Funny how things work out.

I was depressed as hell last Wednesday afternoon. Feelin' low, as you read in the last post. I wanna thank my friends for their comments. Your words do have a healing effect. I feel the love.

Like I said, when I was sittin' there in the library, posting that stuff to the blog, I was feelin' as low as a rats ass. After getting out of my late class at the jail in San Saba, I called my wowman to see if she wanted to go watch me play pool in my Wednesday night league. She usually declines, but this time she didn't. I could tell from the tone of her voice that something was up, but I didn't say anything. I picked her up at my house and we headed over to the US Club.

Long story short, we had a wonderful time. She finally got to experience some of the fun of hanging out with Dave and the guys. She rooted for me as I won my match against a guy who was rated better than me. I played really well, and then she gave me a celebratory victory smooch after I won. It was great.

I guess the only good thing about a fight is the makin' up after. It turned out that she'd seen the earlier post, and was surprised when I invited her to come to watch me play. It was a sweet end to what had been a shitty day. Another hurdle cleared.

The good times continued into Thursday. It turned out the English teacher down in Florence had taken my second period Juniors on a field trip, so I just sat back and played on the computer for a while. Then, it turned out the school had a thing scheduled where the Seniors were taking 8th graders around, showing them the high school. So my day was easy. One of the other teachers, seeing that I only had a few kids for third period, told me I should give them to her and get the hell out of there. It didn't take me more than a few seconds to agree.



Next thing you know I'm zippin' down the road to San Saba, with visions of the Dairy Mart in my mind and a good cigar burnin' in my teeth.



I decided, since I had time to screw around, why not play with the camera.



It was a good cigar too. lasted me the whole way to Saba.



I made sure the cruise was set to just a hair (Bruno?) above the speed limit. I'm tryin' to be good. Too many pricks out there with radar, and too many points pilin' up. And don't mind the Check Engine light. It's just the busted gage in the gas tank. Too many extra clicks of the handle when I fill up. Do take note of the miles. These trips to Saba are pilin' 'em up quick.



The real reason for the camera was to finally capture some pictures of the Bluebonnets that I get to enjoy along the road to Saba.



We got a lot of rain late last year and early this year, so the wild flowers are poppin' up all over the place.



I usually don't have time to stop, having just enough time to get from Florence to Saba in time for my noon classes. One of these weekends, soon, Denise and I will to a Hill Country drive. They tell me the flowers around Llano are amazing.



The other reason for the camera was to capture the amazing Jalapeno Sourdough bread Bacon Cheeseburger in all it's glory.



Yep. The best thing about gettin' out of Florence early is a chance to go to the Dairy Mart and enjoy one of these rare treats.



Today was another easy morning in Florence. I took roll, visited with friends and watched a few episodes of Clone Wars on the laptop.



I bought the DVD set of the first season at Wally World last weekend. I love the world George Lucas created for the movies, but I never get a chance to watch any of it on TV, so these are all new to me. Excellent.

Now, after posting this, I'm gonna get out the vacuum cleaner and try to spruce this place up a bit. A buddy of mine, Dave Waters, is bringing his girlfriend over at 6PM and the four of us are gonna go out to Applebee's for dinner. I can taste those BBQ ribs now. Mmmmm, good. And we've never met his new woman, so it's gonna be interesting on many levels.

The regular Friday night dinner with Mom is postponed to Saturday. Maybe I can get the girls to do to Dynasty, seein' as how it's my turn to pay. Anyway, the drizzly rain we're having has freed me up from the drudgery of yard work, so it might just be a nice, restful weekend.

So I'm feelin' better. I guess I'm richer than I realized in that moment. Rich in friends and lucky that they are willing to share their wisdom with me. I'm still figurin' this shit out, so I guess I need all the help I can get. I hope you guys are feelin' good and have a good, restful weekend too. Cheers.

Friday...

This'll be short. I got the full-time job in San Saba, and they want me to start drivin' out there four days a week on the 27th of October. My work load on Ft. Hood will be cut from five classes to two, but I'll still be drivin' to Florence every morinin' and teachin' at the high school.

This means regular pay checks every two weeks from now on, with extra money on top of that for teaching the AP classes in Florence and the two nights on Ft. Hood. Busy as hell, but no more classes than I'm teaching now. Important thing is, I'll make enough extra money to begin paying off my credit cards. That's big. It's worth all the driving to do that.

I'll be takin' mom and Denise to eat tonight. probably BJ's in Temple. Then maybe a football game. My Florence kids are playin' in Rogers tonight. Then, hopefully, we'll go to a pub in Temple called O'Briens to see Chris Lopez.

The rest of the weekend will be yard work and relaxing. You guys chill, kick back and we'll talk later. Cheers!

Graceland, and other stuff.

Well, today was just gonna be the post about Graceland, but I got a call, actually several, late last night from my sister. She's got two cats that are sick, slowly dying, and she's decided to take them both in today to give them the shot.

One is about 18 years old and increasingly frail, unable or unwilling to eat. The other is diabetic and has to be given shots every day. Both are way past the time when life had any real value... The point where keeping them alive only serves to save us the pain of their departure. They're my sisters children, having filled a void, replacing a daughter that she lost at birth many years ago. She's not taking it well, as you can imagine, but she's gonna do the right thing.

I told her, consoling her, that this is the last duty we all have as pet owners. It's how we can pay these critters back for all the years of unconditional love they give us. I told her that if we were really "humane' to one another we'd take each other to get the shot when the time came, in stead of trying to extend life to the bitter end while the sick or old lay unconscious in a fetal position in a hospital bed or old folks home and shit in a bag. I sure as hell won't go out that way!

Anyway, I'm gonna go over there after work today and help her take both cats to the vet. I'll probably end up payin' for it too. She may surprise me though and go get it done on her own. We'll see. It's all very sad, but it's what you've gotta do. This means the regular Friday with Mom and Denise may be postponed to another day. We'll see.

