Excerpts from the Book of Life

William Franklin Taylor - The Road to Texas

2024-07-31T19:53:00.005-05:00

William Franklin Taylor

The Road to Texas

In the book History of Leon County, Volume 1, Edith Taylor Gray provides the 'legend' of Doc Taylor. A summary of that includes certain details passed down from members of the family. The first known and verified historical record of Doc Taylor is a record of his marriage to Elizabeth Hunt in 1879, in Hill County, Texas.

This is a summary of what appears in that book.

Doc Taylor was born in 1855 (note a) somewhere in Tennessee (note b) on August 2, 1855. (note c.)
His father was a steamboat captain.
The names of both mother and father are unknown.
Doc Taylor spoke of a brother or half brother.
His father perished in a riverboat explosion when he was less than 12 years old.
Some time afterwards the mother remarried and the family lived in Forrest City, AR.
It is not known whether the brother was born to William's step father or if he was in the care of grandparents.
When he was 12 years old his mother died.
When the step father remarried he chose to work for a local pharmacist for room and board.
At age 16 a wagon train to Texas was being formed and he hired on to drive a wagon for a widow and her children.

What follows is suppositions and educated possibilities about the route that William Franklin Taylor took from Arkansas to Texas, circa 1878.

The closest historical trail to Forrest City is the Chickasaw trail which passes throuth Memphis, TN passing just north of Forest City, then to Little Rock, AR, where it joins the Southwest Trail. It is likely that a wagon train bound for Texas starting in Forest City would take this trail starting out.

The Southwest Trail enters Arkansas along County Road 166 at the Arkansas-Missouri state line, and passes through Little Rock, then follows Interstate 30 to Texarkana.

While we do not know if the wagon train's destination was Hill County, or if Doc Taylor left the wagon train before it's intended destination, we do know that Hill County is his first record of his being in Texas.

Assuming the wagon train's destination was Hill County it is unlikely that the wagon train proceeded beyond Washington Arkansas because the trails leaving Texarkana into Texas all went south to Nacogdoches. (note d.)

More reasonable was that the wagon train, if bound for Hill County, left the Southwest Trail at Washington, AR, and followed a known trail west to Fort Towson. Crossing the Red River at Fort Towson and into Red River County, Texas. From there he would have then followed the Texas Trail which leads into Dallas, then following Preston's Trail right into Hillssboro, Texas. A crossing further west than Fort Towson would mean crossing the Red River closer to the Oklahoma Indian territory, even though during this time period the US military was continuing to push the Indians further west and onto reservations.

The theory of crossing at Fort Towson into Red River County seems plausible due to the fact that following his marriage to Elizabeth in 1879 they moved to Titus county by June of 1880 where the census shows a 25 year old William with his 17 year old wife, Elizabeth. Titus county borders Red River County to the south. It's possible that having crossed at Red River County earlier he found the area desirable and returned to the area immediately following his marriage to Elizabeth.

Notes:

a. On his medical license and application to practice in Leon County, Doc Taylor writes his birth year as 1854.
b. On his medical license and application to practice in Leon County, Doc Taylor writes that he was born in Covington, Tennessee.
c. In the 1900 census the census taker shows that Doc Taylor and his parents were all born in Mississippi.
d. The El Camino Real trail passes through Nacogdoches the proceeds westerly through Houston and Leon Counties where a branch goes north crossing FM 831 at Buffalo Creek, then crosses Wheelock Creek 2 miles east of the Taylor Cemetery, north to Buffalo then turning again southwest on through Brazos County and on to San Marcos and San Antonio.

William Franklin Taylor (1855-1925)

2022-10-02T17:24:00.016-05:00

William Franklin Taylor

William Franklin Taylor was born on August 2, 1854 or 1855 in Covington, Tennessee, depending on your source. Some of the details of his birth are sketchy and not verified by government record and come from various sources. One census record indicates that he was born in Mississippi. Those sources may include, but not be limited to his own handwriting, family legend, and gravestone dates.

Family legend says that he was the son of a riverboat employee, possibly the captain, but this has no other source for verification. When William was young his father's riverboat was docked somewhere on the Mississippi River. William and his mother, and possibly a sibling went ashore for the night. During the night the ship boilers exploded and William's father died in the explosion.

William's mother remarried soon and the family lived in Forrest City, Arkansas, but young William and his stepfather did not have a good relationship. William's mother died when he was about 12. Soon afterwards his stepfather refused to give him his mother's belongings. As a result William left to be on his own around the age of 15. William worked in a Forrest City pharmacy where he worked for his room and board. Around the age of 16 he joined a wagon train bound for Texas working as a driver for a widow and her children. The wagon train made it's way to Texas using a route as yet undetermined and William settled in the Hillsboro area. He worked for a rancher where he met and married the rancher's daughter, Elizabeth Jenny Hunt, on January 1, 1879.

Titus/Franklin County

Since Elizabeth's father, Wadsworth Thompson Hunt, thoroughly disliked William he and Elizabeth made their way to Titus County. Titus County and Franklin County were once a single county known as Titus County. William and Elizabeth first appear in the 1880 US Census in Titus County. However, the land purchases by William and Elizabeth are clearly in present day Franklin County.

William and Elizabeth first settled in Grey Rock, Texas purchasing 48 acres on November 25, 1887. The tract of land was north and east of the intersection of the southern access road of I-30 where County Road SE 4130 crosses. The metes and bounds read like this:

"The largest tract of land begins on the NB line of a survey made for T J Councill and 397 yds West of Martha Wallen's N.W. Corner, a stake for a corner. Thence W 295 yds a stake. Thence S 505 yds to the center of the Gray Rock and Sulphur Springs road, Thence East 295 yds. Thence N 505 yds to the place of beginning. Containing 35 acres, more or less." I have learned from an older resident of Grey Rock that the Grey Rock and Sulphur Springs road is what became the I-30 Frontage road on the south side of the freeway.

The June, 1880 agriculture report lists William Franklin Taylor as farming 21 acres of land and having livestock worth $15, namely a milk cow and calf, with 12 chickens.

William and Elizabeth then purchased an additional tract of land adjoining the first on February 9, 1888. The metes and bounds appear as this:

"The small tract of land joins the above on the West and is a part of the John Humphrey's headright survey and a part of the homestead of B. L. Blake and begins on the WB line of W.F. Taylor and the East B line of B. L Blake 200 yds S of W. F. Taylor NW Corner, a sand rock for a corner. Thence N 395 1/2 yds a rock. Thence W 175 yds a sand rock for a corner. Thence S 395 1/2 yds a rock. Thence E 131 yds to the place of beginning containing 13 acres more or less making a total sum of both tracts of 48 acres, more or less."

After a bit of research I have pinpointed the property and outlined it on a Google Map:

The First Homestead

On November 23, 1891 William and Elizabeth purchased 148 acres of land in the William McNeece survey about 6 miles to the south and situated to the southeast of present day Cypress Creek Park and on the banks of Andy's Creek (not identified on present day maps, but a historian in the Franklin County Historical Society pointed me to an old plat of the area showing the creek.) The unnamed creek that runs from the northwest to southeast passing by Cypress Creek Park and in the northeast corner of the Wm. McNeece survey is Andy's Creek.

Leon County

William and Elizabeth brought 3 children to Leon County; Robert (1884-1969), Annie (1888-1973), and Maude (1891-1977), and having three more in Leon County, Fannie (1896-1972), Rosa Lee and Tegie. In the Taylor Cemetery are headstones for Rosa Lee and Teagie, who I am told are children of William F. Taylor, but the birth mother is not quite clear. Ancestry trees from others identify Elizabeth as their mother so I can deduce that they were both born in the years between 1896-1899.

On June 30, 1896 William and Elizabeth purchased their first tract of land In Leon County purchasing a 160 acre tract of land in the S. Pate survey north of The Bodine. (This is the property owned by Roy Lynn Taylor near the intersection of CR 284 and Pvt Rd 2230.) They sold the property in Titus County keeping a note and lien up until 1909 when he sold the note to Ida Pasquay.

On May 23, 1899 William and Elizabeth purchased another 160 tract of land in the A. G. Rose survey, also north of The Bodine on CR 277 near Bethel Lane (just south of CR 282.). It was likely that it was one of these two tracts where William and Elizabeth lived that their home caught fire. Elizabeth tried to fight the fire but was unsuccessful. She lost her life as a result of smoke inhalation several days later, on August 9, 1899. Elizabeth is buried in the Taylor Cemetery.

On November 1, 1899 William purchased 100 acres in the Ferguson survey near Brushy (Cemetery?) Road and Wheelock Creek.

William married Mary Lee House in late January or early February of 1900. On the 1900 Census dated 4-5 June, 1900 there appears to be 5/12 written over by a 0 in the years married column.

In October of 1900 William and Mary purchased 183.5 acres in the A. Willis survey near FM 831 and CR 225.

Their first child O. K. Taylor was born on November 22, 1900. William and Mary had a total of 8 children that I could find.

William and Mary purchased many other tracts of land including tracts in the T. Peale Survey (300a.), A. Thomas Survey (150a.), J. Whitfield Survey (234a.), J.T. Cotton Survey (405a.), G&BN Survey (190a.), BBB & CR Survey (52a. the Gray homestead), R.M. Mason (80a.), and another 80 acres in the G&BN survey. The Galveston and Brazos Navigation Company did several surveys in Leon County. It is one of these Surveys that later became the J. Bodine Survey which is still in the family today.

One tract of land in the G&BN Survey contained a cotton gin and grist mill. William purchased the mill from GW Yarborough in 1907, and it was operated by his son Robert L. Taylor. William sold the gin and mill back to GW Yarborough in 1910. However, the account by the Yarborough family below in the link below differs slightly.

Most of the properties in Leon County purchased by WF Taylor can be found on this Google map. However, the pins only represent approximate locations as some of the property descriptions reference landmarks that are no longer in use today. i.e. "The Jordan Place."

Dr. William Franklin Taylor

William Franklin Taylor became a physician because he wanted to learn why so many children died so young. Family legend has it that it is because he wanted to learn why HIS children died so young, but I cannot find any children other than Rosa Lee and Teagie that died young. Rosa Lee and Teagie are buried in the Taylor Cemetery in Leon County, and since W.F. Taylor was a doctor prior to coming to Leon County this must be a reference to other peoples your children, or W.F Taylor and Elizabeth had children we do not know of. There is no doubt in my mind that William and Elizabeth may have lost other children that may be buried in unknown graves in Franklin or Titus county but I can find no evidence of such.

William actually earned his license to practice medicine two times. The first was on June 6, 1893 by appointment of the 20th Judicial Court and the Medical Board of Examiners in Clarksville, Red River County, Texas. He again earned a license to practice medicine on February 8, 1908 by standing before the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners which had just been established the previous year. It is on this license that he writes that his birth year is 1854. "Doc" Taylor again writes his birth year as 1854 on his Registration to Practice Medicine filed in Leon County in 1908.

Doc Taylor was a compassionate doctor. He would travel from house to house providing medical care to the residents of Leon County spending days, even weeks, with the very ill. One notable story I found particularly interesting. I'll copy the paragraph here and you can take the credits from the link.

Cannie, in the story above refers to Cannie Jones Moore who lived from 1872 to 1953 and is buried next to her husband, Henry Watson Moore in the Parker Cemetery, Leon County, Texas.

Dr. Taylor served as the area physician and dentist until his death in 1925

Credits:

Family Legend: Mrs. Winnie Taylor, Mrs. Edith Gray, Wendel Taylor

Publications: A history of Leon County, ISBN 0-88107-050-5 (1986)

Web: www.yarboroughfamily.org, Texas Online, Texas Historical Commission, County Clerks of various counties including Hill, Bosque,Titus, Franklin, Leon, www.earthpoint.us, and many others.

This post is subject to editing. The last time this page was edited was October 22, 2023.

The Battle of San Diego

2022-06-27T09:53:00.010-05:00

The Battle Of San Diego

As many of you know, our father Wendel Taylor, served in the US Navy near the end of World War II. He had registered for the draft on his birthday, July 12, 1943 in Centerville like many young men at the time. He then enlisted in the Navy on October 11, 1943 in Houston at the age of 18 .

The first written record I could find was where he was received on board the USS American Legion on August 2, 1944 from Training Division 36. So far I can find no record of Training Division 36 in 1943-1944, but can only assume that it included basic training plus some additional specialist training. His rank at the time he boarded the USS American Legion as shown on the Muster Report was S1C(SM), SV-6. Since dad was trained as a signalman I assume that the rank is Seaman First Class (S1C) with training as a Signalman (SM). SV-6 may refer to a code used to further identify a reservists volunteer status. SV may refer to Selective Volunteer, and the 6 for General and Specialists.

The description of the Signalman's duties on board the USS Enterprise is shown as "Stand signal watch on bridge. Identify flags. Use blinker, searchlight and semaphore. Use range finder, searchlights, signal apparatus." (Note: Semaphore is the skill of using flags by hand for communications.) Assuming the Navy keeps a standard throughout the service for job descriptions then I assume that dad's duty station on board the USS American Legion was on the bridge of the ship.

Dad had always told us the during his time in the service he "fought the battle of San Diego" and never left the harbor. It wasn't until after he was gone that I was able to discover more details about his time in the service, and the outcome of, The Battle of San Diego.

Most of the available records found that one might consider the ship's log are called War Diaries. Under normal circumstances a ship's War Diary covers a period of one calendar month. During a specific exercise or battle a War Diary might be limited to that specific exercise or battle. Below are the chronological War Diaries that mention the USS American Legion, beginning with a period prior to dad being assign to the ship. Here is an example of the USS American Legion for the month dad boarded the ship.

July, 1943, War Diary of USS Stanly shows the USS American Legion as the flagship of COMTASKUNIT 34.4.7 consisting of 5 ships, plus 5 additional escort ships. Destination Guadalcanal. (Note: The famous Battle of Guadalcanal was fought between August, 1942 and February, 1943.)

December 10, 1943 USS American Legion arrives at United Engineering Company, Alameda, California.

