Looking Back Through Time Today...

 I pursue a little family genealogy from time to time. It does not go to the extent a few friends and relatives efforts do where they travel and look up old records in court houses and graves in cemeteries. It's just a rainy day type thing that I do using ancestory.com when I can't play outside. Maybe one day when I can't play outside so well at all I'll check out the genealogy room at my local library which will probably have a staggering amount of info on my people who started coming to the area in the late 1830s and 40s. 

One particular person I have been curious about is someone who never made it to Angelia County. His name is Aqullia Nerren. I think I have picked up some vibe, maybe it's from the unusual name or the sparse information I have but it's cased me to look a bit further. I can't really call it all a proud history because it involves my people owning people and living in infamous places but it is an interesting history.  

Aquilla was my 4th great-grandfather. He was born in 1780 in Abbeville South Carolina. and passed away in Lafayette County, Mississippi in 1848 and was a slave owner. This is all I knew at one point so to flesh him out a bit I looked up Abbeville County. Before his birth Indian Treaties had been signed there and the native people had moved on. By the Civil War the area was a hot bed of succession activity. From 1882 to 1919 there were nine documented lynching's in the county. It's a poor county with median family income reported in 2010 at $33, 143. Lafayette County, Mississippi is thought to be the model for William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County which was where he set his famous gothic southern novels.  

Here is an online photo of someone's research into Aquilla with more details you can read for yourself.  

Aquilla was my 4th great grand father. His was John, who made it to Angelina County in 1848 with his family in a covered wagon and settled at Marion's Ferry running a ferry until his murder in 1850. If you read the document you will find mention of a slave, Solomon. You probably can't look up Solomon's genealogy very well since he was willed like property by John to youngest son George Nerren but apparently was so instrumental in the ferry which crossed to Nacogdoches that after the Civil War it became know as "Sol's Ferry." This is interesting because once I was fishing with a friend on the Attoyac River branch of Lake Sam Rayburn and he showed me an unofficial campground in the woods where old hairy county people came to camp and fish and he called it "Sol Bridge." I don't know if there is a connection.     

John was my 3rd great grandfather. His son George who owned Solomon was born in Yalobuscha County Mississippi in 1845, and passed in Angelina county in 1900. George had two sons B.F. Nerren who figures in the history of Angelina as a former sheriff and my great great grandfather John Quiller Nerren, the father of my grandmother Gladys Nerren Wallace. Quiller as they called him was born in Lufkin in 1869 and passed away. in 1946 in Granny's old house on Jack Street in Lufkin. I have a picture of Quiller around here somewhere but I can't find it. 

Let's see if I can get this right:

Aquilla was married to "Emilly" "Emelia" or Emily Learwood.

John Nerren was married to Elizabeth Mooney

George Nerren was married to Nancy Jane Needham and "had a relationship" which produced children with Julia Ridgway.

Quiller Nerren was married Aliza Lydia Albritton and that's why all Albritton's in Angelina County are related to me. 

There's a lot to learn from this history here. It's how we got here and it's how we move on. More information will come to light and we will adapt and add it to the record. As Faulkner said, "The past is not dead. It's not even past."  

Here's photo of Granny with my dad and uncles. left to right Sammy, Leonard, Bill, Don, Granny and my dad, Gene. 

     

 

            

I Forgot...

I'll write about turning things on or really the more important part, turning them off and it brings to mind a story from a friend which I will try to relate as true as I remember it. Trying to remember figures as a part of this also.   

A local church, they knew a friend of mine was a musician and they gifted him a non working Marshall guitar amplifier. You might think that's an unusual gear choice for church but it was not the big old Marshall stack associated with hairy young men scaring the adults with a raging distorted Highway to Hell/Smells Like Teen Spirit type thing. Instead it was a small combo amp (there was probably also some crunch that could be dialed up) like I had once seen master of the Stratocaster Lil Buck Sinegal use at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival to produce those clowns have all gone to bed and The Wind Cries Mary clean round clear tones that worked so well for Lil Buck's blues and zydeco. 

