When the Light and the Noise Shines in Your Eyes...

 We name the bike trails we ride in our rural neighborhood. There's the cemetery, the "L", the East Tex loop and one I don't ride too often we call the "T". I call it the "T' because you ride a long straight road and come to the choice of left or right and not being 100% where they go I turn and around and ride back because the distance I have covered has been enough to maintain the health of a 67 year old man, at least for this day. 

Riding the "T' recently as I approached it I heard growing sounds of machinery that I had not noticed the last time I rode this route. I passed a couple of those country mansions that are springing up all around my area, places that sell for $300,000 to $500,000 depending on acreage and there was some type of well, gas or oil reared up above the tree line behind these homes. 

Now of course I am guilty. as singer songwriter Randy Newman said, for the the rest of my life. I drive a big pickup pulling a camper and my preference for a hybrid car and the lithium ion battery on my e bike coupled with recent rare metal finds in the USA will threaten to turn Arkansas into a strip mine. It does appear that someone is going to have to have things like this in their backyard.    

From the looks of the clearing there will be more than one well going in here. So more noise and I would imagine these work places are pretty well lit at night. I live on a pretty dark dead end road and recently some new neighbors put up lights. Thankfully not permanent installations but shop lights and extensions cords strung through the trees while pretty bright are not showing signs of making it through the winter. I've been here 42 years and have lived through worse   

    

After a couple of well photos I took a dirt track across the county road into another clear-cut area and spotted a deer stand and feeder. No one was around and there were deer tracks in the road so I would imagine while hunting success was possible is happiness possible?

Modern life has evidence of 1st world people who have everything being unhappy. This indicates that the quality of the experience might not be all that good. I can imagine a hunt in a wilderness area using ancient skills as enjoyable but sitting in a deer stand in the middle of a clear cut waiting for a deer or the rig workers to show up leaves a little something to be desired. Same with a spending a half mil on a house and having an oil rig running loudly and brightly next door.

Of course that will probably happen to me. A decade or so ago my neighbor's cow field was surveyed by crews drilling holes and setting off charges to sound for what was beneath the ground. My neighbor died a few months ago. The heirs are going to want that money. 

I'll have to watch out for the oilfield traffic while riding my bike.         

This Might Be the Last Time I Don't Know...

I have been marking my mortality this year. I'm the same age as my dad was when he passed. My knee hurts. Cathy made our wills. Every few days I see an obit for some one I know. Not an old person but someone close to my age. 

 When  I was about 17 years old I spent a summer working construction. Good pay for the time at $2.25 an hour. I was a big old boy and did well pushing wheel barrows full of dirt and concrete. I don't remember it even being hot. I do remember there were older guys on the job who seemed cool. They arrived each day to work in late 60s/early 70s muscle cars, not real clean muscle cars but cars that had been once owned by cooler guys who had already got the goody out of running the heck out of those big motors. My guys did ok with a fill up the oil check the gas kind of muscle car.  The morning after a night of racing around in these cars and they usually had a pretty good hangover. 

I remember one of these guys was nicknamed "Fish." I saw Fish's obit the other day and even though it did not mention what his nickname had been (I want ya'll to make sure and list "mudbelly" in my obit) it did have a photo of him in which he looked just about how I recalled his appearance from that summer we worked together. It also listed his age as 72. So that means when I knew him I was 17 and he was 23. I thought he was 72 back then. 

Later this week I'll get these documents signed and notarized. Godspeed Fish. I'll think about your nickname from time to time. I think my knee feels a little better. 

  

"That Feller Had on a Dress..."

Men wearing dresses has been in the news lately. So has the fact that temps have been over 100 degrees around here for 23 days this summer. I say that a dress is cooler than trousers and for some years now a sarong, a one piece wrap popular in tropical areas of Asia and Africa has been a favored type of dress to wear while lounging about my house. Even though it seems that men with real short hair wearing suits may pass laws against men wearing dresses I may go against the mainstream and wear my sarong to town. It's hot enough, I don't think anyone will bat an eye and anyway that's kind of how I go, different from everyone else. 

