prairie point

about thirty year's ago

It was down in Tulsa, about thirty years ago,

At Cain's Academy, down in old Oklahom'

The dust was blowin' but the music was right,

And W. Lee O'Daniel played all night

Actually it was about 30 years ago that I first heard James Talley sing those lines. In those days most of my record collection was jazz or rock. Despite living in Texas I had little appreciation for country music. But Talley's music touched something in me.

The album was a gift that got lost somewhere over the years, but the music kept running through my head. I tried to find a replacement but it was always out of print. Then I happened on his website where all his albums were available. Now I've got a brand new copy and in addition an album of James Talley singing the songs of Woody Guthrie.

wait wait don't tell me

Tonight we will be at McFarlin Auditorium to see a taping of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. The tickets were a premium for renewing my membership at the local NPR affliate.

I have been listening to this NPR station for almost 20 years, ever since I moved to Dallas for a job and took an apartment in a new complex. I thought an apartment complex would be a great place to meet people in a strange city but it wasn't. But I guess I wasn't trying too hard anyway. In those days I went to work 6 days a week, sometimes 7. I was one of the first people at the office in the morning and one of the last to leave. I parked my car in the same spot every day. One time a coworker told me that she thought the car was abandoned or something because it was always there in the same place.

There was a cafeteria in the building where I worked and I ate both breakfast and lunch there every day. I always had the same thing for breakfast and after a while the cafeteria workers got to know me and they would have my order waiting for me. Before leaving home I made sure I had exact change to pay the bill. These things were like rituals. For some reason it was important to me to do things the same way all the time. Maybe it was because that way I didn't have to think about it.

I am not as compulsive as I used to be. One thing that has stayed the same - I still wake up listening to NPR. On Sunday mornings that means Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. It's a quiz show, where they call somebody in the radio audience to solve a puzzle.

Well I don't know why just thinking about going to this show got me off on such a tangent. Maybe I was just looking for an opportunity to talk about myself. I think the show will be fun. I'll let you know about it later.

Tales from Elm Flat

Growing up, I would listen as my parents sat around the kitchen table with their coffee and talked about places called Rural Shade and Elm Flat and the people who lived there. These were communities around Kerens Texas where they grew up, and which in their minds they had never really left.

They still had family there and about once a month we would load into the family car and go visit my grandmother with the sunny garden and the quilting frame in the living room, or one of my mother's many sisters and brothers. If we were lucky we would get to spend the night at a cousin's house, most likely sleeping on the floor on a pallet. Only a few times in my childhood did we go on real vacations. These trips to Kerens were about the only traveling I experienced.

Kerens attained a sort of mythological status in my mind, a sort of Eden that my parents had been forced from by the necessity of making a living. Eventually they were able to return there thanks to good health and social security, but by that time most of the people they knew were gone. Whatever gods of history or economics there might be had dried up the town until only a few abandoned buildings remained in the old downtown. Once there had been schools, garages and churches in the surrounding smaller communities. Now there are only a few houses spaced a little closer together than normal along a farm road.

My cousin Ivan was a little older than me and lived there in the years when the people and places in my parent's stories were still alive. He has started writing down some of his own stories in a series called Tales from Elm Flat. It's not quite a blog. I find them pretty entertaining and maybe you will too. The latest story is about the town doctor, who by the way, is the doctor who brought me into the world too.

how this started

I have read a couple of interesting accounts recently by bloggers of how they got started. I'm coming up on my second anniversary of writing in this blog and it occurs to me that I never have recounted my own story.

About two years and a few months ago Tricia and I finished remodelling our kitchen. It was a time-consuming project. We pulled everything down to bare studs and started over, doing most of the work ourselves including electrical, plumbing and drywall. It was finally over in time for the holidays that year and then that winter I went into the hospital for a gall-bladder operation.

My life changed a little. I had lots more time and I wasn't supposed to do anything strenuous. I had always been an Internet fan but I started spending more time than ever surfing and especially reading this new kind of website called blogs. It was the political blogs that I started out with, but soon I was reading all kinds of stuff and I knew that I wanted one myself.

I used Blogger until I was sure I was serious. At first I called the blog Vertigo. I did not know just what I wanted to write about either. I mainly just wanted to write but I was not an expert on anything and wasn't particularly funny or entertaining. I spend a lot of time working in my garden but it never occurred to me that someone would want to read about gardening. I kind of had this idea of writing about all kinds of things using the persona of a country gardener. Eventually I did wind up writing a lot about the garden itself just because that was what interested me.

After a few weeks I changed the name to praire point which is the name of a community that ceased to exist decades ago out where my parents are from. Also I had noticed that most of the sites I liked then used Movable Type. Clearly that was the way to go and I decided to get my own domain and try to install it.

The very first gardening blog I stumbled across was Garden Spot. I once lived in Houston and I think I was just looking for blogs in Houston when I found it. From the list on Erica's site I discovered a handful more, many of which are no longer active.

I don't know what I expected from blogging, but I can say that I did not expect it to be like the way it turned out. For one thing I am surprised by how much I feel like I am writing to a particular audience all the time. Many of the readers have become friends - even if we have never met.

I don't seem to have as much to say as I used to. Nor do I have as much spare time. I have planned for months to redesign the site and to either upgrade to a new release of MT or switch to WordPress. I can't seem to get off my duff to do those things and with spring around the corner I imagine they will be postponed even more. However I am definitely hooked on this.

musical meme

This meme comes from Bookish Gardener. It's fun to trace it back and discover previously unknown blogs (and music).

Random Ten
Gillian Welch, "I Dreamed a Highway"
Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Day Blues"
Grateful Dead, "St Stephen"
Talking Heads, "Take me to the River"
The Supremes, "You Can't Hurry Love"
Duke Ellington, "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue"
James Talley, "W Lee O'Daniel Played All Night"
Mamas and Papas, "This is Dedicated to the One I Love"
Whiskeytown, "A Song for You"
Wilson Picket, "Land of a Thousand Dances"

The number of music files on my computer is:
Zero. I must be the last person in America who still buys pre-recorded CDs.

Last album I purchased was:
The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack

Last song I listened to before this message was:
John Lee Hooker, "Ground Hog Blues" on KERA radio

Five songs that I listen to a lot are:
Gillian Welch, "Beulah Land"
The Byrds, "Hickory Wind"
Patsy Cline, "Back in Baby's Arms"
Bob Dylan, "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry"
Norman Greenbaum, "Spirit in the Sky"

do-nothing weekend

Since last June Tricia and I have left town for at least a day trip and frequently overnight every single weekend. We were overdue for a stay at home. Sometimes doing nothing is the best vacation of all.

The temperatures are down in the lower twenties at night. It's been windy too and even the afternoons have been chilly unless you stay in the sun. Not good to do much of anything ambitious outside.

There are blossoms on the quince and on the rosemary but otherwise my garden is bare. Time to look at catalogs and magazines and make plans for warmer days in the spring. Time to finish reading The Corrections which I started over the holidays. Maybe even time to organize the papers on my desk - nope, not that much time.

goodbye 2004

For our household 2004 has definitely been the year of eldercare. It had been slipping up on us for awhile but the shoe finally fell in June with a call that my Mom had fallen while taking clothes out of the dryer. From there things just seemed to mushroom. We suddenly realized that Mom had full-blown Alzheimers and that none of us were equipped to take care of her. Dad decided there was nothing left for him. Self-sufficient to the end he paid his funeral expenses in advance and picked out his own coffin.

Then just before Christmas Tricia had to face some of the same situations with her own Poppa. Hopefully not as grave. Nevertheless he is going into a rehab facility while he builds up his strength enough to undergo chemo. We went to see the place earlier in the week and it looks disturbingly like a nursing home.

On the plus side Tricia left her day job to try to get her quilting business off the ground. At this point she still spends most of her time on personal projects but that will change. And we realized a long-time dream of buying a little piece of land where we can get away from the city and "do our own thing."

My own day job keeps getting busier and busier while I become more and more conflicted about whether that is a good thing or not.

The flower garden has just been coasting. I have tweaked things here and there, replacing a few items and filling in, especially in the flower bed we built last year on the far side of the driveway. Mostly though the garden has just taken care of itself. The plants keep getting bigger. It is a little wild perhaps at the very back, and sooner or later, I will have to replace that back fence before it falls down. The vegetables were a different matter altogether. For one thing, neither of us seemed to get real interested in them and for another, the weather did not treat us right. First it was too wet and then it was too hot.

I would try to tell you what I expect in 2005, but if this year is any indication, not much of it is in my hands.

white christmas

Like everyone else, I've always dreamed of a white Christmas. Little did I know that I would get my wish like this. We were visiting Tricia's Dad in the Rio Grande Valley, the southernmost tip of Texas, and woke up on Christmas Day to the first snow there since 1895. And the first recorded white Christmas ever! About three inches where we were, but much heavier a little further north.

weekend of gluttony

It seems like all we did this weekend was EAT.

