Dictator of Taste...

We saw one of my heroes last night at the Heights Theater in Houston, Tx. Think if you rolled the Temptations, Curtis Mayfield, Archie Bell and the Drells all into one then spiked blues singers Ledbelly and Mississippi Fred McDowell's whisky with ayahuasca and you get what Fantastic Negrito calls "black roots music for everyone."  

I called this blog "Dictator of Taste" because that's what he had painted on the back of a gold flowing thrift store costume he wore. Fantastic Negrito's story is a good one and it's why he's my hero. Poised for pop success with an album out in 1996 under his given name of Xavier he suffered a near fatal car cash which left him in a coma for three weeks. The crash left permanent damage to his right hand. In 2015 he won NPR's Tiny Desk Concert contest and has since won three Grammy's. 

His stage show is very energetic and his dancing energy does not indicate that he's 56 years old. The songs are the story of a man examining his life. His experiences guide the music and he is an independent artist with his own record label for people who were told the were too old, the wrong body type or the wrong color. The backing band was treat. Everybody was a singer and sometimes there was so many parts going on vocally, high gospel harmony and low bass singing that it could be hard to keep up with.       

I did not get the guitar players name. Good playing and singing, a strong back up man, doing it all. Great costume also. A stage show, it's what we want to see. 

We enjoyed the show from the gallery balcony seating. I'd say maybe 200+ people at the show and while certainly dedicated fans our seats were good and not crowded. 

There was a great performance of Ledbelly's "In the Pines." That's a good song for me as I have an oscilloscope reading of this tune tattooed in tribal style around my left upper arm. As I say, we connect. 

  Fantastic calls himself a recovering narcissist. "My dog died, my cat died, how can I make this about me?" He says there a lot of steps to this journey of taking the bullshit and turning it into good shit.    

Opening band was the Houston based Mighty Orq. Great guitar sound playing electric and a wonderful delay drenched cigar box guitar and resonator used to good effect. I think he has played locally at the Live Oak Listening room and looks like he has guitar lessons on his YouTube channel  

Check out these bands and check out the Heights Theater. Be a Dictator of Taste. Turn that bull into something good. 

That Old Three Legged Stool...

My mother never much talked about the "good old days." I think there was some cotton picking, a daily chicken killing and plucking so there was something to eat and a good bit of movement back and forth across the Mississippi River between Arkansas and Tennessee to wherever her dad, Caleb Lester Wiley thought the farming was going to be the best. Not really all that great.

 From the family history I know, and I might have some cousins that can fill in, it was along about 1942 that my Uncle Richard and family who were already in the area convinced my grandfather and Pinkey, my grandmother, that there was good work at the Box Factory in Diboll, Tx and to come for the factory job. My mother stayed to complete high school in Tennessee and soon joined them and by 1946 was working at Southland Papermill. Those good manufacturing jobs with a pay check each week beat chicken plucking.     

My mom was a woman ahead of her time and before she married bought her and her parents a house at 1208 Andrews Street in Lufkin, Tx. By 1951 after several strokes Caleb Lester passed away at this address. He was 72 years old and I don't know exactly what year he exited the workforce, either because of his age or health but I recall my mom saying he did not want to take a social security pension because he considered it welfare. I don't really know but I think they convinced him to take the money because it no doubt came in handy. 

The bill to create Social Security was introduced in 1935. The USA was one of the few modern countries of the time that did not have a safety net for it's older population. Changing times and situations such as the transition of of my ancestors from farm to city was one reason for the need to help people. The first taxes to fund the program were collected in 1937 and the first check was issued in 1940 to Ida May Filler for the princely sum of  $22.54. In her lifetime Ida collected $22,888.92 after paying in $24.75 in taxes for three years before she turned 65. She lived to 100 years old. That's a pretty good return and no doubt came in handy.       

I retired in 2020 and began collecting Social Security as soon as I could but also relying on the old three legged stool for my golden years of fun and to avoid chicken plucking. One leg I'm sitting on is Social Security, one leg is a bit of a monthly pension and another is savings, some of which through employer programs is linked to the stock market. The stock market has done well for a few years now.

I can certainly understand in these perilous times that threats to cut social security and other uncertainties have younger people in doubt that such benefits will be there for them. One leg of the stool, company pensions, is pretty much out the window these days. It does seem that things are in good shape till 2035 but action will definitely be needed and till we see positive signs of that you should save some money so that leg of the stool is solid.        