Of course men with real short hair and suits have passed laws against heroin use. That does not make me want to go against the law and mass public opinion to sample narcotics because after all like climate change, COVID viruses and more there is science behind the reasons you should not take heroin. As far as I know there are no studies about men wearing sarongs. 

The other day I was driving along a main thoroughfare and I saw a poor woman walking in the 100 degree heat in a black bikini. She was probably in her 30s, the swim suit was on the modest side of this type of wear and she had a nice tan. By all appearances she was very hot and on a directional heading to the corner convenience store where what I imagined to be the only air conditioning she would experience that day lay in cool wait behind heavy glass doors. I say this woman would have been better served by a sarong and if you think I'm picking on women I saw a few men that would have also been well served by wearing a sarong. 

Once while working in the nursing home I had two physical therapy patients. One gentleman got up each day and dressed in button up western shirts, jeans, and leather shoes. The other gentleman preferred a patient gown with a pair of shorts underneath. Despite the differences in dress both men liked a good domino game and when they ended up in the gym together as a build up to more strenuous activities I placed a bedside rolling table with the dominos on them between the two and they happily spent quite a while playing. At the conclusion of the game I rolled the table from between them and Mr. Jeans sighted the other mans patient gown. "That feller's got on a dress!" he exclaimed. When you wear an unconventional garment in public it will take getting used to for some.        

Just so there is no confusion when you see me so you can start getting familiar with the terminology a sarong or sarung is worn wrapped about the waist. A West African word from the Akan language srong or sorong means fastened at the highest point. Memorize this and you will not be ignorant about which one I'm wearing. 

Cathy also has a sarong. She likes it when we are all matchy matchy. Whatever men in suits with real short hair think I like it also.  

 

Bury Me on the Lone Prairie...

 Rose was in for a visit. Me, Cathy and her were driving home and there was talk of how we rode bicycles to the old cemetery near the house. I don't know if I was looking bad or something but the talk turned to where I should be buried and how it would make sense to be close to the house and what's the procedure for being buried in these small isolated country cemeteries. Do you have to have a family connection? 

So we just stopped by what's called  the Old Center Cemetery or Rocky Springs by some. I have researched a lot of genealogy since our bike trips here and sure enough there is a pile of Nerrens in this East Texas ground. I am related to the Nerren tree through my Granny Nerren Wallace. The Nerrens came to Angelina county from Mississippi in 1948 and settled at the Marion's Ferry Crossing on the Angelina River now covered by Lake Sam Rayburn. At the old center cemetery I found this gravestone.

This is the resting place of a 3rd great cousin Lorenzo Dow Nerren Jr. The son of Lorenzo Sr. he is the grandson of my 3rd great grandfather John Nerren. His wife, Nancy McKinney is buried with him. 

That's a pretty good run for Lorenzo. Born during the Civil War he died Sept 25th, 1941 and did not quite see WW2. 

We next headed on to the Rocky Hill Cemetery, a place where I knew there was a nice pear tree but  I did not find and relatives and the pears were high in the tree and looked to be hard and knotty with the drought. A google maps check showed we were near the Nerren Cemetery in Huntington, Tx. We drove over and nearly missed the little track leading to it. 

It was a quiet place and we found some interesting things. Here is another 3rd cousin Alexander Nerren born Aug 5th 1851 in Angelina County and died April 13th 1947 in Huntington, Tx. He's the brother of Lorenzo Jr. 

That's a pretty good run. Born before the Civil War, might have grandchildren old enough for WW1, great grand children old enough for WW2 and managed to see the atomic age. 

He's buried by his second wife Mary Marshall. They wed in 1909. His first wife was Martha Richardson wed in 1874 she passed in 1897.    

  

Here's the photos I found on the internet of Alexander.

Yep, that looks like a bunch of Nerrens. Can anyone date the photo by the clothes? 

I did find Alexander's death certificate where he was described as "retired farmer" and cause is listed as "intestinal obstruction, partial."