Friday, Mom's nursing home put out a big spread for the residents and guests. Roast beef, turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, plus side dishes and topped off with a huge piece of chocolate cake. They had crammed extra tables into the dining hall for everyone to sit and the staff served as waiters. There were even Christmas carolers. All the residents seemed to be having a great time.

For Mom it was much more successful than Thanksgiving, when we took her home. Then she had little appetite and hardly interacted at all. Friday she was in a good mood and talked to all her guests.

Back home on Saturday Tricia made a cranberry cheesecake to take to a seven-course gourmet dinner. There was enough food there for several meals. Two main entres. After the fifith course I was barely able to stuff any more food down my throat. I was only eating out of a sense of obligation.

If I were still on my Weight-Watchers diet I would used enough points for a week. Surely this must be wrong.

Sunday was a work day at the lakehouse but we interupted things long enough to take guests out to the local cafe for fresh catfish and the best chocolate pie I have ever had in my life.

It's still five more days until Christmas and lots of more food to consume.

lakehouse

Another reason we've been busy lately - we've just bought a vacation and retreat house on Lake Palo Pinto. It's a small house but it has a space that can be converted into a studio for Tricia's quilt-making plus five acres of woods and a barn for me to putter around in. It also has this great view from the deck. We closed on it last week.

out of the blue

Out of the blue recently Tricia got an email from an old friend who had been missing for a couple years. A job-related move had taken K and her husband out of the area and they had quickly fallen off the proverbial cliff.

K is a truly amazing character, part 60's hippy chick, part Jesus-freak. She ran away from home at 16, worked as a topless dancer and somehow earned a PhD. I think she looks like Veronica Lake, in case you happen to know who that is. She is also a great writer and I have tried without success to get her into blogging. She does not really have the discipline to write a journal though. In fact using the word discipline in the same sentence with her name would probably be enough to send her running.

But her main claim to fame as far as I am concerned is that she is reponsible for Tricia and I getting together. K had been telling me about this new church she had become involved in - a "cell church" she called it. Small groups met in each others homes on a weeknight and then on Sunday mornings all the small groups met together in a traditional service. She was enthusiastic about having found the true religion.

Since I approach church as a kind of anthropologist, I felt like I needed to check out this new species that she had discovered. I went to a couple of the cell meetings at her house and then decided to acompany K one Sunday. Like a lot of other churches they had this custom of having everybody greet the neighbors in the seats around them. When it came to that point in the ceremony I turned around and found Tricia sitting directly behind me. She was there with friends too. That was our first meeting.

For a little while Tricia and I both became regulars at the cell meetings. We found we had a lot in common with each other but not so much with the rest of the ones there. The church was kind of the opposite of "inclusive." In fact they were pretty much up-front that their point of view was that "there are a lot of other churches out there and if you are not like us then you should go check out one of the others."

To make a long story short K obviously did not fit in, even though she really wanted to, and eventually the minister came to her and asked her to leave. Lately there has been a controversy in the news about a commerical in which one church trumpeted its own inclusiveness. It's more uncommon than you might think.

I guess I kind of rambled on and got off the subject I started with. Anyway we're glad to be back in contact with a long-lost friend and glad she is in a place that seems really idyllic .

reading about life

Today I was reading a magazine essay when the author of the piece began to relate an incident with his brother that had taken place when he was a boy. All of a sudden I put two and two together. His brother had been a friend of mine in college. All the details fit - the name, the city. I had even spent a night in their house once - perhaps in the very bedroom described in the article.

It made me feel a bit like a voyeur. I haven't heard from my friend in years but when I think of him from now on I will have another perspective.

I have been acquainted with a few other authors but I was never really able to fully identify any characters in their books with people that I knew. Of course I am talking about fiction now whereas the magazine article was an essay.

A couple teachers in college were well-known writers. Larry McMurtry wrote a lot about places that I knew even if I did not recognize the characters. I can remember drinking beer with some friends once on the patio of a Mexican restaurant that had been in a scene from one of his early novels, while we debated how well he had captured the atmosphere of the place.

moody weekend

The weekend was the kind of damp, moody fall days that I love. Cloudy and rainy weather seems to bring out the colors of the fall leaves best. Unlike some people I enjoy a little cold and damp. I like walking outside when it is just cold enough for a sweater or a jacket.

Saturday Tricia and I returned to Reverchon Park. We wanted to collect a few more of the burr oak nuts we had seen there before. We explored more of the park this time and found more of the trees.

The park is in a valley and one hillside has an intricate web of stone paths and stairs built in the 1930's. On our previous visit I had been intimidated by the groups of young men hanging out along the paths. This time it was earlier in the morning and they were not out yet. Tricia did not want to climb the steps because of her bad knee so I left her to saunter down by the creek and set off on my own to see where they led.

There are picnic tables back in the woods too and old stone fireplaces which have been stopped up so that you cannot use them anymore. And lots of stone benches set into the paths.

Coming down from the hillside we followed the creek for awhile. We had this part of the park all to ourselves. We found one of the big burr oaks back there with lots of the nuts and filled up a canvas bag. I have promised to trade some for some other seeds and I will keep some for myself too.

Ever since my father's death I have felt like I have been acting out scenes in a play. It's a familiar play and I know the scenes but I have not played this part before.

It keeps you busy for a few days, making all the arrangements and then gathering with friends and family. Then suddenly all the scenes are played, it is all over and mysteriously someone is missing. Just like you knew it would be.

break

I am going to take a little break from posting in this journal. My father passed away last Friday and I seem to be at a loss for words.

birdhouse quilt

Tricia donated one of her quilts to a silent auction to raise money for the Native Plant Society. You can see more of her work here.

we get some culture

The last two Fridays have seen Tricia and me at SMU watching plays performed by the school's graduate theater students. In the director's notes in last night's program, Leah C. Gardiner, who has directed many professional actors, wrote that the student actors were as good as any she had directed.

For several years we have been going regularly to plays there and we have to agree. Not only is the acting about as good as most of the local theaters around here, but the auditoriums and sets are first-rate. Another thing is that the plays are often classics which we don't often have the chance to see. All this for a price about half that at local professional theaters.

Last night we saw Turcaret, an 18th-century French comedy about greed, credit and a money hungry middle class. Friday before last it was The Children's Hour.

The audience at these plays is an interesting mixture. It's on campus so there are always a good number of students on dates and in little groups. Then there are usually family members of the performers. Lots of elderly people are there in groups, too. But there are not many between those ages.

The Children's Hour was an especial treat for people-watching because it was performed in the round. We were early so we got to watch practically the entire audience cross the stage to their seats. It's a blast to watch the students. I am not often around people of this age group. Despite the differences in clothing and hair styles, it brings back old memories.

checking in

I guess I had better post something - my fellow bloggers are starting to wonder what has become of me.

I have been sick most of the week from allergies. The weather which I was praising just a post or two back has turned extremely hot and humid. The air is so thick that I feel like I am swimming.

On top of that I have had to take some time off from work to go down and help out with Mom and Dad.

birthday party

Yesterday was my Dad's birthday. Tricia and I took a day off and drove down with a birthday dinner. We got Mom out of the nursing home for a few hours and had a little party. Mom's sister showed up and a nephew and several grandchildren too.

It was something of a farewell party too. Mom and Dad will be giving up their independence and going to live with my sister tomorrow. It's been 20 years since they retired and left the big city and bought a little house in the town where they grew up.

Now it is time for another phase of their lives.

my mom

I got some good news about my Mom. Today she moved herself from the bed to the chair without help for the first time since her accident. That's one of the things they told her she had to do before they will let her go home. The doctor still hasn't given his approval to put any weight on her leg though.

My niece Kathy has been visiting her every day and giving her encouragement. Mom and Dad took care of her while my single-mom sister was at work so they have always been close. Luckily Kathy lives close now and has the time to spend with her.

missing blogger

Just a note to let my readers know that I am still alive. We have been inordinately busy lately, and have been neglecting a lot of things, including both gardening and blogging. When we are not at the office we have had to spend a lot of time with Mom. She is out of the hospital now and in a nursing home where she is getting physical therapy. She will need to stay there for a few weeks until she can do some things for herself. She is not liking it at all, unfortunately.

taste test

The Bookish Gardener started this. Then Kathy took it up and challenged others to take the test.

What you do is to pick one of the two alternatives in the list below and then compare your choices. I am posting my results below followed by commentary. My choices are the ones in bold.

For those more oriented toward the arts than gardening check out the original model.

