The Big Night

Summer evenings on the Coastal Plains of Texas can often mean muggy, sticky, mosquito ridden hours that go on forever. This evening however was different for a couple of reasons.

First, a mild “cool” front came through. All that means is that the pressure is high and the humidity is low. Weather reports had it at around 39% today; normally it’s 90% or higher. High temp was in the low 90’s. The evening turned off really nice, just a few small clouds, a soft South breeze. Mosquitoes were hunting in the cow pastures.

They missed a bonanza, because there was a stadium full of warm-blooded family and friends making ready to witness the graduating class of 2009. I was there because my middle daughter was one of the 496 eager grads just outside the stadium. They were all wearing their orange caps and gowns, the girls’ hair all straightened and/or curled, the boys’ necks all crammed into buttoned collars and ties. No doubt most of them were visited by butterflies and flop sweat.

As the stands filled up with interested and obligated spectators and the sun edged down, the breeze was refreshing and made the hard bleachers a little less offensive. The only thing we were concerned with was saving space for my parents, who were to be a little late. Even that assignment was made bearable by the parade of humanity in a variety of forms that issued past us.

This being Alvin, the Alvin ISD police were checking bags on the way in; they banned the air horns and cowbells and all manner of obnoxious noisemakers that had plagued previous graduations. The reason being, enthusiastic family cheering for one graduate virtually obliterated the names of the next three or four kids. So much for the dignity of the ceremony.

The graduates filed into the stadium single file down the track on each side. I was told that we should be on the South side. Sure enough, of the four hundred ninety-something high school seniors mine was there way back in the back with the “S’s”.

As I watched her in her orange cap and gown, I had that strange feeling that amounts to wonder at the speed of life. *Cliché alert*; It seems like such a short time ago that she was just a little kid running around the house with a busted piñata on her head. No, really. She has grown up so much. She is over five feet nine inches tall, and with the shoes she wore, she was nearly six feet even. Taller than nearly all of the girls and a great percentage of the guys. She looked like royalty, striding along the padded track with her wide, bright smile and her long blonde hair. Like Graduate Barbie.

Now she was in a group of kids that had gone through 12 years of school together, and were about to hit the streets as real people. They filed onto the new field of artificial turf filled with an army of chairs in a long, neat rectangle.

The crowd settled down and the color guard came out, the national anthem was played by the band, minus the seniors. The introductions of the officials were made and the speeches were speeched by the student class president and the smart kids. The top 10% was introduced, honors made and the long list of graduates’ names was read.

We sat through the lengthy list, waiting for the nineteenth letter of the alphabet that would signal Katie’s moment. We watched as her row stand up and walk to the staging area to be called up to receive their “diploma”.

Hearing her name, our entire group stood up and yelled, “Yay Katie!”. I texted her later during her time of Project Graduation all-night-soirée and asked if she had heard our exclamation. Her reply was, “LOL yah! ☺”. It made me feel good to have been noticed from that far away.

I am proud of my girl. She took the Math classes that I didn’t even know existed. As a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone in my immediate family has even touched that level of ciphering unscathed.

She is one of the reasons that I have to go on, and I love her so much. Congratulations Katie-Belle.

Wordy Guy X!

Yes, the ever-sensational Wordy Guy has bestowed another puzzle gift on us. On you, I mean, I already knowed what this one means.

As always, do your best, dig deep in your brains, and NO CHEATING...

Lugubrious

A. Extremely ridiculous


B. Extremely mournful


C. Extremely humorous

And remember, last time Innominatus got the actual Wordy Guy to chork on his java with the dandy usage guess.

I'll have the answer and winners on Monday nite!

UPDATE
Well, here it is Monday night, and as promised I am announcing the winner of the Wordy Guy XI, or "X!" as I have in the title (on purpose)(really, I did it on purpose).

This is going to be difficult, since Innominatus came in first with an answer that very well could indicate that he knew the meaning of "lugubrious". But I can't let him drift through on his lightning-quick smart aleck answers forever. So this week's bragging rights goes to Falcon. His "process of elimination" educated guess was right on the money.

While Joe Biden's hair could be described as "extremely mournful", it wasn't decisive enough for the win.

And I mention "money" just as an expression, as you know there are no monetary prizes issued here.

Just a warm feeling of questionable accomplishment. So Falcon, revel in your moment. Thanks for playing!

I Think I Just Made Them Mad

The skeeters have been getting a little “uppity” lately. The evenings have been fairly windy, so they have been getting not fogged the past week and a half.

Bad move on my part.

I have been thinking about it, but couldn’t quite get out there and smite them properly. It happened kinda suddenly I guess. However it happened, it happened quickly. Just this moment as I am typing, a mosquito flew close past my face and one bit me on the nape of my neck. I have killed them in the shower and the kitchen. I killed another only moments ago on my arm and another on the back of my neck.

I Black Flagged them last evening, and they weren’t swarming me. I thought I was in pretty good shape, catching them a little early.

Turns out they were just in someone else’s yard at the time, and came home to roost this morning. I should have known that they were back en force when I saw the horse on the front lawn, completely drained of blood.

I am going to get out there again just before nightfall; I am tired of going to bed with mosquito repellent on my ears.

This Almost Didn't Happen

I almost didn’t go. I had set the alarm for 5:30 a.m. I hadn’t slept well last night, and that time of the morning is awful early, and today would have been an ideal day to sleep in. But the sound of the little crack of dawn kept me awake, and the stillness of the past few mornings called me toward the bayou.

So I dragged my carcass out of the bed and got dressed. I grabbed a couple of Cutie Pies and a couple of bottles of water. Loaded everything into the car and hit the road to Highla—er, my “secret fishing spot”. In the growing daylight, I constantly monitored the breeze; I watched the grass at the sides of Highway 6 for the sign of increasing wind, the tops of the trees were eyeballed for any extra movement. All seemed calm for the time being.

When I arrived at the appointed spot, there was only a breath of a breeze with a slight Northerly component. I walked up the gravel road and over the levee to survey and choose my line for the day. On a whim and a bit of experienced impression, I decided to head West, into the corner. I know that the redfish tend to congregate in that spot up there, and so I set out to get into the water to wade to my destination.