Another interesting find was the marker for the first wife of B.F. Nerren, my 3rd great uncle. Old Ben Franklin was sheriff of Angelina County 1888-1894. He's buried in Walker Cemetery by where Paul Nerren's Junk Barn used to stand on Highway 59 North.   

I did not pick out a spot during this exploration. I'm feeling pretty good no matter what they may think. What age comes after the atomic age?  

    

Slow Fishing Report...

It was a fine morning for canoe fishing and even with my malfunctional camera lens closure that leaves a smudge on seemingly only the best photos a good day for pictures, bird and turtle watching. My fishing log shows that in the past I have been piling up the big bull bream this time of the year but I could not find them today. 

I wish there was some way to measure the erosion of this point separating the two coves at Hanks Creek. In years past spring time fishing has yielded many a white bass in this spot but either because

of the changed topography or something else I have not been able to arrive at the same time they do for several years now.        

Is this a turkey? 

The campground was a hub of activity with work underway on the campsites that spent several months flooded a couple of years ago and then there was a truck spraying the vegetation growing from the riprap protecting the camps from eroding and at the boat ramp rocks also. 

Spraying is the name of the game on area lakes and I can understand controlling invasive species like giant salvinia that can destroy life in a lake. I saw a spray boat in the parking lot of HEB the other day but this spraying is to prevent old trash trees and weeds from undermining the rocks. It's something a crew could do by hand. 

I hate to be a pessimist but I noted no protective gear in use and one day when this guys doc gives him a cancer diagnosis he will say:

Did you spray chemicals?

Did you work in the sun?

Did you eat Wieners?

Three strikes you are out!        

I am a turtle. Are you a turtle too? 

Turtle swimming under the canoe. 

Two fish was all I could manage. I think we had more bull bream on the last camping trip to Hanks. I'll either hit the catfish next time or if canoeing head over to B.A. Steinhagen where there is a good chance for monster bream. 

I did have a new recipe I wanted to try and until I get on the fish check this guy out for action and some good cooking ideas at Outside the Levees.  

On the way home I noticed the cows laying down. That's never good on a fish day.  

 

Thanks For The Birthday Wishes...

 This is what 66 years old looks like on me. Before you say "it looks like them tictok teens making bathroom selfies" (this was her idea) I'll tell you that my dad passed away when he was 66 years and 5 months old. My mom lived till she was 95 and I have quite a few first cousins older than me with some of them still pretty spry ranging from 75 to 95 or so. It's not really fair to cry bad genes. 

When I think about what I thought about my dad way back those 32 years ago when he passed it does feel like I am nosing the boat so to speak into unknown waters. It seemed at the same age my dad was a slow old man or at least that's what I thought. Maybe he was as he was starting to get sick and I was a dumb young man who maybe did not know as much as he thought he did at the time. Makes me wonder what my kids think (I really know what they think, I think) about me at the same age and makes me think that those waters might not be what I don't know but what they don't know. To make it all more mysterious makes me think about if we all know anything at all. 

Thanks to all the folks who reached out through social media, texts, phone calls, sent cards, gifts, or bought me a birthday dinner. It's a humbling experience to know how many people think about you in a special time. I'll try my best to follow the example my fine friends set as I continue to navigate the waters of life.     

I Take An Old Age Test...

It's that time of the year that I take an old age test. Can he still get up on some towable behind the boat toy? It's legitimate testing since I have been getting towed around on Lake Sam Rayburn since probably the late 1970s and real regular since I bought my first boat capable of towing in 1986.

Sadly to say the testing these days is done on a float thing we call the couch. The couch is a lot of fun but it's pretty much idiot proof and you can't fall off of it unless you do something stupid which I was prohibited from doing because I was riding with two little people Luca and Cullen who are under two years old. 

   

Mary rides with Ezra and Parker. 

Ali takes on a full crew. As I was airing up this tube I noticed there was a warning printed on the side that you should not tie riders to the towable. I don't know why I have never seen that before.  

Morgan gets in on the cruise. 

Here you see Mary taking the old age test on the knee board. You are supposed to be kneeling on that thing. I used to take my old age test on the board but it's been a couple of summers since I could pass it and this weekend my right shoulder was really painful which I think was an injury suffered from trying to dip ice cream that was too frozen so I declined this test. 