I don't know what my grandfather's savings were like and it's possible he could have paid about $200 into the program if he worked a decade past it's beginning. I never knew my grandfather but knowing Pinkey and my mom (everybody worked hard) and what they thought I believe old Caleb would have been in favor of a safety net to keep folks falling through the cracks especially the ones that got sick like him. 

Here's Caleb and brother Jim. Being Caleb was born in 1879 I'd guess this picture from the late 1890s. I don't know why they are all armed up with pistols and rifles but hopefully we won't need that to keep social security going.  

Here's Caleb Lester Wiley's death certificate. Rest easy Poppa, that's what my mom called him, my three legged stool sits pretty comfortable. Thanks for leading the way. 

 

I Splurged...

 I like getting magazines in the mail and while Cathy can often be seen at the box by the road in pajamas as she collects them the diligent carrier tosses my newspaper way up in the garage so the only special going to get the paper dress up required first thing in the morning for me is a cup of coffee in hand. No matter what I am wearing this is how I get the majority of my news. 

One magazine I take, Rolling Stone Magazine, once a great bastion of the counter culture which I somehow managed to acquire a lifetime subscription to pictures a world of music and culture I'm not a member of. It's changed.  The other magazine, The New Yorker has a great mix of poetry, politics, short story fiction, science, books, music,  theater, current events, food and more reported each week in it's pages. The Lufkin Daily News is a Pulitzer Prize winning paper and while at three days a week it's a shell of it's former self I think it does a good job. 

Now I know some will say, "I knew he was a commie liberal when I saw him in boxers fetching up that rag the LDN out of his garage." Because we live in historical times and I wanted the best coverage I splurged on the introductory offer made by The New York Times to deliver to my email in box the entire paper for the vast sum of $1 a month for the next 6 months. The Times has been around since 1851. They probably know what they are doing.

I guess in addition to being a commie liberal I'm now a member of the East Coast Elite because Lord, Dorothy, out here in Kansas we don't even think about New York but the thing I see all these news sources have in common is that if it walks like a duck they say so with no bias. It's left for you to decide if it is indeed a duck. 

Recently there was a story in the Times that touched my heart. A photo accompanying the story of the civilian causality toll of war in the middle east showed two wounded brothers, about the age of my grand children laying on cots. One of the kids badly wounded himself was rolled so he could keep his arm on the other in comfort. I watch my grandkids as they help each other, finding lost shoes, getting a drink of water or a snack, teaching the little ones how to climb and putting all that together with the picture of the two wounded boys I get just a glimpse into how we should treat each other in the world.

That's not how it is. It's the 21st century and in the middle east, the Ukraine, Sudan and other places human beings still bomb cities and civilians. 

To try and get a grip on thoughts about this I turned to an unlikely place. I thought of the Grateful Dead song China Cat Sunflower. It can be tricky to turn to pop personalities for wisdom because like Popes and Presidents they are flawed fallible men and women and the song certainty has it's psychedelic overtones but reportedly the authors say it's less about this than it is about the connection we have to each other and what it's like to remember being three years old. 

That's my prayer today. Let everyone splurge and remember what it's like to be three years old. We might then walk out to the mail box to some different news. 

                

  Look for a while at the china cat sunflower

Proud walking jingle in the midnight sun

Copperdome bodhi drip a silver kimono

Like a crazy quilt star gown through a dream night wind

Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandanna

Like a one-eyed cheshire, like a diamond-eye jack

A leaf of all colors plays a golden-string fiddle

To a double-e waterfall over my back

China cat, china cat

China cat, china cat

China cat, china cat

China cat, china cat

Comic book colors on a violin river cryin' leonardo

Words from out a silk trombone

I rang a silent bell, beneath a shower of pearls

In the eagle-winged palace of the queen chinee

Seven Years or So in a Cycle...

Once I was sitting around an old kitchen table, in an old house out on old Press Road in the oldest town in Texas and in the course of discussion someone mentioned that singer/songwriter/poet/rock star/Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Dylan said that every seven years you had been through a total skin shedding and that at the end of this period you were a totally new person. 

