fruit (which became Standard Fruit and Steamship Company, which became Dole Food Company) apparently had some clout; Ray made application August 21 and the passport was issued August 25th. Try that today.

But did Ray actually set sail to Puerto Barrios? That's the big question. No one in this branch of the family has ever heard a whisper that he spent a year in Guatemala. We know he lived in Mexico as a boy. We know he began a 50-year career in railroading as a fireman for the National Lines of Mexico at age 15. We know he spoke fluent Spanish. We heard the stories about having to carry a rifle in the cab during those days to prevent the likes of Pancho Villa and his banditos from stopping and boarding the train. We know he famously rejected all things General Motors when diesel locomotives made by that company replaced his beloved steam engines and displaced his firemen co-workers (no one ever told him that his new Frigidaire was made by a GM subsidiary).

But there are no stories from a year spent in Guatemala. There is a lengthy article from the Zavala County newspaper, published upon his retirement in 1957, describing his long and varied career, mentioning many of the lines he worked for and places he lived. Guatemala is not mentioned,

Did he go and find the situation so intolerable that, like some war veterans, he never spoke again of the experience? Standard Fruit and its larger competitor, United Fruit, were notorious at the time for mistreating and endangering native workers, often aided and abetted by the greedy dictators of the various countries they did business in.

 Did he not go? Maybe he got cold feet after hearing that US troops had just been sent to Guatemala to protect American interests while various local factions were engaged in the National Sport of all Banana Republics - guerrilla warfare? Or maybe he decided that he couldn't take a week of sea-sickness?

Or perhaps on August 22, he got a telegram from his wife back in Pleasanton that said:

COME HOME AT ONCE -STOP- 

MISSOURI PACIFIC HIRING -STOP-

You pick the ending you like. Chances are, we'll never know for sure.

Monday Meanderings - 8.22.2016

Planes, trains, ships and automobiles. Gathered the entire family on a cruise to Alaska! Didn't start out as planned - Barb and I missed the boat, thanks to Alaska Airlines, and the kids and grand-kids sailed without us! We did manage to catch up with the boat in Juneau, and as Will said, "All's well that ends well."

By the way, cruise ships don't limit the amount of food they serve, and it was interesting to see how much teen-age boys can put away. Want another/different entree? No problem. Multiple desserts? You got it!

Alaska was wet and cool, and we brought that weather back to Texas with us. You're welcome. We've had about 7 inches of rain this past week and a few more expected, they say. Pretty nice, as long as we don't end up like Louisiana.

The Rio Olympics have concluded. Since we were cruising part of that time, we missed a lot of it, but we did see the opening and closing ceremonies (and lots of highlights). Didn't get into the Olympic junkie mode like I often do, but it's only 534 days until the Winter Olympics.

And now, in accordance with tradition, I declare the Games of the 31st  Olympiad closed, and I call upon the youth of the world to assemble four years from now in Tokyo, Japan to celebrate the Games of the 32nd Summer Olympics.

Reading between the lines - Grandma Barbara - Stories from the Tree

The genealogical record is an accumulation of facts - who, what, when and where. This person was born on this date, married some other person on this date and died on this date. Record the essentials, the dry facts and move on to the next person in the line.

But if you read between the lines, those dry facts often tell interesting stories. That's true for Grandma Brown - my wife's paternal grandmother, for whom she was named.

Barbara Augusta Meyer was the first of 8 children born to German immigrants Frederick and Annie Schiebler Meyer. True, Frederick was born in New Orleans, but his parents were fresh off the boat, the "Admiral," and his wife Annie was born in Berlin. They met and married in New Orleans, but by the turn of the century, Charles had a carpentry and contracting business in Houston, where Barbara Augusta and her siblings were born.

In 1910, the Meyer family was living at 3418 Texas Street in Houston's 3rd Ward; Frederick's parents were just around the corner on the same block at 608 York Street. And right next door, at 610 York, were brand-new neighbors George T. and Molly Brown and their children, Ray and Pearl.

