We just spent a few days with our two oldest grandchildren Warren and Coraline camping at Perdarneles Falls State Park and seeing the sights around parts of Austin, Johnson City, Fredericksburg as well as some visits with old friends. It was hot, nearing 102 most days with an unknown by me heat index that was probably higher but it was actually pretty nice and breezy in the park with the river being a nice place to cool in and the camper AC good enough for snuggling at night. Like they say, "it's a dry heat," and it surely was.
Perdarneles near Trammels Crossing.
This is what they call "the Swim Area."
At the Falls. No swimming hear due to the dangers of flash flooding.
I think the first time I walked through these doors to Austin's Continental Club was in the early 1980s. South Congress Street has changed a lot since then and maybe I'll bring Warren back one day when he's a little older.
The Perdarneles is not a cool river like some of the others or Barton Springs but when you are used to Sam Rayburn swimming it's ok by me.
So I was standing and looking at my tomato crop. Looks good. Nothing ripe yet but lots of fruit and still plenty of blooms. The vines are a little spindly it seems but that thought takes me somewhere else and I start thinking about ideas and how that's like they are sometimes. There's blooming, there's fruit but things are a little spindly. Maybe this idea could be a song, a poem, a story, a book, a screenplay, or a movie. If you want to buy this idea or even a couple of tomato I'll include a Venmo link at the end.
In my idea there's a guy who lives in a small East Texas(this may sound familiar) town. It's in a time way before you could Google something or order something you wanted from Amazon or could look up a YouTube video about how to do something or use AI to make a funny picture for the internet. If you wanted to know something it was brought to you by that one TV channel which was probably black and white, a little green transistor radio that was about the size of a serving of the serving of meat we all need to eat about once a week if we are going to quit needing hospitals and complaining about the quality of healthcare and save the planet or it could be found at the library. As time passed and horizons broadened this guy starts to get out in the world a bit, chasing things he's interested in and meeting people.
So say he's interested in growing tomatoes. He meets someone that grows tomatoes real good, gets a few tips, grows a good crop then a bad crop, learns something, meets someone else that grows tomatoes, quits, starts over just a whole process that takes years.
Then one day he meets a guy in a tie dye shirt who has a real good collection of reggae records. You can't just walk into Target and get tie dye or get a reggae record so here goes the process again till of course our guy has some real good reggae records and has seen Steel Pulse, Third World and Burning Spear all play live.
Our guy meets someone that cooks a real mean home made egg roll, meets some one that plays harmonica, learns to weave baskets and pretty soon he's doing these things also.
Of course while doing all this other things happen, there's marriage, raising kids, a couple of careers, helping his brother in law get sober, has a bunch of grandkids and so much more until one day the man just sits back and takes it all in while listening to his real good collection of reggae records and comes to the realization he's at the top, he's done everything he wanted to do in life and that this is the peak. Often times we say, "that's as good as it gets" and that's kind of an excuse for something less than perfect but this REALLY IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS.
So our hero starts kind of a backwards journey. He looks up the tomato grower, the tie dye guy with the reggae records, the egg roll maker, the harmonica player, the basket weaver, all the many others and at this point someone cues weird sci-fi music played on a theremin, which by the way can be had as a build your own kit pretty cheaply or for the price of a high grade Chinese made electric guitar and he starts to notice some weird stuff.
All these people that had been so inspiring seemed less colorful, less able and missing some integral part of themselves. Our man realizes that he has stolen or absorbed some kernel of each self leaving the person a husk of what they formerly were wandering helplessly through a dull life.
Upon this realization, this is the age of where either the bad guy wins or you can't tell who the good guy is our guy becomes a beam of light through the universe. The beam of light collides with other worlds, other civilizations and more and more internal kernels are absorbed until the man is just a rage of color and light that becomes everything.
Of course once Hollywood gets in possession of all this they will add some grow juice so things won't be so spindly, will stand on their own, we will have ripe fruit and a real good reggae record collection.
Father's Day Weekend Good AS Any To Make This Confession...