At this point, I must confess that I had made the trip down to the water on Wednesday morning, which was the first time since last August. I wasn’t sure about what Ike did to my favorite spot. Would there be a lot of debris in the water? Did it change the shoreline any? Were there any dead animals in the water that I would (shudder) snag on? Worse?

I wore my long pants to protect my legs in the event of lawn furniture or a fence or something just under the surface of the water. Wednesday I chickened out. I wasn’t sure of the bottom, or anything, and when I saw a furry form in the grass at the edge of the shallow water, I froze. On closer inspection, it was small chunk of carpet rolled up. That did it, I decided to hike around to the road and fished a little on either side of the railroad track. Then I went home. The wind was strong out of the East, and the old rhyme came into my head, “Wind from the West, fishing’s the best; wind from the East, fishing’s the least.” That, coupled with the mullet playing around in the water was an indication to me that they were unconcerned with any local predators. I was unwilling to get into the high tide, up to my back pockets in the water and have to drive home in wet pants with no fish.

Today was a different story. I charged into the water on a mission. I made some casts in my trek to the corner, but had the feeling that they were in vain. I waded through the mud and the rising tide, water that was usually knee deep on me, was now at my mid-to upper thigh. Maybe Ike had something to do with that, I didn’t know. What I did know was that the regular sneakers I wore on my feet were NOT the wading shoes that I usually wore. They were neoprene with a zipper up the side and they came up past the ankle. I write of them in the past tense, for alas, they are no more. They only lasted about twelve years.

About halfway to the corner, I was pleasantly surprised by a strike on my line. I use soft plastic lures on a lead head jig. The strike was not a big “WHAM” like a redfish usually makes, yet it wasn’t a flounder, either. Turned out to be a 17 inch redfish. Under Texas law, the red drum must be between 20 and 28 inches for a fisherman to keep it. So I let it go, as prescribed by law. But my heart was light since that is what I had come for.

After nearly losing a shoe in mud up to the middle of my calf, I arrived within casting range of my target area. I sent a cast just past an old post standing in the water. My retrieve was medium speed and with a couple of yanks on the rod. In just a few seconds, the whole tone of the morning took an exciting (for me, not necessarily for you) turn.

My lure paused for a split second, then took off in a different direction. I yanked on the line hard, and the fight was on. The big fish ran like a torpedo (not actually “running” since it lacked legs) and I did my best to turn and reel him in. The fight was spectacular, with me grinning and laughing like a big idiot. At times when trying to slow his progress, my line started to sing from stretching so hard. I am impressed that it held together, but for a few seconds I was in doubt.

I finally got the fish into my net, removed from the line and put on the stringer. He was a hefty, strong and by now, tired 26 inch red drum. During the fight with the behemoth, I saw other reds take off out of the vicinity; so they WERE there!

I fished for another hour and a half, and in total, hooked 12 fish; three that I kept, five that were undersized (but very strong and vigorous fighters) and four that broke my line in several creative ways.

I have to say, fish breaking the line is not too uncommon, but I have never had four of them in one fishing trip. The first ran up on a partly submerged fencepost and broke the line. Next, one of my hook eyes broke the line that went through it (the knot was still intact when the slack line flew back in my face). The third one used his brothers on the stringer to break the line by diving beneath them at three-quarter speed. The most ingenious was the last one.

After a fierce fight, line singing, rod bent in a big “C”, me laughing and straining to keep my foe away from that fencepost (yes, that one again) the creature made a run at me. At the last second, he dodged left and ran to the fish on the stringer. I was smart enough not to let that happen again, but the angle was nearly impossible to turn a fish this strong. He ran under my stringer, turned right and circled my right leg. I felt the line through my Wranglers and eventually it gave way with a muffled “ping”.

I was only a little aggravated, it was a sizeable fish and I would have liked to put the tape measure on him before I let him go. I already had my limit of three reds on the stringer, and another big one would have just been illegal.

My Dad later asked how big that last fish was, and since he broke off, I told him it was as big as I wanted it to be. I’ll say it was 32, no 52 inches long.

The epilogue to this “best day of saltwater fishing ever” is that I cooked the big one for dinner this evening.

Twelve hundred and fifty words to say, “I had a great day and a great meal today”.

Berry Good Times

Blackberries are among my favorite forms of produce. Especially the extra large Brazos blackberries that my parents grow. They are juicy and tart, and this year there is a higher proportion of really sweet ones. Many are the size of a pigeon egg. No lie.

They are coming to the peak of their season now; a couple of gallon buckets every couple of days. I went to the Soderberg Farm and Chicken Resort and picked on Saturday after our fishing trip. My mother and Dad and I went back there with our little one-gallon buckets ready to harvest some of the easy picks. It was around noon, and the shade was gone by that time. Though it makes the berries easier to see and pick, the bright sun drains the impetus from the picker.

As the picking progressed, there were some just too full of juice to allow them to be crushed by their own family. These I had to eat immediately. I checked each one destined for the gullet, having learned my lesson too well a while back. And not one berry passes my lips without the thought of something unseen that may be in there haunting me. You see, there are bugs that lay eggs in a berry to ensure that their offspring has a great first meal. There is always the danger (read “probability”) that I am eating some insect’s progeny, but I usually justify it by allowing that the extra protein would be beneficial. And you can’t taste them. Mostly I try not to think about it.

I never even knew about the worms, and thus never worried about it with all of the dewberries that we picked when GranMommy and GranDaddy took us to the wild berry patches when we were kids. The short version is that in the spring, they would take us to San Leon near the railroad tracks and pick berries till our fingers were purple and there were gallons of dewberries ready for use. We had our little Coke case stools, buckets, hats and a snake stick, all issued by the ramrod of the operation. I remember once when I was taking a break; drinking water out of the bleach bottle under the seat of the Dart and then laying on the back seat. When I shut my eyes, I saw berry vines. And berries. Just an image burned into my retinas. And I learned that some of the berries just needed to get eaten right away. We were never scolded or admonished for this; part of the reward for stooping, crouching and kneeling in the sticker, ant and mythical snake-infested berry patch was the joy of popping in a nice, fat, perfectly ripe dewberry.

