Honk!Tx 2024...

Yes there were tubas. Lots of them as well as all other kind of instruments at the Austin Honk!Tx street band festival this past weekend.  It was our second year to attend and I love every minute. Though I do get plenty of opportunities to play music with good people all the time I do wish there was something like this in my home town with wacky dress up sensibilities which in many cases with these groups also combine with community purposes to make the world a better place. 

Here's the Honk!Tx Mission statement:

HONK!TX is a nonprofit, community-driven festival that brings street and brass bands from around the country to perform for free in the public spaces of Austin, Texas. Mobile and unamplified, HONK! bands transform everyday locations into spontaneous stages, dissolving the line between crowd and performers and inviting everyone to celebrate the joys of music and community. A range of genres will be represented: New Orleans second-line brass, European Klezmer and Balkan, Brazilian, West African and more. HONK! is a celebration of community, collaboration and creative expression. Join the revelry!

Above is pictured and you may guess their name, The Neon Brass Party from the clothing style. They come to the festival from Seattle, Wa. The traveling bands are put up in the homes of volunteers, preferably located on public transit or bike lanes. Food sponsors, Restaurants, Caterers and individuals feed everyone. 

9th Avenue Brass from Pensacola, Fl. One of my favorites. 

Bramaya West African Music and Dance from Austin.

Generally not real crowded for a free festival but I could not get real close to the Minor Mishap Marching Band. 

Black Sheep Ensemble from Atlanta.  

Greenbelt Honk! Situation from Greenbelt, Maryland. 

Cimarrona La Original from Santo Domingo Costa Rica. Great group, good drums and tuba. 

The Human Band from New Orleans. Not your typical New Orleans thing but a bit of Balkan and other stuff thrown in. 

I think a lot of Honk groups, many cities have Honk Festivals, meet in the park or other public space on a weekend afternoon, rehearse an hour and then perform an hour. I'd love to do something like that. Maybe I'm not too old to have this much energy I just wish I had the arranging skills to put it together. I'd certainty hold down the tuba line.  

 

Slow Fishing But We Managed a Few...

The American White Pelican nests as far north as Alaska and the Northwest Territories of Canada. Some go south in winter to Costa Rico like my friend U.S. Tico but a big bunch of them can usually be found on the lakes of East Texas through the winter. They eat about four pounds of fish a day and I usually see them moving and feeding on deep open waters for shad and minnows. Yesterday we spotted this group of birds and laid up in the warm sun on a little nub of an exposed sandbar instead of fishing and it proved what we found out. The fish were not biting, at least not at that moment in time.     

Our old friend Jongy was with us on this trip. He's going to catch one sooner or later if we keep taking him out because he did get a bite but his luck is not much worse than Cathy's total of one fish. The last trip Cathy invited people to the fish fry before we left for the lake and like most people who work well under pressure was able to back all that up with some fat blue cats landed in the boat. No pressure on this trip she claimed.  

Matt took the most fish this time out. We caught zero fishing deep which was where they had been last trip and found the catfish about 4' deep under slip corks. The lake was up after the rain but there are reports that it will go down again. There's work being done on the dam rip rap. When flows on the Neches River slow going into B.A. Steinhagen Lake the water from Sam Rayburn Lake which goes down the Angelina River to join the Neches out of Rayburn will be released for the work to continue.   

Note in these photos that after all the rain water color is about like how I like my coffee. 

I took big fish honors. Two big fillets off this fish worth $8 a pound. The smallest 8 fish probably worth $40 at the grocery headed, skint and sold bone in. 

Despite the slow action the total was 11 fish and they were decent size. That's 56 fish for the month of January. Things will probably slow in February because of non fishing plans but March is a solid slip cork meat in the boat month. 

 

U.S. Tico and The Man at Rockport Fulton Market Days...

 I've written about my old friend, Donald Setterbo, or as we called him in college Donnie "Mo-Honny" or as friends and family know him, "Papa Turtle" or as he is now known through the branding of his retirement business venture, U.S. Tico. I helped him this weekend in his booth at his hometown Rockport Fulton Market Days. 