Not being able to perform this test made me think of something my brother, who works at what they call the "little hospital" or the East Texas Heart Institute, told me. Seems that twenty something people come in for a stress test on a treadmill (the reason being they have reported chest pain) and can't complete this test. If they can't run they then submit to a nuclear stress test which involves injecting radioactive something or other into the body which is what Putin has threatened to do to Ukrainian bodies and given probabilities a few of these heart patients probably refused the Covid vaccine because they did not think doctors knew what they were doing. In some circles "nuclear" is a threat.  

Although I have been retired from health care a couple of years I can't recall seeing patients this young who had heart surgeries so I asked my brother what the the doctor does for this type of thing. His reply was, "He tells them they need to get up and move around."

 So all this getting up and moving around was done with a 40 horse power Johnson outboard motor which happens to pull these water toys at their recommend speeds of 15-20 miles per hour. I have heard reports of 450 horse power motors cruising the lake. That seems like a lot of trouble and it only took about $15 to $20 worth of gas and a $5 entrance to the swimming area to move people around enough that all of them took naps on the way home. It's a good life.  

       

I believe these guys might be talking about another kind of movement in this photo. Hopefully I'll get to redo my testing as many times as possible this summer. 

 

Let's Work on Cars...

 This is a photo from the old collection of family photos assembled by my cousin Mary Lou and her husband Mike. An unidentifiable man works on a Ford automobile. I believe it's a very late 1930s or possibly 1940s model. There's a lot to take in on this photo. 

First off if I stood on my car's bumper it would probably come off or the plastic it's made of would shatter. My little hybrid car (yeah this is that dreaded liberal virtue signal running up the flagpole) is a discontinued model because some very smart man decided to lower gas mileage requirements a few years ago and automobile manufacturers made a decision to build only cars larger than WW2 armored tanks that get about the same MPG so I probably could not get the part and if I could it wouldn't be the same color as my car is now.  

Also if I look under the hoods of my car or truck, both coming up on 10 years old or more I see warnings that if it's not yellow don't touch it. They are talking about oil dipsticks, windshield washer fluid and such that have yellow handles. I would imagine on a new car if you touch something you are not supposed to your phone dings. 

This guy's arm has disappeared completely up to his shoulder as he grapples with some demon in the very depths of the engine compartment. There's no way my arm will penetrate to this depth and if it could get past the inner circle of unknown auto part hell it would quickly encounter the Earth's surface because generally vehicle clearance is so poor that an encounter with a large racoon on a Texas Farm Road will end with severe damage or completely upends the car.  Don't ask how I know this because that's another blog post. 

Also it's amazing to me that he's doing this and I don't see his phone propped up somewhere showing a youtube video of how to do whatever it is. I suppose they had youtube and maybe they had phones because the number of views these videos get indicate they have been watched a lot, a long time or something. 

Oh yeah, one more thing about the hybrid. Unlike this old Ford (hybrid is a Ford) it has been very maintenance (knock on wood) free. I've taken it to my guy a few times for an occasional minor issue and I'll think and tell him "hey why don't you check the such and such for me, it's never been checked." He'll call me back and say, "It didn't have on of those."   

After all this talk about about modern cars I am a little closer to cars like the old ones than you think. My neighbor to the north east a yard over has hauled several rusting hulks of similar vintage onto his property. He must consider these valuable because he put them close to his house which is better than along the generous back border we share and if I stand on small stool at the kitchen window I can just see their roofs above the privacy fence me and the side neighbor share. 

If I can't work on cars I figure watching these old cars sit in the yard will give me something to do for the rest of my life.          

Down on the San Pedro...

 It seems like I know a lot of people with international travel plans right now. My grandson, Luca  and I spent the afternoon on San Pedro Creek and hiking around Mission Tejas State Park. It's not far but if you have an imagination it is travel back to another time. 