1. Lilies: oriental or asiatic?
2. No-till or till?
3. Bare hands or garden gloves?
4. Garden tchotchkes, no or yes?
5. Clay or sand?
6. Shrub roses or hybrid teas?
7. Hollyhocks: single or double?
8. Foliage: gray or glaucous?
9. Hemerocallis: flava or fulva?
10. Impatiens: double or single?
11. Calendula or tagetes?
12. Arborvitae or juniper?
13. Spaded edge or "edging"?
14. Asters or mums?
15. Reflecting pool or coursing waterfall?
16. Morning glory blue or forget-me-not blue?
17. Lettuce: leaf or cos?
18. Hyacinth bean or red runner bean?
19. Orange or pink?
20. Garden bed shapes: formal or informal?
21. Garden bed planting schemes: informal or formal?
22. Hydrangeas: lace-cap or mophead?
23. Spirea japonica: dried flowerheads standing over the winter or in bloom?
24. Japanese beetle drowning medium: kerosene or dishsoap solution?
25. Garden stroll time: dusk or dawn?

This was interesting for a number of reasons. For one thing so many of the plants are ones I don’t even use.

I never thought about the distinction between oriental and asiatic lilies but pressed to state a preference I choose oriental.

We till the vegetable garden each spring. It is a raised bed and the top 12 inches of soil is all imported. Some of the flower beds were built by spading up the soil and amending it. Others were built by just mulching over the existing clay. I edge most of the beds with either steel edging or with limestone. Spaded edge beds look nice too though. Most of the limestone I hauled from a site a couple miles away where the ground was being excavated for a big apartment building. We have our own limestone just a foot or two below the black clay soil. If I had a choice though I would prefer a sandier soil.

I am skipping around a little I guess in my comments. I wish I could remember to wear gloves in the garden. Maybe my hands would not be so rough and the fingernails all broken. And yes we have lots of garden ornaments of various degrees of sophistication.

I am not sure just what the definition is for a shrub rose but I do like tea roses. Actually almost none of our roses fall into either category. Most are what are called China roses or floribundas. A lot of our plants, including the roses, were chosen for their fragrance. I have never planted impatiens. I usually don't bather with annuals unless they reseed themselves. I did not know impatiens come in single or double so I just skipped this question.

Calendula or tagetes? I have only Mexican mint marigold which is Tagetes lucida.

I choose junipers over arborvitae. In Texas juniper is called “cedar” and, like mesquite, is usually considered a big weed that has to be cleared off the land. There is a big controversy over whether it is native to the area or is an invasive alien. Personally I tend to like it though.

It would certainly be wonderful to have a coursing waterfall in the garden. Tricia and I have talked about adding a water feature but since the property is flat as a pancake I’m afraid a small pool would be all we could manage.

Im afraid I have forgotten what forget-me-nots look like, but I do love morning glories. Blue flowers may be my favorites which is why I like asters over chrysanthemums.

In general I do not like anything that looks formal or controlled in any way. I like for things to look as if they grew naturally. Actually though I think it takes more work and control to make them look natural than it does to make them look formal.

I also had to skip over the choice of hydrangeas. I can’t say that I know anything about either of the two. I don’t think they will grow in the type of soil I have. Also I had never really noticed the seedheads on spirea. I will have to look for them. We have a big bush out near the fence but frankly I don’t pay much attention to it except during the week or so that it blooms in the spring.

This is starting to make me think I am terribly ignorant and unobservant for I also have no idea what a Japanese beetle is. After doing a little research though I think perhaps it has not made it’s way this far south yet. I am going to go out on a limb though and express a preference for soapsuds over kerosene just for environmental safety.

And I prefer to stroll through the garden in the late evening, when there is a gentle breeze cooling things off.

update on mom

Several readers have asked for an update on Mom. We visited her a couple times over the weekend. On Saturday she was still too medicated to realize we were there. Monday morning she was more awake. She told us that waking up on Monday was the first thing she could remember since they put her into the ambulance. She still dozed off a lot while we were there however.

It was hard seing her lie there in the hospital bed. She is so small she hardly takes up any space at all in the world. When I walked in to the room it took me a while to even realize she was in the bed. I could hardly make out an outline of her body under the covers.

According to the doctor she is mending well. The biggest problem is a lack of appetite and they are going to give her an appetite stimulant. Today they are releasing her from the hospital and transferring her to a convalescent center until she regains her strength. She is very fearful of that, especially that we will leave her there forever. My niece lives nearby and will be able to visit her every day.

Thanks to everyone who expressed their concern. I'll keep you posted as to her progress.

mom

My mother fell and broke her hip today. My niece who lives near my mother called from the hospital to tell me about it.

She evidently lost her balance while washing clothes. Her washer is in the back of the garage on a part of the pavement that is about six inches higher than the rest. Mom probably stepped backward and lost her balance.

She is very fragile and has osteoporosis, so she will have a hard time healing. In the early morning she will have surgery to have a pin implanted.

the dabbs

I really feel the need to comment on the place where we spent our weekend. The Dabbs Railroad Hotel is unique. The original twelve tiny rooms were just the right number for a train crew to overnight when the Dabbs was built in 1907. A couple of the rooms have been converted into bathrooms with indoor plumbing and the inkeeper reserves two for his own use. That leaves eight rooms plus a "sleeping porch" for guests.

The two story wooden building fronts on an unpaved alley in the small central Texas town of Llano just a block off the main drag. Behind it is the Llano River where you can fish or swim, or just sit and enjoy a glass of wine in the moonlight while listening to the water splashing over the rocks.

The best part of the stay though was the "biscuit show" as Gary, the innkeeper, calls his breakfast. Seated around the big table in the dining room there were grey-bearded bikers, fresh-faced yuppies, college students with tattoos and piercings, and ... us.

To see such a diverse group eating and talking together reminded me of a family reunion. And in a way I guess it was. As Gary put it, we were all part of the Dabbs family now. With no locks on any of the doors, communal bathrooms, no check-in or check-out times, it felt more like a home than a hotel.

we're back

We're back from a weekend in the country. Normally I try to avoid traveling on holidays. However we both needed a getaway, especially Tricia, and we needed it right away. So on Thursday, as soon as it became apparant that we were going to be free for the weekend, I made some last-minute plans for us to get out of town for a a couple nights. It was interesting time and I'll write a little more about it when I've unwound from the return drive.

real life, or something like it

Tricia and I have both had interesting weeks at work. Hers has been the less pleasant. As a member of the manager class at a "major telecommunications company" where union workers have walked out, she has been putting in 12-hour days. Needless to say she has not been a happy camper, not only because of the long hours but also due to the stress of crossing picket lines to get there.

Interesting times where I work too. A two-year, 25 million dollar project has completely collapsed, the department head has resigned and a major regrouping is in the works. Lucky for me I was never associated with the project in any way.

sunday picnic

After two days of rain, Sunday turned out to be one of the most beautiful days you can imagine. Not a cloud in the sky and the air felt clean and pure out in the country for the family reunion. About forty turned out for the picnic. The crowd was mostly on the older side but there were a few younger ones. The food was really good and there was lots of it. So I guess you could say it was a success.

After we turned off the highway we saw big fields of bluebonnets and primroses plus the occasional Indian blanket. The bluebonnets were starting to fade a little. Last weekend was probably the peak. Close by the side of the road we could see purple winecups which is a favorite of mine. I believe this is one of the best years for wildflowers in Texas that I can recall.

family reunion

My grandmother died forty years ago. Up till that time no one needed to organize a family reunion. She had ten children and most every weekend one or more were at her house. All you had to do was show up and there was an instant family reunion.

When I was young we were there about one weekend every four to six weeks. There were always cousins there and we would play outside on the big covered porch or in the winter time in the parlour, where sometimes my grandmother would have a quilting frame suspended from the ceiling.

After grandmother died a couple of my aunts started to organize annual pot-luck dinner get-togethers in the Spring. They would bring big albums of photos and copies of records from their geneaological research.

The aunts have almost all passed away now and most of my generation has lost interest in the reunion. The cousins I remember from childhood show up once in a while but they are scattered around the country and have their own families to keep track of. We still had about thirty-five people last year though including children.

For the last several years the task of organizing this event has been mine. That in itself says something. I am one of the world's worst organizers and a very poor socializer, so if it has come down to me to get a social event together, you know how desparate the situation must be. Still there are a few older ones who look forward to it.

Sunday we will do it again. We are meeting at the Prairie Point Cemetery, just down an unpaved country road from the old family farm and the site where all four of my grandparents were laid to rest and two of my great-grandparents. It is a place with lots of memories. I'll let you know how it turns out.

do i need to broaden my reading habits?

figure from the past

Over the weekend I learned that my former brother-in-law had passed away of cancer. When I saw his picture in the obituary I didn't recognize him at all. Thirty years does a lot to change a person, I guess.

When he married my sister he reminded me a little of Fonzie on the TV show. No black leather jacket that I can recall, but he was tall and slim and had long black hair and sideburns. He struck somewhat of an anachronistic figure, but then Texas was a little behind the times in those days. He was self-confident and a smooth talker, and seemed just slightly dangerous.

Even as a kid I sometimes saw through his talk. It did not surprise me that he was not as successful as he wanted to be. He tried to be liked, but he always pretended to be more than he was.

I have no idea what problems there may have been in the marriage but it came to an end when my sister moved back home with a black eye and two baby girls. What little good will toward him that remained in our household was squandered by that incident.