I case you don't know "Tico" is a term for a native Costa Rician. Setterbo has been living in Quepos, Costa Rica for six years. He is U.S. Tico, a Tico at heart from the USA. Quepos is a tropical harbor town, surrounded by rain forest and famous for big game fishing. It's an easy place to fall in love with and identify yourself with the relaxed pace of living and the ecotourism that replaced the banana plantation economy. Do I need to mention that resident Americans and Europeans enjoy the cheap rents and cool breezes off the ocean?    

U.S. Tico got the idea for his brand one day while walking the harbor along Marina Pez Vela. He encountered a young Nicaraguan woman out to enjoy a stroll down the picturesque waterfront. The woman pushed a baby carriage and the chubby cheerful baby wore a hat that said, "No Soy Tico" or translated to English "I'm not Costa Rician." This set the wheels of creativity turning. Costa Rica is a beautiful, easy place to be. It also spends 6.9% of it's budget on education compared to a global average of 4.4%, is rated at a higher level of human development that other countries of similar income and scores as the worlds 23rd happiest place according to the World Happiness Report. Let's get together and talk sometime about why you don't want to be Tico.    

U.S. Tico goods are high quality. The prints and logos are created and drawn by humans, not AI machines. Hats and other items are embroidered.  At the Market Days U.S. Tico introduced his new line for Ticas, or for non Spanish speakers, the girls. 

Looking around the Market Days Fair grounds there were several hat booths. These are different. They  fit my big head. That's quality. 

Creativity runs in the Setterbo family. Click the link to check out his daughter Naedas's children's book, "Sloth Bunny Goes to School." U.S. Tico reviewed the book for me, "there's a lot of different levels..."

You can pick up Sloth Bunny on a hoodie. 

Of course in the short time span of one weekend's work U.S. Tico did not covert the whole USA to the Tico life. That's their loss, but he told his story, sold a few hats and talked to other local business owners interested in carrying the line in their shop. No one else is doing this. Why not make the sales pitch? Pura Vida is a Spanish term used in Costa Rica to describe the culture there. It means the pure life. Why not be Tico? Why not be Tica?    

Shop now, someone with that many nicknames is bound to have something going on.

U.S. Tico

 

I Like Warm Weather...

 I don't like the weather to be cold and it snowed here last week and then stuck to the ground for several days. That does not happen very often in these parts and actually the ice sheets on the roof, which brought to mind the fact that wooly mammoths froze with green salad still in their mouths, slid to the ground in my flower beds and stayed frozen in the shade for almost a week. In those flower beds I had a wandering Jew house plant (a name invented by someone else) that took root in the fertile soil. In our usually warm clime and the 40 days and nights that pass for winter here it sleeps undisturbed in piles of thick homemade mulch until warm weather comes and it's time to wander to other beds and pots. I look forward to such wandering action myself. 

 I had put some thought into cold weather this year. Not the thought that true northerners put into winter like how they are going to push snow piles out of the way to get the door open or the car out of the drive way or who they are going to call if the roof collapses from the weight of snow and ice. I just bought a thrift store set of insulated bib overalls. I had brief dreams of catfishing over deep holes stacked with large blue cat so warm on the bottom of the lake that they are as comfortable as U.S. Tico on BenJammin's porch down south in Costa Rica. I might have worn those coveralls once. I certainly did not need them on the short trek back and forth from the firewood pile last week. 

My preferred dress, given the coming of spring and summer is no shirt and no shoes. A headband, do rag or a hat is handy to mop sweat and give assist to thinning hair that does not give enough sun protection to a delicate scalp. Service won't be necessary. In fact in the early days of writing this blog and posting photos of my self online people often asked if I ever wore a shirt. These days I am kind of like that once handsome friend who often got away with murder until he aged and was not so handsome and started getting punched in the nose quite regularly. I might punch myself in the nose if I saw a picture of me online without a shirt but then there is that threshold you cross where you just don't care and when it's warm summertime I don't care. 

One time when I did care I put some thought into what I was going to wear one summer. There were some pastel checked cotton shorts in a light color that all the other guys were wearing and they looked like they might be comfortable and stylish for summer. When one of my kids saw me wearing those shorts she said "That light color is not going to work for you because you get so sweaty and dirty." 