It looks like we're gonna be inundated with rain from this hurricane over the weekend. The shit storm is expected to dump down on us at any moment, but just rain. The real wind and crap will be way off to the south. At times like this you realize how truly cool it is that Texas is as big as it is. People are already evacuating from the coast up to this area and the local high schools are canceling games or moving them up to get them played. My kids in Florence played their regular Friday night varsity football game Thursday night in Blanco. They lost. The girls volleyball team won though. They rule!

As far as how I'm doin', things are kinda up in the air around here. I haven't heard anything yet about the new gig in San Saba, and my personal life is stumbling along in a tediously familiar mine field, littered now and then with huge piles of steaming horse shit. I came home happy from playing pool Wednesday night (I won, shockingly, against a much better player) and ended up in a screaming fight. Things may be coming to a head, but I never can tell when it comes to these things. I'm too new at it. All I know is, this familiar refrain is getting really, really old.

As far as how I'm doin', things are kinda up in the air around here. I haven't heard anything yet about the new gig in San Saba, and my personal life is stumbling along in a tediously familiar mine field, littered now and then with huge piles of steaming horse shit. I came home happy from playing pool Wednesday night (I won, shockingly, against a much better player) and ended up in a screaming fight. Things may be coming to a head, but I never can tell when it comes to these things. I'm to new at it. All I know is, this familiar refrain is getting really, really old.

So, having bummed you out, let's talk about this trip through Graceland.



As I told you before, Denise and I payed our $32 each to get the head gear and the guided tour by tape recorder, boarded the bus and began the tour by taking a walk through "the big house".



As you can see from these pictures, the decor in the house is still stuck in the styles of the mid 70s. They don't let you use a flash in the house, or anywhere else, so all of these shots turned out dark. I had to photoshop them to try to lighten them up, and that's taken for-friggin' ever. Some times it worked out and some times it didn't.



It's funny, having grown up in the early 70s, walking through the place and finding yourself thinking stuff like "Oh cool, I love that couch", and then "Oh shit, green shag carpeting and Tiki chairs? Oh no he didn't!"



All in all, I have to say I loved the style of the place. It all looked WAY too familiar, reminding me of the stuff I grew up around back in the day. We all had those houses back then with a formal living room where you weren't allowed to touch anything, and then the comfortable den where you lived. Lots of dark wood paneling and yellow shag carpeting in my past.



I have to say that I've never really been much of an Elvis fan. I grew up with the older, Las Vegas version, and the bad movies. The pop culture folks of my era seemed way cooler to me than that. In retrospect though, I really love the young guy I saw in the pictures here. The guy who went to the army rather than pulling strings to get out of it. The guy who payed off other peoples mortgages and bought them cars (you can see the checks below). Walking through the house, thinking about that guy, morning the death of his mother, thinking about his life as an outsider in school, I really began to feel for him. I even teared up a few times.

Looking at the displays, you get the image of a poor kid, different and brilliant beyond anyones understanding, kind and generous to a fault, who was manipulated, used and coddled by others till he ended up dying way too young. Live fast, die young and leave a bloated, drug addled corpse. Of course, it turns out that many of my other pop culture icons from the 70s didn't end up much better than "The King". I guess none of us really will get out of this alive, as someone said.



The house was cool, and the tour tape you listen to was really well done. The grave site out by the pool was truly moving. I found myself really feeling sympathy for the guy by the time we got there. Sympathy for the kid who flashed onto the world scene and should have had better guidance.

But what the hell. He lived a rich, if short life, and his legacy today is not only millions of fans who still celebrate him, displaying a slavish love for him, but the fact that he's still earning money and paying the bills for all the hundreds, if not thousands of people who keep this place going every day.



Bottom line, that kid who burst onto the worlds consciousness in the early 1950s is still the coolest thing there ever was. Can you imagine how cool he'd be if he were still around today? But you can say that about way too many of the pop culture icons of his day. It's very sad, but what can ya do.



By far, the coolest stuff I found was in the private plane museum and car museum. It was hilarious to see the 1970s TVs and stereo equipment all over the place. I though his taste in cars was mostly questionable. The Stutz Blackhawk was about the ugliest thing I've ever seen.



I loved this purple thing though. Any ideas what this is? Come on, Lin or Bruno, spill it. I found The King had much better taste in motorcycles. Those were cool as hell!



This big trike reminded me immediately of the stuff I saw when a friends dad took us to a car show in the early 70s in Missouri.



See what I mean? Very cool!



As we wound around the house, to the hand ball court and almost to the grave out by the pool, I started to have issues with my camera. The batteries were wearing down and I hadn't thought to toss a few extras in my pocket. So I repeatedly turned it off to save power and then turn it on again to take another shot.



I've found in the past that when the thing tells me the batteries are dead I can turn it off, let the charge build up again and get a few extra shots out of it. So I was doing that, over and over, more than ever before, until the camera began to behave in strange ways.

It would go dead on me, but unlike the usual occurrence where the camera shuts down and the lens folds back into the camera body, this time the lens would stay extended. When the camera was turned back on the focus would extend to it's maximum level and then stick there. I had to force the lens back into the body while turning it on and off again.



After the thing died on me I cussed myself for not carrying extra batteries, and then I realized that I could still take pictures with my phone. Shitty pictures, admittedly, but still... After getting through the house and the grave site I walked in the steady drizzle back to the car and got new batteries for the camera. But the friggin' thing still didn't work. No change.I would turn it on and then the lens would extend all the way out and stick there. That's when I was REALLY cussin'. I thought I was truly fucked, having abused this poor little piece of Chinese crap beyond it's capacity.

Then it hit me. I started to console myself, thinking that I'd gotten my moneys worth from this one and now I could go out and get one of the slimmer, more portable (concealable), better cameras I always love to fondle at the store.I forced the lens down one more time, put my camera in my pocket and continued to walk through the private plane museum and the car museum, taking shitty pictures with my phone. By the time we got most of the way through the cars the phone was filling up. SHIT!!!! So I started to send the pictures to my hard drive and erase them, one by one, so I could take more. FUCK!!!!

