Monday Meandering - 9.16.2013

Tropical Disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico! For parched Texans, those are among the sweetest words ever!

When I go to my neighborhood Super Cuts I often get a Vietnamese woman named Tran. I mean no disrespect, but even in a quiet room, sitting face-to-face, with my hearing aids turned up to super-high, I would not be able to understand Tran because of her heavy accent. None of those circumstances are present during the time I spend in the chair, so consequently I don't understand a word she says. That does not seem to bother Tran as she never stops talking, so based on inflection alone she gets a lot of "Uh-huhs," and "Hmms," and "Reallys." I'm afraid to flat-out agree to anything she says - for all I know she is asking if I want my hair in a Mohawk this time.

This reminded me...

While rising from the couch the other day I heard a faint "beep." It sounded like it was associated with my movement, so I sat back down and heard another beep. Indeed, every time I shifted my position I heard one or more beeps. This was puzzling, because couches normally don't beep. I listened carefully to see if this was a smoke alarm beeping or some other electronic device but heard no more beeps. However, when I later went out to get in the car the door was locked. Sitting on my car key remote again!

I came across a number of Undeniable Adult Truths the other day. Here are a few of them:

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.
5. Was learning cursive really necessary?
6. Google Maps really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
7. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
8. Bad decisions often make good stories.
9. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.
10. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
11. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.
12. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.
13. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?
14. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
15. The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.

One of my Elders from church sat down beside me the other evening. Here's a question. Would you seek guidance from someone wearing these shoes? Just asking.

Labor Day at the Lake Cabin

For nearly 50 years, the Anderson clan and associated families and friends have gathered at the Lake Cabin on Labor Day. Two years ago, the wildfires around Possum Kingdom came within scant feet of derailing that tradition, but thanks to timely intervention of some volunteer firemen, we continue to gather, and did so again this past Labor Day weekend.

We brought our children when they were babies; they grew up and married and brought their own babies; now those children and their spouses bring their babies. This is Cora, my great-grandniece, the most recent member of the family - at least for a few more weeks - and the fifth generation of Labor Day attendees.

Cora really, really wanted my ID bracelet.

It's a pretty simple tradition. You come as early in the weekend as you can so you can claim a good bed (though seniority does count for something); you bring enough food for a small army; you sit on the porch and visit; and if there is water (and you are young) you spend some time getting wet, or trying to avoid doing so. There are always one or more jig-saw puzzles underway, and the conversation goes late into the evening, sometimes beside the fire pit. Did I mention food? The table with desserts is known as the "Table of Good and Evil."

It may be, however, that we will have to start calling the place something besides the Lake Cabin, because there is no lake evident. The cabin itself is on a small creek that joins a larger creek at the edge of the lake proper, and it is not unusual for that small creek to dry up. Sometimes the larger creek also slows to a trickle. Today, if you stand on the eastern edge of the property and look off into the far distance, you can just see water. Holly and her family drove a number of miles simply to find a place to put a boat in the water.

Here's a picture taken by Rozanne to illustrate the current lack of water. This is the new dock; the old one was lost to the fire.

Sleeping at the Lake Cabin is always an adventure. No, there is plenty of room - there's a big room full of beds. And that's the problem. Fill that room with slumbering, snoring, up three-times-a-night for bathroom break folks, add in the baby, and the prospect for a good night's sleep is slim. If one has trouble sleeping in one's own bed in one's own home... you get the picture. So Barb and I made an end-run this year - the community of Graham is about 30 minutes up the road, and there are some really nice motels there. It may diminish the opportunity for fellowship just a tad, but sometimes there is such a thing as too much togetherness.

There are other businesses besides motels in Graham. You're on your on to figure this combination out.

As a side note, Graham plays a part in the family history as well. This town was my father's first relocation as a telephone man. Married exactly a year, he and Mother moved to Graham in 1929, at the tail-end of the local oil boom; wooden derricks were abundant and some exploration for new wells was still underway. Oil was cheap, less than $1 per barrel, but there were no houses for rent.

Mom and Pops moved to a furnished apartment and lived there about three months before a small house in someone's backyard became available for rent. It had two rooms and a path to an out-house. They had some furniture, but had to cobble up a kitchen cabinet from orange crates, stacked with a board across the top. My sister and brother were both born in Graham during that not-quite 5-year stay. It is interesting to think about the small triangle of Graham, Breckenridge and the Lake Cabin as a locus for much of our family's life.