January 10, 1944 the USS American Legion arrives at Hunter's Point (San Francisco), California, departing on January 18th.

April 14-26, 1944 the USS American Legion participates in the training of the 81st Infantry Division on the beaches of California.

August, 1944 the USS American Legion docked in San Diego on the 1st and 2nd.

August 2, 1944 dad is assigned to the USS American Legion.

Underway at 1842 on the 2nd for San Pedro, California to unload ammunition.

August 4th the ship proceeded to Los Angeles Shipbuilding, San Pedro, California for general overhaul.

August 20th ship relocated to load ammunition, then proceeded to San Diego.

September, 1944. It appears that the ship merely relocated to several different moorings in San Diego.

October, 1944 the ship conducted training exercises in Coronado Strand, San Clemente Island, and Alisa Canyon, Oceanside, California, returning to San Diego on the 30th.

November, 1944, from the 1st to the 13th in the US Naval Repair Base, San Diego getting underway on the 14-30th to conduct training exercises in San Clemente, Alisa Canyon, and setting anchor in Oceanside, California on the 30th.

December, 1944, War Diary of the USS American Legion as flagship of Task Group 13.9 Amphibious Training Group, Pacific Fleet, and training for amphibious operations for Army and Navy personnel in the area of San Diego, California. From December 1 to December 8th, the ship conducted training exercises which involved the firing of machine guns and small deck guns (3 inches or less) towards shore targets on San Clemente Island.

January, 1945, Commander Dona J. Houle assumes command of USS American Legion on the 8th. The ship conducts landing and air support exercises around San Clemente Island returning to San Diego on the 18th.

February, 1945 USS American Legion conducts a series of exercises including landing, air support, and tactical training in the usual practice areas of Oceanside, San Clemente, and Coronado Strand, and set anchor in Santa Barbara on the 27th.

March, 1945, the USS American legion conducted a series of landing exercises from Santa Barbara, to San Clemente Island and back to San Diego.

April, 1945, War Diary of the USS Fillmore identifies the USS American Legion as the flagship of the Training Group 13.9, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet.

April 26 - May 31, 1945 the USS American Legion participates in a series of landing exercises from San Diego, to Coronado Strand, to Pyramid Cove (San Clemente Island) and back to San Diego.

May, 1945 the USS American Legion conducted a series of training exercises in Coronado Strand, Oceanside, and San Clemente Island.

May 4-7, 1945 the USS American Legion being repaired in San Diego shipyard.

June, 1945 the ship conducted a series of landing exercises in Coronado and San Clemente Island, returning to San Diego on the 28th.

July, 1945 USS American Legion conducts a series of landing and gunnery exercises off the coast of Coronado Strand and San Clemente Island, returning to San Diego on the 27th.

July, 1945 the ship conducts a series of training exercises in landing, surface fire, and air support in the areas of San Clemente Island and Coronado Strand, returning to San Diego on the 27th.

August, 1945 the USS American Legion is flagship of Commander Training Group, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet, and conducted exercises including anti-aircraft fire, surface fire, and landing at the usual practice areas of Coronado Strand and San Diego, and spent the 22-26th in dry dock for repairs.

Note: On 15 August 1945, Japan surrenders, with the surrender documents finally signed at Tokyo Bay on the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, ending the war.

September, 1945 USS American Legion is assigned to Operation Magic Carpet and in San Diego Shipyard for reconfiguring and preparing to get under way.

September 7th ship is underway to San Francisco, arriving on the 8th.

September 11th, ship is underway to Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii.

Arrived in Pearl Harbor on the 17th.

September 20th ship is underway to Apra Harbor, Guam, Marianas.

September 30th, arrived in Apra Harbor, Guam, Marianas.

October-December, 1945. I found no records of the USS American legion during this period.

*UPDATE* Wikipedia shows that the USS American Legion returned from Guam arriving in San Pedro on 24 October, 1945. On 8 November, 1945 the USS American Legion departed for a second cruise to the Pacific with orders for the Philippines. After stopping at Manilla and Tacloban the ship returned to San Francisco on 12 December, 1945.

January 1, 1946 dad is shown in the ships muster report with the rank of S2C(SM) SV-6.

March, 1946, the USS American Legion is placed on inactive duty and scheduled for de-commissioning.

The Navy Historical Center confirms dates above as the final two trans-Pacific cruises and Dad was aboard during that time. These two cruises as a part of Operation Magic Carpet would be the last cruises of the USS American Legion prior to decommissioning.

Operation Magic Carpet. A veteran at the Pacific War Museum tipped us off to the operation that dad's ship was assigned on and after September, 1945. This operation was a full on effort to bring American troops home from overseas. The operation officially began with the ships returning from Japan following the signing of the surrender document in Tokyo Bay. Every available ship was quickly re-purposed to bring home over 8 million servicemen deployed around the world. The missing logs from October-December, 1945 could indicate that the USS American Legion made more than one trip to carry troops home, but I have not found the logs for those months yet.

So, my assumptions are, that the USS American Legion returned from active battles in the Pacific to become a flagship of the Pacific Fleet Amphibious Training Group. Every month, or several times a month, his ship would take on sailors or soldiers from other branches of the service to train them in various operations from landings to air support to surface and ship to shore gunnery.

Dad was likely utilized in not only the communication from ship to ship, but also to assist in the training of other signalmen that would be transferred to other ships destined for the Pacific theater of operations under the command of Admiral Chester Nimitz.

So The Battle of San Diego did happen. The battle was fought time and time again. Every month from August of 1944 until commencement of Operation Magic Carpet. Training our servicemen and preparing them to serve our country, and finally participating in the massive effort to bring the troops home. Yes, The Battle of San Diego was real. And the winner was all the American sailors and soldiers that benefited from their time with our dad on board the USS American Legion.

On Father's Day, 2022, a flag was flown in his honor and a plaque was placed in the Pacific War Museum honoring dad's time in the service and aboard the USS American Legion.

A series of YouTube videos by Frank Zalot, Jr. have been found online that can give you some idea of life aboard the USS American Legion during World War II. Frank Zalot was assigned to the USS American Legion much earlier than dad and saw action prior to the ship returning stateside in December, 1943. After the USS American Legion was assigned to the training fleet, Frank then switched from guns to signalman, and completed his service as a signalman several months after dad boarded the ship. He includes many still photographs of the sailors on the ship, including dad.

You can view the movie and others prior to dad's assignment to the ship by going to YouTube.

Marriage is Not a Two-Way Street

2016-02-15T10:11:00.002-06:00

February 13, 2016

It has been said that marriage is a two-way street. That each party to the union must compromise their morals, values, thoughts, opinions, or whatever, for the sake of harmony. When one party disagrees with the other it becomes necessary for one to give up what they would normally choose so that the union can be successful.

Another common expression is 50/50. Just another way of saying “I’m not gonna get my way but I’ll pretend it doesn’t matter so that my marriage stays intact, and I expect (s)he to do the same.” More recently I have heard that marriage is 100/100 referring to the effort giving to the marriage. Why give 50% when you should give 100%? Well, it’s apples and oranges, isn’t it? Just a play on words.

I have been married now for just over a month and I can tell you without hesitation that marriage is a one way street. She and I are both on the same street going the same direction and in the same vehicle. Our marriage is 0/0. It requires zero effort from either of us and there is no need for compromise.

I have been with this beautiful young lady now for just over three years, although we have known each other for more than ten. While that is far from the experience required to justify expert status in the eyes of most I am not new at the idea of marriage. I have done this before. I’m not proud of the fact that it did not work out the first time, but this time it’s looking up. Some would call me lucky. Lucky to have found someone that shares all of the same thoughts, morals, and values that I possess. It’s not luck. Luck is the reason accidental occurrences happen. I was fortunate. Fortune is the rewards for effort. I was fortunate to have found someone so aligned with me who loves me as much as I love her.

My son has already found his love so this I dedicate to my girls who have yet to tie the knot. I truly hope you never find the need to compromise, instead, find the love in your relationship as I have in mine. Marriage is not a two way street. Nor is it 50/50. It’s the best vacation you will ever take, when taken with the one you love. And to Lisa Vatani Taylor, my wife, who I love and adore, I share the rest of my life. Happy Valentine’s Day.

If Deer Could Only Laugh

2012-06-09T08:18:00.000-05:00

November 7, 2011

First, my apologies for the extreme delay in getting this version to press. It has been six months since this was started and I am just getting it finished. So, just imagine going back in time….

This past weekend was the opening day of deer season here in the great Lone Star State. And, as the dutiful son that I am I took my dad hunting, on the very property on which he was born eighty six years and five months ago. For those of you that would rather opt for the short story, we didn’t see anything. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. The big goose egg.

The weekend started a day later than anticipated due to a surprise audit on Thursday. It was uneventful but it did throw us a day later getting off. I knew that on arrival I would have a ton of water pipes broken in need of repair and needed to arrive in the morning to get a good start. One thing I could not tolerate is not having water in certain appliances in the cabin. Of course, I didn’t anticipate all of the parts necessary so we had to make a trip into Centerville for one lousy fitting. Now, I don’t know about you, but I simply cannot walk into a hardware store and purchase a fifty nine cent fitting and walk out. I just have to purchase enough that the sale justifies a credit card purchase. The new pipes would have to be insulated so we added ten dollars in insulation to the tab. Then on the way to the door I spot some deck screws that I thought would work better than nails on that step that needed fixing thanks to my best hunting buddy. And it required a torx driver instead of a typical Phillips driver so there is another eight. And because I am so unorganized I could not find my plastic pipe cutters. Another twenty. Finally after I am satisfied we would not be short any supplies we headed back to the ranch. Pipes at the well house repaired we headed up to the cabin to turn the water on. Darn…water pouring out of the wall under the sink. Out comes the sink, sheetrock, and insulation revealing not one, but two half inch cpvc pipes split. Luckily I have just enough fittings to repair those leaks, but to my dismay once the water was back on there was another just out of sight. Now we are headed into Buffalo because Centerville closes up a noon on Saturday. It took me a couple of days to realize that the day was Friday and we could have gone back into Centerville, a much closer trip.

Now that the water is repaired we headed out to the spring where I constructed dad’s deer stand several years ago. It is a four by eight stand with an eight foot ceiling and an eight step stairway going up to it. We have to replace a step right up around number seven. Simple and easily done with a couple of hours to go before we head back, watch a movie, and turn in. However, about five or six months ago I gave up my Direct TV due to economic reasons. I mean, I was seldom going up there these days and it was just not practical to keep paying for something you do not get much chance to enjoy. So, I replaced the satellite system with a DVD player, which would have worked just great had I remembered to bring some DVDs. A quick search through dad’s truck turned up two movies. Transformers and Sky High. I think another trip into Buffalo is in order.

Hunting comes early on the Taylor ranch. Most of the time that is. I give the elderly a couple of more minutes. After a good hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs (I won’t mention that we both have heart and cholesterol problems…) and bundling up following the drastic dip in temperatures overnight (it is now 44 degrees) we head out to the spring stand for our first morning of hunting. We filled the feeders up about two weeks ago and the kids hunted last weekend (one of the kids shot a doe at this very stand) and it appears that the feeder is empty, but it still had corn on the ground. So we stuck it out, for about an hour after daylight. At that point dad just couldn’t take the cold any longer. I can understand that. As you age you simply lose muscle mass, and therefore the natural body insulation that keeps you from freezing. So we left and headed back to the cabin for snacks and a nap before lunch.

As dad slept most of the afternoon I contemplated the evening hunt. I fiddled around with this and that. Fixing some things and intending to fix others. Watched those DVD’s yet again, and generally lounged around waiting on the opportunity to try my luck again out in the deer stand.

When the time finally arrived to get ready to go out I woke Dad up and mentioned something about getting ready. Well, he didn’t want to go out this evening. He just thought he would sleep the afternoon away and let me go out on my own. Well this presented a little bit of a problem since he is just now getting to that time in his life that I really do not want leave him alone. It’s not that he is dangerous or anything. I’m just starting to get a little uncomfortable with some of the little things he says and does. It just makes me think I’d rather keep an eye on him. However, against my better judgment and his edging along I finally agree to go out this evening and leave him asleep in the cabin. After all, we are in the middle of the ranch. He has no place to go and no transportation if he was so inclined. I felt the risk was minimal so I went hunting alone this evening.

I’ll just skip all the nonsense about not seeing anything yet again. Suffice it to say that this evening’s hunt was uneventful. It was when I returned back to the cabin that things got interesting. Dad was no where to be found. It’s not like he could be hiding in the cabin, there’s only two rooms. A quick scan outside did not reveal his whereabouts either. But, I need to strip down out of these hunting clothes so I can perform a thorough search. Luckily just as I open the door to exit the cabin to start my search there he is, on his way back from the neighbors. I say neighbor. It is my cousin, his nephew’s new place.

Well, that is the last time he gets left alone, even for a moment. I’ll just chalk it up to lessons learned.

As morning arrived we were up early with a hearty breakfast eaten. We headed out to the ‘far’ deer stand and arrived just in time to see the sun crest on the horizon. A little late in the scheme of hunting, but considering the age of my current hunting partner it was just in time. We got settled in quickly and patiently waited for that monster buck with the atypical rack with the drop tines. Just then I hear it…

Tap, tap, tap… Now as some of you know, I am just a little hard of hearing. Ok, a LOT hard of hearing. Even with hearing aids it is sometimes difficult for me to distinguish near sounds from far away sounds. There it is again. Tap, tap, tap… Wait a second, I thought to myself. That is rhythmic tapping. Almost as if tapping to music. I look around and sure enough there is dad tapping out the Navy song on the butt stock of his rifle.

Shhh! I can remember when he was doing that to me. Again, I have become my dad.

So with the tapping subdued I am back to listening and scanning the tree line for the subtle hint of a deer looking out into the clearing as if to see if it is safe. Then out of the corner of my eye I see movement. As I slowly turn my head to the right I see dad raising his gun and easing it out of the window. Scanning the trees I look anxiously for his target but see nothing. As he moves his gun left and right I then realize he was using his gun scope to scan the clearing. Argh. Use the binoculars, dad.