There is a lot of Texas history in the park. The original sites of the local missions, Mission Tejas and Mission Santissimo Nombre de Maria are lost to time as are the locations of the mission bells which were buried when the Spanish fled the area in 1693 after activity of the soldiers stirred the local Tejas tribe up, crops were failing, and an epidemic swept through killing priests and indigenous alike. 

Luca stands along a section of the Old Spanish trail, or El Camino Real. The trail was first marked by the Spanish in the 1700s but it's 2500 mile length had been in use long before that.    

My experience with more recent trails through the East Texas wood that have disappeared make this amazing to me that there was enough traffic on this road to leave it as visible as you see it here as it winds through the pines. Thousands of early peoples, indigenous people, Spanish, French and later anyone of note in Texas history including Davy Crockett on his way to the Alamo walked right down that path and that little hill through this forest. Me and Luca walked down it also.  

I saw this trail to San Pedro Creek on the map with a little fish symbol and that meant I had to check it out. Usually you can find out a bit about Texas water ways online but other than the fact that the mission was near here and the Tejas village was along the banks there's not much. I did find a journal article on a search for the village in 1929 and I spotted several off limits trails that probably lead to undeveloped archeological sites within the park.  

There are bass in San Pedro creek which is an impressively swift flowing body of water. Maybe old Davy stopped there, the El Camino Real trail is less than 100 yards from this point and caught a bass and ate it. 

We casted lures at the park pond also and had a couple of bites but no fish there. I think maybe try for catfish sometime as many state park ponds get regular stockings. 

We took the easiest trail and Luca was grateful that I brought the wagon. There look to be some interesting and challenging trails that might be good for the big kids. Our total walk was about 1.5 miles and took us an hour and a half including the fishing stop at the creek.  

The hilly ridges in the park were left from the Eocene Period. Probably shark teeth to be found digging around here.  

A recreation of the old mission. The park, lake, trails and facilities were developed in the 1930s by the old Civilian Conservation Corps. 

I was trying to get a photo of us and a dogwood but it came out looking like wild boys in the woods. 

Here's a nice dogwood. 

There is a folklife festival with old time stuff and reenactors the last weekend in April. I would like to make it but that's one of those conglomeration days for me with a lot going on. Maybe you can make it for you own trip back in time. 

The Mudbelly Guitar History or a Book Someone Needs to Write if Anything Ever Happens...

 All the recent interest in the Beatles that has been brought back in focus with the new documentary "Get Back" that gave us insight into their creative process. For us guitar and gear nerds it was a pleasure to see what instruments and amps played what. 

This caused me to recall a website I once saw that must have had a photo as documented proof of every guitar and amp a Beatle was publicly seen playing and a history of that piece of gear. I can't seem to find that site but there are books written and another site very similar. The information on each item was amazing. I recall there were some amps spotted in the studio with one Beatle in the 1960s and then later spotted onstage at a live performance with another after the group disbanded. Imagine the call, "Hey you still got that old Fender Bassman, can I borrow it this weekend?" 

This trove of info reveals that the fab four were pretty much like all guitar guys (except they played much better and more creatively) with it came to guitars. They worked on them, painted them, sanded them down, had them stolen, backed over by cars and traded back and forth. It seems like I read in a book that Lennon had a room in the Dakoda where he stacked guitars against the wall much like I do. 

All this brings me to the old pawn shop Suzuki Classical guitar Bill Cooney gave me to repair in 2019. I made repairs and returned the guitar to him. It came back to me after his passing. I played it in public the first time this past week at a Religious Education Epiphany Celebration at my church. I decided if a bass guitar, what I usually play at church is not essential I'll play this guitar on the Spanish and bilingual music.    

Maybe one day some one will collect up all the photos of me playing my various instruments into a book and try to explain what I was doing. Should be interesting reading. 

If they write a book on Cathy there will be a lot of photos but they will all be the same guitar since that's the only one she owns. 

 

Don't forget to include photos of me playing the shaker I made from the belly dancer

ghungroo bells. It's not a guitar but it's a favorite. 

I guess the point here is play what you like. Something will happen and that's what everyone wants.  