Out of frustration, hoping for the best, I took my camera back out and tried it again and the friggin' thing worked perfectly! Relief! I walked back to the start of the car museum and ran through it quickly, taking better, but still dark shots of the cool stuff there. The camera still works fine today, so my lust for a smaller, lighter, cooler camera has once again been put on hold.



In the end, after walking past all the t-shirts that i knew I'd never wear and other souvenirs that were up for sale I ended up getting two Elvis CDs, one Blues/Rock and the other Country, and the drink cozy you see above (the head didn't come with it, but it completes the picture, don't you think?). After listening to the country music CD I ended up giving it away. Yuk! But the first half of that Blues/Rock CD is WONDERFUL!

By the time we got through all of that, we'd been walking around this place for about 4 four hours! Pooped, to say the least, and soaking wet. With the rain showing no signs of letting up we decided to blow off walking down Beale street and our plans to eat good BBQ and listen to good music. We can come back next year and do that another night.

Who knew that as we drove on west, into Arkansas, that the countryside would be completely friggin' bereft of other, decent food options. We ended up going without, driving all the way to the outskirts of Little Rock and staying the night in a cheap, unpleasant little hotel right off I-30.

By then Denise and I had gotten on one anthers very last nerve and the vibe was chilly. It didn't get much better until about half way through the next day. More about that later.

Enough is enough for now. I'll put an end to this road trip drama in the next post. It's gone on way to long on this blog and I'm getting sick to death of talking about it. Of course, if I could rewind and do it all over again I'd jump at it. Next year can't get here fast enough. But we'll talk. Cheers.

Friday stuff.

Denise and I had dinner here in Killeen with my mom and my cousin Trish last night. We met them at the Olive Garden, and surprisingly found we didn't have to wait for a table even though it seemed crowded. Mom hadn't been there in a while, so she was lookin' forward to it. She and Trish had the Eggplant Parmesan, Denise had the Stuffed Chicken Marsala and I went with the old standby, Spaghetti with meatballs.

Drinks all around... A big Margarita for mom, and glass of house wine for Denise and a tall chilled Shiner for me. Trish just went with tea. They probably though she was driving or something. After dinner we said our goodbys to mom and Trish got in our car. She spent last night at my place here in Killeen and then Denise took her to the Killeen Airport this morning. She's flying back up to Michigan as we speak. She's a sweetie and we'll miss having her here.

She and mom had a great time for the last two weeks, sittin' around and shopping and pullin' weeds in the back garden. I know mom will miss having her around. She'll probably be thrown back into some emotions now that she's alone in the house again. I'll make sure and try to take up some of that slack when I can.

My sister got a job in Oklahoma the other day and now is in a panic to get herself moved up there. She's gonna give me a bunch of stuff, including some huge old speakers from the late 1970s. I'll have to get one of them fixed, but they really blast the tunes when you crank 'em. Could be cool. Probably get me busted on a noise ordinance violation.

Her relationships with mom and I have been strained since dad died, with her perpetrating lots of childish melodrama, throwing fits and going into a panic when mom threatened to cut her off. Maybe in a decade or so she'll be able to look back on this and see that by cutting her off, mom got her off her ass and up to Oklahoma so she could have a normal life. I doubt it though. She has a seemingly endless capacity for self delusion and projection. I'll be glad she's gone, and I'll be praying for her to succeed.

Thinkin' about where I'll take mom to eat tonight. Maybe somewhere we haven't been in a while. I'll tell ya where we went later. It's all still up in the air. Denise and I are planning to try to get some yard work done this afternoon and then maybe go swimming at the colleges fitness center afterwords. She's been goin' out there to swim in the evenings, while I teach, for about two weeks now. We're both determined to lose weight. Well, I'm determined to eat and drink as much as I can handle and work out so as not to become a complete elephant seal. We'll see how it works out.

I also got a call from Holly yesterday, sayin' she was in town and we should get together. We'll all go out to eat, maybe BJs, on Saturday. She's a sweetie. It should be fun.

You guys have a great weekend and we'll get back into "The Woods" on Monday. I'm enjoyin' the hell out of writing that stuff. Memories are flooding back, with things seepin' back into my mind that I haven't thought about in 35 years. I think this sort of reawakening is the best, or near best thing about bloggin' about your past.

Anyway, cheers guys. we'll talk later.

One of the perks of being a service brat was getting to live in some cool places, and visit some other cool places from time to time.

My family was stationed in England in the summer of 1967, and lived there till the late summer of 1970. It was a return trip for everyone in the family but me. My folks had been stationed there in the early 1950s, and my older sister had been born there in '54. Things were pretty good for Americans in Europe back in those days if you were living on the economy. The exchange rate was VERY favorable (opposite of what it is now), so we could afford to go on trips every summer to the continent and see the sights. Pretty amazing situation for a sharecroppers kid and his family from Bell county Texas to find themselves in. Tall cotton.

Our first vacation, summer of '68, was about a week spent driving around Spain in a tour bus. The second, the summer of '69, was a trip to Germany and Austria. The last one, in the summer of 70, just before we packed up and headed back to the states, was a long, 10 day bus trip that took us from Munich, down through Austria to Naples, and then back up through Switzerland to Germany again. That one was a doozie, and I was lovin' it.

As a kid (ages 6 to 9 through those years), I soaked up all the history and culture of Europe, and it was easy to do. living in England would have been enough. Christ, the place oozed history. But it just got ratcheted up when we went to the continent. Hell, it seemed that everywhere we stopped in Spain there were castles and armor and big racks of swords to tempt my adolescent imagination. I used to run up to those racks and fondle the swords, thinking they were all real, imagining all the carnage they'd been involved in. it was bliss. I used to drive my folks CRAZY wanting one. I ended up with two new ones, crossed with a wooden plack. Basic tourist setup. Loved the hell out of it, and hung it over my bed for years. It's probably in my parents attic now.