In his picture I could discern none of this. He looked plump and pleasantly prosperous as he sat grinning at the camera with another wife standing behind with her arm around him. Was the picture as false as the stories I remembered? I didn't want to know

restless

I was driving down Northwest Highway last night, on my way to the big electronics store on the other side of town to look for a particular part I need.

I drove past a Target and my mind flashed back to the very first time I had been in that store. I had just moved into the area and I went there shopping for housekeeping supplies. I checked out and carried my stuff out to the parking lot. But I could not find my car, hard as I searched. Just as I was about to think my car was stolen I discovered it was on the other side of the building. That Target has two identical front entrances and checkouts on opposite sides of the store. I wonder how many others have made exactly the same mistake there.

That trip was memorable in another way too. It was a beautiful Spring afternoon. Instead of heading back to the little apartment I had just rented I decided to explore a little. I headed west, driving with the windows down and came to an area that I thought was really pretty. Lots of trees and big chalky cliffs. About that time I realized I was driving on a flat tire. I pulled into a church parking lot and changed it. The odd thing is that I now live in that area and attend that very church. But that did not happen until many years later.

It is hard to believe that was so long ago. I moved here on April Fool's Day, 1987. There was snow on the ground, which is rare here so late in the spring. I never expected to stay here this long. I was not entirely sure that I wanted to even be here at all. I was working for a company that was relocating and offered to move me. I was tired of being where I was and this was closer to my family so I thought I might as well.

It makes me feel restless to think I have spent so much of my time in this one place.

rosemary remembered

By now you know that two of my favorite things are plants and the Texas Hill Country. What I haven't told you before is that I also have a thing for mystery novels. I started out reading Hardy Boys mysteries when I was in grade school and have been addicted ever sense. Yes, I know it's not the most intellectual thing to read, but ...

Anyway with that set of interests it is somewhat surprising that I didn't discover before now the China Bayles series of mysteries. They are about a former big city lawyer who resettles in the mythical town of Pecan Springs in the Hill Country to run an herb shop and get mixed up in the local crime scene in typical Murder She Wrote style.

The author of these books is Susan Wittig Albert, who also has a fine blog called Lifescapes, which you may have noticed before on my blogroll. I found the blog first. She is a gardener too and often writes about plants and about the local landscape. I have been meaning for months to read one of her novels and one finally fell into my lap. It is one of the earlier ones in the series called Rosemary Remembered. (They all have some kind of herb in the title).

I can't say anything about the rest of the series, but this one at least is sprinkled with references to herbs and gardening. I'm just getting into it but it's engrossing and I already know that I am going to want to read every one in the series.

the mounty

One of our favorite places is a little cafe called Angela's which also happens to be within walking distance of our house. Not that we travel there by that method very often, you understand. Angela's serves lunch and dinner but the Mexican-style breakfasts are the real draw.

We became regulars immediately after it opened in a little hole in the wall and served only breakfasts. It was named after the owner's daughter, who used to sit behind the cash register and color or read her schoolbooks. She's a little older now and I hardly ever see her there any more. The cafe has changed too - triple the number of tables they first had and a waiting line in the morning.

That's where we were sitting Sunday morning when I noticed Tricia's eyes fixed over my right shoulder. I followed her gaze to the waiting area where I saw a tall man with a neatly-trimmed full beard. He was wearing a full-length fur coat and a brown western-style hat. A lot of men in these parts wear western-style hats but something about the shape of his seemed different.

A few minutes later the hostess led his party to a table behind my back. As he passed I heard a jangle and glanced down to see silver spurs on his boots. Boots and hats are one thing but spurs and calf-length fur coats at breakfast are something to catch my attention.

I didn't want to turn around and stare, but Tricia told me that when he removed his coat he was wearing dark pants with a stripe down the side and a military style sweater. Was he a Mounty who had tracked his man all the way to Texas? More likely he was on his way to or from some kind of horse show. He had the air of a performer. The other man and the two ladies in his party offered no clues. They could have been on their way to the Methodist church.

I searched for his horse in the parking lot when I left. It wasn't there.

bowling

It seems to happen fairly frequently that something Tricia thinks "everyone" has done or "everyone" knows turns out to be something I've never done or never heard of. Then she accuses me of being an "alien" who was born on another planet.

For instance, bowling. Until Thursday night I had never set foot in a bowling alley in my life. For a good many years this was just the way things had turned out, but then more recently I had deliberately turned aside efforts by friends and family to get me there just because I wanted to keep my "uniqueness."

But I could not get out of it Thursday night. The boss had planned a bowling party as one of his "team-building" events and came around to say that, although it was not "mandatory," that I had better be there.

Of course I did not want to let on to my coworkers that I had never done this before. Luckily there is not much you need to know about bowling. I mean it's pretty obvious that you are supposed to knock down the pins with the ball. I have no idea what the rules are or even if there are any rules. There is an electronic thing that keeps score for you, so you don't even have to know how to do that.

My team never won a game but I don't think I looked that bad. My ball only went into the gutter a couple times and I even made a "strike" before the evening was over. It was even kind of fun. I might do it again some time.

So that is how I took one more step closer to being a "normal" person.

we visit a sculpture garden

It's warmed up a little here but it has been rainy all afternoon. I've been expecting a technician from the phone company out to check on my DSL line but it is looking like he has stood me up. For the second time too, since he was supposed to be out yesterday and had to reschedule. So I'm still connecting via dial-up.

I mentioned earlier that I was installing a picture gallery. In the future I expect to put up more garden photos than I can on the weblog. I haven't found the time to load many yet but I have made a start. For beginners I have put up an album of pictures from a recent trip to the Nasher Sculpture Garden.

The Nasher is new and this was our first trip there. No photos are allowed inside and outside you can only take them without flash. We were there in the late afternoon on a sunny day about two weeks ago, so there are some deep shadows visible on some of the pictures. I am still experimenting with a new camera too so I guess you could say that everything about this project is new.

Raymond Nasher was a shopping center developer and some of you may remember Hammering Man from Northpark Mall in Dallas, where it was on display off and on for many years. It is a motorized piece - the arm goes up and down. I believe everything in the museum is from Nasher's personal collection. Some of the other pieces used to be on the grounds in front of his house.

It's a nice collection and the building by architect Renzo Piano is really something special too. The only negative about the whole thing is the price of admission. Ten dollars seems a little much.

time

Yes, I am still here. I feel like I have been insanely busy since we got back from our trip south and I've hardly had time to post here. Besides working late to catch up at the office, I've also taken on a couple more projects.

After several evenings of effort, I finally managed to install the Gallery photo software on Tricia's website. Of course it turned out that if I had just followed the instructions to begin with, I could have saved myself hours of frustration. Why, I ask myself, does this always seem to be the case in everything I do? Once I get some photos uploaded to the site I will put a link on this page.

Another thing I have been trying to do is teach myself to use Dreamweaver so that I can help out with the website at my church. This is really nice software. I've been coding web pages by hand for several years. There have been a couple of software packages that I came across and experimented with, but they didn't seem to work for me. Frontpage just wasn't versatile enough and I never really got the hang of Adobe Golive. But Dreamweaver seems to make sense.

So that is what's been eating up my time. Thank goodness the weekend is coming up. If the weather is good I hope to be able to work in my garden. And it would really help my peace of mind if I could get this room that I call my office straightened up and organized a little. For months I have been stacking books and papers and computer gear on the floor and table and telling myself I would put things where they belong later. Now the disorganization has gone beyond even what I can stand. Tricia has been hinting that I should visit the Container Store.

And I really owe my parents a visit for Sunday dinner too.

it's all over now

We took down the tree and decorations over the weekend and now it's all back up in the attic once again. Empty boxes were placed on the curb this morning.

Unfortunately the traffic was back to normal for the daily office commute. At least I had my new copy of Bob Dylan Live 1975 in the CD player. Actually made the drive seem too short.

almost back to normal

Things are starting to get back to normal around here. Our houseguests left this morning and I went into the office for a regular day. We had a pretty full holiday this year. I think we saw about as many family members on both sides as we ever have in any four-day period since Tricia and I have been together.

Unlike last year when an excess of party foods did me in, and I spent Christmas at home eating soup and waiting to be admitted into surgery the next day to have the old gall bladder taken out. As a result we hardly saw anyone last year. The only good side of that was losing so many pounds that Weight-Watchers told me that I needed to gain instead of losing. Which I have dutifully proceeded to do for the last 12 months. If only I had stopped at 11 months. Now I have gone too far in the other direction and I need to change course once again. I guess I know what my New Year's resolution will be.

We spent Christmas Day at a big family dinner at my parent's house. I think I counted twenty there. Then Tricia's family began gathering at our place on Friday. We had three small children for a long weekend and several more visiting on Saturday, so the usually quiet house was suddenly a whirlwind of activity. The cats are just now creeping out from under the beds and down from the top shelf in the closet. They are more accustomed to seeing humans move in a slower pace so they didn't know what to expect from the fast-moving dwarves who suddenly seemed to be everywhere at once.