Monday Meanderings - 9.9.2013

We joined much of the clan at the Lake Cabin over Labor Day. More about that on Wednesday. We must have been really, really zonked after the trip. We went to bed early, and during the night Barb got up and noticed a couple of red lights, seemingly in the neighbor's back yard. She was puzzled about that, but it was the middle of the night and she came back to bed. The next morning she checked the neighbor's yard and didn't see any crop circles or other evidence of alien invaders, so we set out on our errands, only to find that a short block over, a house had burned to the ground during the night and we slept through the whole thing!

Just down the coast from Carmel is Point Lobos, a California State Reserve. It is a remarkable area of seashore and headlands, home to seals, sea lions, sea otters, birds and, seasonally,  migrating gray whales. It is also a favorite area for divers and underwater exploration. The area used to be the home of a turn-of -the-century whaling and abalone industry and a small cabin built by Chinese fishermen from that era still remains at Whalers Cove. 

We were visiting that cabin, looking out over the cove when we noticed a disturbance in the water. Thinking that it might be a couple of sea otters, we watched closely, only to be taken aback by two dark objects rising above the surface. Now thinking Creatures from the Black Lagoon instead of Cute Little Otters, we watched with growing concern... only to see two wet-suit clad divers emerge from the depths and begin making their way to the shore. 

In the course of a single day this week, the convenience store up the street from us listed the price of regular gas as $3.33, $3.09, $3.39 and $3.20 a gallon. And those were only the prices we saw. No telling what other prices might have been posted. Maybe the person in charge of the big price sign is numerically challenged.

After Barb and I met with our new sleep apnea doctor this week, she said, "Do you think that before we die, all our doctors will be 12 years old?"

Each Fall, we wonder what kind of crop the pecan tree in the front yard will produce. With the on-going drought, I expected nothing of mention last year but the tree fooled us and produced perhaps its best crop. This year I will be surprised if the squirrels leave us any pecans. It's one thing to scurry around on the ground and gather up the fallen nuts, but they are jumping the gun and eating them off the tree before they mature. To make matters worse, they litter the drive and sidewalk with the leavings. It is somewhat unclear, but here's what we face each morning - at least until Barb started a sweeping action.

Stories from my father - First Things

At the age of 93, my father set out to write down some of the things that he remembered over a long and active life. My brother transcribed these recollections, and I share some of them with you now.

"I was born on July 15, 1907 in a small, two room box cottage located one and one-half miles northeast of the Johnson County courthouse in Cleburne, Texas. The location was on what was then called the Old Grandview Road. By a box construction is meant the cottage was a single wall board and batten house with no two by four frame. It was the home on a fifteen acre sandy loam vegetable and fruit farm. My father supported our family of four by growing and selling fresh vegetables from house to house. I had one sister who was three years my senior.

A first toy I remember was a cloth elephant. It was stuffed with sawdust. When we at last wore a hole in the small toy, all the sand seeped out and I only had an elephant skin left. I also remember a doll I played with. It had a black China head on a sawdust stuffed cloth body. My sister played dolls so naturally I also did.

I received a small toy lantern for a Christmas present about 88 years ago.  It is a real working unit with a glass globe and a wick that is adjustable with the turn screw.  The small red fount was designed to hold kerosene.  But the lantern was dangerous because the oil seeped out of the seam in the fount.  Mother let me light it a few times but feared I would get burned or possibly set the house on fire.  So I kept the lantern as a keepsake for many years before passing it on to my grandson, John.

An aunt gave me a toy train when I was about 6 years of age.  It was a pull toy with an engine and 2 or 3 red cars.  I was disappointed because it was not a mechanical train on a track.  But when the aunt would visit I would get the train out and play with like I really liked it.

Our nearest neighbors were the Curtis family. A father who was a civil war veteran, and the mother who baked good cookies, and a spinster daughter, Miss Emma, who taught school in small county schools. Parker and Rio Vista were two of the schools. She was the friend who gave me the glass egg that is now packed in a box in the apartment closet labeled "Pop's glass egg".

On the other side lived the Richardsons. Mr. Richardson was our rural route postman.