The trip to Spain was the first major exposure I had to a different people and a different culture. I don't even think of the British as being different, even though they really are. Living there for three years made them folks, and I still feel a huge kinship with them. But the Spanish were different, speaking a different language and having a much more pronounced public religious life. We saw castles and ruins and LOTs of institutions of the Catholic church there, all dripping with history and drama. I remember seeing paintings by El Greco and Ribera, including this picture, which we saw at a museum in Toledo.



It's called The Bearded Woman, and purports to show a bearded woman breast-feeding a baby. I remember looking up at the full length painting, a lot larger than I was at the age of 6, with the tour guide grinning at me, and thinking "Eeew, that's not a woman. That's a old man with tits!" You know that had to fuck up the mind of an impressionable child. Probably screwed me up for life (nice rack, by the way).

Between this and all the other religious images, with the fully painted statues of Jesus bleeding on the cross, and crumpled down and bleeding from wounds off the cross, with blood dripping from his eyes and mouth and everywhere else, I stayed pretty freaked out much of the time we were there. I remember, both in Germany and Spain, being puzzled by the constant representations of Christ on the cross that we saw everywhere we went. Those blood soaked statues scared the hell out of me, effecting me the same way as a scary statue of Dracula in the wax museum in London. It occurred to me later that they were probably intended to do just that - literally scare the HELL out of the viewer. Provide important lessons and messages to a largely illiterate public (back in the old days).

The coolest thing I remember about Spain was the city of Segovia, with the Alcazar castle, the Romanesque cathedrals, and the huge Roman aqueduct.



I'll never forget our tour bus driving under the arches of that aqueduct, and parking outside a cafe where we ate lunch. The pictures we took turned out to be the classic tourist shot, repeated in most of the postcards from the time. The Romans fascinated me then, as now, so anything that was associated with them got my attention in a big way.

Spain was an allied country at that time, and a NATO ally of the United States, but Generalissimo Franco was still alive then, and there was a lot of violent crap going on in the world. I remember seeing the Spanish cops with the interesting, old fashioned hats, and I think I knew that something was up with them, but I was too young to pay close attention to any of that. I was too young, and too wrapped up in ancient violence to pay close attention to what was going on in my own time.

It was the peak of the war years, but I had no real clue that Vietnam was happening, although I knew something was up. I think my uncle Bob was there at the time (Colonel in the Army, Military Police), but my dads job in communications and his work with SAC largely shielded him from threat of being sent there. I found out much later that there had been a chance he could have been sent there when we moved back to the States in '70. He told me later that he'd had the choice of going to Hawaii or Missouri. I said "Hawaii? What the hell were you thinking?" He said that Hawaii was WAY too close to the war, and that it was not uncommon for men to be sent to 'Nam when their families were sent back to the states. I guess he was a bit concerned about it, understandably.

Most the stuff that was going on in my own world had to do with the IRA, blowing up pubs and fighting the British for control of Northern Ireland. I absorbed a lot of that stuff from the British media, and developed some pretty funny attitudes towards the Irish. I could tell you who the prime minister was, and who Bernadette Devlin was, and Ian Paisley, but the stuff in my own country was a mystery. I think maybe I had a vague awareness that a recent President had been from Texas, and that I was from Texas, but I didn't know what the hell that was. Not a clue. Too much movin' around, I guess.

The trip to Germany and Austria in '69 was also full of old castles and opulent palaces. We went to the Linderhof palace, where "Mad" King Ludwig of Bavaria had his famous Grotto, with the swan boat. Now THAT place was cool! We went to Ludwigs Neuschwanstein Castle, that Walt Disney had copied for Disneyland.



The visit to the castle was not without recrimination. There was a winding road going up to the castle from the town (you can kind of see the end of it here), and people were renting carriages and riding up, getting the full tourist experience. Dad would have none of it, so my mom, sister and I were forced to hoof it. God, did we bitch, particularly after every carriage passed us and we got to see people enjoying themselves in comfort. Our family vacations are famous for those sorts of moments. Cheap bastard. Spend a shit load of money on something in one moment and then pinch pennies in another.

Later on in the tour we went up to the peak of Zugspitze in the Bavarian alps (this time by cable car). It's the tallest Mountain in the Bavarian alps, with a beautiful big cross on the top. I was starting to get used to those crosses. Later I went swimming in the lake at the base of the mountain. Snow and sunny swimming on the same day? Good times. Germany was fun, but the best vacation was the last one.

Just before we left for home, mom, sis and I went on a 10 day bus tour from Munich to Naples and back. Dad had to work so it was just the three of us. Summer of 1970, and sis was about 15 then, and old enough to want to be involved in all the adult activities. One night in Germany, at the very start of the tour, some of the adults took the teenagers to a beer hall and got them all loaded. Mom and I stayed at the hotel that night, and I still remember when sis came back sick as a dog. Spent the rest of the night worshiping the porcelain alter. Mom was pissed, but not as much at sis as at the adults who let her daughter get loaded. Needless to say the bus was quiet the next day. The trip through the Alps was amazing. I'd never seen mountains like that before, and they really blew me away. The trip really took off for me though when we got down to Italy.

For about a week, for lunch and dinner every day, I had a huge plate of spaghetti. This was my favorite meal at the time. The standard thing is (to this day) that the meals on the tours offer you ether pasta or Veal for lunch or dinner. I ALWAYS chose pasta. The most beautiful places we saw were Florence, Pisa, and Venice. I'll never forget going to the Piazza della Signiora for the first time. I was reading lots of classic comics back then, and ironically was reading one during the tour about the Italian sculptor Cellini. The comic ended with his creation of the famous statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa. Next thing you know I'm standing in front of the real thing, thinking it's about the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life.

I remember going to Venice, before the place was flooding, and seeing the gondolas. Beautiful. My favorite thing there was going and watching the glass blowing. Cool as hell. mom loaded up on LOTS of stuff there. That good exchange rate came in REALLY handy. When we got down to Rome, and I got to walk around the Forum, and the Colosseum, and the Catacombs, and the Vatican, and the Sistine Chapel, my socks were officially knocked off. The absolute coolest place though was Naples.