I have tee shirts older than most of my children. Now you know I have never seen Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, 38 Special or the Ronnie Van Zant Band but back about 1985 I was at Mardi Gras in New Orleans and I saw the Neville Brothers (don't recall the venue) and I purchased one of their "Mardi Gras to the World" shirts in black and I still have it. I have it and when Mardi Gras rolls around I pull it out and wear it. I'm a dangerous man.
So happens that the latest t shirt I bought also has some near greater New Orleans statistical area connections. I bought a shirt from one of my favorite YouTube, "Outside the Levees" which is based in St. Bernard Parish, La. It's a good looking shirt and even my wife, who thinks I have too many t shirts thinks it's a good looking shirt.
On this tee shirt is a very nice picture of a catfish in a Hawaiian shirt wearing sun glasses while an alligator serenades him with a guitar and all this happens while riding in an aluminum flat-bottomed boat. That's all pretty heavy because like Luca says, "I eat catfish," I have a couple of catfish tattooed on my belly as part of a larger work of art, I spent most of the day this picture was made watching the gators swim past the very spot where I stand, I do play guitar and my dad taught me all kind of things while sitting in a flat-bottomed boat.
I like the videos Jared Serigne and crew make on Outside the Levees. They are simple without a bunch of technology or difficult techniques, there are kids involved and sometimes they don't even catch what they started out fishing for but usually adaptation is made and then the catch is cooked and a great easy recipe is shared at the end of the video.
Sometimes my fishing trips go a lot like this:
Several of the Neville Brothers have passed on. Some of the others have cut back on performing or don't even live in New Orleans anymore. I still can't remember where it was I saw them that time but I recally the first time I saw them was at the old Jimmy's Bar at the end of the street car line. A Mardi Gras to the World tee shirt of 1983 vintage costs about $23 on ebay and there's probably shipping. I did not pay much more than that for my Outside the Levees shirt.
When the weather starts to heat up watch the police report in your local paper. Usually someone get arrested for being in the drive through at Dairy Queen naked. I can see the chain of events that leads to this. It's hot, you are dressed for the weather, very comfortable and decide you want a dip cone. It's easier to forget to put on clothes than you think. If your local paper still carries national news flip to that section. Some ex government official who probably has on clothes has become hot enough to break the story, again, that yes Dorthey, they do have alien spacecraft, alien corpses and more proof that they have been visiting us for years it their possession.
I wrote a song about this back about 1983 and I've probably blogged about it before but I have this theory expressed in poetry that aliens have been coming here a long time. They initially took cavemen up in their craft and then things got all messed up when the generals, the politicians, the scientist, the lawyers and the Republicans started being the ones to ride. See the cavemen, in case you may be a creationist is a metaphor for artists, poets, musicians, and just generally the good people in the world and I hope you get it because if you are thinking all those others are the good ones then you won't get it. This song goes so far back with me that I know people get it because any girl I every told this story to has gotten it, my kids get it because they know all the words by heart, the best man at my wedding got it because he knows all the words by heart and I have been fortunate enough to have backing musicians that get it because they will accompany me when I play.
I do speculate that "they" may be breaking us in slowly before they start touring around debris that represent an alien craft destroyed on ground impact like it was some Bonnie and Clyde Death Car. Just remember I have been breaking you in since 1983. Here's a clip from a couple of weeks ago.
If you like that tune it's for sale on my bandcamp site for a buck. If you really get it and like dip cones hit the link below:
After a busy month that saw not much fishing but plenty of other business including the birth of grandchild #9 or Milo as his parents call him we headed over to Martin Dies Jr State Park on B.A. Steinhagen Reservoir for three nights. We stayed in the Hen House Ridge Unit.
I have had good pan fishing in the other unit, Walnut Ridge and we did ok catching about 10 fish of various species. Mostly we just sat by the water and watched the alligators swim by. They need someone out there directing traffic because if one gator swam up the creek two would swim down. Probably there is no telling how many gators are in the area. I know besides the lake there are a lot up the river around the Forks were the Angelina runs into the Neches. When I worked at the nursing home in Jasper many residents came from the river houses below this lake and they reported many gators there.
Here's Cathy on the bank at our campsite which we picked by blind choice from the campground map. I believe it was one of the best, most private, with good fishing from the bank, and by canoe nearby. Also very good bird watching in the park and on the lake.