I’m sure there were larval passengers in them as well, but I never was a witness to them. These days my parents soak their berries in the buckets for ten or fifteen minutes when they bring them into the kitchen to evict the interloping worms. With a few minutes under water, the poor little guys begin to wriggle and float to the surface for a breath of air. That’s when they’re nabbed. Either plucked out and squished or simply washed (warshed) down the drain.

So we always soak the berries. When I got my parcel of about five pounds of them home Saturday, I soaked them dutifully. After the required amount of time, I checked to see how many bug children were present. My mother’s statement from a few days back, “We didn’t have hardly any when we soaked them the other day…” rang in my ears as I watched probably ten or twelve of the little buggers float to the surface. Some were small; less than an eighth of an inch. Others, however looked as though they were outside the slot limit for length governing the harvest of black bass in some Texas lakes! Writhing eels, anacondas, mostly not the pearly white of their smaller cousins, nay, these were long purple colored streamers with a heft and ominous look overall.

They weren’t really all THAT big, only about a quarter of an inch long, but still I was glad there were no game wardens in the area. You never can be too sure.

I made a great cobbler out of three cups of our little purple friends, and there are others refrigerated for eating on cereal in the morning, or just to snack on.

And I am secure in the knowledge that the rest of the big Brazos blackberries that are harvested at the Soderberg Farm are destined for delicious, worm-free blackberry jelly. This goes well on PawPaw’s angel biscuits.

Are you hungry yet?

You Call THAT Music?

What passes for music these days.
NOW I know what the geezers from my past were talking about. The music that kids listen to today barely qualifies as music.

Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of artists out there on the popular music scene who can actually make music. John Mayer, Jason Mraz, Grace Potter, and a few others are first-rate musicians and songwriters. These guys are not the focus of this rant.

And I guess that’s what it is that bothers me so badly. A new band may actually have a decent song; tolerable lyrics, lead singer that’s not too annoyingly “urgent” and some musicians who can actually play their instruments. The most maddening detail is the drummer, pounding incessantly on the cymbal with each and every beat with no variation or sense of rhythmic patterns. Just banging on the cymbal. Sometimes through the chorus or even the verse. I hate it. I have even unwittingly ruined a band or two for my oldest daughter. Sorry. But this is a widespread problem, a disturbing trend, and the stuff of geezer chronicle.

Apparently the only requirement to be a drummer these days is to have a drum kit and a pair of sticks. Oh, and enough brain power to carry a beat. But that’s where it ends.

No more Neal Peart, Richie Hayward, Mick Fleetwood or the other greats who could play complex patterns of interesting rhythms, and keep a steady beat at the same time.

These guys were back in the day when guitar players actually played the whole way through the song, not just little breaks at the appropriate places, then a fifteen second bridge. Paul Barrere of Little Feat (a band that many have not heard of, but who were very cutting-edge and influential in the 70s) was a phenomenal guitarist whether playing lead or rhythm. Most of the songs, he is just playing behind the vocals, not just chords, but complex rhythms that are hard to hear unless you are listening with headphones or at volumes to make the neighbors a little angry.

My point is, that musicianship is getting passed over for a decent hook, over-produced music and a cute face/fancy dance moves. The old guys, and I’m going way back to Tommy Dorsey and Bob Wills, the 1930’s and 40’s, were definitely not lookers, nor did they even have singing voices that were beautiful, but they could play their respective instruments and assemble others who could technically and creatively complement them.

Now all you need is an aggressive manager and a good producer.

*Note*
I don't know the band in the picture, I just wanted to show the young, vapid musicians prowling around these days. They look like they would play the kind of tripe that I described above. For all I know, they could be the next band of geniuseses that make the Moody Blues look like a bar band. Just judging the book by the cover. Geezer stuff.

I am a Victim.

A victim of Warner Brothers cartoons, specifically Bugs Bunny. I enter into evidence the fact that Monday, while dutifully working on workish work, I was listening to Rossini’s Barber of Seville. There was a concrete job being done in the parking lot by a guy using a jackhammer.

The problem is, that even while working on workish work, my mind conjured the image of the unseen worker in the parking lot, manically wielding a giant jackhammer, with his feet coming off the ground, bouncing all around, in time to the music. Purely unintentional, but some of the pauses in his hammering coincided with the pace of the music. I was watching a cartoon in my head.

I also saw Bugs Bunny abusing poor Elmer Fudd with the mud pack on his face in the barber chair, cracking it with the chisel and hammer. Which progressed to the scalp massage, fertilizer and flowers sprouting from Elmer’s head. The chase scene in the barber chairs. And “You’re so next”…

This is my life. Fully 25% of my observations are easily relatable or reminiscent of some Warner Brothers animated situation. A quote, a picture, anything.

Everybody has a burden to bear. If mine is to be a giant 11 year-old that likes a 75 year-old rabbit, then so be it. I guess there are worse things I could be.

Like Daffy Duck. Now there’s a jerk…

Wordy Guy X

That's "X" as in "Ten", not something naughty. You guys know me better than that...

Yes, looking back, it was back in June '08 since last we heard from our Wordy Guy. Here is his latest puzzle-ette.

Answer in the comments, first correct answer in order gets bragging rights and not really much else. As if "bragging rights" for this blog is not an oxymoron. Anyhow, no cheating.

Pinnace
A. A sleeveless garment worn as an apron or a dress

B. A light sailing ship

C. A thin, light-weight saber

FINAL RESULTS
Well, knowing the author and readers of this blog, I suppose a straight answer would be outside the realm of possibility.
Innominatus seems to be the unclear winner, he confessed to looking up the answer, but his mini-narrative was hilarious. I almost prefer it to the real answer, which up until the time I read the first entry was a simple B, a light sailing ship. In fact, I am contemplating changing the rules. The entries should/might/could be accompanied by a sentence putting the word in question to good use, made up or not.