Now that I have his gun back inside the stand he lays it across his lap and get comfortable. Now, I don’t know about you but to me comfortable is the gun in the gun rack and me leaned back in a recliner taking it easy. No wonder he is beat after only an hour in the stand. I don’t think I could sit ‘at attention’ with a gun in my lap for several hours. And, for safety sake you really have to be completely alert if you are going to have a gun in your lap all the time. It’s just a safety thing. Relax dad. Put your gun in the rack and relax.

After being in the stand now for about fifteen minutes, I’m getting just a little bit on edge. Dad is moving around like a teenager and seems to me making enough noise to run the deer off from even the neighbor’s deer stand. Now he is whistling. Not really whistling like those prisoners of war that built that bridge over the River Kwai or anything, but the sort of silent whistling like snare drum imitations. Shh!

Finally I hear it. “I’m ready to get out of here.”

I sort of ignore it for a minute or two. Two whole minutes. Complete silence. It is the quietest that he has been since we arrived. Now he’s quiet. But I figure the damage has already been done. It is time to go. I don’t think he actually came he to go hunting anyway. This is his home. He was born here and some day he will return here for his last trip. He’s earned the right to lead the way and decide how long we hunt and when we go visit with his sister. We pack it in for the day and spend the rest surveying the area just looking around the countryside.

It comes time to head back home. Neither one of us brought enough medicine to last more than the four days we have now been here. So we pack it up to head back home being especially careful to drain all the water pipes in the cabin to hopefully prevent a repeat of this years water pipe fiasco.

Those of you that know me, know well enough that I do fib on occasion. Not often mind you, but today I pulled one over on you. We did see something. On day three we saw a family of hogs pass by on the way to who knows where. And on day four, as we were approaching the exit gate on our way home, there it was. A nice doe waving at us as if to say “Thanks for playing. Ya’ll come back now, ya hear?”

If only deer could laugh. It sure would have made hunting a lot easier this year.

The Stepford Parents…NOT!

2011-03-30T22:23:00.000-05:00

March 29, 2011

If you remember my last installment I touched on how terminology has changed over the recent years. Men have encroached on the once female dominated career as stewardess and have championed the new phrase ‘Flight Attendants.’ I also touched on the occupation of ‘maid,’ which has since been dubbed ‘housekeeper’ or ‘domestic engineer.’ I have now learned that the ‘baby boomers’ are completely responsible for these changes. I know this because I have started a search for an appropriate nursing home for my Mother and have come to find out that nursing homes are now called ‘Senior Assisted Living Centers.’

The reason I have come to this conclusion and blamed the baby boomers is all because nursing homes are no longer nursing homes. They actually are assisted living centers. I look at it like this. A child has at least some responsibility to help care for their aging parents. The activity of doing this is ‘assisted living.’ Years ago children actually did care for their parents until they were no longer capable of providing appropriate care, at which time the parent then acquired the appropriate nursing care from a nursing home. Today, however, many of the baby boomers shirk this responsibility and send their parents off early to some facility that does not necessarily provide actual nursing duties, but they provide some much lower level of care. Generally, assisted living. All this is due to the baby boomers. Whether it is laziness or irresponsibility, it is the fault of a majority of the baby boomers refusal to provide even a modicum of care for their parents. Or maybe the baby boomers are simply victims of an era. I don't know. I just don't understand.

I certainly hope I have instilled in my son the values necessary for him to desire to help me out as I grow old, but recognize when I am no longer in need of assistance and am really in need of nursing. A parent couldn’t be any prouder of his child than I am of mine, but I hope I have the mental facilities to be even prouder still should he choose the route that my siblings and I have taken with our own parents.

I once said that I would never write about my parents. I have already made myself into a liar with a previous entry so I may as well jump completely off the cliff and say my ten Hail Mary’s. After all, my therapist has told me that writing is good for me. It helps me to relax and calm my nerves.

Many of you are already aware that my parents are well into their eighties now and require round the clock supervision. I hesitate to call it care because there is little that you need to do for them. Most of the time the level of care provided is simply supervision to keep them from hurting themselves, or each other. Dad is unable to drive now and simply up there in age with reflexes on the slow side, and dementia has crept up on him and often overwhelms him at times during the day. He will never admit it, though. Mom, on the other hand, is in stage five (out of seven) of Alzheimer’s disease and unable to cook or do most anything that requires even the simplest cognitive skills. Although she recognizes me and my sisters as familiar faces, she is unaware of our names or relationship to her. Dad has always been called Grandpa and as a result mom has taken the belief that he is her grandpa. After all, we have always called him grandpa from the day his first grandchild was born. In fact, I believe it was mother that started that.

You may find that this article bounces around just a little too much to be a chronological order of events. That is mainly due to my taking so long to produce this installment. I have taken several selected events from different times over the last three months to bring this to you and did not keep notes on a single page, rather, I have a pile of scraps composed of anything from bar napkins to cash register receipts with notes hastily scribbled thereon. So, if I forget to apologize later on for the seemingly haphazard ramblings that appear to bounce around like a ball on a pinball machine, I do so now. (Does the current generation even know what a pin ball machine is?) Ok, for you younger tykes out there: like a group of pixels in a pong game.

One of my many chores around the homestead is cooking. Not something I really care to do, but nevertheless it is something that I was taught to do. Not only did I learn by my dear mother but also by my years in the Boy Scouts. Three meals a day, seven days a week I cook, then clean. Not completely mind you. I do leave something for mother to clean. After all, she has done so for so many years I don’t think it would go over well to simply tell her she no longer needs to help clean the kitchen. She probably wouldn’t remember it for the time it would take her to go sit in the living room anyway. It does give her some purpose. At least that’s my justification for ‘allowing’ her to help clean up. Every evening I take most everything out of the cabinet and place the items in the dishwasher. Mom’s idea of washing dishes now is rinsing them off with water and drying with a paper towel. Nuff said.

I have learned that I need to fill their plates and even cut things up into bite size pieces when I place the meal on the table. Dad’s idea of cutting up meat, for example, is to place the bottom of the fork on top of the meat as if he were holding it down from floating away, then drawing the knife all the way across it from side to side in an attempt to cut it into with a single slice of the knife. Maybe if I were Bobby Flay, but I cannot hold a candle to his exquisite cooking skills. Dad will never get any meat prepared by me cut with one draw of a knife, and his attempts to do so often results in catastrophic events at the table. Either food or drink ends up in places it was not meant. Of course, there are times where this method actually does result in nicely cut items. Bread, for example. Dad must have some kind of bread at each meal. And no matter how hard I try that bread will always end up on his plate buttered with honey on it. It is sort of like potatoes in that respect. No matter what kind of potatoes I put on his plate those potatoes will always end up mashed with a fork into mashed potatoes.

Mom and Dad also have very different tastes when it comes to meals. I have never been one to do a lot of cooking and therefore my repertoire of menu items is very limited. I really have to think and plan meals, and in doing so I will select a meal a week that I enjoy for my self. When I place the meal in front of them I usually get some reaction out of one or the other. Last week I tried Chicken Cordon Bleu. Dad took one look at it and said “What’s this?” and Mom ate it right up with no question. On another occasion I prepared fajitas with red and green bell peppers, and onions, and a few other spices. Topped it off with a four cheese Mexican shredded cheese topping. It was really good. Mom took one look at it and said “What’s this?” and Dad ate it right up, no questions.

As I mentioned earlier, Dad is no longer able to drive on the road. He has been driving down to the highway to get his newspaper or collect the mail (see previous entry, something about assimilation) but I had been doing that for him now for about the last month. When I returned from a recent weekend furlough I sat through an hour of him telling me about the local kids and how they must not have anything else to do and go around knocking over or damaging mail boxes. I went down to the road to see what could be done about repairing it. Sure enough, the mail box pole was cocked over in an unruly tilt to one side, and the box itself was canted back on the pole. Looking up and down the road I could see no other mailboxes damaged in such a manner. I guess maybe the neighbors had already repaired their boxes. I asked my sister about dad driving to get the mail and sure enough, she confirmed that Dad had driven down there the last two days to get his paper. Well that’s enough on that subject.

Today Mom decided that she wanted to leave for home (we really are not sure where that is…) and loaded up a box full of her belongings and carried it to the front door. Actually this is a daily event, but that is another story altogether. I was in my room at the time and was not witness to this. She and Dad had a few words that were just not quite loud enough for me to understand and then the door opens. (I have an alarm system on the doors of the house so I am alerted when either leaves the house.) I was answering email or something at the time and did not jump right up to investigate the door opening but did notice it had gotten strangely quiet in the house. You know, when you have kids in the house playing and suddenly things get quiet? You know something is really wrong when it gets quiet. Well I was right. By the time I made it out the door and to the garage they had that box loaded up and dad was behind the wheel just about to put the truck in gear. I offered to drive so Dad got out of the driver’s seat and handed me his keys (note this!) and proceeded to get in the back seat. I asked Mom where she wanted to go but she really could not say. She simply referred me to Dad, who also had no clue where Mom wanted to go. Eventually she decided that it was not necessary to go anywhere and they both returned to the house. Remember the keys?

I really dislike all this Daylight Savings Time and the government’s idea of saving energy by making it stay light later in the day. Old people tend to want to stay on a schedule. Wake up at a certain time; take naps at certain times; eat at certain times; whatever. A month ago it was easy. Dinner was at 5:00 to 5:30 and quite soon afterwards it was dark enough to trigger the sleep sensor in them. Now, however, while we have to still eat at 5:00 to 5:30 it remains light for far too long after dinner is complete. As you are aware as you age your memory begins to falter. Well, with so much light remaining (10 minutes should do it, really.) they have more than enough time available to forget that they have already had dinner. So, tonight while writing I begin to smell something. That in itself does not alarm me but I did make it a point to step into the kitchen in the next few minutes to see on what they are snacking. As I approach I can see three rolls on a plate being carried on a hot pad by Dad. If the rolls were not slightly blackened it would not have made such an impact on me, but the smell simply did not match with what I saw on the plate. Its one of these mind things. You see something but another sense just does not agree with your sense of sight and as a result you sort of get mental vertigo. As it turns out those rolls were prepared in the microwave. Now I can tell you with relative certainty how long it takes for a microwave to brown rolls. It’s not a pleasant smell.

I said earlier that I would apologize and I do. Again I have rambled on about nothing and spent too much literary real estate in doing so. There are so many events that take place that is worthy of the written word but much of it is private and not meant to be shared with those not close to the immediate family. I wish I had started writing about my parents years ago, not for your enjoyment mind you, but for my own memories. I know that some day I will lose those memories as they have and I will then regret not having written memories of these days. The one thing I am sure of is this: I will forever cherish being able to spend this time with my parents in this era of their life. Having regrets of not being close to them while they were alive is something I could not live with when I am nearing the end of mine.

Coming Out Of The Closet

2011-02-16T22:35:00.000-06:00

February, 2011

They say that the first time is just an experiment. Anything more than that is a habit, an addiction, or a label. I suppose, then, that I am beyond the experiment phase… or should I say ‘we.’

It’s been several years since we have been on a real vacation so I felt we were due. Oh, we’ve been on trips where I have to drive to a destination, and we may have stayed there for several days or even a week. Then I would have to drive back. That’s not really a vacation. It is more like work away from home. I hate driving. Most of the time I am faced with what many would call an adventure. To me it is Hell. I hate driving. This trip would again be a real vacation where we would fly to our destination. Have a great time, then fly home.

Our last real vacation was to Jamaica. A real neat island in the Caribbean and just a stones throw from Cuba. We couldn’t see Cuba from where we were on the island because we were on the Southwest side of the island at a place called Grand Lido Negril and Cuba was North of the island. Of course, that was then, and now it has changed hands (the resort, not the island) and at the time of this writing it is owned by the Breezes organization. I did a short write up for the family after we returned which can be found at http://www.lrim.com/vacation

Anyway, once we arrived at the resort we were promptly asked if we wanted a unit on the family side or on the ‘clothing optional’ side. Jackie and I looked at each other and as if we read each other’s mind we simultaneously said ‘clothing optional!’ And thus it began.

This year we wanted to again go to the Caribbean. First of all it was just beautiful there, but mainly because it was January and only a fool lies out on the beach in San Francisco in January. So the Caribbean it would be. Now to select which island we would visit. We really didn’t want to go back to Jamaica even though I am a creature of habit. I would have been quite comfortable back in Jamaica but I realized I needed to continue to broaden my horizons some but mostly I wanted to take Jackie to a different destination. Otherwise she might develop my ‘old man’ habits.

When I started to search for a destination I remembered the time we had in Jamaica and wondered if I could find a place that would compete with our past experience there. After many hours searching I decided on St. Martin. I remember seeing a segment on National Geographic channel about the 10 most dangerous airports of the world, and St. Martin was like number six. (I dare not mention this to Jackie.) And although the airport was a mild attraction for me it was the beach at Orient Bay that convinced me that we would go there for this vacation.

The resort there was a fair size resort. We didn’t want to go to a real small resort. The bigger the better, we thought. And it wasn’t an all-inclusive resort as was the resort on Jamaica, but there were benefits that outweighed the negative of not being an all-inclusive. And this resort (Club Orient) carried the name of the beach so we felt it would be the best there. As you remember, the accommodations we secured on Jamaica were on a clothing optional beach. As it turns out, the entire Club Orient was clothing optional. Not only was the beach clothing optional, but you could dine, shop, take a stroll, or just lay out anywhere on the resort without a stitch on. It was amazing!

We were quite excited to once again be going on a real vacation, but slightly ill prepared for the airlines, the airport security, the parking lot, the TSA, and all the other alphabet soup of initials of whatever government agency would try to make our trip miserable. We encountered them on every leg of the trip.