Since then Dylan has said and had many things attributed to him and with the advent of the Internets I have never checked the seven year shin shedding theory. There were many quasi metaphysical and false intellectual ideas broached around that kitchen table which all might have had to do with the fact that that particular parcel of land was quite fertile for the growing of Texas Red Dirt Marijuana. Eventually a damper was put on those high minded sessions when one day while no one was home the sheriff came, cut down the crop and left his business card sitting on a stump. The sheriff never came back and regardless of what you think about what Dylan said there was some skin shed over this incident. 

My oka crop has done pretty good this year but I think I can detect some type of 5 year cycle I'm on. Every five years everything I own breaks. I think five years ago it was the septic system and the roof which gave me an opportunity to replace those things while I was still drawing a pay check instead of relying on retirement income. This five year cycle begins with the air conditioner, the hot tube and the lawn mower on the blink. 

Fortunately the air condoner problem was resolved quickly thanks to Felipe of Action Services. The hot tub needs a part and the repair people have required gentle prodding over the last week to come and diagnose the problem and I may have to prod some more to make sure the part is ordered. The lawn mower runs pretty good engine wise and cuts well but something with the steering  makes me look like the guy that cut those crop circles due to the patterns and path required to trim the yard. 

Speaking of crop circles that reminds me that I once heard that a guy, Red Eagle, who lived on out Press Road in the Shawnee Bottoms built landing pads for flying saucers. I don't know if they were ever used but that would be another blog post written after participants in that skin shedding were interviewed.

What do you think Dylan said and what exactly was Red Eagle up to? My kitchen table is not too old and I usually only sit at it while eating but I'll think about these things while relaxing in the hot tub after mowing the yard.   

             

Register To Vote...

 I'm not one of those old guys up in there on the internet using memes I did not make myself to bemoan the fact that the world is not like it used to be. I look to my millennial generation children and the children they are raising to see positive proof that the world is a better place than it used to be and besides there are somethings I can't remember how they used to be. One of those things I can't remember is when I was 18 years old I do not recall registering to vote. 

In January 1975 I had turned 18 and I recall having a draft card in my pocket and I must have registered to vote at the same time but I could not tell you when or where. When the November 1976 election was held I was a college student. Just a couple of years before when endless appeals, delays and lying had yet become popular Nixon had resigned the Presidency before we could find out just how bad he was. His successor Gerald Ford appeared at an event in San Antonio and was photographed eating a tamale with the corn husk still on it. Those were not my guys. That fall I voted Jimmy Carter for President. He won. Next time I voted for him was 1980 and he lost but I kept voting for Presidents. Like a long suffering coach I could put up my career won/lost numbers but that's not the point here. The important point is that I registered to vote and vote I have.

I was talking with some friends the other night, friends who believe like me that being registered to vote is important and they had proof that registering is harder than ever. Used to when you went to the Angelina County Courthouse Annex where you register vehicles there would be a table with voter registration materials handy to fill out and turn in while you waited. That table is still in the building but up the stairs in a low traffic area where no one passes and no one sees it. The Texas Department of Public Safety is supposed to make voter registration available when you go to their office to renew, replace or change contact info on you drivers license. Apparently this has become inconsistent. High School Principles are required to serve by law as Deputy Registrars for the State of Texas and make registration resource materials available to eligible students. This is probably how I got registered to vote. There is only one school in Angelina County doing this. 

These instances are probably just the tip of the iceberg. Like Nixon they won't want it all to come to light. 

If you want to vote in the upcoming election you must be registered to vote by October 7th. You can't register to vote online in Texas but at VoteTexas.gov  you can print out an application and find info on where to turn it in. If you need a printer or computer I know a place that will be glad to let you use their equipment to prepare your registration. I am not currently a Deputy Voter Register but I have been and I'll answer any questions you may have at cewallac@consolidated,net and I know people that will come to your house and take you to register to vote. 

After Jimmy Carter lost that election he has lived a whole life making the world a better place. He will soon be 100 years old and he has said he looks forward to voting in the next election. You should register to vote and look forward to it also.    

 

 

         

First Trip in the New Camper...

 We bought a new camper. It's from Baily's RV here in town and it's a Wolf Pup BHSW model. That's really not the big news. We bought it because our son Morgan, wife Ali and grandkids and moving because of his job to Greenville, South Carolina and in the coming year we will be on the road more often and something a little bigger and nicer will serve better. Morgan's job is really a move upward and what the heck, we deserve a promotion also.  

This past weekend we broke our camper in with a trip to the Brazoria County free camping beach. We both love the beach and with school starting it was not as crowded as a previous trip this summer.  There's no hook ups out there and with it's solar panel and off road package we felt in the lap of luxury.  