It will probably be another week before we can get all the decorations boxed up and stored in the attic. For now I am just happy to sink back into the comfort of old routines.

department stores

While I was out shopping at the mall, I got to counting how many of the stores there I remembered from my childhood. Not very many.

The department stores in Ft Worth were Leonards, Striplings and Monnigs. None of those exist anymore. Leonards was the biggest, with it's own private subway. Downtown Ft Worth was built on a bluff above the river and Leonards built a big parking lot down below and offered free parking and a free subway ride to everyone. There was only one stop, in the basement of their store. Lots of people would always park there whenever they went downtown. It was a great way to get traffic in to the store. But evidently not enough to beat out the traffic to the malls.

The only names I recognized in the mall were Neiman-Marcus and Radio Shack. Neiman's was too rich for our blood growing up, but I'm sure we bought a few gifts at Radio Shack.

We also did a lot of shopping at the big Montgomery Wards store (or Monkey Wards, as it was called) and later at the Sears store when it opened. Those were the chain stores of the day.

There's always a lot of talk about how Walmart is changing small towns but it is easy to forget how much larger towns have changed too. Department stores, restaurants and banks are all the same everywhere now.

cowboy thrills

Nowadays when children visit us, we entertain them with videos. They usually watch their favorites over and over, probably the same ones that the kids watch at your house.

When I was a kid we watched TV instead of videos. Lately I have realized that at least in those days children's TV had a local flavor. The shows I watched are different from the ones you probably watched where you lived.

The first TV program I remember watching regularly was "The Cowboy Thrills Club." I think it was probably on WBAP in Ft Worth, although I haven't found any references to it anywhere. I can't remember many details, other than that it was a showcase for Hopalong Cassidy and others. I also can't remember how I got this pin. "Everybody's" was the name of a local department store and "Admiral" was a brand of TV popular at the time. No doubt they were sponsors of the show and I may have got the pin at the store, where I can remember my parents shopping in downtown Ft Worth at Christmas time.

The greatest kid's show though was probably Slam Bang Theater. The host was Icky Twerp, also known as Bill Camfield, who showed Popeye and Felix the Cat cartoons, and later Three Stooges shorts. He even appeared in the last of the Three Stooges pictures. In between times he clowned around with various guests, some of them in gorilla costumes.

Icky Twerp was on Channel 11, my favorite of the four channels we could get. It was the only one that was not a network. It had lots of kid's shows and old movies. Even as a little kid I liked old movies, especially if they were horror shows or science fiction. In fact Camfield also hosted a series of horror films as "Gorgon."

Another favorite in our household was The Mickey and Amanda Show. This was a long-running puppet show featuring Mickey Mudturtle and Amanda Possum, and other characters too. Apparently Mickey moved on to LA later and hooked up with Michelle Mudturtle, so some of you may remember him from there. Mickey and Amanda was oriented toward a slightly younger crowd and hence was more popular with my little brother than with me.

On every show they would read from the Birthday Book the names of everyone who had a birthday that day and sing their song:

Mickey and Amanda say...
Happy Birthday.

grinch

For the last couple years I have been fortunate enough to work for an employer which was actually expanding its IT department at a time when most everyone else was contracting. I knew that would not last forever and now it is apparent that the party is over. Since the top management turned over a few months ago there has been some reorganization and consequent job loss for those who couldn't or didn't want to fit in.

Then the Friday before Thanksgiving came the first round of downsizing, and it's likely to continue into the new year. I've been through this before and I hate it. Morale is low and it's the topic that comes up in every conversation. It's hard to be cheerful when you see somebody you work with packing up their personal belongings in a cardboard box. Doesn't exactly make me look forward to getting up in the morning.

I just hate it that others have such power over my life.

mrs c

We found out last week that Mrs C had passed away. Until about 18 months ago she had lived in the house on the corner.

She had lived there longer than anybody knew. Her only family was a daughter in another city. We had never seen her but we got the idea that there wasn't a lot of affection left between them. None of us really thought Mrs C should be living there by herself but there was no way we could convince her of that.

Shopping was one of her main activities. Her house was packed with stuff in boxes, some of it never used. There was even stuff still in shopping bags with the sales slips still in the bag too.

She paid close attention to what was happening on her end of the block. She always knew when there was a strange car or person at a house. When Tricia's dad came to visit us she dropped by to welcome him with a bouquet of magnolias from the tree in her front yard.

She must have been starved for attention. Ocasionally she would knock on our door to ask for help with her phone and Tricia would go back with her to see what was the matter. Most of the time it would turn out that the line had been disconnected from the wall.

We were used to seeing the truck from the key store in her driveway. I can't explain how she could have locked herself out so often, even after they fixed the door so that it was impossible to lock the door without a key. And police cars too. She was convinced that someone was getting into her house and stealing things. All of the windows had bars on them and she had an alarm and even a video camera setup, but somehow they got past all that. The policemen never lost their patience. In spite of all the calls they kept showing up to investigate each time.

So it was kind of a relief when she fell and broke her hip and had to be hospitalized. We knew she was getting some care at last. The doctors refused to release her back to live alone and she went into a nursing home right across the street from the mall where she had spent so much of her time.

tree

We installed a Christmas tree in the house over the weekend which served to remind me that it is time to get cracking and get my shopping done. So today I stopped at the bookstore on the way home and crossed a few obligations off the list.

Soon I will make my annual visit to the mall. There is really nothing that requires me to shop at the mall, I just like to go there to see the decorations and watch the people when it is crowded at Christmastime.

an old-time fair

Tricia and I spent most of Friday at a fair at Brazos de Dios, which is a farm operated by Homestead Heritage just north of Waco. The event spreads over three days and combines some of the more enjoyable elements of a renaissance fair with a visit to grandpa's farm.

We had some homemade jalapeno sweet-potato soup that was out-of-this-world tasty, watched a barn-raising, rode a hay-wagon around the property and had a great time. There were all kinds of demonstrations - quilt-making, soap-making, black-smithing, weaving and pot-throwing among others - as well as examples of all these things for sale. We wanted to stay for the gospel-singing in a big outdoor tent after dark, but unfortunately it was colder than we had expected and windy and we had not come with the appropriate clothes, so after five hours we were ready to get back in a warm car and head back north.

Brazos de Dios is the old Spanish name for the Brazos River. It means "the arms of God." The farm is located in the rich floodplain of the river and is worked using drafthorses instead of tractors, which they say is actually more efficient for a small farm. The fields are lying fallow this year, which they do every seventh year.

One of their businesses is taking down old barns and reconstructing them on new sites for customers. Several of their own buildings are reconstructions, including a working gristmill that dates from 1760.

As you tell, I am really taken with the lifestyle of these people and the way they have built a community that incorporates traditional crafts and values into their everyday lives.

a burglary

We heard a report today of a strange burglary a couple of blocks from our house. The owner got a call at work from his alarm company and drove home to investigate. He arrived to find two police cars. He went inside through the open front door and turned off the alarm and then opened the back french doors for two police officers who were peering inside.

One of the officers said "I'm glad someone knows how to turn off the alarm." They told him that they had seen a woman inside, knocked on the back door that was ajar and she came to the door, greeted the police officers and acted as if she belonged in the house. She was smiling, was not panicked and called the dog by name (not the real name it turned out) to call to calm him down. She told the police to wait one second while she turned off the alarm and never came back.

They all went back out the front door and a neighbor came up and said she had seen a woman run out the front door and hide in some bushes down the street. The police, realizing they had been fooled, went to investigate but didn't find anyone.

Apparently some jewelry was missing. At least the police should have a good description.

where I am from

I am from a yellow cat sleeping on a porch
and from an old woman in a faded sunbonnet
tending a garden of hollyhocks and flags.
I am from butterflies dancing in the sunlight.

I am from the sand and the grassburrs,
and from a forest of blackjacks and post oaks
hard as cast iron.

I am from pinto beans and cornbread.
I am from the cotton fields and the pea patch,
from quilts made of feedsacks and dress scraps
and from pallets laid on bare floors for sleeping.

I am from blackland farmers and schoolteachers
and from an uncle killed in war.
I am from a cedar chest filled with packets of letters,
faded Kodak prints, newspaper clippings, and crayon drawings.

I am from a church built of cypress planks
that were carried across the prairie on a horsecart.
I am from sweet-smelling roses and wildflowers
blooming in an old graveyard at the end of a narrow road.

Another post inspired by Fred. This and the ones at his site are modeled after a poem by George Ella Lyons.

Why not write your own version and leave a link to it?.

talking funny

Fred First has been writing about speech dialects lately, which has inspired me to write down a few comments of my own on this topic.