Old big boy. One thing I noticed is that two nights I left the catfish bait sitting by the water and no critters bothered it. Last night I did a little pre packing and put the stink bait in the truck bed. Coons got in it. Their tracks were on my windshield. My theory is they stay away from the water because of the gators.
All these gators gives me an idea. I think I will turn old Milo into a gator fighter. If we start training now in two or three summers I send him up a gator hole like the one seen here and have him pull the gator out. I can see him now. He has the gator by the tail and looks back at me and says, "Like this?: and I say, "yes, like that."
This is our 5th trip this year. So far none have been further that 4 hours from our home and this park is about 60 miles away tops. We have plans for later this summer but this was a nice getaway.
Life is math. That may seem like a funny pronouncement from someone who did not pass college algebra till he was 47 years old. I mean I could do math. I could balance a check book, figure the gas mileage on a car and eventually had a job where I plugged numbers into various algebraic formulas to calculate results to produce productive results for the rest of the work shift. I trace my scholastic math failings back to 1967 when I had a teacher I really loved and he loved all the same things I did such as reading and music so there was not much time for math. In East Texas in 1967 the house was not air conditioned and there was only one channel on the TV and it did not seem like math was going to be important. Eventually houses had air, TV became binge worthy and I got a mark on paper that caused people to sit up and say, "Whoa!, dude can math."
Today is my dad, Gene's birthday and born in 1925, let's do the math. He would have been 98 years old. My mom passed in 2019 at 95 and often wondered what kind of little old man he would have looked like but we did not get to see that since he passed away in 1991. Here is where we come to some equal numbers. He was 66 years old. I turned 66 years old earlier this year. I am the same age as my dad when he passed away. All those Wallace brothers passed away at various ages between 60 and 72.
I once heard a doctor call it "three strikes and you are out." My dad cut little stubby King Edward cigars in half. He smoked one stubby and saved the other for latter. He was in the army landing on Omaha Beach in WW2 on the second day of the invasion of Europe which today, in addition to being his birthday is the anniversary of that event. He turned 19 and witnessed the remains of the carnage of June 6th, the initial landings. Hopefully no one tuning 19 today has an experience like that as a birthday present. After the war he worked in a factory. That's the three strikes. Smoking, military service and working in a factory.
I've never been in the service and it's been quite a few years since I smoked or worked in a factory. Maybe I'm eligible for the all clear.
Back to that math I was 34 years old when my dad died. I was really just getting started, going through those early years of work, family, marriage and kids that take so much of your time and with him suddenly gone I feel like I and he missed a lot of things together.
More math. Three out of four of my kids are older than I was when my dad passed away. Let's do that math. They are closer to my age that I ever was to his.
Left to right uncles Sammy, Leonard, Bill, Don, Gladys "Granny Wallace" and my dad, Gene. All of them gone too soon. As I talk to my various cousins, some older than me, some younger I realize how many different lens we flip through as if at some kind of cosmic optometrists examination viewing actions, experiences, relationships, our lives with these men and so much more that the numbers I have figured with today is only a start to try and tell the story.
No blog post here would be complete without a fishing report. Yes, me and my dad caught a lot of fish. I did not keep count. I am keeping count of the fish I catch with my kids and grandkids. Hopefully it will take some high level math to total those numbers. After all I have the proof I can handle that.
Like everybody else (if this is not you nothing to see here) I put videos of myself in the internet. They are usually spur of the moment things. I picked up a musical instrument, usually a tuba or banjo and a song popped out. In the video I'm usually shirtless and I post it to the internet because I want other tuba and banjo players to comment, "you go girl."
The videos that went to facebook show up years later in what's called "memories." It's a what you were doing on this day when type thing that just automatically does that thing. So you look at it and have a, "did I have more hair, was I less fat or what ever happened to that shirt" reaction. I look at my music videos made 5 to 7 years ago and I have a "how did I do that reaction?" Some of them look pretty good. I was playing electric guitar out with other guys in bands and such and was really in pretty good practice.
That gave me an idea for a blog post. It would be about how musical interest had shifted back to my main instrument of tuba, learning your scales, fluidity on the fretboard, arthritis, the God Almighty Quest for TONE, the righteous true believers, Pink Floyd and how modern man has ruined his brain and lost sight of the cosmic plane. All that's going to have to wait because this went a different direction.