I am usually not the frugal person but this year I had to act the part due to the economy. Even we are struggling this year and I suppose an explanation is in order. You see, I have been accumulating frequent flyer miles with Continental. Well, it might have been frequent many years ago and not so much lately. Back in the ‘90s I did have occasion to make numerous business trips and had the forethought to join Continental’s frequent flyer program. In flying for business I was able to accumulate about 90,000 frequent flyer miles. Just enough to fly to Europe first class, it seems. But then, what would a trip to Europe be traveling alone? Anyway, I opted to use the frequent flyer miles for our trip to St. Martin. Total out of pocket cost? $170 in taxes. Total cost in aggravation? About the same as if we had driven!

Although Continental does not offer the most direct routes when requesting to fly free I was able to secure the most direct route possible. You see… Continental only services St. Martin through Newark. So, we had to fly about four hours North to catch a plane to fly about five hours South. We left Houston in 40 degree weather to travel to 14 degree weather just to change planes to travel to 74 degree weather. Quite confusing.

When the list of flights was on the screen I had to scan about 4 pages passing up the flights that connected through Chicago then Newark, or Dallas to Denver to Newark, or Fayetteville to Charlotte to Newark, or Atlanta to Newark, finally arriving on the last page to discover the Houston to Newark to St. Martin flight. The only other alternative was to fly from Houston to Panama on Continental then from Panama to St Martin on one of their ‘code share’ airlines. ‘Code share’ always scares the bejeebees out of me. Well, I had never been to New York and the Newark airport was just across the river. So, I decided to select a flight that would stay overnight in Newark and give us enough time to see a Broadway show on the way.

As much as I would have liked to seen Driving Miss Daisy with James Earl Jones, it appears that some actors actually want a night off and his night would be the night we would be there. Oh well, saving $200 seemed a frugal thing to do. Instead we went to a comedy club. Caroline’s Comedy Club touted itself to be the premier comedy club in New York and even though the talent that night was unknown to me I thought a comedy club would be fun. I suppose it was, if you are 20. I am more of the Bill Cosby fun kind of person. Today’s comedy is apparently filled with not only profanity, but disgusting situational comedy. Even Eddie Murphy was mild compared to this comedienne. She had one of those single name names. Like Beyonce, or Madonna, but I cannot remember her name at the moment. Maybe later. She was a black comedienne. I don’t know off hand if that had any affect on the audience composition but Jackie and I appeared to be one of only four white couples there. We did feel just a little out of place but no one seemed to pay us any mind. I wish James Earl Jones wanted off on Monday instead of Sunday.

Everyone raves about New York for some reason. I found it just horrible. It’s not even portrayed accurately in movies. Take downtown Houston, for example, and narrow the streets by half, reducing the lane widths by half, and multiply the number of cars by 4 and the number of taxicabs by 10, and you will just about have New York. Well, I can say that I have now seen New York. I need a tee shirt now. One that says ‘I survived New York,’ or ‘I went to New York, rode a taxi, saw a show, and all I got was this lousy tee shirt.’ I was glad to be leaving Newark. I finally got to see the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, and Manhattan as we were climbing out and turning South for St. Martin.

The St. Martin airport is situated on the beach. And I mean on the beach. From the surf there is maybe 50 feet of sand, then a very narrow two lane road, then the fence at the end of the runway. The aircraft approach so low over the beach that photographs can be taken of people on the beach showing aircraft lower than the tops of their heads! It just seems that way, of course. It’s all done with mirrors I bet. But, a main attraction there is to hang onto the fence as an airliner is departing. Or at least attempt to hang onto the fence. Those that are unsuccessful end up in the surf.

I had originally planned for a 4 day trip and had all the arrangements worked out based on that but eventually changed it to a 5 day trip. As a result the only thing that did not get changed was the day that the resort would pick us up at the airport. So, we rented a car there at the airport instead of waiting on renting one at the resort. After all, it’s an island. You can’t get lost…

Halfway from the airport to the resort we could see the traffic backed up at least 2 miles going up the mountain so we opted on taking the route clockwise around the island instead of the recommended counter clockwise route. What difference would it make? We wanted to see the entire island anyway. Now was as good a time as any to go through Marigot instead of Phillipsburg. Needless to say, the roads on St. Martin island are less than perfect. In fact, they appeared to be about half as wide as the roads we left behind in New York, and in a state of repair of those found in most ‘second’ world countries. Despite having spent the majority of my life within the confines of the U. S. we would eventually arrive at Club Orient safely and with about 4 hours of light remaining for the day.

The room was ready and the first of my surprises for Jackie was waiting for us. After about 9 hours of travel time from Houston to Newark to St. Martin, and another hour on unfamiliar roads, I knew a massage would be just the thing for us both. Was I ever right! It was just the thing that we both needed to get loosened up after that flight. Immediately following there was a wine and cheese get together for everyone at the resort. We had to at least look relaxed for that even if it would be our first encounter with a clothing optional event other than a beach.

By now you are saying ‘what is all this baloney about ‘clothing optional? What you are describing is a nudist resort, isn’t it?’ Well, like so many other things today terminology changes. Stewardess’ are now Flight Attendants, Maids are Domestic Engineers, and nudists are now naturists. It is a Naturist resort. Regardless of its label no one paid attention to our ‘less than perfect’ bodies and we had a great time.

First thing the next morning we had to make a run to the resorts general store for a few things. Coffee, breakfast rolls, a few staples, and some sun tan lotion! Then it was the beach. I was content to simply lay on the beach listening to the surf relaxing in an attempt to simply forget about the rest of the world for a few days. Of course, I did have a plan and I had to try and keep on track. I really wanted Jackie to try scuba diving and the locals on the beach had a ‘Intro to SCUBA’ program where they took someone out in just about 15 feed of water and taught them just enough to breath under water for about 20 minutes. You could only go with an instructor but that is about all that was needed. I was certified back in ’97 but since Jackie had never before been diving she would have to be accompanied by the instructor. So we made it to the dive shop and were fitted with wet suits and gear and proceeded to board a boat that would take us on a 5 minute trip out to Green Key, and island within the confines of Orient Bay. However, being January, even in the Caribbean the wave action tossed the boat around pretty good. (And those that know me are already starting to laugh.) I was doing just fine until the crew discovered a sailboarder had taken a spill in the bay and was in need of assistance. We stopped to render aid to the fallen surfer, picking up his gear and taking him aboard to deliver him back to the shore. Well, the 60 seconds or so that we stopped to get him on board was enough to render me completely disabled due to seasickness. Once the boat was ashore to deliver the sailboarder I had to excuse myself from the remainder of the dive. Jackie would go ahead with the dive and return with a less than excited look about her. She wasn’t really impressed. Oh well, this surprise didn’t go over so well. Maybe the next will work out better.

The next day found us back on the beach with liberal amounts of sun tan lotion to protect those areas that have not seen the sun since I was 3. This day would be one of total relaxation and no surprises. The water sports center of the resort offered free snorkeling gear and Jackie found that she preferred that over scuba, so she took a stroll down and obtained the gear, returning by way of snorkeling. It was probably five or six hundred yards from our lounge chairs to the water sports center so the walk down and the snorkeling back actually took an hour or so. During this time I was supposed to be timing myself so that neither front nor back faced the sun for more that 15 minutes at a time. Although I thought I was doing ok, I soon discovered that there are parts of the body that was just not meant for tanning. At least not mine. Jackie finally made it back from the water sports center with her gear and a huge starfish that she found on the way back. We lounged for a while longer and had a few drinks from the convenient bar and grill that was a mere twenty steps or so from our chosen spot on the beach. Our drinks of choice were virgin daiquiris or margaritas. The fruity drinks were just the thing for the beach. As the evening drew near Jackie needed to return the snorkeling gear to the water sports center prior to closing and she wanted to snorkel back so I gave her about a half hour head start, watching her snorkel down the beach, and then followed a bit later. I managed to reach the water sports center just as she was exiting the water. I had thought to bring her a towel and a visor to shade from the sun a bit. It was just about time to think about returning to our room to get ready for dinner. Well, getting ready for dinner was simply taking a quick shower to get all the sand out of your hair. It’s not like you had to decide what to wear…

The restaurant was fabulous. Although it was an open air restaurant the moderate Caribbean temperatures kept it a comfortable 75 degrees even at night and even with nothing on at all. There was entertainment every night and the food was excellent. But, since we were not in an all-inclusive resort the meals were charged to our room and the prices on the menu was all in Euros and not dollars. So, that 10 € meal actually cost us $13. Just something we had to keep in mind, although I was not pinching pennies on this trip since I saved about $1300 on the flights. Some day Jackie is going to get me to dance with her. Not this trip.

We awakened the next morning to a startling discovery. It shouldn’t have come as any surprise at all. After all, who goes to a beach destination and does not expect a little sun burn? But I have to tell you, that snorkeling five or six hundred yards really allow the sun to do just exactly what the sun does. And it did it so well! Jackie looked like a white Valentines day cookie with red icing on the back side. I had to get my glasses out to read the fine print but there it was just as plain as day. SPF-3. Jackie picked it out. Well, after locating some SPF-30 for the bulk of our now tender bodies we went on that futile search for some SPF-500 for those even more tender areas. Back to the beach I say. I have not yet forgotten about my world.

The next surprise was more of a ‘she wouldn’t expect this of me’ type of activity instead of a typical surprise. We set out once again in the car to the other side of the island to locate a narrow road which led up the tallest mountain on the island. Standing 424 meters (1,391 feet) Pic Paradis is the highest point of the island and offers some fantastic views. Along the road there was the occasional ‘lookout point’ where we had to stop and take a few photos at each. The road was in rather poor condition and I later learned that it doubled as a hiking trail. I think most all roads on the island doubled as hiking trails. In fact, they were likely primarily hiking trails and used as roads as a secondary function.

We also made a few of the shops along the main roads in Phillipsburg and the cruise line docks, as well as a casino. We thought we would give the Flamingo Casino a try as it had the most recognizable name. Jackie is not much of a gambler so we didn’t stay long. Just long enough for her to win $9 and me to lose $20. The Flamingo Casino in St. Martin is simply not the impressive Flamingo Hotel and Casino of Las Vegas fame.

We stopped by the Marigot Fire Station on the way through. (Jackie insisted.) We were fortunate enough to get there on a day they had chosen to do some rappelling training. I got a good look at the equipment and the one thing I have to say is that those complainers in the Montgomery Fire Department have absolutely nothing to complain about!

I’m sure I am making this sound as if St. Martin is a real third world country. Not at all. In fact, we saw the one thing that I have never seen in the states other than on T.V. A Segway. You know, one of those two wheeled personal transportation devices where the wheels are side by side and you stand on it. I’ve never seen how one operates other than on that T.V. show Royal Pains. Anyway, we both did a double take when we say that. We were driving at the time and nearly needed that extra insurance coverage I wisely opted for at the car rental agency.

We returned taking the same route as on the way down here, but the return trip did not include an overnight layover. We left St. Martin at 1:00 in the afternoon and arrived in Houston just after midnight. It was some trip but I would do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, I have already begun to search for our next vacation. The first criteria? A clothing optional beach!

So it appears that we are now beyond the experimental stage. We have started looking for places in Texas to visit on short mini trips. We found many places we could go, the most famous of those being Hippy Hollow right nearby in Austin. And we have discovered that there are discounts to member of certain organizations. So, now we are card carrying members of the Naturist Society. No longer are we closet nudists. We are naturists and we found a great way to have a great time on vacations. Things are looking up.

The First Annual Restaurant Review

2010-12-02T15:19:00.000-06:00

December 2, 2010

So, immediately you say, “a restaurant review? You?” I’m entitled. I may not be the foremost authority on food, preparation, or presentation, but I know what I like. I know when the food tastes good. I know when I am pleased with the service. What else is there?

So we (yes, today I have a partner on my travels) start out, making sure we have everything necessary. And even though I always tend to forget something (see previous article) we hastily load up and start out on our journey. And a journey it shall be. You see, I decided to review a rather unknown restaurant just a little farther from the house than your typical evening dinner out. We decide to make it a two or three day trip and spend the first night at my sister’s house in Canyon City, about three hours away. We begin by making the first gas station so that we need not be bothered by fuel on this first leg of the trip, which was rather uneventful. About halfway there we did pass the exit to Kyle, and remembering my prior experiences in Kyle we decided to avoid that exit. We arrive at my sister’s with plenty of daylight remaining and ample time for socializing. After a modest amount of exploration around the area, and wanting to get an early start the next morning we head to bed plenty early. And just so that we would have something to write about my sister’s house decided to contribute some material of its own. They have a rather large grandfather clock situated just outside the bedroom door where we were to sleep and every fifteen minutes it decided to let loose with a melody that lasted about fourteen minutes (or so it seemed) at a volume which did not disturb me, due to my failing hearing, but kept Jackie up all night. It seemed the logical solution would be to close the door, which we did, but then revealed the next of our disturbing events. The alarm system control panel was set to glow constantly. And it was bright! So, either we tolerated the light or the sound. I was quite happy with either but Jackie never could make up her mind and simply never got any sleep all night. I guess draping a dry wash cloth over the alarm panel was just too easy of a solution..

We got an early start the next morning as expected and stopped off at the local donut shop for a cup of java and something to settle our stomachs for the long trip ahead of us. I decided for a cinnamon roll and a dozen holes and Jackie requested a hot dog kolache without the pastry part of it. Just a hot dog? Who eats just a hot dog for breakfast?

En route to our destination, somewhere beyond Sonora or so, but not yet to Fort Stockton we came upon an area where all you could see on the horizon was windmills. Not the Holland style windmills nor the water well type of structure, but those new electric generating windmills. In this part of the country there are multiple plateaus situated above valleys, or even flat areas, and the plateaus are simply lined with these tall white electric generating windmills. It rather reminded me of all the aborigines lined up on the ridges in the movie Quigley Down Under. For as far as you could see there were windmills. From the south horizon to the west, and continuing on to the north, nothing but windmills. Now I realize where all those propeller blades you see passing through town are headed. I remember wondering why I never see any of the pedestals on trucks headed this way. Maybe they are manufactured elsewhere and thus do not pass through my neck of the woods.