When I was growing up in Fort Worth I was acutely aware of the difference between the speech of my relatives who were from rural East Texas and that of the people around me, which was more "citified." I wanted to talk like the people in movies and TV, not like uneducated hill-billies. Among my friends was a boy whose family had just moved from Massachusetts. His mom helped out in our cub scout group and I loved the way both of them talked. One day my third-grade teacher kept me after class. She thought I was making fun of my class-mate's speech when I was merely trying to be like him.

Now, my own speech is probably a kind of a smoothed-over mixture of different influences. Many native Texans assume I am a Yankee when they hear me talk, while most people from up north still peg me as a Texan. There are a few things that I have carried over. For one thing I still refer to the kind of sliced bread you get in grocery stores as "light bread." I think that is a fairly unique regionalism. And I still say "fixing to" and "over yonder" as in "I'm fixing to go over yonder and get some light bread."

The small company where I've worked for the last several years is kind of a mini UN. Upper management is Canadian (we all smile when they say PRO-cess), and the IT department where I work has Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Vietnamese, a Cuban, and several flavors of Europeans. So I hear a lot of different accents during the day now. The differences between Texan and, say Minnesotan or Californian, seem pale by comparison.

Probably because of the civil rights struggles during the time I was growing up, I always had negative associations with southern dialects. I always took pains to let people know that I was from the "west" and not the "south." Lately I have been pleasantly surprised by how nice some of the southern speech can sound. On a recent trip to Birmingham I shared a shuttle from the airport with some young women on a business trip. Eavesdropping on their conversation I was enchanted with their voices. The cadence was so slow and relaxed, it was hard to believe they were talking about business. If I closed my eyes I could have imagined that I was out on a verandah with a mint julep.

With all the influences from television and the movies, and so many people moving around, it is surprising to me that there still is so much regional dialect. I wonder how much longer it can last.

veteran's day

Traffic seemed a little lighter this morning on the way to work. That was about the only reminder of Veteran's Day, except for the fact that there was no mail.

My father and many of my uncles were veterans, including my uncle, Lt Booth Tarkington, who was killed in action in Germany on January 21, 1945. That was well before I was born, but I've heard about him all my life and I got my middle name from him. Everyone always said how smart he was.

This last week I've been reading some of the letters that one of my aunts collected over the years, including a letter that my uncle wrote to his mother and sisters while he was stationed in England. He writes about going to London on a weekend pass and seeing all the sights, Ben Ben and Westminster Abbey. He inquires about the cotton crop back home. He expresses a belief that the war will be over soon. But his only complaint is about the army's accomodations, "they would make good sheds for the sheep and cows."

home decorating

How is a guy supposed to keep up a garden blog these days? I work a regular job and by the time I get home most days it's already dark. Then comes the weekend and it rains all the time. I can't really be sure what's happening out there in the garden.

I've got more than enough to keep me busy inside though. For several weeks Tricia has been talking about replacing light fixtures in the living room. It had the same ones that were in there when we bought the house. Wall sconces actually, kind of old-fashioned, with little crystal "jewels" hanging down. Not really our style. But they worked. And there were six of them, which translates into a lot of money when you start thinking about replacements.

With home decoration, as in most things, I have a tendency toward being frugal. If it works, why does it need to be replaced? Before I was married I never owned any two objects that were matched to each other or were even remotely the same style. I tend to forget that objects in the home can have a decorative purpose too. Actually it is not exactly that I forget. When I see things in another context - other people's homes or a store for instance - I do appreciate the decorative aspect. It just does not occur to me to incorporate that into my own surroundings.

So we went shopping for some wall sconces together and found some that we both liked that did not cost an arm and a leg. I spent yesterday afternoon installing them. They really do look better I must admit. They give the room a different feeling. More Arts and Crafts style instead of Victorian. Perhaps I will now feel like a different person than I used to whenever I am in that room.

But there is no improvement in functionality or efficiency. I can't say that the value of the property has been increased. All I can say is that they look nicer, and there are many who would not even agree with me in that assesment. I have increased my wife's happiness though and my own as well. I suppose that is sufficient justification.

channel surfing

Sorry for the lack of recent posts. The last couple days I have been fighting off a bit of a cold and haven't felt like doing much. I've actually started a few posts and then changed my mind and decided not to publish them after reading them over.

Last night I was a real couch-potato. Came home from work, fixed a hot cup of tea and then plopped myself in front of the TV. Unfortunately I could not find much to watch.

Joan of Arcadia is a new series that I had not seen before. It's centered around a high-school girl who encounters God in various disguises and each time he (or she) provides enigmatic instructions which Joan attempts to apply. The publicity I heard beforehand compared the show to Buffy but it reminded me more of the American Dreams series that has been playing for awhile on a different network. Both deal with a middle-class suburban family learning the daily lessons of life and both center on a teen-age girl. In American Dreams she is a dancer on American Bandstand. The early 60's backdrop (civil rights, the looming specter of Vietnam, and of course the music) may indicate that show is designed to appeal more to boomers instead of a younger crowd. In both there is a handicapped brother and a stay-at-home mom concerned with how to cope with that, and a father who faces problems of his own in the workplace.

One of the things I liked about Joan was that I could step into it without needing a lot of background. I don't tend to be very regular in my viewing habits; I prefer for every show to stand on its own without my having to be familiar with previous episodes. It's also got Joe Mantegna in it, whom I tend to like. I will probably watch it again.

After that I surfed through the channels for awhile and finally wound up watching a second-rate movie from 1972 called The New Centurions starring George C. Scott and Stacy Keach. It tried to show policemen as people, how their personalities affected their work and vice-versa. But it wound up making me feel very old. I kept thinking how different the police methods seemed from the more recent dramas I see - more relaxed, the crimes more trivial and the people less paranoid.

There was one scene where they stop a black man for a traffic violation and discover he has outstanding warrants. After a tense moment or two they arrest him. But when they ask him to get in the squad car he just opens the door himself and gets in. They don't frisk him or handcuff him; they don't push his head down as he gets in the door the way they always show it being done now. It was just a lot friendlier even though this was supposedly in LA during the time of the Watts riots and all.

It started me wondering if real life had changed that much in 30 years or just the way it is shown on TV.

letters from the past

When I was a boy I had two aunts who were interested in family history. Every family gathering they would bring along big albums with photos and genealogy charts. I used to sit and pore over those. I often wondered what became of them. One of the aunts passed on years ago and the other has Alzheimers now. She lives just down the street from my parents. I stopped by over the weekend and my cousin who helps take care of her had found the books in her garage and had them all spread out on a table.

It had been many years since I had seen the books. There were a lot more of them than I ever realized. I took a couple home with me. One of the albums is filled with old letters. Some from uncles who were soldiers in Germany and Italy in WW2 and many from my grandmother to her daughters. The other book has little essays written by one of the aunts about each of her brothers and sisters, with stories about their childhood on the farm.

It was a big family and my mother was on the younger end of it. Some of her brothers had children who were already grown up and married when I was just a little boy. It was hard for me to comprehend all the relationships and what the grownups were talking about. Now I have charts to explain it all and letters to read. All the mysteries that I didn't understand about the grownup world are going to be revealed at last.

the man in the chinese buffet

One of our regular hangouts is a Chinese buffet. It's a neighborhood place, dark and comfortable. I like the grilled fish and the teriaki chicken and Tricia goes for the sweet and sour chicken and snow peas.

Tricia was watching ER or something on the television and I was watching the fish in the aquarium when we heard the guy a couple of booths over call to the waiter. He asked him if he would get his wallet out of his jacket which was on the seat across the table, explaining that his own hands were greasy and he didn't want to wipe them on his jacket. The waiter obliged and started to hand it over, but the man shook his head and directed him to open it up and take out some money. He told him how much to take to pay the bill and then asked him to put the wallet back in the jacket.

The hostess watched us watching him. Later, after the man had left, as she stopped by to refill our iced tea glasses she told us that he ate there twice a day every single day, usually alone but sometimes with a companion.

coffee shop

It’s possible I am the last man in America never to have set foot in a Starbucks. It’s certainly not for want of availability since, according to their website, they have 22 stores within five miles of my home, two within walking distance. I would be tempted to say that it’s my disdain for chain stores, were it not for the fact that I actually may have never been in any kind of establishment that could properly be called a coffee shop.

Apparently they do not fill any need that I have recognized yet. I should point out here that I do not even drink coffee regularly any more. Some years ago I gave up Bustelo and switched to Earl Grey as the delivery system for my morning fix of hot caffeine. Though I still order coffee when I take breakfast away from home, as I often do on Saturday mornings or when traveling.

From what others have written though it is my impression that coffee shops are not so much about imbibing hot java but are apparently some kind of place to hang out in public either alone or with others. In my travels on the backroads of Texas I have found that most small towns have a café or a diner where locals gather during the day to take a break and linger over a cup of coffee or two. If you live there it’s usually a good spot to catch up on the latest gossip or if you are just passing through it is a good spot to get a feel for the place. My best guess is that the coffee shop is kind of a big-city version of this for people who either don’t have jobs or else have jobs that don’t confine them to an office.

