Here's a First...

Wait a minute, shouldn't that deer be on the other side of the fence?
Hey, off my lawn, stay away from the tomato cages!
No animals in that barn, not equipped.

Hey guys, I'm out here, let me back in.

Got home from work the other day to find Cathy stalking a deer in the yard camera in hand. She sure was acting strange, may be slipped out of the game fence and now has a fawn on the other side somewhere.

I have seen her once since these pictures were taken. Standing in the drive one evening I hear the sound of hooves pounding down the black top. There went the deer with Buford and Brenda's border collie/cow dog mixes in chase. Trailing this action at a safe distance was El Guapo.

I called to El Guapo, "Come here, quit chasing the deer." He obediently came to my side. I could see from the look on his face he was readying the story he would tell his dog buddies. "The man called me. I had to come, I mean he feeds me, built the dog house, scrubs my belly till it's plumb pink. I owe him everything."

That look on his face was relief. Relief from the tired thirsty work of deer chasing on a hot summer afternoon.

Stalking...

Stalking just aint what it used to be. Ruined as it be by caller ID and ever falling prices of home security monitoring systems. So yesterday I hearkened back to the olden days. I tried to get a feel for what it

must have been like for an Indian to stalk up on a herd of buffalo somewhere out on the great plains. Lucky for me I have a herd of buffalo right next door. Some places people will pay a fee to stalk up something like this. Besides, this herd is basically underutilized. I have only been using them to tell if the fish are biting. Buffalo stand up,fish bite.Buffalo all lay down, fish not bite.

There's some now. Let's see if we can get a little closer.

Right up to them. Old Chief Mudbelly peers right between the trees as he shoots with his trusty bow and kodak.

Wait a minute, What's that coming, quick, hide.

Looks like another large animal is working the area. Careful, be quiet, be sneaky.

Look out folks we scared him. Run Away!

Those old stalking habits are hard to break.

Who Done This?...

Seems like that is a question I have asked many time throughout the years of raising four kids and except for the big white dog of course, providing shelter for numerous pin headed canines.

So now with most of the kids out of the house and the two resident pin heads totaling about 20lb combined weight, not really enough to do much damage, I ask that question again. Who done this?

What you see is damage to one of my flower areas from an unknown source. This shaded area has a couple of azaleas, Indian hawthorn, and here you see the shoots of some bulbs that look to have been used as a bed. No real damage here, the flowering done they are just waiting to be cut down by the weed eat to do it all again next early spring. One thing that may be lost is an Easter lily that has been coming up and blooming for some years. It hasn't done it's thing yet so I don't know if it can recover, the stalk is broken and the plant lies on the ground.

This really looks as if something about 6 or 8 feet tall laid on the cool green stalks and crushed them. This looks like such a cool comfortable place I almost tried it on for size myself. So I ask again, who done this? A swamp ape? Aliens? Buford and Brenda? Those thing loom large in the lore of this blog, popping up to inhabit our dreams and visions, to provide explanations to the unknown and to provide that ever needed re-enforcement that no, we don't know all and there are things out there that are hard to wrap our weak minds around.

Who done this?...

Strange Doggy Doings...

I have mentioned my neighbors here before. Their names are Buford and Brenda. They rent from another nearby neighbor. I don't see Buford much, keeps his nose to the grind stone to feed a bunch of stair steped kids. Brenda has too much time on her hands.

They got a couple of dogs who lay in the road and if the newspaper comes after I have left for work they get it and tear it up in the cow field that seperates our houses. No big deal, the Lufkin Daily, a once proud Pulitzer prize winner is somewhat in decline, at least the print version is. More features online these days. Burford and Brenda are poor folks and I got considerable more than 50 cents in my pocket if I want hard copy, so I let the paper thing go.

The strange doggy doings is that Brenda has seemed to adopt my dogs. Kind of started last weekend, I was home alone, stero was blaring kind of lost to myself what with my better half at work and there is a knock at the door, only the screen as the weather has been so mild and Brenda burst right in. I'm a bit startled, she is a big ol loud gal and she starts telling me my dogs are at her house in the laundery room. She says she has not seen her dogs. I note that I have seem them on the highway and shereportslater that she tracked them down, a neighbor had taken them in to the "vet" ,and it cost $185 to bail them out.

So bear with me here, I'll try to cut to the chase. The last really cold night Brenda leaves a note on the door, "I have your dogs call me and I'll let them out they were cold." Couple of days later, a telephone message, " I am gone to town, be back in an hour, I'll let your dogs out then." Last night the dogs apparently slept in all night in their landury room.

