Macho Mockingbird and Other Spicy Stories...

 I though I would flesh out the story of the Macho Mockingbird a little more. I have been thinking about a new tattoo and this certainly is a candidate because it does hold some transcendental meaning. It has a back story and could be related to events that may or may not or could or did not happen. Or maybe they did. People tell me stuff I said and did all the time. Like the facts involved here I don't always remember. Maybe I did, maybe I said, maybe not.

Some years ago before blogs and internet influencing, before conspiracy theories and when global warming had not come to the attention of certified YouTube researchers me and Scott Smith (yes that's his real name) came up with an apocalyptic sci-fi novel idea. It started when Mr. Smith saw a mockingbird, the State Bird of Texas, eating habanero peppers from his garden. That was a macho mockingbird for sure and when it came time to bottle hot sauce Mr. Smith got his artist friend, Jon Stuart Anderson  to draw a logo. I was proud to receive a bottle. I love hot sauce.

Now we know how much trouble it is when something that is so much fun and we love so much happens to be illegal. Like say, catching as many fish as you can or driving as fast as you can. Fun stuff. Pick your own poison. What if hot sauce was made illegal? 

So from these events and ideas the story of a near future where an evil government has outlawed hot sauce. A good old boy is growing banned peppers deep in the pine forests of East Texas. To spread the freedom of the burn to the word he must avoid the authorities by stealing down the Neches Rive in a 12' flat bottom boat powered by a 1954 five and a half horsepower Johnson outboard motors. His destination is a shady connection at the river's mouth near Beaumont, Tx.

In addition to the atom bomb metaphor of peppers and hot sauce being illegal other murky environmental events, wars and domestic terrorism have rendered the river back to it's free flowing state and made many technologies such as modern outboard motors with computer brains that require fancy gas, oils and lubricants useless. 

With the relentless rain and flooding we have had lately I doubt you could find your way down the main river channel so you are probably getting the idea by now. A good, honest man takes on evil, injustice, and global warming. The animals are his allies and are led by the Macho Mockingbird. He wins by being the spiciest guy around.

Actually I think a rough draft or first take on this idea exists on paper somewhere. It's probably in a pretty crude state but it might be an idea that comes to maturity one day. 

In the mean time keep an eye on lawmakers. You never know what they are thinking. 

If I show up with a Macho Mockingbird tattoo maybe you better get one too.             

   

 

Meet Hamish Bruce Tulloch...

 Grandchild #8 made his appearance on Monday May 17th. Hamish Bruce Tulloch is 20 inches long and weighted 7 pounds 2 ounces. To continue with a family joke, which I am sure he will be disappointed in the future when he reads this blog if we don't make it, I have caught catfish larger than this. 

Mom and dad are fine and Grandma is in Chicago to oversee big brother Wallace. 

So we have a new blog character. Since Hamish is Scottish for James, kilts will be appropriate wear for when me and him go anywhere. I'll probably need XL. 

While Cathy made the quick trip by plane when it was seen that Hamish would be soon arriving I'll make the trip to meet him and retrieve Cathy by car sometime in the next days or so. 

I think Hamish already has a Texas trip scheduled for late summer so maybe you can meet him too. 

 

  

Fishing With the Grandkids...

Four adults, four kids under four. What could go wrong? Well nothing because with a one to one adult to child ratio we caught 23 catfish yesterday slip corking in 10' of water. 

Just look at me and Luca cruising across the lake. 

Here's a boat load of fun. We often thought we would buy a longer boat when we retired. Looks like the kids will probably buy their own boats. I soon might not need a boat at all.  

Plenty of action reeling by Ezra and Parker reeling in fish. 

Cathy took big fish honors but had to net it herself for all the apparent reasons. 

Morgan holds up a stocky blue cat with visions of blackened fillets dancing in his head. 

Actually I did catch one fish while holding a baby but there were a whole lot of missed bites. 

The Zamora boys with a hard days work. 

Actually there was one disaster when one of those old yellow Eagle Claw rods with the cork handle was sticking over the side of the boat and got broken when it hung on a bush. That pole, which had been assigned to use for Ezra last summer was probably 50 years old. Maybe I'll convert it to a short power rod and the little ones can continue to use it for tight line fishing.  

I tend to be a glass half full guy though and the broken rod will soon be forgotten. What will be remembered is when some one handed you one of Dad's Famous Hushpuppies. 

 

Take Me Out To The Ball Game...

We teamed up with John and Mary who had good tickets to go see the Astros play the Bluejays. It was a good game. I consider any game the Astros win a good game. I had thought on retirement I might catch more games but Covid came along and there were no spectators last year but with things slowly getting back to normal maybe my retirement will get back to what I imagined. 