The bay of Naples was a choice vacation stop 2000 years ago, and it's still wonderful. What made it cool for me was a visit to Pompeii, a Roman city that had been buried by ash from a volcano in 79AD. The idea of walking the streets of a real Roman city, and looking at the remains of actual victims of the disaster, floored me. I was amazed by the Colosseum there, and imagined gladiatorial games going on as I stood there watching. A decade or so later, I learned that about a year after I'd been standing on that very spot, the band Pink Floyd had performed a concert there for a British TV special there. The recording of that concert was a hotly desired bootleg for years, and then in the late 1990s the band actually released an audio recording as a bonus to a re release of the album Ummagumma. Years later I found they'd released the DVD! More bliss, I wanna tell ya.

One of the best tunes from that live show was a version of the tune Echoes, from the album Meddle. Here's a video of that performance, in two parts (YouTube doesn't have a good version in one sitting, so you'll need to click on the second video as the first one ends), with a slow intro showing the Colosseum I'm talking about. It's worth a listen.



And it continues here, with an awesome base line.



Love the mix of everything here; the guitar screaming, the base hitting you, the keyboards in the background, and the drums, all combining for an amazing musical experience.

About a week after we got home from that last tour, delivery trucks arrived. Crates of goodies were disgorged onto the floor, and we got to relive the trip all over again. For years after that I'd tell people that I'd been to Rome, and the Idea didn't even seem to ring true in my own head. We moved from England to Missouri a while after the tour, and life moved on. I lived with the relics of these tours decorating my various rooms (in various places) for many years after. The green mountaineering hat from Germany with the pins, the banners, and the postcards tacked to the wall, and the full color tour books on my shelf, all leafed through and well worn. All that stuff is still around here somewhere, but it's mostly been replaced with more recent relics. Funny how the objects of youth fade in importance as time goes by, and yet stay in your heart.

I managed to get back to Pompeii as an adult, when I went out on my first teaching trip with the Navy in 1990. I'd just about given up on having a teaching career, and then I got a call from the folks here at Central Texas College. I took a job teaching History and Government on deployed Navy ships, and the college flew me to Naples, where the USS Thorn was at anchor. I taught a semester in four-and-a-half weeks, having class 6 days a week, and on Sunday I took my two roommates on a tour.

We walked the ruins of the city, and I looked specifically for one statue that I remembered vividly from the earlier trip. Finding it, reconnecting with that earlier time, and that little kid that I'd been all those years ago, proved to be an emotional experience. A lot of feelings washed over me, and I kept thinking back to the trip in 1970, and my folks, my sister, and what my life had been like back then. I'd grown up a lot in the intervening years, and I think standing there again symbolized that fact to me. I'd begun a new journey, towards a fun career, and a full life.

This time I was callin' the shots, and I also looked up another Roman city, Herculaneum. Herculaneum is a much smaller ruin, due to the fact that it's situated under the present city of Herculano. Thing is, the area that has been revealed is very plush, and while Pompeii is huge and hard to really see in one trip, Herculaneum is easy to see in one afternoon. I was a tour guidin' mutha that day. When we got back to the ship and I laid out in my rack, I couldn't help but think back to 1970 again. What a cool life I was having. I'd been able to travel all over Europe and America as a kid, and now the college was paying me to travel all over the world, doing a job that I loved.

We're all a lot older now, but those memories are still there. Dad is still a pain in the ass, but I've learned to get along with him, and we enjoy one another. We'll be hitting the Chinese food place again today, and probably hitting golf balls after. Mom's doing fine, and their house is still decorated with all the nick knacks she picked up along the journey. We all still have lots of crap that we've accumulated over the years. Sis still has issues, but she's working on them. Our life on the road turned us into a tight little unit, and we've found that we don't really like to stay anywhere too long. We all start getting nervous after about three years, thinking it's time to go.

Anyway, it's early, and I've got to go, so take care of yourself this weekend and I'll see ya on the other side. FHB.

I think this has something for the whole family.

Ok, It's a friggin' CRIME to wreck an old TA like that. Criminal!

Gonna have dinner with dad again tonight, and now that the snow has melted we've added a new wrinkle to our normal Friday routine. Before we go to the Chinese food place, we go to the local driving range. He watches me as I hit a bucket of balls, and he hits a few and gives me little lessons and hints to help my swing. After that, having worked up and appetite (like that's necessary) we go hit the buffet line.

Dad was a huge golfer when I was growing up and he's wanted to get me to like the game ever since I can remember. He was taught to play in Germany right after WW2. He says this German POW showed him how to hit correctly in a large derelict opera hall. It was a rich mans game back then, and I think my dad, the son of a tenant framer, saw golf, and being an Army officer (eventually in the Air Force) as a path out of his old life. He became a shark on the golf course, and played all the time, as long as I can remember. He made me a cut down driver when I was very little, and still tells me and everyone else that I had a natural swing when I was a kid. I don't know. I never have felt comfortable in that swing. Can't feel it well enough to be able to feel like I know what I'm doing, if you know what I mean.

I was always more into archery as a kid. Used to watch all those old movies about medieval times, and always wanted to be Robin Hood, or the guy shooting arrows out of the arrow loops in the castle, or the guy in the formation at Agincourt, shooting arrows up into the air into the French army formations. When we moved to Missouri in 1970 I found other kids there who loved it too, and we'd shoot arrows into anything. That place was paradisaical. We'd stand at one end of the field that stretched out through and connected averyone's back yard and shoot arrows into the air, just to watch them fly and see how far they'd go. There was an old tree in the woods there that we'd shoot arrows into, rotted and missing half it's bark.

We got a huge amount of enjoyment out of walking down the trail, pretending to be surprised by a bear or something, and then shooting arrows into that old tree. They would always make a cool thud as they hit it. We'd cross over the creek and pull them out, and then go through the ritual again. We called it the elephant tree. I think I'd seen an illustration in National Geographic showing Alexander the Great defeating the Indian Army elephants by filling them with arrows. That Image is still in my head.