George was a railroad engineer and Ray, at age 18, was a railroad fireman. The Brown family previously lived in Mexico, where George and Ray drove trains in San Luis Potosi, Chihuahua, Cardenas and Guadalajara, Mexico. And did I mention that Ray was good looking?

Here's a picture of Barbara, Ray and Barbara's sister Lizzie, taken in 1910.

In 1911, the record shows that Barbara went to work for the National Biscuit Company at their brand-new bakery on North Chenevert, about a mile and a half from home. And she married Ray in August of that same year.

And there is one other item in the facts of Barbara's early life. She is listed in the 1912 Houston City Directory as working at the Magnolia Coffee Company in Houston, putting labels on cans of WABA brand coffee, alongside her sister Lizzie, who had been working there for at least a year. Interestingly, she is still listed as Barbara Meyer, and her address is still 3418 Texas Street.

That's probably just the slow-moving nature of the city directory business. But she did marry a railroad man, and it is possible that she (and Ray - when he was in town) continued to live with her parents for a while.

But less than 5 years later, Ray and Barbara were living in Kleburg, Texas, where Ray is working for the St Louis Brownsville & Mexico Railroad in Kingsville. And 5 years after that, there is another fascinating read-between-the-lines story about this family. I'll tell that story next week.

Monday Meanderings - 8.15.2016

One of the benefits of being without Internet access for a week or so is that you are not bombarded with the latest political babble. No Donald, no Hillary, no kidding.   Although I had already noted that it takes me far less time to check social media these days. When you flip past anything that even faintly looks like political rhetoric, it doesn't take long to check Facebook & Twitter.

Here's an item that showed up recently on the Austin Craig's List:


"Free cat to loving home, broken home, single person, broke person or homeless person. This cat will be perfect for you if:

• If you are looking for a companion that is a reflection of your cold dark heart
• If you hate people and are looking for a pet that shares your disdain for the human race
• If you can't afford to go to the zoo but want to experience what it is like living in a lion's cage
• If you are tired of being blamed for all the problems in your relationship and would like something to share the blame with.
• If you are into are a glutton for punishment and enjoy sadomasochistic behavior i.e. being bitten, boxed and hissed at continuously
• If you want a constant reminder of your ex-lover that broke up with you via text message and then ignored your calls for months.

The cat is named Ringo but has never shown any interest in responding to that name, so feel free to call it whatever you like."

The Life Magazine Cover

Fifty years ago this month, Charles Whitman ascended to the open visitor gallery of the University of Texas campus tower and began a 96 minute sniper assault that eventually ended the lives of 16 people, wounded 30 more, and went down in history as the worst mass killing on US soil, a record of dubious distinction that lasted for another 20 years.

 Fifty-year anniversaries bring out retrospectives and special newspaper sections and memorial ceremonies, and that has been true for this horrific event. And one of the photos that has been reprinted was this iconic Life Magazine cover. I have no connection to the events on the UT campus that day, but I do have a link to the man who took that picture.

Two years earlier, the company I was working for was heavily involved in an exhibit at the New York World's Fair, promoting the churches of Christ. Part of the involvement was fund-raising to pay for this expensive exhibit and we produced a lot of promotional material to that end.

Shel Hershorn was a free-lance photographer based in Dallas and already had a very notable and respectable portfolio of journalism-related photography, most particularly those related to the Kennedy assassination a year earlier. Shel's assignment for us was to come up with some great photos of the exhibit and activity there, along with more "arty" photos of the New York City area as well. I was there at the time with a crew filming movies of the same general subjects.

This was my first experience working with a professional photographer, and I recall being astounded that a one hour walk-about in the Bedford Stuyvesant area of the city could result in 50-60 rolls of exposed film, from which we eventually picked 4 photographs.

Shel Hershorn was a free spirit, once described by his friend Gary Cartwright as "having the guts of a bugler." Bedford-Sty was not a desirable part of New York City at the time, and the citizens there were not all that enamored with having their pictures taken, but Shel ignored the stares and snarls, if not the down-right threats, and took the pictures he wanted.