I do not think I have seen a game with the roof open in Minute Maid Park. The weather was nice and our seats along the second deck, third baseline were shady with an uncrowded concourse area. 

Here's a photo of some friends with better seats behind home plate, more toward first base. Note to self, if the roof is open first base side is sunny. Technically these are better seats than what we had but they brought to mind the only Rangers game I have even seen. It was on a hot summer day, no enclosing roof and space age planet killing air conditioning and I recall my joy at the barest cloud passing over the sun for a brief instant of shade that I used to not sweat from the effort of raising a quick, cool drink to my mouth.   

Yuri Gurriel is Cathy's favorite Astro. If he's at bat I'm just cold booger on a stick. Nicknamed La Pina he has some fine looking hair that I just cannot compete with. He showed out in this game with at least 3 hits and a RBI sacrifice. 

Gurriel's younger brother was on the Bluejay team as was former Baseball Hall of Fame Astro Craig Biggio's son. 

This was my first international baseball game as the Bluejays are based in Toronto, Canada. I think in the history of baseball there have been about 28 Canadian players but they flew the Canadian flag and sang the Star Spangled Banner as well as the Canadian national anthem in French. Take that you English only nationalists and sports boycotters who confuse common decency with politics.   

I guess I had actually seen another game with the roof open because I watched it from the roof of that building peaking over he outfield stands. No, I did not sneak up there. It was during those days I was in with the in crowd. I probably won't be up there again unless I sneak in and a retirement budget won't support many games in the fancy seats I had for his game but I did note that a Poor man's Guide to Minute Maid Park I found on the internet reports nose bleed seats priced $5-$15 depending on how good the opponents are.   

Another good ticket deal is one offered by the Triple A Hosuton team, the Sugarland Skeeters. $180 gets you 10 tickets to be used in any combination. One person could go ten times, 10 people one time and so on. That's a good deal and I think I'll spring for it. 

Take me out to the ballpark! 

 

Parker Fishes Hard...

It's entered into family lore that if you steal quietly into Parker's room while she is napping you can hear her talking in her sleep. Phrases like, "catfish," "more bait," and "hand me the fillet knife" are clearly intelligible. Awake and on the lake Parker will fish hard.  

She also refers to the boat as "Grandma's boat." 

Parker is busy wearing out a Zebco 202. If you cast it, she will retrieve it. Of course that's not quite what we wanted as we were slip corking catfish yesterday on a very windy day on the lake that kind of made it hard to tell when you had a bite and even harder to set the hook well when you did. Parker missed two bites that as my dad would say of your cork, "went plum out of sight." I barely caught more fish than she did because I could not take my eyes off her cork to watch my own. 

Final tally for the fishing log was 9 catfish with a lot of missed bites and small fish throw backs.  

I recall a deep sea party boat trip with family once when my daughter Mary was about 10 or 12 years old. She was right along side the adults, steadily pulling red snapper off the bottom in 100' of water. The deck hand on the boat asked "where did you learn to fish, little girl?"

By that age she had been fishing so long she had forgotten what it was like to not fish. She replied to the deckhand, "I don't know." Parker is going to be just like that. 

 

Davey Crockett Really Came to Texas to Slip Cork Catfish...

Cathy wants you to see her fishing cap. It's the famous Davy Crockett quote, "You May All Go to Hell and I Will Go to Texas." Davy was a pretty good guy. While in the U.S. House of Representatives he opposed Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. He reported a Bigfoot sighting and you know what happened when he came to Texas. What they did not have room for on the hat was the rest of Crockett's words which were "and slip cork catfish."

With Hanks Creek Ramp, our usual launch place closed due to high water after the rains of the weekend we launched at Monterey Park and found the cats in about 7 feet of water around the cypress trees. There's miles of this kind of structure on Sam Rayburn and I would imagine that other than the occasional bass fisherman's passing crank bait there are cats that have not seen a hook.    

For great success all you need is some JPIGGS punch bait, a package of the biggest slip corks Bass Pro Shops sells, a Zebco reel, treble hooks and weights.. Oh, yeah, you might need a pair of fish pliers to take them off the hook, a live well, a frying pan, corn meal and cooking oil but some of those things are standard equipment in most homes.  

In my last blog post I mentioned a drop off and a weed bed that we fished to great success. We were in the same spot but different wind direction pointed us to a pocket further down the point. It's always good to know there is nearby structure. You can toss a bit of sour maize out for chum but without that drop off where the cats hide close by your catch will be limited and mostly small fish. We chummed but were on the fish from the first cast. They were handy to the area and the chum just concentrated them where we cast.  

All these fish were cooked and eaten. Final total 23 fat cats in two and a half hours fishing. The grandkids came over. Mary and Miguel took some by cousin Betty's house. They are swimming in our belly.

Luca will only eat wild caught fish.