The Epic Battle

Saturday was the first day of battle. The enemy troops have been massing since a couple of days after the kittens tried to invade. There was an inch of water in out back yard for a few days; the flower beds have gotten out of hand. The gerber daisies are nearly three feet tall, the ornamental boxwood is more like an ornamental crate, the trumpet vine could open its own jazz club.

The mosquito queens did their job well. Laying thousands of eggs that hatch into millions of larvae, that metamorphose into billions of sinlge-minded bloodsuckers that waited to descend on the human population at once.

May 2 was the day of the beginning of the epic summer struggle; man vs mosquito. The mosquitoes had numbers, a hollow proboscis and an unquenchable hunger for hemoglobin.

I have a Black Flag fogger. It took a try or two to find the ammunition for it. Walmart sold out yesterday. Dang it. I went to Stanton’s and found what I was after. I got two jugs of it.

I got home and devised my battle plans. I would wait a little until the blasting South wind died down a little. My trigger finger got itchy. I needed to test the amount of propane in my weapon. It was still a bit early, and since my foe is mentally unsophisticated, I decided to chance a test fire. I filled the reservoir with my toxic ammo, opened the propane valve and heard the hollow hiss. Yes! I touched the igniter and after a quick “pop-poof”, my instrument of war was warming up. After another minute for the fogger to be fully ready, according to the directions that I read and understood, I was ready for the test firing.

The wind was still a bit strong, and knowing that the most intelligent and resourceful of my quarry liked to stay in the garage, I fogged in there first.

Great, it worked. Worked really well, as a matter of fact. So I loaded the agave plant with smoke. I just rounded the corner and fogged along the side in front of the gate. The wind was lower over there, lets just see what will happen along the side of the house. The mosquitoes rose in clouds to meet me in combat. I squeezed the trigger and sent forth a beautiful plume of poison. I could see the silhouettes of my enemy against the white haze.

None of them dropped immediately, that would have been very rewarding, and I should not have gone after individual fliers since they don’t immediately succumb. A couple of the bravest got a puff to themselves anyhow. The back yard, with all the vegetation and shielded from the as yet strong breeze beckoned me forward. I sprayed the daisies, the caladiums, the trumpet vine. I even sprayed the cracks in the deck.

I continued around the house, and then to the front yard, and the neighbors’ yards. The sense of purpose that drove me around was very fulfilling. So fulfilling, in fact, I repeated the entire exercise when the wind did die down. And I plan on repeating it this evening as well.

Our little winged enemy, small though it may be, comes in innumerable throngs. Culicidae is the army, the divisions are many; Aedes, Culex, Anopheles. Some are small and aggressive, others are large and frightening. They all must die.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “I will fight them in the front yard, I will fight them in the backyard, I will fog under the deck and under the shed, I will never surrender, I will never give up.”

Yet ANOTHER Swine Flu Alert, Really.

Yes, you have all no doubt heard about the swine flu and the attending symptoms and panic warnings. The news media is constantly mining the scientific journals and secret medical networks for any other information that will protect the public from this insidious and frightening illness.

The indications are similar to and include the normal flu symptoms of fever, lethargy, lack of appetite, coughing, runny nose, and sore throat, the porcine version may also incorporate nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Yuck. You only thought you didn't want this stuff. It gets worse.

Further medical sleuthing by yours truly has unearthed yet other warning signs that the swine flu has been contracted. Some indicators the alert patient may notice are:
• in game situations, hogging the ball increases
• in social situations, hogging attention and even hogging the camera intensifies
• melancholy at the smell of bacon or pork chops cooking
• aching in the ribs when hickory smoke is detected
• Snorting/oinking when coughing/sneezing

Please be aware of these symptoms in addition to the regular discomforts. While serious and certainly nasty, for the most part this illness is not fatal, but I hear that by the middle of the second day, you'll wish it was.

As an added precaution, please gargle after any display of affection from a pig, hog, boar or even javalina. (While the last is not technically a swine, it has a generally malevolent disposition and will likely bite your face off after it pretends to want to give you a nice peck on the cheek. Your nose will likely be running, but not from congestion. More like running for the border after being removed from your face.)

Just be careful out there. I can't afford to lose any more readers.

That is all...stay well.

Cat Update: Happy Ending!

Well, the kitties did indeed get re-rescued by their biological mother. While she didn’t knock on the door she did come back for the kids. My girls are bummed, but I am relieved.

We left the kittens out in their box lid and let mama cat overcome her shyness; she did come and gather them back up. Every time we went out last evening to check on them, all I could see were a pair of eyes glowing from the bushes in the beam of my flashlight.

I went out this morning and got the puddin' scared out of me when the black mama cat jumped and hissed at me like some wild, evil spirit flying from the shadows. Lucky I didn't kick her over the fence. Of course, that's hard to do when you're jumping backward with chill-bumps colliding with each other all over your body! She had obviously secured her progeny and for some reason was returning to the scene, possibly to make sure the mittens were recovered as well.

Ms. Kitty had a home under our shed anyhow, I think. We had a frog-strangler rain on Saturday and I think that they just got displaced temporarily. My 13 year-old found them before the mom got back with her FEMA voucher.

I am, once again, a free man. No kittens in the house, no cat food to buy, and hopefully, the family will control the “abundant wildlife” that is in the neighborhood. Sometimes this wildlife finds its way into our attic or pantry. If these cats are going to illegally squat under my shed, they need to make themselves useful. Especially after the fright that mama gave me this morning.

Dang cat.

Dang Cats

Driving home from church in my middle daughter’s car, her in the passenger seat, my youngest called with the news that she found two kitties in the back yard.

Great.

The youngest didn’t go to church this morning because she didn’t feel very good. Well, she apparently felt good enough just before noon to slosh around in our rain-soaked backyard to find these wayward little cats. Actually, the dogs found them.

They’re fat little things, not like they have been neglected and abandoned. Most likely the mom had a batch of them under our shed, and the rain drove them out.