It’s been years since I was able to spend time like that doing nothing. Back in my college days I would often head over to the student center to get coffee in the evenings, partly to keep from falling asleep in the library but mainly in the hope of finding any kind of diversion that would prevent me from studying. That is probably the closest that I have come to experiencing what a coffee shop is like.

The coffee at the student center tasted like weak dishwater. After college I spent a winter in Chicago and that is where I really learned to experience coffee. I spent time there with a group of students from the Art Institute, and one of them knew how to brew coffee in an hourglass-shaped contraption. It screwed apart into three sections. She would pack the coffee into the middle section and put water in the bottom and then set it on the stove. Somehow the water would get sucked up into the top section when it was done. That was the best coffee I’ve ever had. It was strong and you needed it to fortify yourself before heading for the El in the bitter cold.

Michael Pollan wrote in an article recently that the modern coffee break actually started early in the last century as a “booze break.” Only during prohibition did it turn into a break for coffee. I find that interesting because the other thing I keep thinking about is how much what I hear about coffee shops reminds me of a bar.

Read what others have to say about Coffee Houses at Ecotone.

furniture-moving fever

The current topic at Ecotone is one of my favorites. I wish I had the energy to write something on it, but there is just so much to do. I worked late at the office today and tomorrow we are going to the State Fair. Maybe later.

Tricia was off work yesterday and she was busy rearranging more furniture. It all started when she got the twelve-foot-long quilting machine a few weeks ago. To fit that into her sewing room required juggling most of the furniture already there. That's how she caught the furniture-moving fever.

Monday she hit the living room and dining room. Our dining room was really a waste of space. I can't remember the last time we sat at that table for a meal. We usually eat at the smaller table off the kitchen, even when when we have company. It's more cheerful because it catches the sun both in the morning and evening through big windows. So she just moved the big dining table in there. Without the leaves in, it doesn't take any more space than the dinette set and even with all the leaves in it still fits.

She has made the formal dining room into a TV room. It's just the right size for that. When we had the TV in the living room, it was hard to find a good viewing spot. The old house had been built before there was such a thing as a TV. The focus in the living room was on the hearth. Anywhere we put the TV we were always looking at an angle. All the way around this is a more practical arrangement. The only thing it does not accomodate is a big dinner party, and we don't have many of those.

The big stuff is moved but there is still all the pictures and other odds and ends that will need to be adjusted to make everything just so. Meanwhile my little "office" - the smallest room in the house - has become the repository for everything that does not have an obvious place. I will have to find a place for those things or keep stepping over or around them to get to my desk.

the hat collector

Not long after I got out of college I bought a sports car, a second-hand Fiat Spyder. It was a fun car, kind of a cut-rate Alfa. It always seemed to be in need of repair. A buddy convinced me that I needed to adjust the valves myself because the mechanics never did it right. T had a special-order tool from Italy that would lift up a spring so that little discs could be inserted to give just the right clearance. I borrowed it and tackled the job one weekend.

I am not mechanically inclined and really shouldn’t be doing anything under the hood of a car. I don’t know what I did wrong but when I started it back up the engine turned over and then just froze solid. All the valves crashed into the top of the pistons and bent, freezing the engine up solid. Basically I had caused more damage to the engine than the whole car was worth. The only solution was to fix it myself. That’s how I became a driveway mechanic one summer. With T advising me I finally got it running again.

It was the only convertible I’ve ever owned and extremely impractical in Houston, a city where it is always either raining or else blazing hot. To keep the wind out of my hair I bought a cap with a visor - not a baseball cap but a leather cap similar to ones worn in the early part of the century. Some of the guys where I was working at the time thought it looked like a yacht cap and took to calling me "captain."

That was the beginning of my “hat collection.” Soon after I got the next one. As a favor to a friend I picked up his girl at the airport and drove out to a beach-house on Galveston Bay. A few weeks later I received a package in the mail. I guess she wasn’t impressed with the leather cap either because it was a new handmade cap. I still have both those, along with a number of others, souvenirs from trips, a beanie from my freshman year at college, and a grey felt businessman’s hat that my father used to wear in the fifties. I’ve got a few baseball caps too, and that is what I am most likely to be seen in these days.

the texas kid

When I work outside I always like to wear a hat. My favorite by far is a straw Resistol I picked up at an estate sale at the home of The Texas Kid. It was already stained and raggedy when I got it about ten years ago so you can imagine that it is pretty disreputable-looking by now.

Never heard of The Texas Kid, you say. Well, his real name was Willard Watson and he was what they call a primitive artist who had a few shows in the local art scene. His yard was full of odd sculptures and found pieces and he had a closet full of hand-beaded cowboy shirts. By far his greatest creation was his car. I believe it was a Cadillac, but I am not sure which model. It was covered all over with geegaws and ornaments pasted to it, including the obligatory horns above the radiator. He made an appearance in the film True Stories, which I recommend if you haven't seen it in a while. It featured songs by the Talking Heads and was filmed hereabouts.

I never actually met Willard Watson. He passed away shortly after I moved to the city. I just followed the signs to the estate sale and that was where I learned everything I know about him. I can't say for sure if he ever wore this hat himself, but someone sure did and I bet it was him. It doesn't have fancy beadwork like a lot of his clothes did though, so maybe it was just a work hat that he wore when he wasn't trying to make an impression.

When I first began to wear it, I had an old beat-up Chevy truck. I really looked like a genuine farm hand when I was in the truck and wearing the hat. Since I got the shiny new truck a few years ago I don't wear it as much, except when I am working in the garden. I like to think I am channeling The Texas Kid. I always wanted to be an artist. Maybe some of his creativity will rub off on me.

interview

The interview meme has been going around lately, and in a moment of weakness I asked Joel at Pax Nortona to interview me. Here are the results.

1. In what ways is your garden like a quilt? Is any part of it done in Prairie Point?

Nope, no prairie points in the garden. For the benefit of those of you not into quilting, prairie points are little triangles sewn around the border of a quilt. That's a depiction of prairie points I recently added just below each post. I didn’t know about prairie points when I named the blog, but my wife is an avid quilter and told me about them. She even made a quilt with prairie points on it.

There are a lot of ways that gardening is like quilting. Both combine beauty with usefulness. A garden can be designed using color and texture the way a quilt does. Many herbs and vegetables serve not only culinary but medicinal purposes although few of us grow them for either reason nowadays. Flowers may seem frivolous but they brighten our lives. Like quilting, gardening can be a shared experience. Quilters like to get together and trade patterns and fabrics the way gardeners pass along plants. I have quilts made by both my grandmothers and by aunts. I don’t have much in the way of plants that have been passed down but many do.

2. How do you reconcile your gardening with your environmental concerns?

It is true that gardening can be very unfriendly to the environment. Many commonly sold fertilizers are damaging not only to the soil but to our water as well when they wash off the lawn. Insecticides kill not only the undesirable insects but bees and butterflies also. Vast expanses of lawn grass not only look sterile but are sterile.

I have tried to avoid these mistakes. I use only organic fertilizers and no poisons. I use a great many native plants. It would be possible to go further than I do, but frankly I like my roses and irises even if they are not natives. This garden is more environment-friendly now than when I started with it and more than most other urban yards around here.

3. Do you let any part of your garden "go wild"?

I had to laugh at that one. No one who has seen my garden would ask that. My real worry is that a health inspector will find some ordinance that I am in violation of. I have never been very fond of mowing or clipping and tend to let things get out of hand all the time. However there are a few areas that I let get “wilder” than others. I keep a fairly wild border around the entire perimeter of the back yard. I have let trees and shrubs get large and pretty much do what they want there.

It has been said that gardening is all about “control.” By that standard I am a pretty poor gardener. Mostly I just watch what happens in the garden. I introduce a new plant now and then. I try to encourage the ones that please me and I try to suppress the ones that I do not like or that threaten to overpower the garden by their numbers.

The yard is a “wildscape” but that designation really means that the yard has features that make it friendly to wild animals rather than actually being wild. It has many native plants which are more popular with birds and insects than imported ones. There are nuts and berries and water available.

4. I had to notice the interesting juxtaposition between an article about the "zen of weeding" and a second about "goldenrod". What makes for a "weed"?

This one is easy. A weed is anything that you don’t like in the particular place where it is. If I happened to like dandelions I would let them grow.

5. Why do you resonate with Paul Krugman when he writes that the environment "scares" him more than anything else?

The environment is a complex and enormous beast, and not necessarily a benign one. I believe we over-estimate ourselves when we think we can control and master it. The environment is changing, partly due to the damage our civilization has done to it. Our world could become a much less livable place. We need to be devoting much more of our resources to learning about it and doing the best we can not to impact it in a negative way.

Thanks for the questions, Joel!