Additionally we began seeing more than just hills and high plateaus. We were now seeing small mountains in the distant. Mountains that would soon grow to epic heights to those of us that have spent our lives in east Texas, but still referred to as hills by those in Colorado, Montana, and others. As we traveled into those mountains I could feel my truck struggling to get up and around those hills. In fact, it seemed that even though we were going downhill it struggled. I doubt that it was the thinning air as fuel injected engines are not supposed to be affected by altitude changes. After setting up the GPS I could see that even though it looked like we were often travelling downhill we were, in fact, steadily increasing in altitude. It actually sickened me slightly, but then, a lot of things do. It was almost like being in the fun house at the carnival.

I knew we were getting to West Texas when we started seeing towns that have been mentioned in John Wayne movies. El Dorado, Blanco, Ozona, Sweetwater, and several others. It took all I could to keep from taking a side trips to each one just to be the standard tourist.

We arrived at our destination of Sierra Blanca, Texas at about four in the afternoon. I would have thought for sure that we would be simply wasted after the long day on the road but we actually felt pretty good, so we decided to explore just a little. Ok, by now you have come to realize that this really isn’t about a restaurant review, haven’t you? We did have another reason for making this trip out west. Jackie had purchased some property out this way some years back and this would be my first trip out here. Of course, it was mule deer season and breaking out the 270 for a deer or the 204 for a predator of some sort was not out of the question. From the hotel where we were staying for the night to the property turned out to be about 60 miles. She didn’t mention that. Of course, I found out that a trip to the grocery store in these parts is in excess of 70 miles one way most of the time. We arrived in the area of the property shortly before sunset only to discover that the fall rains had washed out not only one, but two areas of the road just before her property. Not wanting to deal with it all this evening we decided to abandon the property viewing for the evening and head into town for a bite to eat before turning in.

We decided on one of the only two places in town to eat, La Familia Restaurant and Gift Shop. Well the gift shop portion of the place was already closed so we sat down at a table near the register. The only other occupied table was just next to where we sat. We were promptly greeted by a young Hispanic female. Jackie ordered a fajita enchilada while I decided on the Mexican Plate so that I would have a sampling of several things. The young lady took our order then visited the next table, presumably to check on their drinks or whatever. The waitress handed one of the customers at the table something that looked like a check, but instead of the couple heading to the register to pay they passed it right up and headed into the kitchen to prepare our order. Turns out it was the cooks sitting at the next table. Jackie’s order was ready a couple of minutes prior to mine and sat on the counter under the heat lamps for those minutes. I was seated to where I could watch the cook at the grill prepare my meal. On several occasions she took a squeeze bottle of what looked like oil and squirted it not only on the grill itself, but also on absolutely everything she cooked. But, I was open minded and willing to reserve any comments until I had tried it, which finally did come.

Jackie proceeded to unwrap her enchilada to find nothing but fajita meat wrapped in a corn tortilla. No rice or beans. She had to request hot sauce (we did not get any chips & salsa) and sour cream to dress it up some. The sour cream came in a small package which actually made us feel a little better as the cleanliness of the place was rather short of the local gas station restrooms. My meal consisted of a Chile rellenos, two cheese enchiladas, taco, rice, and beans. The taco meat had no real seasoning in it at all so it was not much more than lettuce and tomato in a crunchy shell with some chewy something on the side. Having tolerated the taco I moved on to the chile rellenos. Now, all the chili rellenos I have had in the past was filled with seasoned hamburger meat or something. This one came to me flat leaving my to wonder what was waiting for me inside. As it turned out it had no filling in it at all. My chile rellenos was simply a fried pepper. Next was the cheese enchiladas. How could someone mess up a cheese enchilada? Cold is one way, and cold it was. As it turns out the beans and rice was the best thing found at La Familia Restaurant and Gift Shop. See? It is a restaurant review after all.

The next morning we headed out to the property with sufficient help to get all the way to the property. The local ‘guide’ that accompanied us seemed well enough equipped to handle most any situation but even he had to manually fill in a ditch or two just to get to the property. Then he decides to drive off into a huge ditch and get completely stuck so that I had to break out my chains to get him free. It was about that point that we decided to simply walk the remainder of the way and avoid any further chance of losing our transportation completely.

Many times, when walking around on my property, I dream about a variety of things. This particular property reminded me of the many John Wayne movies I have seen over the years. One specific one, in fact. McClintock! One certain passage in that movie applied to this property. As I recall it goes something like this… “This land hates the plow. Serves pretty good for cattle. But you just can’t make it go on the Mesa verde.” I really believe this about Jackie’s property. Even the mesquite has better sense than to try to survive there. Tumbleweed is obviously formed when bushes intentionally chew themselves off at the ground to free themselves so that the wind might blow it to another county. There was not much there but rock. Lots of rock, limestone, talc (or whatever talc is made from) and sand. There was sand everywhere. On everything. In everything. Around everything. There was sand in the air. So much so, that you could not see more than a mile or so. It didn’t appear as a widespread sand storm, but then, I have never seen a sandstorm short of the movies.

We did see several herds of pronghorn antelope, but no deer, although we saw evidence of both in abundance. Being a week into deer season explains why they are keeping a low profile.

Not wanting to be left alone out on the ‘mesa verde’ we decided to leave once our guide’s truck was freed. There was no communications available at all. Cell service was non existent and if we were to get stuck ourselves we would be sort of on our own unless the amateur radio that I had brought along could raise someone local. We decided to go on into El Paso for the remainder of the day just for sightseeing.

There is not much in El Paso, and if it were not for Fort Bliss we would not have been at all entertained the entire afternoon. As it was we ended up in New Mexico for lunch just to say we had been there this trip.

We started back early the next morning and was over 100 miles into our trip before we found anything open to get breakfast or even a cup of morning coffee. We drove all the way back not even stopping at my sister’s. It took an entire day for me to recover from this trip and we both decided that the next trip out we are going to fly. I think we would rather enjoy the pat down by the TSA instead of the intolerable 700+ miles in the pickup.

Persistence is Futile. But I want to Assimilate!

2010-11-20T19:21:00.000-06:00

November 20, 2010

Some time ago, I don’t mean years, or months, or even weeks; about 10 days ago Dad stopped receiving his newspaper. I won’t mention which because they undoubtedly have much more money to put towards legal fees than do I. The day I discovered this I had just returned from a weekend off from my duties. You see, I happily moved in with my parents when it became obvious that they had become unable to properly care for themselves. I spend weeks at a time there with the occasional weekend or week off to go home to… visit. I have three sisters who gladly relieve me at least two and sometimes three weekends a month, and again at least a full week or ten days a month. I didn’t completely move in. I sort of live out of a suitcase and occupy the same old room that I lived in some forty years ago growing up. Moving on, I returned home to learn that dad had not received his daily newspaper for the last three days, so a call to the circulation department was in order. Now, this particular newspaper is not of the local variety. Although we live in a rural area and the nearest town has a publication of sorts, it is not a daily paper. Dad therefore relies on the paper from the great metropolis that is about forty miles distant, but delivers daily. Well, we both thought.

My call to the papers main switchboard was answered by a rather male sounding voice, which in itself, was a surprise. I don’t know why. I suppose it may be because it has been many years since I was actually out in the workforce and exposed to what normal really is. I shouldn’t be all that surprised, after all, I do have access to the internet and am not completely cut off from the trends affecting our country. In any event the pleasant young man transferred my call to the circulation department whereupon I spent several minutes monitoring my own circulation while I listened to that recorded voice, “All customer service agents are presently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and someone will be right with you.” Finally after what seemed like hours I hear a different recording. Progress.. “We are experiencing a high volume of calls. Please use our automated system. If you experienced difficulties receiving your newspaper, press 1.” *Beep* “If you did not receive your newspaper today, press 1.” *Beep* “Please enter your ten digit telephone number, starting with the area code, followed by the pound sign.” *Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep*

And after all that… “Please hold for a customer service representative.” To my surprise, a person then answered the phone right away. I guess all that was just a way to kill some time while an agent became available to talk to me. It didn’t really seem to do anything because the agent then had me dictate all that information to her again. I hate that. Why make us wear out our telephone keypads pushing in all those digits when they are going to ask anyway? These new phone are not made by Western Electric any more. They wear out faster than batteries in kids toy now days. But after all that I got a pleasant “Thank you, we will take care of this right away.” That’s it? Seemed easy enough, once I got to talk to a real person. I was happy, or so I thought.

Day two. Dad makes his usual early morning sojourn down to the highway to check the mail….and his newspaper; which of course, was not there. Another day and again I have to watch him return to the house empty handed. Besides from that I patiently sit and listen to the events of the trip. About the neighbor’s cattle and how the cows leave their young unattended (like the hawks are gonna swoop down and carry them off,) about how little they have to eat, and then analyze the trash he picked up in the ditch to bring home. Its trash, Dad, let’s put it in the trash. Well, to this day that trash is still on his desk. He is still wondering exactly what it is and why someone would throw it away. “We are experiencing heavy call volume and all customer service agents are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold or to use our automated system. For English please press 1.” All I want is for Dad to have his newspaper. That way, when he returns he will quietly sit and read his newspaper during breakfast. “Yes sir. I’ll send a message to the carrier and we will get this cleared up right away.”

Day three. Dad makes his usual early morning sojourn down to the highway to check the mail….and his newspaper; which of course, was not there. Another day and again I have to watch him return to the house empty handed. Besides from that I patiently sit and listen to the events of the trip. About the neighbor’s cattle and how the cows leave their young unattended, about how little they have to eat, and then analyze the trash he picked up in the ditch to bring home. Its trash, Dad, let’s put it in the trash. “We are experiencing heavy call volume and all customer service agents are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold or to use our automated system. For English please press 1.” Is there an option if I want to speak to a supervisor? I leave my phone number for the carrier to call. I have hopes of a newspaper by Thursday…

Day four. Dad makes his usual early morning sojourn down to the highway to check the mail….and his newspaper; which of course, was not there. Another day and again I have to watch him return to the house empty handed. Besides from that I patiently sit and listen to the events of the trip. About the neighbor’s cattle and how the cows leave their young unattended, about how little they have to eat, and then analyze the trash he picked up in the ditch to bring home. Its trash, Dad, let’s put it in the trash. “We are experiencing heavy call volume and all customer service agents are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold or to use our automated system. For English please press 1.” Any chance I can talk to a supervisor? “Please hold.” Finally, someone that will give me the attention that this is due. I have hopes. “Sir, my supervisor is unable to take the call at the moment but I gave her your phone number. She is really good about returning phone calls. You should hear from her today."

Day five. Dad makes his usual early morning sojourn down to the highway to check the mail….and his newspaper; which of course, was not there. Another day and again I have to watch him return to the house empty handed. Besides from that I patiently sit and listen to the events of the trip. About the neighbor’s cattle and how the cows leave their young unattended, how little they have to eat, and then analyze the trash he picked up in the ditch to bring home. Its trash, Dad, let’s put it in the trash. “We are experiencing heavy call volume and all customer service agents are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold or to use our automated system. For English please press 1.” By now you are wondering why I am wasting time with this antiquated communications system called the telephone. Why not simply get on the internet, look up the papers site, click on the ‘Contact Us’ link and be done with this nonsense of daily talks to the customer service recordings? You know? I fool around with designing pages such as this. I mean, after all, I have been in the hospitality business for longer than I care to admit, and I have contact us pages for customers to communicate with me. So, I recognize a well planned contact us page. So I did use their contact form on about day two. That day all went as planned. “I didn’t get a newspaper. Circulation was no help. Can you help me get a newspaper?” No worries, right. The next day I fill out the same form and I got a little long winded about how I had called circulation, then sent in the contact us form, explained that I was not all that hard to find, and listed the previous ‘case number’ provided in the email confirmation sent to me to acknowledge receipt of the previous days form. “Your form contains too many characters. Please edit your text and limit the number of characters used to 150.” What? 150 characters? How can you legitimately complain about anything in 150 characters? So that day’s complaint was about how the form did not allow enough room to adequately complain.

Day six. It is now Saturday. Dad makes his usual early morning sojourn down to the highway to check the mail….and his newspaper; which of course, was not there. Another day and again I have to watch him return to the house empty handed. Besides from that I patiently sit and listen to the events of the trip. About the neighbor’s cattle and how the cows leave their young unattended, about how little they have to eat, and then analyze the trash he picked up in the ditch to bring home. Its trash, Dad, let’s put it in the trash. “We are experiencing heavy call volume and all customer service agents are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold or to use our automated system. For English please press 1.” By now I had learned the keystroke sequence and entered them in without even listening to the recordings, and I get a live person. “Mr. Taylor, has anyone called you back yet?” Oh, yes, of course. But I was just calling to say thank you….NOT. Not only has no one called me back, but I still do not have a newspaper! So, I ask the customer service rep (I really don’t know why they call it customer service if they cannot provide any service) for the carrier’s mother’s name so that I can call her to see if I can get a newspaper by Sunday. I never got to speak to a supervisor that day and the call ended quite soon afterwards.

Later, and not very much later I receive a call from a nice sounding lady. “Mom?”, I ask. Well, no, but it was the local distributor. She was quite pleasant and explained that the carrier was indeed delivering a paper to what they thought was the correct address, and after a long conversation about how to recognize the correct location to deliver our paper I get a promise, and a phone number.

Well, things are looking up. I have a real local phone number to contact the actual local distributor in the event I do not receive a paper tomorrow. I really think that if we don’t get a paper the distributor will actually bring it out herself. Wishful thinking. Tomorrow is another day and I think if I hear one more time about how little the neighbors cows have to eat I’m gonna feed them cows a newspaper distributor.

Copyright, 2010. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced without advanced written authorization from both the author and Google.