The girls have already taken them in, made a box/bed for them and laid claim to each one. Oh. My. Gosh. They’re getting ready to go to WallyWorld, I think, to further celebrate the coming of the feline children.

I am hoping to see a mama cat come knocking at the door looking for her lost kittens. I imagine her showing tiny mittens that she had been knitting for just these-sized kittens to prove that she is indeed the parent.

Whether the mother cat comes to request the children from foster care or not, I feel like this won’t be the last you will read about these little animals.

The cats. I meant the cats.

Golden Memories

Memory is a funny thing, especially for the geezer. For the important things; an onion, toilet paper, paper towels, angel hair pasta, butter and ummmm, what else was I supposed to get?, the memory is an unreliable sense at best.

But for the “unimportant” things; the smell of “vampire blood” that you got for Halloween, what that girl’s favorite headband looked like, the feeling of the sand eroding in fast motion from under your feet and hands as the Gulf waves recede from the beach, the memory is a beautiful, golden picture frame.

We all had great times when we were 16 or 17 when we were at our best. Those days stick in our heads more tenaciously than the grocery list or, in certain situations, the correct names of our children.

My old buddy Charley D. up in Oregon has a blog, Skippin’ Rocksand there resides a series of posts, four to be exact, that start to chronicle the beginnings of his love of playing music. I need all of you fellow geezers, and interested non-geezers, to go over in a couple of spare minutes and read Charley’s thoughts.

Cereal. It was cereal that I was supposed to get. Cap'n Crunch. Yeah.
UPDATE
Be sure to scroll all the way down to the very first section, or you'll miss the beginning of the story, and obviously that's pretty important!

The Cuban/Misses Crisis

My mother is a great source of stories, since she was somewhat of a quiet rebel in her day. She was a bit like Lucy I guess, and her “Ethel” was usually her lifelong friend, we'll call her, ahhh, “Miss House”, to protect her identity. Sort of.

Back in Texas City in the early Fifties, there was a semi-pro baseball team. On this team was a catcher from Cuba who apparently caught Miss House’s eye, and vice versa. She asked her mother if she could go on a date with him; her mother said, “Only if Lila goes.”

My mom got the message and as was her nature, she didn’t “ask” her parents. She knew they would instantly say “no”. Grandaddy would likely not only say “no”; there would no doubt be some expletives accompanying the declaration, for emphasis.

This catcher had a cousin that they fixed my mother up with. The catcher was handsome, how much worse could his cousin be? Turns out, he could be pretty ugly. On reflection, my mom says he looked a lot like Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who is so gracious to our country. Thick, inside-out lips and bad skin, Mr. Cousin was not what anyone would consider a prize by any standard.

The date did not involve a long ride to anywhere, but the catcher, being tired from his duties at home plate, asked if Miss H would like to drive his convertible. She jumped at the chance since she loved to drive, and my mom and Hugo took the back seat.

Miss H recalls the experience with fits of guilty laughter; glancing in the rearview mirror at my mother, the wind whipping the scarf covering her hairdo, one hand trying to control the thrashing silk, and the other hand fending off her date’s relentless octopus advances. All the while, the handsome catcher was snoring like a sawmill in the passenger seat.

There aren’t too many details about the rest of the night available, but it’s likely that not too much more time was expended on the fiasco. Judging from the fact that my mother never spent any time in prison, it is clear that she never got the chance to reward the Cuban cousin in a manner befitting his behaviour as I am sure she wanted to that evening. It is also clear that my grandfather never heard of the incident, judging from the fact that there was no ugly Cuban reported shot to death and dumped in Galveston Bay.

A Milestone: 80 Years? Already?

In January 1929, the 28th day, in the small town of Del Rio, Texas, a little guy was born that changed my world. Without him, I would be nothing. Literally. He is my Dad. Or “Little Daddy” as I call him.

There is not enough room here to tell all about him, but the short version is that he started out in Del Rio, and soon the family moved to Austin, where he grew up. His first job was at the Capitol Saddlery Shop, cutting leather conchos for saddles. He was under ten years old. Then he drove a bread truck for Butterkrust Bakeries, the rural route. He was 14.

He skipped his first day of school; his mother took him to the school, but he never went in. Instead, he walked part of the way home, sat on a rock wall and ate his lunch. Then he went home and told his mother that school let out early.
That was the last dishonest thing he probably ever did.

He grew up, and while he was off in the Marine Corps, his mother and father moved to Texas City, and so that’s where he came home to. While hanging out with a couple of tough guys on the corner, a girl drove by in a big DeSoto Suburban, and he was smitten. His buddy flagged her and the gang of girls she was cruising with and hitched a ride for him and my dad-to-be. Alvin, my Dad, reached up with his pocket knife and cut off a little curl on the back of her neck. He was sure he’d marry this girl. He did.

He was in the Marine Corps Reserves, so he got called up to go put down the trouble in Korea. He did, and brought home some metal from a Russian mortar that tried to kill him. It’s still in his left leg.

As a Dad, he was the best. He knew when to play, and he knew when to discipline. I remember nights after grueling tickle-fests in the living room, trying to settle down to go to sleep. Just as my pulse would return to normal, and my breathing evened out, I spied a form creeping in the door on its hands and knees, then springing up to my bed, standing over me on the blanket roaring and laughing before descending to pretend to eat my neck. I get chills even now thinking about it. I should be scarred for life, but instead, my children are. I also remember my mother saying, “Alvin stop it, let him go to sleep!”

He scratched my back with his whiskers on Saturdays when he refused to shave. Did all the normal things that a guy teaches his son how to do; throw a football, skip rocks on the river, catch minnows in a bedsheet, fly fishing, bass fishing, how to shoot a pistol and a rifle. How to drive (“More brake, MORE BRAKE!!”), how to trim trees with a bow saw and a rope (without falling to your death), and how to treat people.