Seems that this church, when they purchased the amp new was told, "it's a tube amp so it's bad to turn it on and turn it off and it will wear it out." They installed it in the worship sanctuary, turned it on and never turned it off for so many years that I can't now recall (like I said remembering is a part) but it was maybe 20 years or so. Just for reference I'll mention here that the U.S. military has vacuum tube technology on stand by so operations won't much be disrupted by nuclear war and despite the heat that the tubes in the church amp probably generated the building never caught fire and after all those years a very minor part of some sort was all that failed and my friend was able to replace it for pennies to have an essentially free amp. 

When I retired my old doctor, who was a bit younger than me retired also which I guess is a kind of tuning off. I had to get a new doc so for convenience I chose the same one my wife sees. I have not had to see him much. There was the "Welcome to Medicare" while I put these government dollars in my pocket visit where we talked about how if he was retired he would not get a haircut or take a bath either.

 Actually Medicare does not pay him that well but probably combined with the Affordable Care Act insurance my wife uses makes us worth his trouble. An insurance agent related to me that during a tennis game with a local doc who was spouting misinformed political ideology about why he would not accept ACA the agent used tennis balls to demonstrate how the ACA rocked a circle around the sun and how much money the doc was letting stream out uncollected into the solar system. Next day the doc signed to take those government dollars. 

So anyway during those few visits to the doc we share I could tell he was asking questions to establish which one of us was steering the ship so to speak. Lately it's been a group of two effort. Remember I mentioned that remembering to turn things off thing? 

There's the coffee maker. With the fixed income austerity measures I bought the cheapest coffee pot possible. That means it does not have auto turn off. Leave this on all day and the last bit of coffee in the pot cooks to a nice caffeine rich sludge. She's in charge of turning this off. 

Cathy sews for a hobby. Sometimes when finished she irons what she sews. The iron sets on the sewing table. I'm supposed to be watching if she turns it off. 

I think I left the gas BBQ grill on all night once that I know of. It was a low heat and amazingly enough I cooked several more meals on it before running out of propane so I guess it's getting pretty good miles per gallon. I also left the water hose on which I hate to waste the water but it is a drought and several trees in the back yard benefited. Because these two forgettings cost us money I think she might have docked my allowance.

I do play tube amps around the house pretty often but have not left them on unattended because I use a compensation strategy of an always on fuzz pedal creating a 60 cycle hum, static or back feed squawk that reminds me the amp is operating.  

So I guess what I have here today is always use a tube amp and keep an eye on the old lady. She probably keeps an eye on you. 

   

                      

The Ever Popular Fishing Report...

I have not had a catfishing trip since July 4th. There's been some bream fishing and lots of swimming trips to the pools, the lake or any other place holding water with the 100 degree temperatures that have been the norm but we decide we were catfish hungry and grabbed a couple of grandkids to headed out with the big boat.

We almost made it a quick trip because as we headed south down the long cut we spotted on of those pool noodle pvc pipe floating lines bobbing along all by itself and it obviously had a fish on. It was a bigger noodle apparatus than I would make and it was tipping up and as the boat approached the fish began pulling it completely under. It was a big fish but as Cathy snagged the line with the boat hook we caught only a glimpse of a white belly as it rolled and broke the trotline cord attached to the noodle. I'd guess a 10 to 15 pound fish. In the middle of the lake like that no telling where he came from or how long he had been dragging the noodle around. Noodle was not marked with name, address or date set out as prescribed by Texas law.

Please, it you are a sportsman, harvest responsibly, follow the law and don't leave gear floating in the lake.        

We continued on and began hand fishing our favorite deep spots with punch bait. I guess we still got it, catching fish, riding herd on grandkids because fishing from about 9:30 to noon we managed 14 nice fat channel cats and a few smaller throw backs. Fishing seemed a little slow compared to the last trip but it was hard to judge it with these two monkeys onboard. 

There were a couple of cool off swims. 