After he took the famous tower picture through the Sheftall's Jewelry store window, he saw another photographer from a competing news service angling for the same shot, so Shel kicked the glass out of the window before he could get the shot, telling the irate manager, "Don't worry, Life Magazine will pay for a new one."

Then, as if on a whim, and at the pinnacle of his career, four years later he dropped out of photojournalism, bought a van, children’s Western clothes and a pony, emulating a previous generation of itinerant photographers who photographed kids in cowboy garb sitting astride a pony. He headed west but made it only as far as Taos, where he  re-created himself as a furniture maker and lived a rustic lifestyle without indoor plumbing in Taos, N.M., and, finally, in Gallina, N.M.

In 1996, he donated his extensive collection of negatives, photographs and papers to the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Shel Hershorn passed away at the age of 82 in September, 2011.

Monday Meanderings Special 8.8.2016 - You gotta love this town!

I submit for your perusal a treatise that is currently posted on the Stanford University web site. Why, I cannot say, but it is really there. Or here, at http://web.stanford.edu/group/LoneStar/austin.html. Maybe a lot of Stanford students are considering moving to Austin - those 140 people a day have to be coming from somewhere, right?  I think my version is a little easier to read, so I invite you to stay with me.

I should warn you - this is a little dated; Leslie and Antone Clifford have passed on, MoPac has been under traffic-choking construction for a couple of years, with no end in sight. Jim Bob Moffet - the "Mo" of Freeport-McMoRan infamy - has been turned out to pasture. In addition to the statue of Stevie Ray, we have added a statue of Willie, and there's a bit of  salty language, so reader beware, but the article as a whole still rings pretty true.

Rules for Living in Austin

1. First you must understand that Austin is not Texas, but Austin is in the heart of Texas. The rest of Texas is defined by two zones-the vaguely scary, inbred country regions, and the extremely scary, urban, conservative mega-cities. In Austin, we respect both zones (they are, after all, in the great state of Texas), but we really don't have much in common with them. You may hear us speak disparagingly of other parts of Texas, but you are not allowed to do the same. The only thing we hate more than people from Houston coming to Austin and trying to turn Austin into Houston is people from outside of Texas coming to Austin and insulting our state.

2. You should also understand that it is hot and humid as hell for at least 3 months out of the year. People in Austin know this, and they don't understand people who complain about it. The day lasts 24 hours. There are 7 days in a week. It's hot outside. None of these things are worth mentioning or complaining about.

3. Austin has some peculiar conventions when it comes to traffic. First, if there is anything that could potentially distract Austin drivers, they stop dead in the middle of the road. If they see the scene of an accident on the other side of the highway, they stop. If they see rain, they stop. If there is snow, they stop and start sacrificing goats. Get used to stopping on highways. At the same time, you should get over the idea that drivers in Austin will stop at other, more appropriate times.

Austin drivers will not even slow down for a pedestrian, even if that pedestrian is clinging for life to the front grill of their Suburban Land Yacht. They also will not stop to talk on their cell phones, and they damn sure will not stop for a red light that is less than 10 seconds old. And, of course in Austin, as in the entire state of Texas, it is against the law to use a turn signal. A turn signal may distract other drivers, causing them to stop in the middle of the road, so it is best to not advertise your intentions to turn or change lanes.

4. If you park your car in Austin, it will be towed.

5. Getting around Austin requires a bit of training. First of all, it is relatively easy to go north and south in Austin, but not so easy to get east or west. And if you are going north or south, the directions will surely begin with, "Go down MoPac... 'cause you sure as hell don't want to mess with I-35." Of course, this rule is changing as more and more people crowd onto MoPac, so in the future all instructions will begin with, "Actually, it's probably faster to just take Lamar." Lamar is a road with no beginning and no end, and everything is "just off" of Lamar, so it is just a matter of time before it becomes a parking lot similar to I-35 and MoPac.