Usually music I spontaneously post to the internet is a song so obscure that no one knows it or a bit of doggerel I have written myself. I usually don't do a tune well covered by others because my version might have gone a different direction or taken on some elements of melody or style that cause me to get flagged by the blues police. I sat on my recording of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" because it's a monumental piece of history and legend where the blues and songs about every day living morphed into rock and roll and a more surreal expression of experience.
As I thought how I was going to use this I parked it to youtube for later and in about three days time it has 600 views.
All those views are flattering enough but comments start appearing asking, "what kind of mic, amps, pedals?" and "that's bad dude!" I'm an electric guitar Dear Abby.
For the record because as I said before I look at an old video and say how did I do that:
I made the mic out of a Christmas tin. A pizeo pickup is struck to the lid with the wiring run through to a jack on the other end. It's stuffed with a pool noodle to kill the resonance a bit. YMMV.
The mic runs through and EHX Blurst Pedal which is a low pass filter that does wah wah and tremolo sounds. This pedal sounds good on guitar, bass and tuba but it's capable of so much I hardly get the same sound twice. I use a Fender Front Man amp with the reverb up for vocals. This amp sees use for acoustic bass when accompanying acoustic guitarists, tuba with effects and occasionally electric guitar for which it was intended.
That's a Fender Squier strat with gold foil pickups tuned open E.
Guitar amp is my 1968 Fender Bandmaster Reverb.
Guitar pedals are a Joyo tube screamer and the cheapest Chinese made delay pedal I could find.
As a happy accident the guitar bled to the mic and created a stereo effect with the Bandmaster and the Front Man and The Blurst pedal.
I can get you the name of the guy that re roofed my garage a few years ago if you think that matters.
I did find out that the average youtube view is about 30 seconds and my channel analytics say this video nudges right up against that so I'd say a pretty savvy group of viewers to formulate questions, type it out and all that is such a short time.
I'll be back out in the garage soon trying to remember what that other idea was for a blog and how I got it.
You can support TONE and the cosmic plane by clicking this link:
In this photo of me and Strong, made in a New Orleans hotel room I hold about $300 in my hand. It was the early 1980s and that would get you most things you wanted during a Big Easy weekend. You would be straggling home broke of course but easy come easy go.
Me and another old friend, who now that I think about all this probably made this photo, were sitting in in a cool, comfortable local watering hole. We were talking but not watering. I've been sober going on 30 years. He's been sober for two years. Like singer songwriter Jason Isbell says, "it gets easier but it never gets easy" but we were doing alright.
I greeted an acquaintance in passing and my friend says, "you know him?" Kinda I guess. "He took me aside at a party and told me he was a millionaire." My friend could not recall the man's name. I might have told somebody something like that one tine but that person probably can't remember my name either.
I have another friend. We've been meeting almost weekly for several years due to a shared interest and have only been interrupted by previous commitments, pandemics and other general vulgarities of modern life. Each meet up he usually has a long story, off the topic of our meeting
about some millionaire he knows.
It's usually a young bright shiny couple who manage to pick up from the ground business opportunity, show place homes in expansive rural settings where the living is easy with year around world class boating and fishing, deaconship and VIP parking at a mega church and have customers with open check books elbowing their way into the business.
I ask what kind of business is this?
He says, "they sell equipment."
What kind of equipment?
He says, "all kinds."
I have a friend, not a millionaire himself, who went of a trip with several millionaires. He told me, "they talk about things you and me don't know about and can't understand."
I have several friends who are probably millionaires. I can tell because they usually know the best deal on a cell phone plan, have a nose for a cheap Airbnb, can fix a flapping shoe with a piece of cardboard if they need to and sometimes let a tree grow up in a flower bed too close to their house.
Strong passed away in 2007. Rich people, who we meet every day aren't bad people. I seldom hold $300 in my hand. Many places don't even take cash so I just hand them a credit card like I'm a millionaire. Like Isbell said, it gets easier but it never gets easy.
"...I know I've seen that face before," Big Jim was thinking to himself
"Maybe down in Mexico or a picture up on somebody's shelf..."Bob Dylan from "Lilly Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