Saw only a couple of other fisherman. One who was loading as I was launching complained, "Hot, no breeze, could not find the perch and caught one small catfish." As you can see from the birds that by he time we got out there there was some breeze and these natural born fishermen who only live and eat if they catch fish fishing where it's breezy is the key because fish like moving water.   

Grandma's boat running on the trailer lesson. 

14 catfish. We ate them with baked beans, fried okra and hushpuppies on the side. That's an old traditional meal. Half of all catfish species live in North America. Hushpuppies have their origins in native American cuisine. Okra, with it's origins thought to be in West Africa or Ethiopia was introduced by imported peoples to the new world in the 1600s and noted in American by the early 18th century. As Phil Harris said, "That's What I Like about the South." 

    

 

36 Actors...

 I am religious and in fact a Christian. I'm not given to a lot of hocus pocus but in my reading I discovered the mention of Tzadikim Nistarim an old mystical notion rooted in Judaism and thoughts of this have captured a part of my imagination. The belief is that there are 36 righteous actors in the world waiting for the right moment.

Depending on where you read about the Tzadikim Nistarim the number might be different. It could be 36 or maybe even 45. These are anonymous, ordinary people, hidden among the masses of humanity. They may not even know who they are. They are scattered across the Earth and don't know who the others are. They emerge, act to save their people and sink back into their daily unheralded lives. 

The more I thought about this the more I became convinced that I knew a couple of these people. Then I read that one of the qualities of one of these good actors that keeps the world from falling apart is humility. Nope, sorry about that, I was mistaken. 

I found mention of these people in the Kim Stanley Robinson book, "The Ministry for the Future." It's about climate climate change and now is a good time for reading since heat waves and forest fires are now something that happens here locally instead of somewhere else. 

Robinson notes in the book that we seldom get glimpses of the actors in action. "The stories of the secret actors are the secret action."

Do you know secret actors? 

        

 

Summer Reading...

  I remember in the fourth grade I was in Mrs. Walker's class and we kept a book list. That year I read 145 books. Only person that read more than me was some girl. I don't read that many books a year anymore and maybe I should say we read because some girl, my wife, Cathy probably still reads more than me.  Our book shelves around here sag from the weight and books are pretty much everywhere you can stash one. Magazines come too, literary stuff like the New Yorker and informational reading like Vintage Guitar. In an effort to cut the clutter we renewed library cards this spring and started trying to donate the mags and while we still buy a must have now and then I thought I would make a book report of sorts just like I did in Mrs. Walker's class. 

Chris Edwards is a local singer songwriter who I occasionally get to stand beside on a stage somewhere and yell the lyrics to a Guy Clark song into a microphone. He has also written a book. It's called "Nobody Comes to Visit Anymore." If you've lived in East Texas, listened to the stories of your paw paw, hung out around Nacogdoches or jammed with your buddies in a greasy loud band you might be in this book somewhere. I know I had the feeling of there but for the grace of God go I on some of it or hey, I think I knew that dude. I am not sure exactly where you get one of these since Chris fished my copy out of the trunk of his car and handed it to me in person but you may try the Bosslight in Nacogdoches.  

I checked Robert Stone's "Damascus Gate" from the Kurth Memorial Library. Stone is of the era of Kesey and McMurtry. His novels are action novels, frequently set in turbulent areas and times with politics, drugs, pop culture and music as the backgrounds. A common theme is a guy gets in a situation over his head, he drinks too much, clumsily falls for the girl, his actions confuse people and no one knows which side he's on or where he stands. I think this has happened to me a few times and that's why I like Stone. I have read most of his novels and I notice that a couple of the early ones I would like to reread seems to no longer be in stock at the library. 

The book I'm reading now is by Kim Stanley Robinson and is called "The Ministry of the Future."  I recently read his "New York 2140." Robinson is a "cli-fi" or climate fiction writer. Using the latest known science he writes near future speculative fiction dealing with climate, politics, economics and the stories of the people and populations affected by the ways these things interact as they change. If "Ministry of the Future" does not make you scared for your great grand children your mood stabilizing medicine is better than mine. I would say from information in the novel irreversible climate change is about five years away. Some have criticized the the political developments Robinson describes happening in the face of disaster as "too optimistic." I highly recommend. 