Eventually, a major flood of Shoal Creek will drown all the people parked on Lamar. We call this, "thinning the herd. "There is no point going anywhere during "rush hour," which runs from 6:00 to 10:00 in the morning and from 3:00 to 7:00 in the afternoon every work day except Friday (when rush hour starts on Thursday night and lasts all day). On most days, at least one driver is distracted by something during rush hour, which means that everybody has to stop.

You should also make a note that Mopac IS Loop 1 -- they are one and the same. Similarly, Capital of Texas Hwy is 360, and Research is 183. 2222 is Northland or Allendale or Koenig, depending on what part of 2222 you are talking about. 290 is Ben White, but there are two 290 exits on I-35, one of which is 2222 (which, as mentioned earlier, is Northland, Allendale and Koenig). Don't try to figure it out. Just accept it. If you question the intelligence behind this naming convention, people will simply tilt their heads to the right and stare at you.

6. Austin is effectively divided into two worlds. The new "tech" people who live "north" of town (north of 183), and the old "true" Austinites who live in the "middle" of town (although census data will no doubt reveal that the true "middle" of Austin is now well north of 183). South of town is hard to describe, so we'll pretend it doesn't exist, and East of town is embarrassing to describe, so we'll pretend it doesn't exist either.

North Austin is a plastic, mass-produced world full of chain restaurants and movie theaters. The houses are huge, the yards are small, and the treeless streets have names like "Oak Forest View Circle." Central Austin, on the other hand, tends to attract the granola eating, deodorant-shunning, aging hippie-types. The houses are small and structurally frightening, but they are no less astonishingly expensive, and the businesses tend to be small, privately owned specialty shops that don't sell anything you'd want to buy.

7. There is no dress code in Austin. How you look and what you're worth typically have little do to with each other here. In central Austin, it is quite common to see some scruffy, smelly hippie with dread-locks, tattoos and piercings driving a new Lexus or Mercedes. People in Austin like to look weird. The woman you see walking down the drag with the tattoo of a dragon across her back and the purple hair may be your child's kindergarten teacher.

Your congressman might be a leather-clad biker. And the girl in the coffee shop serving you a latte may have a Ph.D. in astrophysics. Don't judge a book by it's cover here. In the extreme, there is Leslie, who is technically a bearded man, but who likes to hang out downtown in a teddy and a tiara. Leslie's nuts, but he personifies Austin, and we're not going to get rid of him.

8. Austin has a love-hate relationship with tech companies in general and Dell in particular. We love being progressive, and the tech companies represent "the future." However, they're boring, sanitized, and they tend to treat their employees like cattle. Dell is a nasty machine that uses people like a lubricant, grinding them up and cleaning them out when they get messy or inconvenient. People in Austin are beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that George Orwell was right about everything except the date.

9. Austinites are largely a bunch of tree-hugging environmentalists. For example, we're strangely and frighteningly proud of our bats. In the summer, the Congress Avenue Bridge is reminiscent of a Hitchcock film, but Austinites flock down there every night to see the show up close and personal. We have a statue devoted to the bats, and we named our hockey team after them (yes, we have a hockey team). The bats rule. As does our salamander.

At one time, money-grubbing developers (Freeport-MacMoRan mostly) were building irresponsibly along Barton Creek, and because the bastards (may they rot in hell) couldn't be bothered with things like proper sewage drainage, our beloved swimming hole, Barton Springs Pool, was being polluted with the sewage from Barton Creek Development residents (a.k.a., "rich scum spoor"). Most of the city council and the Texas legislature were in the pockets of the festering scumbag developers, so it was necessary to bring out the big guns-the Barton Creek Salamander, an endangered species that was being threatened by the development sludge. For some reason, in Texas it is okay to make your citizens swim in crap, but it is illegal to make salamanders do so.