Here are the rules:

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment saying "interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions — each person's will be different.
3. You will update your journal or blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

sunday driving

We were in Houston for a birthday party on Saturday and drove back home on Sunday. The weather was beautiful and we had nowhere we had to be, so we got off the Interstate and drove the back roads for awhile. There was hardly any traffic and we could drive slow without feeling like we were in anybody's way. We stopped to fill the tank at a crossroads and for a minute I thought I might be in Mayberry. Two men, one black, one white, were sitting out in front of the station drinking Cokes and just passing the time, like there was nothing else to do in the world. In Mexia we cruised around to look at some of the old gingerbread houses from the turn of the century - previous century, that is.

miscellany

Susan Albert is looking for information about how the plant called "poverty weed" or "Roosevelt weed" got its names. I recall hearing a story once about it being used for erosion control during the Dust Bowl years. Anybody know anything more about this?

As a follow-up to my story on red spider lilies, it turns out that a blurb on the same plant was posted at Zanthan Gardens on the same day. I especially liked the picture of the lilies against a purple ground cover. I have some of that purple too, but it had not occurred to me to combine it.

I am a "spatial thinker," according to this test I took, following a link at The Coffee Sutras. Qualities of spatial thinkers are

Tend to think in pictures, and can develop good mental models of the physical world
Think well in three dimensions
Have a flair for working with objects

public transportation

Saturday we went over to Fort Worth to see the Egyptian exhibit. It was quite interesting and I want to write more about it after I think on it some. It is amazing to me how crowded museums are when they have these special exhibits. I remember going to museums on lazy afternoons when I had the place virtually to myself. What a luxury that was.

We decided to make the journey entirely by public transportation. Or almost entirely. We met our friends Charlie and Susan at their house and then went from there to the "park and ride" station near their place. Susan had planned it all out - we would take a local train to Union Station downtown, where we could transfer to a train to Fort Worth. Once there we could pick up a bus at the train terminal that would drop us off right next to the museum. It worked pretty smoothly. There was only a short delay waiting for the bus, before a supervisor called one on a walkie-talkie and got us on our way a few minutes ahead of schedule. Other than that the timing was good and we arrived at the museum practically on the dot, according to the schedule Susan had planned. Not very crowded either and all very nice, quiet and clean.

Coming back was not quite as pleasant an experience. It was the same equipment of course, but in reverse we seemed to have longer waits. After a day of walking around the museum and finding a nearby restaturant, we were getting tired and our sense of adventure was wearing thin. For some reason on the trip back both trains were packed. The intracity one was plagued too with a gaggle of teenage girls loudly bragging to each other about how they had lied to their parents about going to the local mall and instead took a train to another city 60 miles away. Their sense of adventure was still high.

I have to admit that I rarely use public transportation. When I first moved to Dallas I rode the bus regularly to my downtown office. I was okay with it except that I sometimes worked late and didn't feel entirely comfortable waiting at the stops after dark. Time was another problem. Including walking to and from the bus stops it took about three times as long as driving. Now my office is located such that it is not really feasible to get there any way but car.

The trains we took Saturday have a much different feel and a different clientele than the daily bus I took to work. The bus carried a few office workers but a lot more blue-collar workers in drab and unstylish clothes, kids on the way to school and the old and infirm. These trains on the other hand seemed to be full of middle-class families and tourists on sight-seeing expeditions. I would like to make this trip again on a weekday to see how it is different. Only the last leg of the trip seemed truly urban. Passing through the underground stations I imagined for a moment I was in a real city instead of an overgrown suburb. At nine o'clock on a Saturday night every seat was taken and the aisles were filling up. In the seat ahead of me a young Asian man in dark chinos and a sleeveless ribbed undershirt was intently using a yellow marker on a thick book that contained music notation. I strained in vain to see over his shoulder the title of the book or read some of the text. The next Beethoven in training? Two stops ahead of ours he closed the book in his lap and placed one of those giveaway "apartment locator" magazines on top of it, then got up and vanished through the doors.

tricia gets a quilting machine

Tricia took another step toward the deep end of the pool with regard to her quilting hobby this weekend. She is now the proud owner of a Gammill Quilting System. She's been looking at one of these babies with an envious eye for several years and then recently got the chance to get a slightly used model for a considerably reduced price.

There are two separate parts to quilting. First you cut out fabric and sew it together into a pattern. This is called “piecing.” Then in the second step the pieced top is layered onto a filling and a backing and sewn together in the process called “quilting.” Tricia pieces a lot of quilts. A few she quilts by hand but most get sent out for machine quilting. She pays someone to machine quilt each one, so potentially over the course of a few years she could recoup the price of the machine by doing it herself. On top of that she has friends and relatives who need quilting done also so it could eventually more than pay for itself. Besides the economic dimension she wants to control the entire process rather than rely on someone else.

Did I mention that it is over twelve feet long? Although it dismantles somewhat there is still a twelve by three foot table top. After some discussion ,we finally decided we could transport it in the pickup truck. We propped one end of it against the tailgate and let the other end project over the top of the cab and tied it down good. It stuck up about three feet over the cab but we didn't have to pass under any low-lying bridges or anything and we only had a few miles to go.

The real question was how to get it in the house once we got it home. Tricia has her sewing studio set up upstairs in a spare bedroom, but getting it up the stairs was out of the question. The stairway is narrow and has a turn at the top. The only answer was to pass it through the upstairs window. That actually turned out to be easier than it sounds. It took two people down below to stand in the bed of the truck and lift one end up enough to rest on the windowsill and another inside to draw it through. Thanks to Mary and Treavor for the extra hands.

Another part of the price was giving up our spare bedroom. Tricia's sewing room had a bed in one corner for guests but that had to go to make room. The third bedroom which is the smallest had already been confiscated by me for an office, or a “library” as I pretentiously call it. So now future guests will have to make do with blow-up air mattresses which we can keep in the closet or else make their own arrangements.

fortune cookie

Enough is as good as a feast.

who were the grateful dead?

Besides a rock group that is. A type of folk tale according to this book first published ninety-five years ago. The story of Tobit in the Apocrypha is the best-known example.

maps

"Advice on the Prairie" by William Tylee Ranney, 1853

A map is a wondrous thing. It enables you to see not only where you are now but where you are wanting to go and everything in between. But to make a map someone needs to be able to visualize where you are in relation to everything else. In this day, that’s easy to do as long as you are only talking about the physical world.

But most of the places we would like to get to are not as easily pictured and there are not always superhighways leading to them. We have to fall back on the equivalent of hearsay and opinion, which when they are available at all may not be clear or reliable.

This week's Ecotone topic is "maps and place"

a garden story

Perhaps I am descended from the people in this story.

masked and anonymous

We went to see Masked and Anonymous, the Bob Dylan movie. Yes, I am still a fan of his after all these years. There was a time when I thought the wisdom of the ages were hidden in rock lyrics and more so in Dylan's than any of the others, an attitude that began to embarrass me after I started working and paying bills. Lately I've been listening again to some of the music I liked then and enjoying it. I've even bought one of Mr Dylan's more recent albums.

Like a lot of his songs, this movie doesn't really make any narrative sense. It's best to think of it as more like an extended video. But you do get to hear some unusual covers of his songs. The theater was not exactly crowded - there were only seven of us at the early evening show. The long lines were next door at Le Divorce, which looks to be a hit.

reflecting on disaster

The news lately about the blackouts in the Northeast got me to recalling my own single experience with disaster, which was Hurricane Alicia exactly 20 years ago today.

Of course we had a little advance warning that it was going to hit. I went to KMart for candles and batteries along with most of the rest of the population of Houston. At home I taped the windows and rearranged the garage enough to get the car in and then waited it out alone inside with my cat. We lost not only the electricity but also water and the phone. But they were only out a day or so for me and it felt more like an adventure than a disaster. Many others had far worse experiences.

What I remember most is the feeling of togetherness, of everyone focusing on a common purpose, both before and immediately after it hit. All other concerns were put aside. The differences we had felt just a couple of days before were forgotten temporarily. We were in this together and everyone seemed willing to help their neighbor. It's the only time I remember experiencing that and as a result I recall Alicia almost as an enjoyable experience.

Thomas

Recently I read Elaine Pagel's book Beyond Belief and reported on it for the study group that Tricia and I go to on Sundays. That lead to the group's expressing a desire to learn more about the Gospel of Thomas. For today's meeting I brought along Stevan Davies' translation The Gospel of Thomas which has comments opposite each saying. We read and discussed about ten of the sayings. The group we take part in is rather varied and so were the reactions. A few found it interesting and one was delighted that it contradicted traditional teaching. Most just found the sayings weird or puzzling. One claimed not to see any difference between Thomas and traditional Christianity.

It seemed to me that the group felt let down. They did not doubt that the early church had suppressed opinion and documents concerning Jesus with which it disagreed but on the other hand they were not ready to acknowledge the same level of credibility for Thomas as for the more familiar writings. The lack of a narrative was a serious problem. But mostly I think the group felt let down because in Thomas they were hoping to find the pure and simple truth about who Jesus was. In that respect Thomas is just as faulty a document as the orthodox writings because it is equally obscure and pursues its own particular agenda as much as any of the other