 I highly recommend all these books. I'll be making more trips to the library to save my sagging shelves and maybe a few trees if I borrow instead of buy. Read like you are in class. I did not know what I was doing way back there in the forth grade but I do now.    

    

 

Amp Trends...

I'm always noticing the gear bands use and I think I have noticed a trend in the Fender amps bands use. 

Fender Musical Instruments, which started producing amps in 1945 went through a series of amps all easily identified by their cosmetics. There were the "woodie" amps then the tweed, the brown and blond and next the blackface which were made from 1963 to 1968 and are still widely used by players onstage as vintage originals and modern reissues. Then there are the Silver faces made from 1967 through 1981. Seems I am seeing more silver faces onstage these days. 

They may be modern reissues but all the fender amps were known for a sound. Earlier models were known to get quite nasty in a good way as you cranked them up. By the late 60s as venues became larger and bands needed to be louder Fender came up with the silver face to be clean sounding and loud as piss. I own two silver face Fender amps. 

I saw this band, Locos Por Junta, with members from Columbia, Argentina, Venezuela and the USA  at Festival International. It was Latin/Reggae very danceable and certainly modern in the fact the claimed to have no cds. Only way you could get their music was by downloads. The guitar player used a silver face Fender. I was too far away to identify the model but there it was.       

I kind of thought the trombone players were cute but a tall handsome guitar player, hair to the waist and a gold top Les Paul guitar what is not to like? 

Also at the fest was Robert Finley. A long toiling in obscurity Louisiana blues musician Robert has had music produced by Jimbo Mathus (to appear with the Squirrel Nut Zippers at the Angelina Arts Alliance Temple Theater show in October) and Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.     

Guess what? Roberts guitar player had a silver face Fender amp. 

Last week I caught the Malpass Brothers show at the Pines Theater in Lufkin, Tx. Guess what? again silver face Fender amps. That's the sound you have heard on all the old country hits of the late 60s and the 70s though the last time I saw Merle Haggard who had a few of those hits he was playing through a tweed and sounded pretty scronchy. It was only a few months before his death.  

One thing I have noticed in the modern digital age is when some influencer mentions a certain piece of guitar gear on the internet the price goes through the roof. 

Did I mention I owned two silver face Fender amps? I have had them longer than they were old when I bought them and probably won't get rid of them anytime soon. 

  

 

The Malpass Brothers at The Pines...

Last night the Angelina Arts Alliance brought the Malpass Brothers to the Pines Theater. They are a North Carolina band playing the traditional "old country" of Cash, Haggard, the Louvin Brothers, Ernest Tubb and more. As I enjoyed the show last night I thought to myself that I have played in bands doing all these songs, just not as good. 

The Brothers, who have toured with Merle and the late Don Helms who was the steel guitarist for Hank Williams used vintage instruments. That Martin and Epiphone guitars look old. Harder to tell about the Fender amp in the photo as many classic models have been reissued and from the audience they can be hard to tell from a well cared for original but the sound is the same. I hear people say, "music don't sound good anymore!" Sometimes that's because bands are not using the equipment that made the sounds you heard on classic records any longer.   

The backing band were young guys. This steel player was 26, the bass player 24 and the drummer a recent high school graduate. 

Note the Fender Telecaster Bass that the string bass player used on a few tunes. I'm guessing an early 70s model because of the humbucking pickup. Probably vintage and not a reissue because he turned his belt buckle so he would not rash the back. I've see thousands of shows and I am not sure I have ever seen one of these with he humbucker on stage. As I say, it's why music don't sound the same.   

There is also quite a bit of hillbilly comedy involved in the act. Cathy, who has heard about every joke had not heard the one about the camel sucking mud. His a clip of the jokes:

The Malpass Brothers were great. The brother harmonies that you get with blood kin singing together for years were spot on.