10. And of course, there is music. Austin is supposed to be the "music capital of the world." We have a shrine for Stevie Ray Vaughn down on Town Lake (yes, it's a lake-it looks like a river to you, but it's a lake); pay your respects if you come to town. While you're at it, swing by Threadgills and pay your respects to the memory of Janis Joplin, and drop by Antone's and pay your respects to the memory of Clifford Antone. He's not dead, but he's in a Texas prison on drug trafficking charges, and that may be just as bad.

You gotta love this town.

The poem

I volunteer as a reader for Learning Ally, an organization I highly commend to you for its work to provide recorded materials for visually impaired and dyslexic students.

Usually, I read books about historical events and figures, such as John Quincy Adams, or Robert E Lee, or Sociology textbooks, or the like, but my current recording project is a book called “Beyond Courage,” a collection of stories of Jewish resistance during World War II.

It is a deeply disturbing book and not far into it I came across this story and this poem that has haunted me since. I think you will find it disturbing as well, but it reminds us that there are some things that we must not let happen again.

 Marianne Cohn 1922-1944

 During the methodical and relentless campaign by the Nazis to eliminate all of the Jews in the countries that the Germans occupied or controlled, members of various organizations smuggled as many Jewish children as possible over the border into Switzerland.

German-born Marianne Cohn, living in exile in the so-called “free” or unoccupied France during the war, had spirited hundreds of children to safety, but on May 31,1944, the Nazis caught Marianne and twenty-eight children on their way to the Swiss border.

They were imprisoned in Annemasse, Occupied France. Interrogated and beaten mercilessly, 21-year old Marianne refused to implicate her fellow conspirators. Though she had a chance to save herself, she refused, for fear of what the Nazis would do to the children they also held captive. Only three weeks before the liberation of Annamasse, on the night of July 8, Marianne was dragged from her cell and murdered. The children were unharmed.

Marianne left behind a poem:

I will betray tomorrow, not today.
Today, tear off my fingernails.
I will not betray!
You do not know the extent of my courage.
I know.
You are five hands, harsh and full of rings.
You are wearing hob-nailed boots.
I will betray tomorrow. Not today.
Tomorrow.
I need the night to make up my mind.
I need at least one night
to disown, to abjure, to betray.
To disown my friends,
To abjure bread and wine,
To betray life,
to die.
I will betray tomorrow, not today.
The file is under the windowpane.
The file is not meant for the torturer.
The file is not meant for the executioner.
The file is for my wrists.
Today, I do not have anything to say.
I will betray tomorrow.

Monday Meanderings - 8.1.2016

Usually when you get stuck in a check-out line, it's because they need a price check, or there are credit card problems or some such. The other day in Central Market we got stuck behind a guy who was trying to buy, among other things, several cartons of some kind of fancy water. The register rejected the water purchase, however, because the product had been recalled. At this point most of us would say, "Okay - no water for me." But this guy wanted to know why it had been recalled.

They finally got hold of a manager who explained that the cartons were not sealed properly and glass bottles of water were prone to drop out of the bottom of said faulty carton. The water itself, it seemed, was okay to drink. So the guy insisted he would be careful and could they please go ahead and sell him the water?  To make a short story long, no. No, they couldn't. But they tried. And tried. And tried. Barb and I are thinking at this point, "Just give the dude the silly water and let's get on with it!"

I'm guessing that this means my chances of winning $1000 are zero. Nil. Bumpkus.

This was bulk pick-up week in ATX, when the city hauls off all that stuff that won't fit in your garbage can. Like the ginormous hot tub that the family down the street dragged to the curb. This week is also called "junk relocation week" because there are a lot of items that go in the back of cars and trucks before the city gets around to them. Like the small bookshelf that looked like it would just fit that space by Barb's desk, but didn't, so it ended back on the curb again, but that's okay because someone else might want it.

The items put out for bulk pick-up seem to have a pattern to them. Right after Christmas, there were lots of couches and recliners on the curb. This week the trend was for shelves, cabinets and mattresses. And TVs, but only the huge rear-projection types.