 

    

Kind of a Reverse making Records Blog Post...

 A few Christmases ago the kids gave me a USB turntable. It's a handy item if you have a bunch of old records like I do. It hooks to a port on a computer, drop the needle on the groove, click a button on a pretty simple program and the next thing you know that big spinning 12 incher is a digital file. 

That set up including the computer is nothing special. The lap top in the photo is the one I used for work before I retired. It's a Dell ebay refurbished job and not too speedy but it takes care of business and I was able to put the audio directly to a zip drive. That's handy as I already have probably 5000 songs on this little computer and there's no sense in just clogging it up because I can. Speakers are not too loud but with a plug in chord to my bluetooth speaker that I broadcast from my phone or an analog to and I have a fine monitor for a little system that all told probably comes in at a price tag well under three Franklins. I've paid more for fun but not lately. 

You could get technical as I think there are some editing programs out there that eliminate all the pops and hiss of a record but that might get complicated. 

In the time I've owned this turntable I have recorded records to digital in starts and fits and this started as a project to record an old band record for a classmate. It's hard to record symphonic music. There are lots of dynamics, pauses between movements and so on that fool the software into thinking a single piece might be more than one track. 

A rock record is easier to record. It's pretty straight forward. They crank it up and keep it up all the way through. At least they do on a clean record. Those records that might have slid across a dorm room floor back in the late 1970s might have some scratches that hang things up. 

Which is funny as I have a lot older records I have collected up from used stores, thrift stores and flea markets that are in much better shape than the rock records of the 70s. I collect in the categories of dixieland, big band, polka and exotica. I think these kind of listeners just took better care of the records and played them on better equipment like big old consoles that had sturdy built in storage. 

As for the old band records they don't seem to have faired as well. They date to the early mid 70s and have not been played all that much but seems like manufacturing might not be the same standard as the big labels. The techniques to record a symphonic band in an auditorium might be pretty primitive compared to what is available today.  

Cathy is back to work after her hip replacement this week and as she winds down to retirement when the labor and delivery night shift is not busy she will come home on call. Last night she came home early to find me at my digitalization station with a stack of old Joni Mitchell and Chicago records. She said:

"What you do when you are by yourself is worse than I imagined."  

.          

The Church of Shark Handling...

 It was sci writer L. Ron Hubbard who claimed the best way to make a bunch of money is to found your own religion. Hubbard, who passed away in 1986 went on to do just that, amid much controversy, founding the Church of Scientology. On a family beach trip to Surfside, Tx I had the brilliant idea to do the same but avoiding conflicts by pursuing salvation through shark handling. After all Shark Week is an incredibly popular TV show and that kids song, probably from some other show, "baby shark shark shark" is stuck in my head so the more I think about it the more it makes sense.  

For proper shark handling you gotta get a shark. As sharks come in all sizes it helps to have a small one. Easier to handle it and as your faith grows you will be able to handle bigger ones.  

Raise them right and they will stay on the path. I didn't make that up. I heard it somewhere but I bet it will hold true with this one. He's started young. 

Of course some will be afraid and may deny the shark three or more times before some kind of good fish we can eat is caught. Due to the fact that sharks are apex predators of the food chain they tend to absorb lots of toxins like mercury in their flesh and while safe for the faithful to handle probably should not be consumed in excess by by small children and women of childbearing years as many of our church members fit that demographic.    

The laying of hands on the shark is a calming experience for the shark and the handler.

Bow before the mighty shark. Hail thee! 

The faithful bring their children from far and wide for the handling of the shark. 

Oh shark, I bow and look thee in the eye, thy teeth snap and slash but I shall not be afraid at all! 

You need high priests of the shark to be your spirit guides. 

Another high priest of the shark leads the little children to the water. 

Matt, the most high of the shark handlers gathers his congregation from up and down the beach. 

Oh hammer of my heart, I rejoice in you. 

Some do a little dance when they handle. Depends on how frisky the shark. 

And then there are those of little faith who can only catch hard head catfish. Luckily there are many rooms in my Father's house.   

All sharks CPRed, caught, photographed and released.