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My mother sometimes got onto me for daydreaming so much. I had a teacher or two over at Stonewall that agreed with her too. She always admonished me to quit my daydreaming. As though one could. Like most people I think I was meant to travel. Go places. Someplace where they speak different languages. Dress funny. Eat weird foods. Places so far away you might need to get on an airplane or a ship to get there. But to get on an airplane means going through x-rays, being patted down. Getting a passport. Well sure. Pat and I, being the forever optimists, renewed our passports some time back. I guess we did want to be squeezed into an uncomfortable seat and be hurtled at speeds at nearly the speed of sound to one of these strange places.
Read moreSometimes this old Shakespearean quote applies to us. It sure did to people in Allen in 1938—a tough year for people here in Mustang land. I know it was for the Bullard’s. The business dad worked at in Allen was shuttered and gone.
Read moreTexas has a lot going for it. One of the things -- there is a lot of wealth and pride residing south of the Red River and the growth of North Texas continues unchecked.
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Covid perils are still holding forth. But just not so bad now as perhaps a week or two ago. And will it reload and again assert itself as the big news story of our time and be the killer it has been. I hope not. This Covid has terrorized the world long enough. Well, long enough for me. One doctor amazed at the denial among the anti-vaxxers reports that many of these deniers who have already been smacked down by this dreaded virus insist to the death (theirs) that they don’t have Covid. Such is the strength of the organizers of resistance to this happening. It’s very sad. But the denial is as real as the virus itself.
Read moreOne of the results of this Covid was Pat and I have watched a lot more movies here at home than normal. One would think when you glance background that I would have seen all the movies that I should. My tenure at Stonewall Schools (1944-1952) and before that my fellowships at Centrahoma should have been enough. But I must reluctantly admit most of what I know today I learned in the Main Theatre at Stonewall. Covid and the coldest winter ever gave me some chance to work on my “Master’s Degree” in movie watching.
Read moreMany of us who still go to Sunday School are studying a part of the Old Testament called Ecclesiastes. Not only can we not spell it, we in the “Cemetery” Class have a hard time trying to comprehend the teachings of the old teacher (Solomon). But we try. This morning I got out of bed and walked toward my kitchen where my wife was fixing our breakfast. She had our TV tuned to channel 25 and it was saying something about the “heartbreak of erectile disfunction.” That was the same commercial that had played the morning before. Yep. Just like in Ecclesiastes, it too had already been. And my breakfast was on the stove.
Read moreThe crew of the USS Johnnie Hutchins, DE- 360 had been enjoying various ports of call such as in Havana Cuba and Caracas where it was very nice. Exotic almost. But we eventu-ally returned to our home port of Boston. Then one fine day at sea something happened. A sailor tending to the line drying out on the deck allowed it to slip over the side. Caught in the swift water the large “rope” was dragged into the screw. Real bad thing. The screws caught it and our Destroyer came to a shuddering halt. The large drive shafts were bent, and we were adrift at sea.
Read moreHaving a working bicycle in 1945 was very important to me and lots of my 10-year-old friends in Stonewall. But our WWII enemies, the Japs and the Germans had seen to it that bicycles, cars and such were fairly unavailable in the USA. Especially Stonewall. We had plenty of old bikes, but it was hard to find one that worked. Bicycle chains were scarce so if you couldn’t fix yours, you were out of luck. My brother and me spent many an hour figuring out how to fix those things and eventually got good at it. Flat tires? We were masters.
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