This rig has a 12 volt fridge compared to the the old three way conversion unit on the old camper and the solar panel kept pace on the sunny beach with the fridge and the indoor outdoor speakers playing the famous Carl and Cathy Radio mix tape/usb drive. Once the sun went down we switch on the Champion 4650 dual fuel generator for sleeping under the air. 

A few months ago when we bought that generator it seemed like it might be overkill for the rpod but it's just right for for this unit. A tank of propane last 10 hours running air, fridge and outside (you don't want a drunk driver to not see you at night on a beach without roads}

  lights. Since I sleep about 7 hours or less a night we might could squeeze that a bit but somebody sleeps 10 hours each night and we will just have to charge that to her passive income stream. 

I caught one trout which then escaped my old floating fish bag, lost a good size trout at the net and had several more hook ups but no landings while fishing Thursday evening. The water was calm and green. The trout chased bait fish everywhere and dolphins swam nearby. Really beautiful setting. I used to thrash the water to a froth every time I saltwater fished but I am mellowing and just enjoying the opportunity to go. The odds will line up for a big fishing bonanza sooner or later. 

It was no hardship to settle for pork chop and hamburger suppers.      

Rose and family are nearby in Lake Jackson and they came out. It was nice to have a visit from family but with the added people and the extra foot washing with the convenient outside shower to keep the sand out of the trailer it depleted our water. The rpod trailers don't have much of a shower and most of their owners don't even use it preferring to shower at the campground facilities which is where we are most of the time. We were so enjoying the various extras we were not used to that in addition to outside shower use Cathy took two indoor showers and I took one. At 26 gallons the water tank is actually 7 gallons less than the rpod and I drove into town to purchase 6 gallons at $1.34 each. I think at the end of the trip we had a hat full of water left.      

It was a really great trip and we look forward to another beach trip. September is a good time to catch the redfish running in the surf.   

I do still have the rpod. It's a 2010 model and as you might expect it's not perfect but I have camped it for almost two years and would not be afraid to go anywhere with it. Bluebook is $4000-$5000 and I'll sell it for a little less. 

Congrats to Morgan on the new job. See you in Greenville. 

Cross Satchmo Summer Fest Off the Bucket List...

Satchmo Summer Fest a celebration of the great Louie Armstrong's birthday held in his home town of New Orleans is one of those things I always wanted to do but I was usually working that weekend. I retired and this weekend we booked a room at one of our favorite hotels, The Frenchman, which is right across the street from the New Orleans Jazz Museum where the fest is held and just steps away. 

Anything we wanted to do was close by from street music, clubs and dining and never required driving so the car stayed parked all weekend.   

The story goes that on New Years Eve 1912 an eleven year old Armstrong was sent to the Colored Waifs Home for firing a blank pistol in the air. He took up the cornet there and the world was never the same as he became one of the most influential figures in jazz. Louie often said that when he played he looked right into the heart of New Orleans.  

 New Orleans is a city that each person has a personal version of. I have been coming to soak up the music, food and culture since 1983. The oldest African American Parish in the country, St. Augustine dating back 180 years holds a jazz Mass each Sunday. You can hang with the drunk college boys from LSU on Bourbon St. when you visit or you can live like the people live by attending neighborhood functions. That's what I choose. There is a lot of history here from the tomb of the Unknown Slave to being the parish where Louie, Sidney Bechet and Homer Plessy attended. 

After Mass there followed a second line parade from the church to the fest led by social and pleasure clubs, brass bands and other costumed characters.   

Lots of good bands at the fest, brass bands, jazz singers, traditional and more modern stuff I would guess that with only two stages and inside venues for piano music and educational discussions and the museum exhibits I managed to see about a quarter of what was offered and even that was plenty to digest. 

It's hot in New Orleans. Like Deep Mardi Gras it's Deep Summer and one of the internet funny men I follow said all his friends were indoors with only crappy tourist from Biloxi walking the streets. I'll take being a crappy tourist in New Orleans because as playwright Tennessee Williams said, "everywhere else is Cleveland" and it is nice to know that if I can't take the heat there is a whole world of air conditioned fun to see.     

Preservation Hall Brass. 

The Onward brass band on stage

 Best I can tell I saw 17 different tuba players this past weekend. Find your own personal New Orleans.