My father's vegetable growing business must have prospered because in a few years he bought the adjoining fifteen acres the Curtis family formerly lived on. We moved to the larger house on that property. The two room cottage was sometimes rugged but most of the time it was used as a store house for different products. Dad's draft animals were a horse called Prince and a small red mule named Kate. Prince pulled the peddling hack that was filled with vegetables ready to sell. He was also the buggy horse and later drew the family surrey, one with fringe around the top and fancy carriage lamps on each side. This surrey was used to go to church in Cleburne.

I started to school in Cleburne in the fall of 1914 after I was seven years old in July of that year. My first grade teacher was named Miss Green. The school was a wooden two-story building known as the South Ward. The yard around the building was filled with large post oak and blackjack oak trees. Similar trees are now in that same school yard. There was a caterpillar type of insect on some of those oak trees. We called it a tree asp. It had a bite or sting which was very painful. The teachers kept bottles of some solution that helped ease the pain of the tree asps.

The second grade teacher was a Miss Yeager. I remember some of my classmates. One was named Fred, another Tommy, and a girl called Benny Creed Frio. She died of pneumonia during the Christmas holidays of that year. She sat across the aisle from me.

When I was small it was traditional for all boys and most girls to go barefoot through the summer months. Walking through hot sand and getting into grass burr patches were hazards we accepted in exchange for the freedom of not wearing shoes. We could run from one shade tree to another to get through the hot sand.

One of my favorite play things when a small boy was a piece of rope, any rope, the longer the better. I used it to help climb trees, to tie loads of junk on my little red wagon, and yes, as a lasso. Once I roped our small weaning calf. The calf did not want to play and ran through a wire fence. I had to turn it loose to avoid being also drug through the fence. Then, how to get the calf back in the pen and retrieve my rope became a problem. I do not remember how I solved that problem but it must have been with mother's help, with a spanking as a bonus."

Monday Meanderings - 9.2.2013

Hope you are having a wonderful Labor Day. Once upon a time, Labor Day meant that school started on the morrow, but nowadays most kids have been back in classes for a week or so. Nevertheless, any day off is a good day, indeed.

Finally, after two seasons, we now get the Longhorn Network in Austin. Time Warner added the channel Saturday, the day of the Longhorn season opener against sacrificial lamb New Mexico State. Being an opening day patsy is profitable; NMS will take home almost a million dollars for coming to town and letting a big bully team walk all over them. I'm pretty sure that it is in the contract that they lose big-time. No big loss, no big payoff.

The City of Austin Resource Recovery Department - what we used to call the trash truck - picks up bulky items a few times a year. Got something big and unwieldy to get rid of? The Bulk Pickup Week solves that problem; just put it on the curb and if the trash-pickers don't get it first, the City will. It's all good - your unwanted stuff goes away.

What I see on the curb during these periods only confirms that people buy furniture in seasonal patterns. For example, there is a big, big push by merchants to sell furniture on Labor Day. In the early Spring pickup, it was obvious that Santa delivered a lot of new recliners, based on the old ones curbside. In the Fall pickup, it is apparent that a lot of folks got new mattresses in the past few months. We did, but we had them take away our old mattress at the time. For many others,  mattresses and box springs are the trash-de-jour items.

Barb has been reading one of those 900 page books for Book Club. We purchased a Kindle version of the book just because it was a 900 page tome. Big, heavy books will wear you out over the course; this way, you can slip a light-weight Kindle in your pocket or purse and easily read it no matter where you are. Barb has discovered that the Kindle will estimate the time needed to complete the book, based on your reading history. So periodically, she calls out, "Page 721 - 3 1/2 hours to go!" I feel like I need to get up and lead a cheer! Something like, "Chapter, chapter! Page and verse! Take that book right out of your purse! Or, maybe not.

The spirit of Leslie lives on! The other day I noticed a pan handler on the street in some kind of unrecognizable garb. When I got close enough - too late to take a picture - I realized that it was a really ugly dude wearing a filmy negligee. Under that, in true Leslie fashion, he was wearing lingerie of some sort. I didn't notice if he was wearing heels, but there definitely was not a tiera.

I went the eye doctor for a check-up and the new intake technician was filling out all the information needed on the new computerized system. She went down the list of possible ailments that might have a bearing on vision, and then those that were less likely to be connected, and finally she asked, "Do you have any aches and pains?" I just looked at her. "Lady, I'm 72 years old. All I have are aches and pains!"

Really?