The Facts of Life

2010-11-15T23:13:00.000-06:00

November 15, 2010

Recently my son of 24 years asked me the heritage of my biological parents. Now you have to understand, the technology generation that my son grew up in required him to text the question to me rather than use a conventional telephone. Instead of picking up the phone and hearing me answer in my usual round the bush diatribe, he texted me the question. Of course, having received the query via text message I felt obligated to answer using the same medium. Never mind the fact that I still use a cheap, bottom of the line, first time newbie phone that only has a telephone keypad on it (after all, it IS a telephone, right?) and not a full QWERTY keypad (I’ll bet he has no clue what THAT is!), and he knows this, I still felt obligated to attempt to fit 20 minutes worth of ramblings into that little 1 x 1.25 inch screen. Suddenly, I found myself searching feverishly for which of those 12 keys would produce the “=” symbol. You see, having found out that my ramblings simply would not fit on that screen I opted to simply send him a URL to the family tree on Ancestry.com That is a wonderful thing, Ancestry.com, although sometimes I wonder if it simply allows some unsuspecting nitwit (me) to put far too much information into the hands of identity thieves. They say that they hide all information about living persons, and it does seem so. Still, that is a lot of information on the web about my family even if a Great Grandpa seems to have just appeared in Texas with no apparent previous history to be found. Maybe they did not keep prison records very well back in them days.

Anyway, having found a complete barrier to sending him a text message back with a URL to the family tree I decided it would be easier to send a link to the main site with a notation that he would have to search the database for my entry. Well again I found myself then looking for the “_” symbol. Darn cheapo phones. Someone told me just yesterday that I need to get a new phone. He even had a name for it, although it escapes me at present. It would connect to your laptop with one of those USB cables and allow your laptop to access the internet over the phone. I don’t need to get a new phone for that. That’s the way I do it now anyway. So I finally ended up sending him the information but had to use the word ‘underscore’ in place of the “_” symbol.

As it were he must have needed the information real fast because he sent a message back immediately that asked “What nationality?” Well I could see I was not going to get anywhere with getting him to do any research on his own so I finally just sent him what he wanted. My text back to him contained just the requested information. “Moravian.” Within 5 minutes I get another text message from him. “Never heard of it.” So much for a college degree…

So here is the information you requested, Son. I hope this fulfills your requirements and arrives to you within the allotted time that you needed.

My Great Grandfather, Anton, was born in 1861 in Freydek-Mistek, Moravia which, at the time was obviously a part of Austria. It was he who migrated to the United States because he married my Great Grandmother, Johanna (born 1866) in Fayette County, Texas in 1884. Now, since Johanna was born in nearby Zabreh Nad Odrou, Moravia she also migrated to the US. The story has it that they both arrived in the States about the same time but on different ships. Johanna and her family (Peter and Rosina Stavinoha) was in one ship bound for Corpus Christi (I think) but a plague there cause the ship to dock at an alternate port of Victoria, which at the time was on the coast and not inland as it is today. Near that same time Great Grandfather Anton fled his country for reasons unknown (that’s an author’s way of saying he really does not want to disclose the facts of the matter) and bought his passage on board a ship bound for the States as the servant of another family. And, he did so under a forged passport. This part we know to be true because my Aunt, who recently left us, has guarded that passport throughout the years and has preserved it in the family treasures. Well, Great Grandfather Anton’s ship was bound for Galveston yet some catastrophe in Galveston caused this ship to dock at its alternate port as well, Victoria.

It is unclear to me at this point if they met in Victoria or if the individual families both moved inland first to the settlement near Somerville and met there. Regardless, the Great Grandparents (mine, that is) married in Fayette County, Texas.

Back to Moravia. Although at the time it was part of Austria, it bears stating that the European states seemed to wander about aimlessly about the era of the various world wars and I really don’t know myself what political subdivision claimed Moravia in the ensuing years. But, looking at the maps of Austria the area labeled as Moravia appears quite close to some country called Poland. So, I guess you could say we are simply Polaks. Personally, I prefer the mystery of Moravian, hence my text message to you. And by the way, son, the Great Grandparents appear to both have the same Grandparents themselves. That explains a lot, actually…

Copyright, 2010. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced without advanced written authorization from both the author and Google.

Opening Weekend and the Doc Hollywood Method of Deer Hunting

2010-11-14T19:41:00.001-06:00

November, 2010

Well, for 2010 at least, the first opportunity for deer hunting has come and gone. Again this year my father has decided that he just didn’t have the ‘want to’ to get out and go. Not to be deterred I was able to find a last minute hunting partner. Having property suitable for deer hunting is somewhat similar to being rich. You are never without ‘friends’ wanting to tag along for the hunt. But as it were, my friends really are just that. True friends that would make sacrifices for you. This time he sacrificed a good portion of his monthly income so that we could all eat this weekend. Of course, we could simply eat what we shoot but I made a promise that I would start that diet next week, so the security of knowing we would have food was a welcome treat. When Mike brings the food it is usually enough for an army and packed with home made things like extra large pans of enchiladas, made my his wife of course. But we would not have enchiladas this trip. More on that later…

And as is usual I left the homestead not having everything I needed. Speaking of ‘homestead’, I could write volumes, but that is well beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that these days I stay confused about just where the homestead actually is. Anyway, I always forget something and this year was no different. Normally I do not use any of these fancy calls or rattle bags, or what have you. Of course I do use a grunt call that aids in stopping a wary buck in his tracks giving a hunter an opportunity to take his time while leveling his gun for a steady aim. But this year I thought I would give those artificial calls a try. Although I had a puny set of horns I cut off a little 6 point a few years back I decided to purchase a set of rattle horns from an online distributor. The price was right, and if it called up even one unsuspecting buck from out of the woods I would consider it a worthwhile investment. At the same time, in order to meet the minimum purchase on the site I purchased a doe bleat call. You know what that is…it’s a little box about the size of a ring box that when turned over it makes a sound like a doe bleat. Good for other things too. Like frightening the UPS driver that delivers to me. I’m sure he believed without a doubt his truck was haunted. Getting on with it, I left that box of rattle horns and that doe bleat back in Dayton. There must have been more that I forgot. Two items just does not seem enough. More on those rattle horns later…

I was sure I got an early start this year. After all, my sister surprised me with arriving early to take over my parent sitting duties and I was able to leave much earlier than expected. Still, it was after dark before I arrived at ‘The Bodine.’ And for those of you not all that familiar with my family history, ‘The Bodine’ gets it’s name from the original land owner, J. Bodine, of Abstract 1283 of the survey of Texas land completed by the G&BN Company in Leon County, Texas, and where my family put down its Texas roots. Somehow the name has stuck and the entire family knows the property simply as The Bodine. And I only own a small portion of it, having purchased it from my uncle on my fathers side some years ago. The trip up was quite boring as is the norm, with the highway congested with hunters on their way to their own deer leases. En route I spotted about ten or twelve deer within rock chucking distance of the road. As it turned out it would be the most deer I would see on the entire trip. More on that later…

Having arrived I proceeded to get the utilities on and the cabin somewhat cleared out so we would have room to move around. I seem to store things inside in between trips so that the locals don’t relieve me of any extra things left outside. As it was rather dark, the first of the utilities was the outside lighting. I have one of those lights that when you turn it on it takes a half hour to warm up before it is bright enough to put out more light than a key chain flashlight. While it was warming up I proceeded to unload my personal things from the back of the pickup. You know, the usual things. Ice chest, suitcase, boots, gun.. where’s my gun? My gun was here. I know I put it in the truck before leaving. Let’s see. I stopped to get gas. That was the only stop. I used a credit card at the pump to pay so I never left the side of the truck while filling up. But the gun just was not where I put it! So, here I am thinking, could someone have lifted it out of my truck while my back was turned at the Valero? At a long red light? It was a nice Remington 700 synthetic with a Nikon 3x9 50mm scope on it. And in a hard case too! I really liked that gun and was really ticked off about losing it and could only hope that I just somehow forgot to put it in the truck and it was resting comfortably back in Dayton. After that I had to rest a minute and allow the nerves to calm a bit, so I went in and ran the water some. If you have ever done any hunting at all you are very aware of the requirement to get the water running through the pipes before you expect to use it. Not only to get the stale water out but in my case to simply make sure all the air is out of the pipes before I turn the electricity on to the hot water heater. There wouldn’t be much else that I would hate to have to do than to have to change out the heating element on that hot water heater. It's situated up above the bathroom and has quite a bit of tools and left over materials from the cabin construction all around it. It would be a major event just to gain access to the thing. Well now that the water has run sufficiently smelling up the cabin with putrid water and the electricity to the heater is on I decide to vacate the building and resume unloading my truck. Now that the area light has warmed up it is finally bright enough outside to see around and finish unloading and getting stuff inside. Satellite box, couple of gallons of extra drinking water (remember the pipes?), heaters for the deer stands, gun, extra batteries and flashlights. Wait a minute. Gun? That wasn’t there a while ago. Where did that come from? As it turned out the gun, in its hard case had migrated from near the tailgate to come to a final resting place up under the gull wing tool box on my truck. I’ll never know how it was able to navigate the rest of the gear in the bed of my truck, but it did. I’m just glad I’m going crazy and some thief is not a couple of hundred richer as a result of some unsuspecting pawn broker. At least now I will be competently armed in the morning. No way I am going to miss with my trusty 7mm. More on that later…

Mike and his son were going to be running late due to an evening baseball game and I didn’t expect them to drive up until morning. And he was right on about the time. About 4:30 am I see the lights of his truck coming up the road. He didn’t bring his Gator this trip so we would double up and all ride in the Mule, which I hadn’t even bothered to unload the previous night. His first order of business was breakfast. At least he has his priorities right. For some reason deer hunters must have breakfast. Ignore the fact that we have a total of five occasions throughout the year we even have breakfast (and those seem to be for the spouses benefit, not ours,) when on the deer lease it is just a requirement that you eat breakfast. It must be something along the lines of never go grocery shopping when you are hungry or something. You just don’t go deer hunting unless you have had a good breakfast. Often though, a good breakfast is defined as a tortilla with a link of venison sausage topped with spicy mustard. I guess men and women just have differing ideas about what constitutes a ‘good’ breakfast. Today, however, it was bacon and eggs with biscuits. And the requisite coffee, naturally. I don’t do milk, and Mike’s son does not do coffee, so he was content with a Dr. Pepper for breakfast. Or was it a Diet Coke? It doesn’t matter, really, it only serves to remind me of one more thing I forgot this trip. More on that later…

After breakfast we had plenty of time to check on the weather, temperature, and to choose which deer stand we would each occupy this morning. Now, you have to understand something about deer hunters. They would rather have a root canal than to use a different deer stand than the one they shot that trophy buck out of last year. So, it was a short discussion. Transportation was another matter completely. While Mike and his son (Ok, yeah, he has a name) Jordan was cleaning up the breakfast dishes I went out to unload the Mule and pack it for the short trip into the woods. Now, my cabin sits atop a hill. Not much of one mind you, but a hill nonetheless. It is probably a quarter of a mile to the road and no more than a fifteen foot rise in elevation, but it is gradual all the way from the road up to my cabin. And when I parked the truck was situated facing uphill with the trailer behind. You can probably see where this is going already. Unloading the Mule I simply let off of the winch a little allowing the Mule to be move aft just enough to remove the rear restraints. Then I set the parking brake and let off the winch a little more in order to unhook it from the forward tether. Are you with me yet? Then I simply let off of the parking brake and give it a shove and let it gently roll off of the trailer. The slight tilt of the trailer hitch on the bumper gives it just enough of a slope for me to be able to get it rolling by hand. And roll it did. I never knew just how much area that slow-to-warm-up light illuminated, until now. I can tell you without a doubt it does not reach beyond the distance traveled by a rouge Mule in November. I hear the door to the cabin open and Mike asks if I am ready to go. "In just a minute," I say. "I’ll be right back…"

The short trip to the first stand was uneventful. Well, as much as can be with two big adults and a twelve year old on a two seat Mule. Fortunately I would be the first off and Mike and Jordan would continue on to a stand about three quarters of a mile distant. I can’t speak much to the events that occurred with them. Suffice it to say that Jordan was not happy that he was not able to take a shot at that doe. After all, it was just last week that he could shoot at the does. What difference does one week make? So they pass on the does and have to watch as several groups of hogs devour all the corn distributed for the deer. I mean, they were not hog hunting, right? Over in my area I hear a few gunshots just barely after day break. I don’t mean one over there; another there; and finally one over there. I mean three very closely spaced shots where the marksman (sic) was either operating that bolt at the speed of a scalded jackrabbit or using an AR-15. Just how many shots does it take to kill a deer? Was it running? Who in their right mind shoots a deer on the run? Never mind. I forget this is Leon County. It must have ran in front of three other hunters with ARs because those rapid shots in succession seemed to happen several times. Oh well. Much stranger things happen here. I decide it is time to try out my rattle horns in hopes of drawing out one of those running bucks. Yeah, I did forget the new ones obviously made out of some polymer or something, but I still had the authentic short horns of that small 6-point from a few years back. Better than nothing I thought, and began what I assumed would be the rhythmic sound of buck fighting despite never having heard it in person. They were small and quite difficult to get the small horns to click together effectively. After about an hour of not seeing anything I decided that the sound I was making must not be right so I gave it a rest. Figured it was time for a nap anyway. Well about a half hour into my nap I see a huge shadowy figure moving about in the trees beyond my feeder. Soon, a rather large black boar hog can be seen moving about as if to decide if it was safe to come out into the open. It took quite a while before he consumed the corn on the ground that had found its way into the edge of the woods and was forced to either give up or come out in search of more of that golden candy. But he would be safe. Not because I was deer hunting but because old boar hogs are just not fit to eat. He would stay there for the better part of an hour eating away like a pig. I finally decided to find out how the hog would react to my technique of the rattle horns. Not more than a millisecond after that first click of the horns that hog left a dust cloud that obscured my view of the feeder. Almost at the same time I finally get to see what I came here to see. From my right, coming up a road, well, trail, was a lone doe making her way towards the feeder. Apparently the hog had left a generous amount of corn on the ground because I watched that doe feed for more than an hour. Soon mother nature took charge and I have to disturb that doe with my movements. To take care of business I would have to stand up, open the door of the stand, step outside, then relieve myself off the steps of the stand about seven feet to the ground. There would be no way I would be able to keep from disturbing that doe while she snacked under the feeder, but I was willing to give it a try. Choosing my times carefully I was able to stand up and open the door to the feeder, which by the way, provided a nice wall between myself and the doe, and step out onto the top stair without being seen. I removed my gloves which generally gets in the way of doing what I was preparing to do. It was at this time that I noticed the damage that those rattle horns had been doing. Being a rather small set of horns they were generally clumsy to operate and I often found myself rattling my fingers into the horns rather then rattling the horns together. The cold weather basically prevented me from feeling the horns as they clanged against my cold fingers leaving a plethora of bruises on and about both hands. But I couldn’t be concerned with that now. My main objective was to take care of the business at hand, so to speak. Occasionally I would peek back to that doe, surprised to see that she was not paying me any attention at all. Sparing you any further details I completed my assignment and began the arduous task of returning to my seat undetected. I leaned over ever so slowly to have a peek one last time through the space between the door and the stand. Although I was amazed that she was still there, she was looking in my direction. Or staring in my direction like she had just seen the first human in her life. It’s not like I was walking around or anything. I was well hidden behind the door and only my boots could be seen. Knowing that I could not move my feet without taking the chance of her running off I remained still peeking only occasionally to see if she had given up on me and resumed her feeding. It took several minutes before she decided that I was of no threat to her and continued feeding. I then eased around and started a graceful dance to return to my seat within the confines of the stand. I was just about there and was reaching for the door to again secure it closed when I saw him. Off to the left, where I had least expected to see anything, there was a fine 8-point buck watching me as I moved about trying to get back into my stand unnoticed. Of course I froze thinking this would fool this buck into, I don’t know what. Thinking I was a limb or something? Right… So I said to myself, “Hello Mr. Buck. How about you stay right there while I get my gun? Are you ready? “ In just a minute," the buck says. "I’ll be right back…"

Although the cloud of dust left by that buck was a might smaller than the one left by the hog, it hurt worse. At least I learned not one, but two things this hunting session. Rattle horns make for an excellent hog repellent, and Neil Shulman just made up that scene in the movie.