Now this had not really occurred to me because sweaty and dirty is my optimal operating mode. I really don't think I ever got those shorts dirty because one day as I performed the bending, scooting twisting, crab walk side step that is necessary for a large man to seat himself in a small car the backside of those pastel checked cotton shorts were torn asunder like the temple veil signifying that my body would never inhabit such the sanctuary of such a garment again. 

Now I give my thoughts to the coming warm summer, short shorts and swimming. I know there will still be cold days before then but I have firewood and I will use it. I might even try those blue cats. 

 

Brooms, Neck Tattoos, the Economy...

 I was pondering whether to get my $600 tattoo on my back or my neck and I thought about something I heard someone say. 

"It's a good economy for a man that does not mind pushing a broom." 

I think what he really meant was that it's a good economy for a man or a woman for that matter, who does not mind getting their hands dirty and I thought about broom pushing in my own life.  

I got my first real job, an adult job, in an economy where huge warehouses were often needed to hold all the product pouring from the great furnace of American endlessness. These were warehouses roughly the size of a downtown block in the city of Lufkin, Tx. The Keltys warehouse that had once been part of the old Angelina County Lumber Company and occasionally used for offsite storage was the size of several city blocks. These warehouses required sweeping. 

To sweep the warehouse a couple of guys were issued brooms about 18" in width and a one gallon tin bucket full of an oily, pink sawdust mixture called floor sweep. The floor sweep was scattered at random by the handful and caused dust and dirt to stick together for easy sweeping. This took awhile but it was an economy that paid by the hour and time and a half when you went over eight hours. 

As time went on and it was discovered that making money often means workforce reductions the company found that the number of employees and time required to sweep a warehouse could be reduced by having a mechanical sweeper. The last warehouse sweeping I did was sitting on one of these. A comfortable seat, propane powered to contribute to a clean low emission indoor atmosphere with whirling brushes and vacuum suction it was a dirt Zamboni and I probably received 30 minutes of instruction to qualify for a certificate to proclaim my operational prowess.  

So my view here is that the economy, at this point in time is not going to let a man get his hands on a broom. Those big warehouses I mentioned stand on empty ground that few recall the original purpose of. I retired from a second career that came after the sweeping and I checked in on the 401k associated with this work. It had made as much money as one could expect from something like this, on what I do not know and all without me hitting a lick at a snake for the last eight months. Unless you call blog writing, banjo strumming and tuba playing, things which I sometimes do get paid for hitting a lick at a snake. 

Now understand this idle wealth, made with clean hands, is not like legacy money. It could be burned through pretty quick with the purchase of top of the line bass boats, neck tattoos, Gibson guitars and trips to see U.S. Tico in Costa Rica. It will be enough money for the economy I create here on out for myself. 

A neck tattoo of a man with dirty hands pushing a broom, maybe a skeleton pushing a broom, a dolphin pushing a broom, a unicorn pushing a broom, help me, I'm brainstorming here.   

 

Venture the Adventure While Holding a Baby...

U.S. Tico always says, "Venture the Adventure."  I say, "Yeah, but I'm holding a baby." Just do it. that's the whole idea. Pura Vida, with the meaning that you should be thankful for what you have and live a simple life is the way for Ticos but I lived it on one particular vacation to Mexico. 

The summer of 1991 had been very eventful. In July my youngest daughter was born. There had been house remodeling, family adjustments for the three older children and school was soon to start. As a consolation prize for the new baby taking away some of their summer fun thunder we promised the kids that there would be a vacation to Disney World as soon as mom and baby were ready to travel and before school started. Reservations were booked. Only problem with all these goings on, you must remember this was pre-internet when you could just google up this information, the trip was booked after the start date of school. Hasty adjustments were made, Disney World was canceled and it seemed that even though the baby was three weeks old, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico was a good idea.    

Puerto Vallarta is located on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Long a place where Hollywood celebrities could cavort while escaping prying paparazzi at the time it was not on the general American tourist's radar and was a preferred vacation destination for Mexico's domestic tourist. It was a great place, sunny skies, clear, calm water with a deceptive wave break right at the beach that would strip a bikini from the unguarded swimmer in an instant while beach vendors selling cheap silver and fat lazy green iguanas watched.      