More about that last one, because it’s important. Everywhere we went, I saw the way my Dad treated everyone; like they were his equal or better. The bus boys, waitresses and gas-pumping kid at the service station. The high school kids that scooped our ice cream at Baskin Robbins after Sunday night service always heard, “make it like you were makin’ if for yourself…” with a big smile from my Dad. Sure enough, they looked at him, and as the realization of what he said dawned on them, a huge smile spread on their faces. They would then bend to the task of giving the man that engaged them more ice cream than anyone else in the store.

There is nothing false or phony about this man. Everybody knows who he is and where he stands. As a machinist and later a maintenance supervisor at Monsanto Chemical Company for 31 years, he showed everybody there what it meant to be a Christian. Not a “Sunday Christian”, but a real, every day believer and follower of Jesus. For some of those guys, my Dad was their only exposure to God’s love and compassion.

I remember one guy in particular who had an alcohol problem that always would call my Dad for prayer and counseling late at night, or in the afternoon, or whenever he needed help. We took him to church and now, that man after thirty years, still stays in touch with my Dad.

If you have ever tasted an example of the produce or preserves from the Soderberg Farm and Chicken Resort; the bread and butter pickles, the red pepper relish and jelly, blackberry jelly, cabbage, carrots, broccoli, spinach, chard or tomatoes, you have participated in what he likes to do. That is, running around at a trot for hours a day tending to the garden and chickens. He can still out-work me.

So Happy Birthday, Little Daddy. From your Baby Huey!

PS: I have adopted the “Make It Like You Were Makin’ It For Yourself” ploy with ice cream dippers and the like. It works, just look at me!

Caramel and the Past

When was the last time you had Sugar Babies? The last time I had any was Sunday, January 25, 2009. I bought a box of them at Dollar General on a whim and on the way home, had to break into them.

Driving up Mustang Road, I popped a couple of them in my mouth. In the cool afternoon air, the flavor brought me back to the cool days spent while camping when I was a kid. The specific feeling that hit me was from Huntsville State Park. It was in late October or early in November. The smell of coolness in the air, along with the scent of grass and trees was very strong. At that moment, I was ten again, tramping through the trees along the Botany Trail.

You may wonder why smells are so important to me. Science has shown that the most powerful memory stimulator is the sense of smell. And if you ever saw me, or even a picture of me, you’ll notice that my receptor of smells is very capable. Let’s just say, it can handle a lot of air at once.

Since the sense of taste is a subset of the sense of smell, the Sugar Babies and the open fields of Alvin were able to transport a geezer back in time to a simpler day.

I wonder if the secret scientists working on a time machine (and you know they are) have thought about using candy as a catalyst or fuel for their device.

New Year. New Post

Gung Hei Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year! It’s the Year of the Ox, a time of hard work and eventual prosperity unless it all falls apart. And I figured that since I didn’t post anything on or even remotely around our new year, I should at least make some sort of statement about new beginnings and such. Being born in the Year of the Fried Pie, I decided to lay some sweet truth on you, my loyal readers.

This will be my “New Year’s Predictions of What Ought To Be” edition.
I’ll start by reminding you that I am a geezer. Have been since age 19. And geezers, as a rule, offer a lot of advice about the way things USED to be, or SHOULD be. So standby for my “projections” for year 4707, the Year of the Ox, in the Chinese calendar:

RAP MUSIC ENDS
After years of assault on our ears, senses and cultural high ground, rap’s popularity expires in early March when collectively the entire continent snaps back into the groove and recognizes all forms of this “musical” abomination for what it is. What it is, exactly, nobody is sure, but an epiphany occurs and everyone just pulls up their pants, puts their hats on straight and changes outta those big, baggy shirts. The world of music will revert to the major food groups once again; Classical, Classic Rock, Old Timey Country, Texas Swing and Big Band. And these only.

TATTOOS ARE OUT OF VOGUE
Believe it or not, the tattoo craze will peak in June, leading to a crash in the strip center storefront rentals. Strangely, this effect will raise property values on these affected commercial real estate holdings. There will be a corresponding rise in tattoo removal technology and practitioners plying their trade in ever-increasing venues and at ever-decreasing costs. Soon there will be gift cards from Walmart for tattoo removal; you’ll be able to procure your cat food, canned tomatoes and diapers, plus while you wait for your oil change, they can remove the picture of the pit bull head with angel wings eating a human skull that’s on your left bicep. This will put 2009 on the map medically, socially and artistically.

CELL PHONES WILL BE TOTALLY OUTLAWED
OK, quit your whining. Sure they bring good news, on occasion. Yes, they keep a certain amount of boredom at bay, but dangit, they are such a distraction, annoyance and a downright hazard that they should be eliminated. Cold turkey. How many times has someone just dropped out of a face-to-face conversation like you were chopped liver when a call comes on their little device? Hmm? Thousands. And the drivers, especially under the age of 25, with one clamped to their ear and their right foot welded to the firewall with the accelerator pedal imprisoned between, blasting along the formerly (relatively) safe thoroughfares. I have been cut off, wedged in, tailgated and otherwise terrorized by these inconsiderate operators trying to multitask. Not to say that this activity is limited entirely to the younger set. Soccer moms abound with the Tahoe and Sequoia death machines. And salesmen checking their contact list from a laptop in the passenger seat have a fairly high occurrence. Ugh.

AL GORE CONCEDES THAT GLOBAL WARMING WAS HIS IDEA OF A BIG JOKE
It just got out of hand. Here’s how it happened; he wrote his book, then he read it, forgot he fabricated the entire theory after dreaming it all up following a particularly spicy pizza, and then he started believing it. So sad. When he gets the hypno-therapy in November to calm his nerves after being forgotten, his repressed memory of the hoax comes to light and he writes a short retraction on a sticky note. He then throws the crumpled note into one of his seven incinerators.

Now, don’t come crying to me if these don’t come true in the coming year. I in no way warranty these predictions as being certain and unavoidable. This is just stuff that really should happen, making the world a better place.

For us geezers.

Happy New Year.

How Was YOUR Christmas?

The Christmas Holidays have been good. You may have surmised that by the lack of posting here at the GeezerChron. That’s because, to paraphrase my Aunt Orene, “I don’t have TIME to post on the blog…and sit on my butt as much as I want to.”