Copyright, 2010. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced without advanced written authorization from both the author and Google.

2010 Youth Hunting Season is in the Books!

2010-11-14T19:40:00.001-06:00

October, 2010

As is in most states, here in Texas there is a Youth only season where those under 16 get to have a weekend of deer hunting without the interference of boozed up adults. And every year I take a small group of hunters and dads up to my place for that weekend. Well, that was this past weekend.

But, this youth season also co-exists with Archery season, which I have been participating in for a couple of years now.

This year we took a doe and two hogs. Everyone was happy and everyone got to experience the thrill of the outdoors. Everyone was happy that is, except me...

Since my son is well into his twenties I was without offspring for this years hunt, again, simply hosting the group on my property and in my cabin. As it is, I am able to do a little archery hunting while the kids are hunting. And as does every hunter with 'misses' to his credit, I have a short story (excuse) to tell.

The morning was a crisp 38 degrees but the wind was thankfully not blowing hard. Wouldn't matter anyway because my archery stand is way down deep in the thicket where even the sun has to compete for admittance. I have an area about the size of a middle class suburban home carved out of the thicket about a half mile from the nearest of the kids. After I drop off the last father/son pair it takes me just a few minutes to get to my stand, but I was only there minutes before I could see the sun trying to shave off the tops of the trees.

All settled in I decided to take a little snooze, as I usually do. I could see the corn feeder had distributed it's morning portion of feed and that the hogs had already had their share. I figured any deer that happened by would awaken me with their chomping on the corn the hogs had left for them. And, I got a few more minutes than I usually do as a young yearling spike buck (a male with one single horn on each side, for those that do not know the lingo) sauntered out of the woods on the far side of the feeder. Being inexperienced in the ways of the world it did not notice me but a mere 30 feet from him as he began to delicately pick up the corn and chomp away.

As we normally do, we try to communicate with each other using text messaging and picture message to relay what each of the groups are seeing in the way of wildlife. I had already received one such report of a group of hogs feeding at a stand near a spring about a mile distance. So, I obliged by sending my report in the way of a picture message. I snapped a few with my cell camera and promptly decided on which to send based on the picture clarity. So, I dialed the number, still being as quite as possible so that I do not interrupt the buck feeding just below.

Pressing the send button I watch as the cell phone connects and attempts to send the picture. No luck. Timed out, and the cell phone asks, "Do you want to try again?" Well, yeah... So it goes through the connect sequence again and once again it times out without being sent. Ok, I check on the yearling buck still feeding below and not paying me any mind, and I decided to try one more time, but this time I raise my arm high in the air in the hopes that it aids in the cell phone service. As I watch hopeful that the picture will finally send I hear a commotion back over my shoulder where the young buck was last feeding. To my surprise out charges a very nice 8 point buck with it's ears laid back and it horns outstretched and making straight for the yearling buck. Of course the yearling flees instantly leaving the 8 point buck standing proudly in the middle of my clearing beaming as though he had won a major victory. (In reality he had, because instead of me being alert and at the ready, I am sitting with my arm outstretched towards the sky as though asking the Lord why I have my hand above my head while this 8 point buck is surveying his new found territory.) Well I can't move because the king of the clearing was looking around alertly to take in his new territory making sure everything was to his satisfaction. It sure was to him but I had a real problem with it.

It seemed like at least half an eternity before that buck finally decided to claim his newly acquired food which lay in wait all around him. He began picking up the kernels of corn seemingly one at a time and on each he would raise his head and look around as he chomped his candy kernels. At some point in all this I managed to get my arm lowered into what became a baby cradle position. I call it that because my arm had been up there now sufficiently long enough that not only had it progressed to a state where I no longer felt anything past my shoulder, the color had long left the fingers and was fast approaching the elbow, and my arm ended up being the 'baby' that was being cradled.

With that arm being all but useless the buck was free to roam about at his leisure feeding on the corn. Fortunately for me he had not spotted me. I don't know how as I am sure I made several grunts and groans during my ordeal.

Finally I managed to work myself into a position whereby I could raise my bow and prepare to draw back and take aim. At this point I was thinking how nice it would be if I had only listened to that salesman that claimed that a 70 pound draw bow would be more than sufficient and 75 just was not really necessary. Somehow at the time I just knew that I wanted that extra 5 pounds, but now in retrospect, I'm thinking 65 pounds would have been far better. No good. Just couldn't pull it. "Do you want to try again?" Well, yeah!

After 20 minutes or so I finally managed to draw the bow without my soon to be main course hearing me. But as it were, either the bum arm or the buck fever took over and I failed to do my part in the cycle of life. Oh well, there's always next year.

This was the last weekend of bow season and quite likely the last chance I will get to hunt at all this year. In January however, there is another week long youth hunting season. I am already making plans for that week. I just hope they pan out....

Copyright, 2010. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced without advanced written authorization from both the author and Google.

Snippets of a Short Vacation

2010-10-31T20:46:00.000-05:00

February, 2009

Well I started out on a short vacation today so my time may be slightly limited for the next couple of days. I’ll try and provide updates off and on where possible, given the limited internet connectivity.

It started out simple enough. Up rather early and start packing. I never do anything in advance. I feel that if you pack in advance and your plans change then all you did was cause yourself more work. Unpacking. Therefore, my life goal is to never do anything in advance and you will never cause yourself extra work.

So I get on the road about 11 am and within the hour I am rewarded by my first pleasantry. I come across an ice cream factory. So I said, OK, I’m a little hungry. Let’s stop in for a snack. Well this ice cream company is not just any other ice cream company. It’s Blue Bell. Their motto is “We eat all we can, then sell the rest.” Well they must been close to shift change and expecting a large work crowd because they only let me have a small taste of a couple of those many flavors. Oh well, on with the trip…

I remember driving down the road deep in thought and coming to this bridge over a river. I peeked down into the river like most do when crossing a bridge, and thinking that the river sure is low. But, we have been in a bit of a drought. But not less than a mile later there is another bridge, another river. I thought, that is some bend in the river. But as I drew near I could see a different name on sign for the river. And crossing this bridge I noticed that the river was flowing full and with vigor. I wonder why God would send so much water down this river while starving the one just a mile back. But I suppose that it works the same in life too. I wonder if there was a way to cut a canal from one to the other to help balance things out. No, better mind my own business. Besides, I didn’t want to be gone later than the weekend, and it sounded like extra work.

A couple of hours later while almost dreaming as I was driving, I realize there was a sign pointing in the direction of a small town that I remember from somewhere. A town that a certain someone was bragging about being the nicest place in the world to live. So I thought, side trip. Ok, there is no real purpose for this trip anyway. I turned toward…. More tomorrow.

It was maybe a half hour later, no matter the exact time as I seldom pay attention to the minor details, when I came across a sign pointing towards what seemed to be a gravel road which simply stated “The Inn above Onion Creek.” I remember thinking, I’m thirsty, I like onions…Martini. I seemed to forget about my side destination and started wondering if the gravel hitting the underside of my truck would loosen the caked on mud so it would be easier to wash later this week. Well as it turned out, no liquor is served at The Inn Above Onion Creek and I didn’t see anything that resembled onions anywhere near the water. I don’t know how they can call it onion creek if there ain’t no onions.

For whatever reason when I left I turned the wrong way on the highway (I use that term lightly) and spent the better part of the next hour exploring roadside icehouses in an attempt to determine just where I was. As it happened, I was traveling along some road numbered 3237 or something, which came to an abrupt halt, and suddenly I found myself on 12. Why couldn’t they have numbered them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc instead of jumping around so much. Just seems like it would have been easier to find your way around if you were looking for a road numbered 3726 and when you saw 3750 then 3751 you knew you were going the wrong way. But no, some fool just gave out numbers however he wanted to. I think it was an act of revenge or something.

I soon found myself in an area call The Devils Backbone. I wondered why for only a few moments. The road seemed to go up, then down, then up, then down, although it seemed to be doing a bit more up than down. This particular road did a lot of winding around and around too. It wasn’t long before I found myself at the top of a rather large hill, and the road ended at this little cottage at the apex. As I turned around and approached the road to begin my descent I found that I could barely see over the dash to the roadway ahead. Inching slowly the truck finally tipped over to a degree that reminded me of something a little more than the bunny run at Lake Tahoe. Downhill, I thought. Okay…

Upon reaching the bottom I discovered that the road now seemed level, but often had a major dip to upset the fore and aft balance of the vehicle. At each of these dips I noticed a white post on one side with what appeared to be markings each foot or so. As curiosity got the best of me I stopped my truck right there in the middle of the dip to scope out that post (I felt safe enough as I hadn’t passed another vehicle for some time now.) Examining the post I was now certain that the markings were indeed at one foot intervals, except that the numbers started at the bottom instead of the top. At the top were the simple words Flood Gauge. I remember thinking, those words should be larger. I’ll add more later. I have to move my truck.

I spent the night on one of the highest peaks around so as to not be the butt end of flood gauge jokes from my friends. Never mind the fact that I still didn’t know exactly where I was, and reasonable sleeping accommodations were not locally available. The seat of the truck was fairly comfortable going to sleep but I think the steering wheel was up against a bad spot all night because I woke up with a crick in my neck. I went to relieve myself in the edge of the woods. I just couldn’t wait any longer. I was having to go a lot more lately. This recycling thing just isn’t all that profitable. Do you know how many beer cans there are to a pound? Anyway, as I was shaking the dew off the lily I began hearing some strange rustling sounds in the nearby scrub bushes so I beat it back to my truck. Just about the time I got the truck started I see maybe 30 or so small dogs coming out of the woods at me.. They all must have been from the same family because all them dogs looked exactly alike. Same light brown color, same bushy tail, long noses. I thought that maybe I didn’t want to be here. It took me some 10 minutes to outrun those critters. As I rounded the corner onto the next highway I see the sign in my rearview mirror pointing into that road. Purgatory Road. Now things are beginning to make sense and that $267 a night at that onion place doesn’t seem so bad.

As I remember thinking that I was headed for something before all this I see yet another feature that makes me forget about my side destination. Another bridge, Rock Creek. I needed to wash my face anyway, and this ought to be interesting enough. Little things like rocks seem to be more and more interesting to me in my old age. Anyway, I steered my truck onto the shoulder and down the embankment toward the water’s edge. Nearing the creek I realized how this one got its name. It literally was a creek of rocks. No water. Just rocks. Thinking about the previous nights sign in the dip I quickly looked around and decided that maybe I didn’t really want to be here either. What was the name of that town I was headed for?

Back on the road I see a rabbit run across the road. Breakfast. I was getting a little hungry so I started looking for someplace to grab a bite. It wasn’t long before I see a sign zip by quickly on the side of the road. Now what did it say. There went another….and another. Good Eats. HBO. Picturesque Views. Rooms. I hate those little signs. Why can’t they put all the information all on one big sign? It must be a budget thing. I really don’t want my eyes off this road so often. I have a hard enough of a time as it is. Finally, a sign big enough to read. “The Inn Above Onion Creek.” Damn.