 This was our last Pines show on our season tickets. We have had great seats for great shows but seems like next season is not quite as compelling to me and while we renewed our Temple Theater seats we let this one go and will probably just buy single tickets for the shows we are interested in. 

 

Check out the Malpass Brothers for good country fun. Another act I suggest if you like the hillbilly/rockabilly/western swing thing is my Facebook friend Deke Dickerson.

Now excuse me while I drag out a Fender amp, a hollow body guitar, a tic tack bass and practice.  

 

Old Bull Bream...

The canoe is my fitness test. Can I load it and unload it? Can I paddle? Will I lose my balance and turn it over? What if I need to go potty? There are a lot of things that have to happen for a canoe trip and with the heat index topping 100 again today all this is a good work out for a 65 year old man. It did take 64 ounces of water, two juicy pieces of fruit, a good hat, plenty of sunscreen and a cooling swim but I have a fish dinner for later on this evening.  

When I'm out in the canoe I'll take any kind of catch but I really love to target the bream. They fight hard on light tackle and believe it or not these big boys like this actually pull the boat around a bit. The fish were kind of scattered today with one here and one there mostly so kind of tough fishing but hey, what else do I have to do today? 

The bait they wanted was a 1/16 oz. beetle spin. I used to say that these were made in Louisiana by Cajuns who knew exactly what size the lure needed to be to fit in a bream's mouth. Now they are made in Pacific Rim countries and brought over here in shipping containers stacked on cargo ships longer than Carl Perkin's Cadillac but the people making them do seem to know the size of a breams mouth.

It's the first time in a while that the old favorite Charlie Brewer Crappie Slider was not effective. That's ok because sometimes after a day of throwing the 1/32 oz jigs my shoulder feels like I have spent the day throwing air punches while filming multiple saloon fight scenes in an old western movie. On my new whippy fishing pole the beetle spin flies a bit freer.        

Fishing spot for the day was Ratcliff Lake. The recreation area was built by the CCC in 1936 and before that the lake was used for logs and water by the Central Coke and Coal Company that operated there from 1902 to 1920. I think as big and strong as these old bream were they had been around since 1902. 

Total for the day was 6 trophy size bream. They will make a good supper. For a good video on bream fishing click here for the Louisiana Sportsman page. I like their info which seems to be more down to earth that the Texas fishing videos you find. 

I have been suspecting my favorite bream spot at old Dam B might be grown too weedy to fish with light line but if we got a bit of rain and I get the canoe in the truck I'd try it out. 

  

 

The Great July Forth Catfish Adventure...

Last week I went on a bream fishing expedition in the canoe. Cathy thought they were so tasty when she was crunching the boney, crispy fried little critters it sounded like the skidding impact of a car wreck. She wanted to fish for bream on this trip but with dropping lake levels receding from the bushy hiding places along the bank and the difficulty of stealth with the big boat compared to the canoe we were having no luck so we headed out to try a deep water summer pattern for catfish. Hard to believe our last fishing trip when they were still in a shallow pattern was June 7th but with the hot weather the swimming trips with the grandkids have nearly splashed all the water out of the lake.    

 The wind was from the south and the boat laid out over 27' of water. I broke in my on sale Academy Sporting Goods spinning rod that I paid a whole $10 for. I saw this sale and had a reel and thought it might be a good pole for a marsh fishing trip I have planned later this summer to Galveston Island State Park in the canoe. It's a bit noodly and I might should have spent a buck more on the stiffer saltwater version but I felt the reel I had matched this one better. It is sensitive to a catfish bite and casts a beetle spin well.    

Cathy complains I did not take a photo of her biggest fish. We were fishing a spot we have caught hundreds of catfish the last several years. We call it the dog walker because it once had what looked to be a dog leash tied to the stick up we tie to. If the wind blows from the west the boat lays out with the stern in 37' of water and it seems we catch many small bait stealing blue cats. I think wind from the south or east is best for this place. It puts the boat on the shallow side and though only a few feet apart the fish are bigger.   

Cathy's brother Matt holds up a fat channel. 