"Night of the Iguana", starting Richard Burton and Ava Garner was filmed in 1964 at Mismaloya, a beach south of Puerto Vallarta. Our trip, with a three week old baby had none of the drama associated with the John Huston directed film about the human wrecks descending on an isolated resort. Instead there were jungle trips, donkey rides, good food, plenty of beach time and souvenirs to purchase from wandering sellers willing to negotiate what was perceived as the lowest possible price for their wares.        

Since much is made of the movie filmed there and the Hollywood connection to isolated relaxation it seemed like a good idea to book a boat cruise to Mismaloya Beach and Los Arcos Marine Park. The tour promised coastal sight seeing in the vicinity of the movie set, beach time, a jungle trail, waterfalls, snorkeling, and a roasted chicken lunch. Seems like an easy trip for a baby.   

It's not hard to imagine Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor living in a hillside home with the beach right below. 

Waterfalls and jungle trails capture the iguana movie mood. 

I must admit that it has only been in recent years on a trip to the Cayman Islands that I became comfortable breathing through a snorkel. I have a bit of claustrophobia and things such as reclining in the upper berth of an Amtrak sleeping compartment or trying to breath through a pipe activate it. I was perfectly happy to let my wife, Cathy, snorkel while I held the baby.     

Los Arcos became a protected area in 1984 to preserve the habit, fish and birdlife that is abundant in the waters around these granite islands carved down to arches by time and the elements.  

I should mention at this point that the roasted chicken lunch, with side dishes of beans, rice and tortillas had been washed down with cheap tequila, and Modelo beer. The boat crew was a gregarious bunch and seemed to lead the charge when it came to the cheap tequila. Maybe that's why it looked like a good idea to drive the boat through the arch. I have heard U.S. Tico was here in 1982. I am not sure if the boat Captain had heard about Venture the Adventure yet or not.      

These are all photos that I made that day. I don't have photos of the boat ramming the arch, running aground and shattering the rail. It was the pre-digital age so no cell phones to capture all action and post to Instagram. In the chaos I was too busy holding on to the baby. I could imagine the headlines. "Man drowns but saves baby." To Venture the Adventure you must survive it. I think that's a U.S. Tico rule. 

As you can see the boat did not sink, I did not drown, calm returned and I still had the baby. She's 29 years old. We made it back to port with the tour boat engine dying as we bumped up against a docked ocean liner. With the boat damaged and the cheap tequila gone the crew was not as entertaining on the return trip as they were earlier. As I think back on this experience and have learned more about the delicate ecosystem of Los Arcos I would think that compounded with the boat damage there might have been some consequences for the crew to the boat grounding on the protected reef.    

Pura Vida. Venture the Adventure. Even if you choose Costa Rica over Mexico and have to hold a baby. 

 

Slip Inside This House...

 The Man pulled his dark blue 1971 Dodge Demon off the dusty red dirt of old Martinsville Rd. into the driveway of the long brick ranch style duplex. A knock at the door was answered by U.S. Tico who said, "Slip inside this house." The Man entered. The universe shifted and changed by the actions taken and U.S. Tico drew down the old paper roller shade that hung over the front window and a pen an ink of Don Quixote tilting at windmills that had been sketched there by a previous tenant with plenty of time and better than average talent was reveled. 

Slipping inside this house is a mind set, an idea, a way to live that happens in so many ways and in so many places. The Man slipped inside U.S. Tico's house that long ago day to venture a friendship that would last decades with lances tilted to the "fierce and unequal combat" of life. Don Quixote slipped inside the house of adventure when he prepared to attack the windmills he believed to be giants. If you visit Costa Rica and step inside BenJammin's porch out of the tropical rain the afternoon will pass with song and fun before you know it. 

Slipping inside the house of travel never goes out of fashion. It was the writer Henry Miller who said, "One's destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things." 

Maybe that's the best way to think about this idea. Slip inside this house. Make friendships that grow. Look for art that has personal meanings. Listen to the joy of music made by friends. Travel and experience the world outside familiar settings. Find a way to slip inside this house, even if it is a long brick ranch style duplex. Venture the adventure and life will take it from there.