Never forget looking at my first issue of Bowhunter magazine, picked up at the local T.G.& Y., and seeing that there was a world out there where adults shot arrows, and it wasn't silly kids stuff, as my folks always seemed to think. We moved away from that house and into base housing before we moved back to Texas, and mom and dad told me that I couldn't have the bows and arrows on the base. It all had to be put away. Seems like they were always tryin' to get me to do that. They didn't value it, and saw it as kids stuff. Wanted me to give it up and grow up and play football or somethin'. I don't think the gear made it into the moving van. It was like closing a book on a huge part of my childhood.

Next time I picked up a bow was about five years later in San Antonio. I tried to shoot someone else's arrow into a neighbors tree only about 10 yards away, a shot that I would have easily been able to make earlier, and I missed it. Shocked the hell out of me. I guess I accepted that it was over then. There weren't any woods to play in there, and I'd lost whatever talent I'd had, but dad was still there wanting me to play golf with him. Maybe refusing was my way of getting back at him, or my way of differentiating myself from him. Same thing went with other sports too. He never could get me interested in anything, and I could never get them to take anything I loved seriously. You'd think I was switched at birth or something.

I finally relented and started playing golf back in the late 1980s while I was in graduate school and worked at the Colonial Country Club in Ft. Worth. Most of the other employees played, and they got to play the course once a year. I guess I picked up the interest vicariously, listening to them talk around the club, wanting to be included and play the club myself. Dad was beside himself. He made me a set of clubs and I started practicing and playing. Loved it, but never got too good at it. Then, when I got the job teaching on the ships, and was gone all the time, I never had a chance to practice. When I did play, I was always loosing balls and feeling like an idiot when I hit a lousy shot. Never seemed to take to it the way I did archery as a kid. Never became easy and effortless the way archery had. It sucks too, because it's no longer a rich mans game. Hell, everyone plays golf now.

Anyway, Dads old as hell now and can't hit the ball very far anymore. Depresses the hell out of him, but he's always asking me when we're gonna go hit some balls. For a long time I'd think to myself "How many times did you take me to shoot arrows, you old jackass? When did you ever show interest in anything I wanted to do?" But he's old as hell now, and it seems wrong to be petty about it, to hold the crap from the past against him. so I finally decided a few weeks ago to start taking him to the range, incorporating it into our Friday routine. Weather permitting, we'll go out there and I'll let him give me hints. I doubt that I'll learn anything, but he'll enjoy it, and that's what matters now.

I'm also supposed to go shooting (guns) this weekend in Gatesville, so I'll be able to sight in the new .22 rifle and maybe shoot Civil War muskets. I've evolved from arrows to bullets (another thing my dad's not into), but I still have archery in my blood. One of these days I'll post pictures of the sets I've built. It's a fun hobby now and then, when I'm not busy with other things. So, enjoy your Friday and take care of yourselves. Ya know I will.

Update to the update: Well, It's Good Friday, but isn't every Friday good?

I never met a bad one. Don't have to go in to school this morning, or Monday morning ether. So much for separation of church and state down at the old high school. They have a few free days they can take off, so they use them to take religious holidays. But then, I can remember back when Spring Break was Easter Break, so it doesn't bother me. Hell, I'll use any excuse to take a day off, or in this case, sleep in and relax. I still have to go in to the base and teach at lunch time, but what can you do?

Between the morning classes, the lunch time classes, the afternoon feed and post-feed naps, and the evening classes (not to mention the two online classes), I've really turned into a lazy lump of weak shit lately. You've probably noticed that, what with all the easy YouTube posts. The house is a mess. I've got clothes and sheets in a pile on the dryer, clean but wadded up. The clean dishes are still in the dish washer, dirty ones in the sink. My fish are swimmin' in their own filth, but then again that's sort of what they always do.

Aside from a few Bluebonnets poppin' up here and there, the yard is a veritable weed farm. Thistles all over the back yard. I swear, I spray poison every year, and the fuckers just come back stronger. The last few weekends were wet as hell, so I could avoid going out there and spending the time crawling around with a screw driver, but it looks like this weekend is gonna be the time. God, I dread the shit out of it. No gun shows this weekend, so I guess I'll get it done.

I had to buy new tires this week, and it's amazing how much better the Solara rides when it's not on bald, mismatched crap. I had to have my home air conditioner serviced today too. I have to do it at about this time every year. As soon as the temps get warmer I start hearing the ice building up and then falling off the unit in the wall. Have a few slow leaks in the coils, but as it is, all I have to do is get the coolant refilled once a year. Hard to justify the expense of getting the whole thing replaced at this point. So, between this and that, I've been hemorrhaging money lately. Funny how it always feels easier and more fun to do that at a gun show.

Still haven't got the scabbard for my neighbors old knife. Ordered it almost 10 days ago and they were supposed to send it express. Emailed 'em yesterday sayin' "What the fuck?" Haven't heard back yet. Had a project of my own over the last week. Picked up a new toy in Ft. Worth last Saturday. Got a WASR-22, a Romanian semi-auto training rifle. It's basically a Romanian version of an East German training rifle. An AKM that shoots .22LR from a 10 rnd clip. It came out of the box lookin' like this...



And after a few days tinkering in the geeeraj...



New AK-74 front sight post and muzzle break (bayonet lugs ground over), new laminated wood and plum colored plastic furniture, and a cool modification on the original Romanian (Romak) butt stock. All replacement parts are US made, so it's kosher. Picked up a box of .22LR at Wally World, so I'll probably take it out to the property this weekend and do some plinkin'. I've read in reports that the action doesn't eject the spent cartridges so reliably, but I'll see about that. Should be a fun toy to tinker with anyway.

Wait a second, wasn't I supposed to pull weeds this weekend? Hahahahahahaha. Fools. There's ALWAYS time for plinkin'. Anyway, Jesus, it's a holiday. I'll be takin' dad to eat Chinese food tonight, and then we'll see what happens. Have a great weekend yerself, and have a great Easter. Should be lots of cool old bible epics on TV to watch, and great food to eat. Lots of layin' around time. DAMN THOSE WEEDS!