Even though it was July 4th and it seemed that boat ramp traffic picked up after lunch we were never even rocked by the wake of a passing boat. All them folks in the air conditioning looking at ticktoc videos are not a threat to my way of life.  

Total for the day was 38 cats. All caught on JPIGGS punch bait in less that two hours fishing between 12 and 2pm. 

I traded 3 pounds of fillets to my brother's neighbor for these vegetables. A good vegetarian meal of cheese and tomato sandwiches with hot peppers on the side will counter act the effects of artery clogging fried catfish. If you need more medical advice than this my venmo link will be at the end of this report.  

We fried those catfish right up and had Father Denzil, our pastor at St. Patrick's Catholic Church and his nephew Ramon out for dinner. They are from Sri Lanka and that's a long way from Sam Rayburn but I think I could probably make cat fishermen out of them.  

 

I Get Ideas...

I say things all the time. I usually forget what I said but apparently other people are listening and sometimes they think what I said is important and sometimes even visionary. Other times what I said has caused me trouble but I usually don't blog about those instances. This week, that digital footprint of online memories prompted me about something I said by dredging up in a going over the same old ground year after year kind of way a post sent to me by one of my kids that said, "hey dad you always said we were going to have these in the future," with a link to a story about spectacles that played music while you wore them. 

What I proposed back then seems all geeky and clumsy now (plus I don't actually remember it) that we have earbuds and all the anxiety that goes with choosing the coolest, sleekest, best sounding pair and the endless choices of music to listen to on them all isolated and by yourself which only feeds back into that anxiety loop that began when you started picking the damn things out. 

Maybe that's why I did not go anywhere with my original idea because I knew all this but forgot it. 

Way back before speculation about eye glasses that played music and in a less anxious time I often went out to a friend's house which was in a rural setting and listened to music on long playing records. One of our favorite activities was to put on a record by Pink Floyd which contrary to popular belief is not an early American bluesman but an English psychedelic rock group playing plodding, moody music with much self examination and moaning about the isolation of modern life and which proves that I am still on track with where I'm going. 

Now a long playing record really does not play all that long. There have been some intrepid travelers who managed to pack 30 minutes of music to a side but mostly there is going to be about 19 minutes of music there and I would guess that a Pink Floyd record would fall somewhere between those numbers. 

I mention this because the rural house I refer to was located in a sort of a hollow on a little pond, a lagoon so to speak forming a sort of amphitheater. Me and my friends would put on a long playing record by Pink Floyd and climb on the garage out back of the house to enjoy the natural acoustics of the area. Of course when the LP finished in 19 to 30 minutes someone, we took turns, I think, would climb down, flip the record and return to the roof for side two. 

This usually went on for a period of time, generally at night and one modern thing I wish I had had back then that is on the modern thing I have in my pocket now, a phone, would be the step tracker app that could tell me how many steps I took in an evening of roof sitting, record changing activity.

The days of the lagoon are long gone and when I occasionally pass that way I can't even spot the gate of the property. I still live in a rural setting and have a good choice of outbuildings and garages I could get up on but in my second career as a physical therapist assistant I had lots of patients for rehab that were men about my age who had fell off their outbuildings so I have avoided that kind of thing for a few years now. 

I don't own earbuds but like listening to music outside which Cathy is ok with as long as it's not bebop jazz which she says makes her want to slap someone. Though I'm rural, in contrast population density is greater and though some describe isolation in their lives there are neighbors close by and I don't need them saying Galileo is up there listening to Pink Floyd again.

So to tie all this up my latest idea (and it may already be done, who is keeping up?) is that instead of letting your media use you we should use it and have a picture of the year app. I know the last couple of years might be a picture of you in a mask or with a friend who passed away but I think my picture of the year this year is going to be a swimming picture. 

Now you know I really don't swim and do all that splashing and stuff but I just kind of sit in the cool water and relax and I did not really say that I liked Pink Floyd all that much but that I sat on the roof  while they played. 

Find a couple of things. Do them every chance you get. Make it your picture of the year.