I was off the whole week of Christmas, and what with last minute shopping and wrapping and hiding and chasing after little yapping dogs, I just didn’t make it to the computer. My oldest daughter was home starting on Wednesday, and the preparations for the Soderfest were in full swing.

Since the only tradition with our bunch is the fact that we get together and eat/play games and open gifts, the meal was to have a Texican flavor. Enchilada casserole (rolling the individuals up was a little too tedious), tamales, picante sauce (supplied by yours truly), chicken fajitas, pico de gallo, and assorted desserts and other good stuff to eat, including a cheesecake my sister made. Truly good eats. And not a trace of turkey and dressing.

We sat around and played Scattergories, a really entertaining game. It requires the players to think vertically, horizontally, diagonally, every way but straight linear.

Christmas Day at our house was quiet and fun; we opened gifts and everyone was happy with the gifts chosen for them. New clothes, iPod, television, digital cameras, and the piece de résistance; a Wii game system! It was bought for our youngest, along with Guitar Hero, but we all know that EVERYONE will dig this for a long time. Already, the youngest is a Guitar Hero on the “easy” setting, besting the system in 35 out of 42 songs.

I played a little, and even kept up on a couple of songs, but long exposure to the not-really-like-playing-a-guitar game reduces my patience and concentration levels to the point of frustration. There are some recognizable songs on there, but I have played air guitar to “Black Magic Woman” and “La Grange” too many times to keep up with the artificial surrogate on screen. It’s for young folk.

The Wii Sports is much better suited to old geezers. There’s tennis, bowling, baseball, golf and even boxing. Time, space and attention span do not permit me to explain how all of these sports are simulated in a video game, but suffice to say, it’s more realistic than Guitar Hero. Even as I type this, my 18 year-old is playing some heavy metal song broken down to three buttons and a “strum bar”. I am listening to my iTunes on the computer with my new iPod earbuds, with Little Feat cranked up to “drown out all background”.

Christmas Day also includes another standard activity; going to my sister-in-law’s house. The menu there was also non-traditional. Texas BBQ brisket and ribs was the spread we partook in, with Mimi providing the brisket, Becky smoking ribs, and my wife supplied the “good potatoes”. Mimi’s famous cherry dump cake, Becky’s chocoholic pudding pie, and our razzleberry pie all vying for the attention of any and all local gluttons. Not wanting to repeat my failed attempt at professional grub-boating of this past Thanksgiving, I took up a position at the big people’s table this time, in hopes that my gastric region would not be compromised again. Unfortunately, early on it became clear that I am not the eater that I once was, and decided to stop when my plate was empty. That way I could partake of the desserts later and not explode. I also wanted one of those tender dinner rolls with some more of that tender brisket snuggled in there!

Turns out, I just barely made the dessert train, and completely missed the brisket & roll bus. I just couldn’t eat any more. Gifts were exchanged while quiet conversations and digestion went on all around the house. Well, the quiet was confined to the areas where the old people were; the younger set had reconvened to my niece’s room where they played Pictionary. There were eight teen and twenty-agers having fun with probably only half-full bellies. It seems like such a short time ago that it was me in that room, just waiting for another opportunity to inhale the great food still lurking in the kitchen/dining area.

By the time the final bell rang to send everyone home, I think the adults were all about festivitied out. After arriving back at the Soderberg Pomeranian Ranch, we all sort of veg-ed out until it was time to collapse in the bed.

Now for the New Year’s parades!

Reflections on the Cat

The Egyptian word for “cool” is synonymous with “cat”. It has to be. “Suave”, “smooth”, “debonair”, all with an only slightly suppressed savagery that is just below the silky fur. And I think their reverence for the cat is evident in their art; everbody looks like cats, with the eyes and the long, lithe lines of the bodies and clothing.

While the ancients revered the cat, modern humans hold them in high regard for other reasons. Oh, the original reasons are there, they are so “cool”, but they can rub against an “owner” and show their unique brand of “affection”, that has been shown to reduce blood pressure and stress. Also, when they’re young, they exhibit such fun and youthful abandon when they play, and you can’t help but say “awww” when they fall asleep on the spot.

I am not a cat lover, really. Not a cat hater, mind you, but I just don’t LOVE them. They’re cool and cute and all, and I’ll even admit that they even have “personalities”, but I draw the line at believing that they talk. Cats can’t talk. They communicate on a basic level, but when people tell me that their cat talks to them…no. I guess I’m just a couple of notches up the scale from a “Cat Tolerator”. See here for our latest foray into the cat's world.

There is a site on the Web, “I Can Has Cheezeburger” has the “LOL Cats”; pictures of cats, mainly, in different poses with different expressions, captioned with intentionally misspelled and mispronounced snippets that are sometimes hilarious. Some of the pictures and captions indicate that the submitter is perhaps a cat lover with the “she said such-and-such” and “she looked at me and said, ‘That loooks like a great omlette, could you add some more mozerella, please’”. Sometimes it seems that the people who post the most unflattering pictuers of kittehs (the LOL Cats preferred spelling) may be in my camp.

My Dad has a cat, which may come as a surprise, especially if you know my Dad. In the past, if you asked him if he liked cats, his immediate reply would be, “Yeah, I like cats, I like ‘em FAST.” His favorite sport was catching uninvited tomcats in our back yard. He kept tennis balls by the back door, so when one came on the radar, he would creep out with ammo in hand to wing at the normally calm feline. When they realized they were under attack, they often sprang for the fence, and often underestimate the distance, crashing into the chain link with a satisfying “CHIINNGGG”.

His current status as a cat owner began when he got a black and white female Manx appropriately named Stump. The reason he liked the cat was the jacked-up hindquarters were reminiscent of a bobcat. Her disposition, while not mean, was also in line with that of the members of the lynx family. She was a killer. Of birds, and grasshoppers and lizards and rabbits. She was her own cat, but she respected PawPaw. Her replacement, Daisy, is a half-Persian, half-Manx orange predator equal to her predecessor. My Mom brushes her, when allowed, my Dad makes her eat all of her cat food in the dish before he gives her any more. He tells her when he spots a green lizard, and she knows the signal to attack. She has been known to kill and eat the most elegant of avian visitors to the property, including cardinals, hummingbirds and mockingbirds. A beautiful, fluffy cat, equally deadly under the fur.