Given my past experience with this Inn I decided to press on. Hunger is a relative thing anyway. I think of my relatives and their body mass and my hunger seems to vanish, for a while at least. So I head off past the Inn and on towards the unknown. Much to my surprise however, I soon happen upon this little village. I didn’t pass a sign though and have no idea of the name of this settlement. So I decided to locate the center of town in hopes of finding the police department, chamber of commerce, or anything that would have the towns name. Much to my chagrin though I could find none of the above. I did find a fire station which had the city name on it. Turns out I was in the city of Miller-Whitaker. Never hear of a town with two names. Well, there is a first for everything. My hunger returned however when I came across what was likely the city diner. You know the place. Every town has one. That central coffee shop with Sheriff Andy sitting at the counter with a healthy portion of bacon, eggs, and grits. What is a grit anyway? I think I heard that line once in a movie. Can’t remember which. Doesn’t matter though, the diner was still closed as it was only a quarter of nine. I guess the town doesn’t wake up till noon. I ended up finding what Texans call a grocery store and gas station on the edge of town that had a loaf of bread, sausage and a tub of that watered down butter. You know, the ones that are about 85 percent water and the rest vegetable by products? Only after I left the store did I realized I had no way of cooking the sausage. I seen a movie once where a trucker just tossed his meat on the top of the engine for a hundred miles and had a feast when he got to his next rest stop, so I decided to give it a try. Cold buttered bread didn’t really seem so bad for the moment. The bread I picked out was one of those loaves that has raisons and cinnamon mixed in. I needed some variety. As I opened the bread I wondered who decides which direction the little twist ties go when the bread is packaged. Clockwise or counter clockwise? I really wanted to eat at that diner too. It had a hugh piece of cherry pie on display. I pressed on to eat my grub. Instead of risking life and limb for this meal I decided to stop at the next available wide spot in the road. When that came it was in the form of an entrance to a residential area that caught my eye. There was not one tree to be found and the houses were so close to each other it would severely put a damper on my sex life. Not only that, but the houses seemed to have no architecture at all. Every house was identical. Thirty feet across the front. Thirty feet across the sides. And thirty feet tall. They looked like alphabet blocks without the letters. The only thing that distinguished them from alphabet blocks were that they did have pitched roofs. I suppose that is so the builder knew which side was up. As I was leaving I thought I should have remembered to get pictures. You guys might never believe me. Although I didn’t get one of the houses I did manage to get one of the entrance as I was speeding by. I found myself on Center street so I must be heading back into town. Not so bad I thought since I could now see a puff of smoke coming from under my hood every now and then. I realized that I had forgotten all about that sausage. I'll get back to you in a little while. I gotta go back and find that fire station.

On the way back to that fire station I was escorted through town by those men in blue. Wasn’t a bad thing. They invited me over to their place once I was finished at the fire station. They have a nice little place, I just missed it my first time through town. The town police department... They said that I owed the town for the cost of water or something. I don’t know why. They have a pretty big supply and I didn’t use that much. I mean, most of the plastic was burned away and the sausage was about gone by the time I reached the station. I took a picture of the truck they used too. My insurance company suggested I take pictures of everything but I kind of forgot. I got back on the road after a 24 hour stay in town.

As I started out this morning I put a little thought into my directions and put the rising sun to my back. I was a little more cognizant about reading signs and specifically avoided areas with things with the words devil, purgatory, Inn, onion, creek, and the like. Texas is full of wildlife and this trip had already yielded a variety of things to believe and disbelieve at your will. Although I didn’t see any horns on that rabbit the other day I still hoped to see a jackalope somewhere in my travels this week. With only a day longer to go (I would have been on the road sooner but the chief said something about good behavior) I was desperate to see something I hadn’t yet seen in my lifetime. As luck would have it I came across a road sign (I gotta remember to stop reading signs) that offered exotic hunts. Even though I wasn’t up for hunting for things I decided that curiosity had to be quelled, so I pulled in. Upon arriving at this interim destination I saw what appeared to be a small calf licking on a dog. Not the way other dog lick on each other mind you, but close enough to warrant a better look. On second thought I decided to just look around for a barking cow or mooing dog.

I was interrupted by the guide thank goodness, I don’t know what would have transpired otherwise. After explaining my desire to see some strange Texas wildlife I was politely informed that I could only see the game if I was a party to a hunt. So I thought, why not? I have nowhere else to go. So we loaded up and headed out. (Or should that be head ‘em up, move ‘em out!) Within minutes we were deep into the woods surrounding his ranch and I could see native Texas wildlife in its natural habitat. The first thing I saw was a flock (or is it a herd) of wild hogs. There must have been a hundred of them critters, but they were all on the move away from us at the speed that would make Jeff Gordon envious. I mentioned that to the guide and he said he would find something a little more on the lazy side for me to see. It wasn’t long before I was rewarded with something that was less than a blur in the woods. As we approached these animal they seemed to be just cows. However, the horns on these critters seemed a little off. I listened in disbelief as the guide told me that one was a water buffalo, another a regular North American buffalo, and the other a beefalo. Yeah, ok, what the hell is a beefalo I asked. Well, you remember that dog and calf back there at the house? There ya go he said. A cow and a buffalo had decided to breach the boundaries of species solely on the basis that both were lonely or something. Okay, we can go I said. Well, this is where I was informed that my end of the agreement has not yet been fulfilled. The hunting part he said. Well I thought hunting ended with finding, not with killing, but he disagreed. And besides, he had me out in the woods somewhere that I know not where, and I remember the dog and the calf and the cow and the buffalo and didn’t want no part of guide and hunter so I did my part. I now have 600 pounds of beefalo in the back of my truck accompaning those 200 pounds of beer cans. Of course I also found out about what exotic game hunts cost in Texas. My next stop is going to be something European. Like an internet cafe'. Not because I want to abandon my Texas trip mind you, but because I need to transfer some money.

Well it seemed like an hour passed before I finally found a bank to transfer the funds necessary. I may have to cut my vacation a little short. Once the transaction was complete I decided to recommence my trip in an entirely different direction, so I headed off towards the south. I soon came across a new sign (you forgot to warn me about reading signs, didn’t you,) Igloo it said. Now what do you think Texans would need an Igloo factory for? That’s why I had to stop in and see for myself. I hadn’t really noticed any Texans in this area living in igloos, but I wasn’t really looking either. You would think something like that would just catch your eye. Once inside I realized the err of my ways. This factory was not manufacturing igloos, it was packaging ice in ice chests to send up north. I guess that whole global warming thing really has some merit.

Having my newfound information I went to call a friend and discovered that my cell phone was not working as expected. I had seen a Verizon place a couple of miles back so I swung the truck around and headed back to Verizon to check my phone. When I arrived I noticed that this wasn’t your typical Verizon store. It had a nine foot high chain link fence around it with security cameras and one of those boxes like in that clowns mouth at the fast food drive in. When the person answered I explained my problem as best I could but the person answered in the same dialect as the clown. I simply didn’t understand it at all. Excuse me, I said, and I explained again. Once again I asked for entrance to get my phone worked on. No, was about all I could make out, but I was not sure if no problem followed or go away was what followed. Anyway, I asked again a little louder and asked if someone would come out and let me in. This time I got results. Finally. NO! CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? Maybe I’ll stop by on the way home. Someone else may be at the reception desk tomorrow.

Back on the road I am almost asleep because I have been ignoring signs as much as I can. No distractions generally mean boring which equates to sleepy. In any event my boredom was suddenly interrupted by the sound of gravel again. This time though it was not hitting the underside of my truck, but the side. I screeched to an abrupt halt. Coming out of my stupor I realize that the road I am on is literally carved out of a mountainside and I’d swear that the wall of rock actually hung over the road some. Fully awake now I remember thinking, I really don’t want to be here. My suspicions were confirmed just minutes later when the road sign ahead read Watch out for falling rocks. I guess I’ll have to go back to reading signs again.

Still heading south with the sun nearing the horizon I feel like I should start looking for some place to crash for the night. South Texas has become quite flat now and long stretches of road with little to see. As the sun sets for good I’m in the far left lane doing just a little over the speed limit when I see a flash of white zoom past the window. Whitetail deer. Gosh I hope they all stay on the median and don’t jump out in front of me. I really don't need yet another story to tell my insurance company. As I was recovering from the slight fright of deer so close to my door doing 75 miles an hour I get a quick glimpse of yet another road sign. Next service station 65 miles. You gotta be kidding me. Sixty five miles? I look down at the gas gauge, then looked for a suitable place to turn around. This is one sign I think I’ll believe.

The remainder of the trip to south Texas was uneventful. You probably didn't expect that. Neither did I. I found a simple place at the tip of Texas in the heart of Brownsville to bunk for the night. Nothing could go wrong I thought, and settled in for a long nights sleep not knowing at the time that the place I was staying was an old battlefield where hundreds died ~~stealing~~ defending this part of Texas from the Mexicans. I sure hope all those souls are resting peacefully somewhere else.

I was in a real sound sleep this morning when all of a sudden I was awakened by gunfire. I rolled out the side of the bed closest to the wall (I really don’t know how I knew which side was closest to the wall, instincts maybe) and fell to the floor to protect myself from what was surely a home invasion. Realizing it was just the TV coming on automatically I struggled to get up without further harming myself or my surroundings. I felt of my head which had apparently struck the nightstand on the way down and could already feel a quarter sized bump arising from the area just over my temple. Just who sets the television as an alarm anyway? And on the military channel at that?

Well I was up already so I decided to have a look around. I had checked in late last night, maybe around midnight and didn’t really get a look at my accommodations. This facility (I’ll not call it an Inn for obvious reasons) was not your typical hotel or bed and breakfast. It was some converted apartment project. One could live in this place full time. It was a full one bedroom unit with king sized bed, two closets in the bedroom, full bath, kitchen, living room (with a huge big screen TV which, by the way, was the perpetrator of my morning wake up call) and dining room. It did have the typical hotel information book complete with things to do in the area, map of the property, and phone numbers to call in an emergency. I think I’ll leave the book open to that page while I am here.

It also had a complete historical account of the area. As it turns out this is a famous fort (originally named Fort Texas) that was used during the Mexican-American war. Zachary Taylor renamed the fort after Major Jacob Brown who was killed during battle. Five years later a settlement nearby was formed that was called Brownsville. Go figure. Anyway, the area where I am staying is actually part of the fort that fell during the battle. Following the battle they constructed a morgue right here on the spot and buried the dead all around just so they wouldn’t have to move them so far. Hmmm, maybe I don’t want to be here.

I did think to stop and pick up some more sausage, Eggo’s and syrup last night so I thought I just light some of the incense provided and have some breakfast. Sausage cooked on an actual stove seemed quite appealing to me right now. The unit had a gas stove, which I am really not accustomed to using, but I could not find any matches at all. Well, I guess I’ll have to venture out in the world after all. Having retrieved some matches from the local convenience store I returned and lit the stove, added my links to the pan waiting for that savory aroma of sizzling sausage. The room had this aroma, but somehow it didn’t resemble the sweet aroma of frying pork. I actually coughed a little. Looking up I could see a slight layer of smoke near the ceiling. *cough cough* I didn’t think I had the stove on that high, and the sausage was not even nearing brown. Then I saw it. The incense in the corner was putting out much more smoke than I thought it should, and it didn’t have the aroma that I thought it should. Note to self: Incense does not come in green coils with a wire stand.

I put on a pot of water to boil so that I could have some hot tea with breakfast, but the stove started making this strange ticking sound. Although I didn’t suspect I was a target of some breakfast bomber I was a little concerned and called the emergency number in the open book on the coffee table. Maintenance came right down and explained the workings of new gas stoves and electronic igniters. Talk about feeling stupid…

After breakfast, which tasted strangely of insect repellent, I decided to go out and buy some clothes. I usually make at least one trip into old Mexico and pick up various items. This trip it was jeans, a new leather belt, a few gift items to bring home, and some new Air Jordan boxer briefs. You know those shorts that Cuba Gooding Jr. yells out across the room “I’m wearing your underwear” and the little old lady in the hover around spins around with this odd look on her face? That’s them…

On the way back I find out that you now have to have a passport or birth certificate in your possession to get back into the US. It would have been nice to have seen a sign before I crossed the bridge into Mexico. After I left the consulate’s office I stopped by the pharmacy. Do you realize the things you can get at a pharmacy in Mexico without a prescription? And do you know how hard it is to find an ATM in Mexico? Anyway I started walking back across the bridge, not many people drive in Mexico, and learned that you don’t want to pet the dogs at the border. Well, I wanted to but the dog wasn’t too enthused.

My luck just hasn’t been on my side this trip. I decided to spend the rest of the day in my room and tried on my new wears. The jeans were a little loose for now but I expect them to shrink up a little. For $9.00 I can deal with a little shrinkage. The belt was okay, of course, but I may have to take the Jordans back and exchange them. Michael Jordan must have a bad case of “noassatall” because they just don’t have enough room in the posterior for me. I’ll have to try and find some O’Neals or something designed after someone bigger.

I’m going home tomorrow. Straight home. No signs. No rest stops. No Inns. I’m going to try and avoid anything that even remotely seems like it will ruin my day. Going to try and get an early start too. Nine or ten perhaps.

Well I made it back home, none too worse for the wear. It was a six and a half hour drive from Brownsville to home. Along the way I saw rain, shine, wet roads, dry roads, wet roads with accidents, dry roads with accidents, twelve cops, eight ambulances, fourteen car loads of winter Texans, twenty two car loads of teenagers, two pest control trucks, one cattle truck, one horse trailer, three INS Agents, one case of road rage, and one good samaritan helping someone change a tire.

I didn’t go back through Kyle on the way back. I remember what the Sheriff said about hell freezing over so I made a detour around Kyle. I really didn’t want to be there anyway.

The roads had these little rumble strips, you know, those pesky little carvings in the side of the road that wakes you up if you wander outside your lane, and some roads actually had them in the middle of the road. What a novel ideal. Another had the strips in patterns that sounded like Mary Had a Little Lamb when you ran over them. I think the man, excuse me; woman, that invented those things ought to receive the presidential medal for humanitarianism or something.

Although I tried my best to not look at signs on the way home I just couldn’t help but noticing the one that identified Screaming Woman Creek. Given the name and my past luck with places I decided to pass on this one rather than stopping to see what all the screaming was about.

I went through Refugio on the way back. Know what Refugio is famous for? Nolan Ryan was born there. How do you pronounce Refugio anyway? I’ve seen other towns that I had reservations about the pronunciation. Iola. Not like it looks. Ola is how the natives there say it. Not that the town is full of native Indians or anything…I just meant the people that live there. Yturria, now there’s another.

About Sarita I past through a check point. Yeah, a real federale, show your passport checkpoint. Are you a US citizen? Where ya going? Where ya been? Let my dog sniff your vehicle. Turn your cell phone off. Dim your lights. Don’t pass go, don’t collect two hundred dollars…. I mean, they must have a real job to do there I’m just not real sure what it is. I did see them searching some little car from Iowa or somewhere with a couple of old folks waiting. I guess they thought the old people were smuggling Geritol or something.

Well, I’m back, and glad to be back. This trip, despite my occasional excitement, has not completely broken me of taking vacations. But, I think I’ll start planning vacations from now on. Maybe even use a travel agent.

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