Tonight, no dogs around. I march down there, careful not to trip over a kids toy in the dark and beat on the door. It takes 5 minutes to summon someone.All the while I can hear dogs sniffing on the other side of the door and now and then catch a glimspe of them through the curtain, Finely Brenda pokes her big head out, relases them reports they were cold. I ask if the dogs are bothering them. I report that the dogs have dog houses to get in when cold. I mention that I like for my dogs to come when they are called and I offer to pen them up.

Now stop me if wrong. Most dogs in North America generally have it better than most people in the third world. As my little dogs sleep on my living room couch tonight I pray for all those poor folk. I try not to get too wound up about dogs, I like them of course, but I need to know. Do these neighbors seem weird to you?

Soundtracks of late...

For the music fan, I have not covered the tunes spinning in our changers. Naturally there is the new release by GoGol Bordello, the namers of this blog. Cathy says she smells sell out, losing the gypsy essence, better hair cuts, reviews in Rolling Stone and the usual signs. Don't let that stop you though, I bet the rock in most peoples collections is already dead.

Another guy in heavy rotation is Jim White. We picked up on him off emusic through his soundtrack to the documentary he made about our neighbors, Buford and Brenda, called "Wrong Eyed Jesus." Just think about that, if the picture on the wall of Jesus had the wrong eyes. We have picked up several od his cds over the past month and he is mining the southern Gothic vein to great effect. Get a couple of his cds and rent the Tennessee Williams screen play "Baby Doll", sit on the porch and watch the neighbors, man that's some good summer living.

Also check out Papa Mali. He got profiled in Guitar Player magazine and I thought this sounds like something I would like. Called Do you Thing, they had it on emusic. Then I realized the guy was an acquaintance. He was none other than Malcolm Wellbourne who used to play guitar in the Killer Bees, a Shreveport based reggae band from the 80s. He was a friend of Gary Strong's and we actually stood in line to get in the Jazz Fest together one time. Don't let the voodoo persona fool you, real nice guy. Wrote a great tribute to Strong on his online obit page.

This is just a quick run down so you guys get started jamming.

Nice to have celebs in town...

No it was not Brittney. No Paris. It was none other than Alan Keyes, former presidential candidate and one of the many fine stars of the Borat movie.

Keyes was in town with a traveling roadshow called Vision America. They met at the civic center here in town and while the Lufkin Daily News (those pinko liberals) reported the turn out of 300, half the available seats, as "slim," I prefer to think of that number as just the right size lynch mob.

Keyes seemed to have a message which he touted as religious in nature, but I must admit has not been brought out in the Gospel readings we use at my church. The Daily News reports that Keyes said that Christians were not required to love everybody and should hate evil doers while loving God and their neighbors.

Now I got to admit, there are some folks out there that are not easy to love. I kind of have the picture in my mind of an old boy on the other side of the gas pump at the station the other day. Black cowboy hat, an earring in each ear, rough denim shirt and pants, draining mother Earth into a big old truck. Hard to love I bet. Be a lot easier to lump him in with those evil doers I'd think.

But then maybe that's the problem. Or maybe not a problem. Seems it has already been decided who sorts the sheep from the goats. I don't have to worry about that.

And my neighbors? Well that's Buford and Brenda.

The Ballad of Buford and Brenda...

That's my neighbors. The new ones in the rent house down the road past us. The place where I suspect there might be some R.E.D. Neck business going on. I have not officially met them and have not really laid eyes on Buford, but Cathy has met Brenda.

Seems that Buford and Brenda don't have a phone. They are a young couple with several stair stepped small children and also only have one car. Those two things combined is what led her and Cathy to meet. Brenda has come down and asked to use our phone. These phone calls have been to Buford at work.

The first time she used the phone, it was a pretty quick conversation. I think Cathy said she asked something like "you coming home?" She then hung up, apparently satisfied with the answer. The next time she used the phone it was an emergency and she needed the car. Seems that "bubba" or "booger" I can't remember which had come to injure his head and she thought transport to the hospital was needed. "Bring the car" she said to Buford over the borrowed phone line. Cathy said the injured one really looked none the worse for wear. Just the kind of head skin a kid gets when family pictures are scheduled to be made.

So anyway tonight I got a pretty good look at Brenda. Notice I did not say met her. I was mowing the yard, on the riding lawn mower. The person I suspect to be Brenda and a big teenage boy walked through the yard and passed about 10 yards from the nose of my riding lawn mower. They never looked at me. The only thing I can think is that I was somehow invisible to them. This did not surprise me. I have been invisible a few times in my life, never while piloting something so noisy as a riding lawn mower though. Maybe I am getting better at the invisible thing.