And by the way, If you want a good read this weekend, check this out. He says it like it is.
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Update: Well, I took the rifle out to my land south of town after school and shot one clips worth of shells, just to see how the thing works, and it works fine. Only problem I had was one round that bent and got hung up in the action. I took it out, straitened it with my fingers, shoved it forcefully in the action, and it shot and ejected just like the others. I'd heard that the rounds didn't eject all the time, but got caught up in the action, but I didn't experience this. Again, only one clips worth, but it worked fine and I can't wait to take it to a range and sight it in. Love the whip crack sound of those .22LRs.

I took dad to the driving range, and then we did the usual Friday night feed. When I got home, I looked in the mail box and there was a package. Mission accomplished! (look here for details on the mission).



The sheath finally arrived. I checked it out, put the knife in it's new home, and took it over to my neighbor. He was pleased. We talked about hanging it on his wall next to his medals, and his wife said that was a good idea. She said something about having a shiv on the wall, but we both outvoted her, I think. We'll see what happens. I wouldn't take any money from them. Told them it was my pleasure. I got a huge kick out of having it and learning about it. Now I'm gonna see about getting myself one. Saw one in Ft. Worth last weekend, but the dude wanted $250 for it. Not worth that much to me. Think I can make a much better deal elsewhere.

Anyway, the weather has turned cold and windy, and there's talk of colder temps and snow in Oklahoma tonight, so we may in fact be experiencing Global Warming after all. Sheeeeeitttt!
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Oh, and here's what the new baby looks like with the East German scope attached. Yep, it's got a scope rail on the left side, like all the other Romanian AKs on the market.



Notice I changed out the wooden foregrip with plum plastic, to match the undergrip. Love it!

So, it's a hot weekend. Yer at a pool party at a buddy's house, and someone gets a really stupid idea.

This is all about trust. Trust, and alcohol. How drunk would you need to be?



And you may have seen this before. It's been goin' around. Too damn funny not to post. Enjoy.



So, I'm heading to the little town of Sweetwater, Texas this weekend. They're having a combined chili cook-off, rattlesnake roundup, carnival, and gun show. Now folks, what the hell else do you need?

Ok, get yer minds out of the gutter. I'm sure I'll be able to round THAT up if needs must. Chili cook-off folks...



are notoriously open minded, horny as hell, and easily plied with small amounts of booze... or so I hear. And if that doesn't work, there's always the carnival folks. Shiny objects and booze? I understand that it works. Many a marriage has been based on less.

A few friends will be competing in the cook-off, and I'll be eating copious amounts of BBQ, and maybe judging the competition. Can you say ringer? Might even eat some BBQ roasted rattlesnake. It ain't bad. Weather looks like it'll be nice; 70s in the day time and 40s at night. Perfect camping weather. I might even get to buy a new toy at the gun show. If the ninjas of the nanny state have their way, I'm sure these sorts of shows will soon be a thing of the past, so why not splurge?

I'll have an early out at the high school tomorrow morning, and then I'm off from there for a week of spring break. On the way back to town to get ready to head to Sweetwater, I'll spend a while at the local veterans cemetery. An old buddy of mine, Bobby Spence, passed away this week. He was one of the attendants in the building on base that I teach out of. Known him for years. Great guy. Army vet. Korea and Nam, I think. Supposedly his wife found him, seemingly sleeping, eyes closed, hands clasped behind his head. She shook his foot to wake him and discovered how cold he was. Now, if that isn't the way to go, I don't know what is. God bless him. He'll be missed.

So, relax and have a great weekend, and I'll see ya on the other end.

The genious of invention; taking something ordinary and turning it into something exciting.

Check this out. Someone took an old trimmer and turned it into... well, what the hell would you call this? A new, loud, tricky form of locomotion. Can't really say it's environmentally friendly, but I bet the wipe outs are fun to watch.

Now, speakin' of weird technology, someone please explain this little gizmo to me. What the hell? Some sort of containment issue? An incubator of some sort? NASA astronauts or deep sea divers going through some sort of decompression? You tell me.

Oh yea, it's also Fatty Friday, so click on this if you feel you need to. Not quite sure what the funnel is for. Don't really wanna know ether. On the other hand, don't even think about clickin' on this one. It looks VERY painful to me. I wouldn't go there if I were you.

Pooped. It's the end of another week, and you know what that means.

30,000 years ago this was the acme of beauty and bounty, so far as we can tell. The one on the left is called the Venus of Lespague, found in 1922 in a cave in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Now she's got some junk in the trunk. This specimen was damaged during excavation, with the huge droopy breasts being broken off. Here's a few images of this one, and another frontal shot of a complete statue.

Most of them have the typical heavy set, pendulous breasts, featureless face, in fact I think the figurines are usually headless. The one below was found in Austria. She's called the Venus of Wallendorf. Both are thought to be around 25,000 to 30,000 years old. Nice cans eh?

They've found these little statues all over the old world, and think they had something to do with fertility, or a bountiful harvest, or maybe just the notion of wealth and plenty in societies that probably suffered regularly from seasonal famines and scarcity. Of course, nowadays we don't attach the same meanings to things. Most would say, confronted by such an image...




Damn, it looks like another edition of Big Fat Floppy Tittied Friday.



That's right, it's another Friday, and you've just been suckered into the inappropriate zone. God love her, she still gets out there. You know she's got to have back pain from hell.

I used to read how researchers thought all these statues represented an exagerated immage of women. It occurs to me, maybe all those little statues they've been finding showing the "Neolithic Venus", in the same visage over and over, were just the neolithic version of Fatty Friday? Maybe they were passed around the fire by generations of neolithic hunter-gatherers who farted, scratched themselves and grunted something like "Dude, check this one out. Gnarly. Ride the wave man. Ride the wave". Maybe?

A Buddy of mine just sent these pictures, with the caption "Tough One To Score".