Mark Twain penned “A Cat’s Tale” many years back for his daughters. It includes as many “cat-“ words as humanly possible, and still makes sense. “Catastrophy”, “cat calls”, “cat-pipe” and the main cat’s name, Catarauggus, are all used shamelessly. I don’t picture Twain as a cat lover who doted on his feline charges, but I think he liked them. No more, no less.

I like cats, too. When they are in kitten stage, they are sources of endless mirth with the antics displayed. As they grow, their feigned affection is soothing. My favorite trait of cats is their coolness. And my favorite activity is to crack the cool exterior, if even for a second. In neighborhoods, driving slowly, if a cat I spy, I wait until my car is right next to him to bark like a dog or honk the horn of my chariot and watch him come apart at the seams, albeit momentarily, only to regain the previously regal pose, but with a slightly irritated expression.

The only cat I can’t tolerate is the one that shies away or just won’t come to me. I mean, if you’re gonna have a cat around, you might as well enjoy it, right?

It’s REALLY beginning to look a REAL Lot Like…

I’ll say it, “it really IS beginning to look a LOT like Christmas,” only it looks like somewhere else, not here.

On the Texas Gulf Coast, we don’t get too much snow. That’s an understatement. When I was one year old we had a pretty good snow. Then, when I was in eighth grade, we had a really good one, too. I remember Kelly Hutchinson made himself a “snowburger” from one of the cars in the teacher’s parking lot. I’ll bet it tasted a lot like Texas City road film. In 1988, just before Christmas we had a really nice one, very dry and squeaky. You couldn’t even pack it into a snowball.

Looking back only a few years to 2004, the BLIZZ ARD of ’04, was a real treat. For those of you not in this area, we had a veritable white-out on Christmas Eve. Children and adults alike were outside, shivering and grinning, watching the white stuff blow in from the North. The whole area looked like a fairyland. A real and true White Christmas.

This one was a total surprise. I knew it was going to get cold, but a winter wonderland was quite unexpected. At 5:47 a.m., my daughter at Texas A&M texted me that it was snowing. YAY! How cool is that. Never get down here; put it outta your mind.

At about 3:30 p.m., she called and reported that it was snowing again in College Station, Texas, a couple of hours North and West of us. Really neat.

On the drive home, I heard sleet hitting the car on the passenger side, and as the drive progressed, by the time I got to my hometown, the big flakes were floating down intermingled with the freezing rain. An old excitement began to build in my gut; I can’t wait to get out in this, I hope it sticks!

As I understand it, the people who live with this all the time aren’t so excited by the prospect of any kind of frozen precipitation, but this is the Gulf Coast, and it’s rare for this kind of occurrence.

On arriving home, the house was dark and empty; my Katiebelle had gone shopping with her boyfriend and his mom and sister, and my little one was at her grandmother’s waiting for Mom to pick her up. The little doggies were very excited, and I immediately let them out to run around. I don’t think they know what snow is, consciously, but they did realize that it was cold and that there were lots of little white things to chase. At that time, I noticed that the deck was beginning to show a little accumulation of the white stuff.

I know right about now in this post, Charley will be snorting contemptuously at the fascination and reverence I am reacting to the snow with, but he’s in Oregon and sees this stuff all of the time. He raises Huskies, and I don’t think you’re allowed to NOT have snow with those fine dogs. Bear with me, Charley!

So, I hurried back out front to watch the miracle (Gulf Coast, remember) falling from the sky. The road was empty except for me. Then Dennis across the street came out, grinning like a big goober. We “howdy-ed” and then began to revert back many years to a pure enjoyment of the magical moment. His sixth grade daughter bolted from the house all bundled up, followed shortly by his five year-old son. We stood under the streetlight and Tommy exclaimed loudly, “I WISHED for it to snow! And it DID!”

I thanked him, and went back to conversing with his grinning dad. It turns out that Dennis is a native Iowan, and he even used to be depressed at Christmas on first arriving on our Paradise on the Coast. He couldn’t get used to standing around in shorts and a t-shirt, swatting mosquitoes in celebration of the Yuletide.

The rest of the young people began to appear outside, bundled up in their multiple light jackets and socks on their hands. Remember, we don’t get too cold very often; around here, what passes for a snowsuit is a set of warm-ups stuffed with old underwear and free t-shirts from the blood drives!

Standing in the thoroughfare, we saw a silver Dodge ease up to the corner under the streetlamp and a slender form emerged and shuffled quickly across the lane to meet with her friends already playing out in the snow. My youngest had arrived home. The little shivering, giggling gang ran from house to house, scraping as much snow off of the cars and mailboxes as they could to form snowballs to lob at one another, and their dads.

I stayed out for perhaps an hour, then came in to thaw out. I couldn’t feel either pinky toe, and the melt had finally worked its way through the fleece jacket I was wearing. I used a blow dryer to try to get the feeling back in my toes.

Soon, cabin fever got the best of me; being cooped up in the house with the blizzard raging outside made me want to get out and make sure the food supplies were in, just in case we would be snowed in for a month or so. I also had to get the present for the gift exchange at work on Thursday and pick up the ingredients for the salsa I was scheduled to bring.

In the parking lot of the Christmas HeadquartersMart, the lights illuminated the steady blowing flakes, which had increased in size and intensity from earlier. It was like being somewhere besides Alvin, Texas. The few people inside seemed genuinely glad to be there, or at least the endorphins released by seeing snow down here were registering as seasonal elation on most every face I encountered.

The snow is all but melted, save for the patches still in the shade. The slush angels that my girl and her friends made are just memories and pixels in jpeg files by now.
But the surprise blizzard of 2008 will be fresh and cool in our hearts long after the feeling comes back to my toes.

NOW it feels like Christmas!