I don't think I could put it better. What sort of mutant beast grows antlers like this? What a friggin' mess. The hunter's got to be perplexed. You'd wanna be proud of it, but yer kinda scared of it too. Like goin' fishin' and haulin' in a big one, but when you land it it's got three heads. Sheeesh. Where the hell would you start countin'?



Looks more like a diseased growth than a set of antlers.



Looks like one of those sad, tree pruning butcher jobs when they cut the limbs off a tree way too far back and the new limbs grow out of the stumps totally unnaturally. I hate it when people do that.



Is that a proud daddy, or a guy sayin' "Damn, have you ever?" He almost looks like he's holding it at arms length, just in case.

Anyway, It's the end of another week and it couldn't happen to soon. Pooped! Think I'm approachin' burnout, and it's only February. As you may remember, I taught two mini term classes over the Christmas and New Years holidays so that the money would keep comin' in. As soon as those classes ended I started seven more classes, two of which are early morning advanced placement classes at a local high school, and one of which is another four week mini term. I mean two classes ended on a Friday and the others began the next Monday. I'm used to that sort of thing, but this time they've experimented with offering mini terms along with the regular schedule, and I was greedy enough to volunteer.

This latest four week class ends tomorrow, and another three week class begins Monday. I feel like a fat hairy rat on a wheel, but it's a very profitable wheel to be strapped to. I mean, It ain't ditch diggin', so I can't honestly complain too much, but it still drains the hell out of you when you feel like you really don't have any down time. I've got about 30 or 45 minutes to relax between classes in the morning and my lunch time classes, and about three hours in the afternoon, between the lunch time classes and the evening classes. I ether eat out somewhere or come home and throw somethin' together.

I check my email, check on my online class (oh yea, that makes eight classes), and then head back for my daily mini class (5 to 7pm), and then head to the late night classes (one Monday/Wednesday, the other Tuesday/Thursday, from 7:30 to 10pm). I get home between 10 and 10:30pm most nights, and then I check the emails again, try to relax with some TV, or surfin' this thing, checkin' up on ol' Mushy and everyone, and then I hit the sack with a book, if I have the energy. Before I know it it's 6:30am and all this shit starts again. I just finished a great book called "The Long Walk". Check it out. An excellent read.

I know, friggin' ridiculous. What's worse is the fact that I'm fightin' a cold this week. One of my students probably turned in a test after coughin' on it and now I'm takin' pills to try to keep it at bay. The last thing I need with this schedule is to be draggin' around coughin' and feelin' like shit. So I plan to stay home this weekend, relax, and try to recharge the batteries. Dad and I will be heading to our normal Chinese food outing this Saturday night, and then we'll be back to our normal Friday night outings beginning next week. Teaching this last four week class (5 to 7pm, M. to Fr.) pushed us to Saturday night, but the next mini term class will be just three weeks long, from 1:45 to 4:30pm every day, so Dad and I'll be back in business. That's right, my three hour afternoon break will shift next week to the evening, so I'll have time to eat dinner at the actual dinner hour, like a civilized person.

I've also been heading to a few local drinking establishments a few nights this week to watch a few of my buddies from work play pool in their local league. Means I got home about midnight one night last week, and last night and tonight. I enjoy their company, and it amounts to about the only social life I have outside my family and the classroom. Probably contributes to bein' pooped, but what the hell. You gotta have a little time outside of class to laugh and listen to old married guys drink and tell lies about women. These are the same folks I go to chili cook offs with, and go tubin' with in the summer. They're a great bunch. Fun lovin'. You've got to have people like this in yer life or you'll go crazy.

I get a huge break tomorrow morning, not having to go in to the morning classes. The high school kids are taking their TASP tests, so I get to sleep in till 10am. That will do a lot to start the rechargin' process. So, I hope all of you have a new sense of ease and confidence, warmed by the notion that your own life may not be as beat down as you thought it was. I guess someones always runnin' faster on that wheel than you are. I'm pretty well compensated, so I can't complain.

To wrap it up, here's a joke a friend sent me recently...

From an actual sign at a golf course in Scottsdale, Arizona:


1. BACK STRAIGHT, KNEES BENT, FEET SHOULDER WIDTH APART.

2. FORM A LOOSE GRIP.

3. KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN!

4. AVOID A QUICK BACK SWING.

5. STAY OUT OF THE WATER.

6. TRY NOT TO HIT ANYONE.

7. IF YOU ARE TAKING TOO LONG, LET OTHERS GO AHEAD OF YOU.

8. DON'T STAND DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF OTHERS.

9. QUIET PLEASE...WHILE OTHERS ARE PREPARING.

10. DON'T TAKE EXTRA STROKES.



WELL DONE. NOW FLUSH THE URINAL, GO OUTSIDE & TEE OFF.

Have a great weekend. See ya in the later.

Oh, what the hell, I guess it's Fatty Friday, so here goes nothin'. I know you didn't see it, but there WAS a fat guy in that picture. And to think, she's got good taste in reading material too. Now, for real this time, I'll see ya in the later. I'm off to bed, to dream of fat hairy women and easy money...

or is it easy women and fat hairy money. Yea, that sounds much better.

Well this is bullshit.

The NFL has come up with a ban on tailgating and RVs in Miami at the Superbowl. Read this and see. I mean, I 'm not into tailgating or any of that stuff, but this "security issue" sounds more like a cheap assed gimmick to force people to buy expensive food and booze inside the stadium.

Wounder what she thinks about it?


Oh, yea, it must be friday. Happy weekend folks. It'll be gun shows and sloth for me.

Ok, It's that time again. Ya know what I mean.

Damn, somebody pop the valve that thing before it explodes! That may be the valve there over this eyebrow. Go ahead, give it a tug!

And I know about not judging different cultures and shit, but somebody explain this shit to me...

And I don't care what what you say, THIS guy's got a great follow through. Give him a cigar.

Have a great weekend folks. Stay dry/warm/from makin' too much of an ass of yourself, whichever pertains.

Ok, this is just wrong, but it's too funny.

Apparently Saddam had a little Kitten. Poor baby.