Miles and Miles of Shoreline...

I like fishing. Sometimes people pass on tips to me like, "They are really biting down at the old community hole..." and I have headed down there to get in on the fun. Usually though at a place like that I don't catch anything. I get there and it's crowded with everyone else that heard they were biting at the community hole, there's trash left by Johnny come lately opportunist, my fishing tactics are tuned into a different kind of thing and all in all it's not exactly my idea of a great time in the outdoors. Fortunately, living near the biggest lake totally within the state of Texas there is plenty of room to get out there and at some of my favorite spots I may never even see another person. 

Even though it was the beginning of a holiday weekend we had been tubing with no one else in the area and had pulled to the shore for a picnic when this group of boaters and jet skiers, there was at least 4 miles of empty shoreline between here and the nearest launch, put in right next to us. That's my boat and you can see how close their set up was. 

To their credit they did not bother us. The kids were kept in check as pap paw warned, "I'll whip so hard you won't be able to go to school next year," and someone else advised, "Don't cuss, there's people over there." Now I don't doubt pap paw was probably kidding about the whipping and I warned Cathy not to cuss either but you get the idea. We are bombarded by input from various sources everyday and the lake should be a getaway. 

We finished our picnic and resumed tubing. The also tubed and jet skied in the area but thankfully kept to respectable distances. 

Only boater that came close was the Angelina County Sheriff's Department Patrol Boat. We were fully in compliance with the law and our pro tip is you don't have to tell them where you caught the fish. Just say at the community hole. 

 

   Miguel and the boys tube

There's one person who won't be on the tube this summer and it's our resident knee board and stunt specialist, Mary. Won't be long now.

There are a couple of people in training. Here's Ezra trying for daylight.  

Luca tries for outside the wake but it helps if you have some weight. 

Here's the boat ramp, Friday afternoon the third of July. It's not crowded. 

There's miles and miles of lake out there for you to fish, tube and have fun.  

Here Comes Old #10...

 Yesterday friends and family gathered to throw a baby shower for Mary and Miguel who are expecting their fourth boy in early August. It was good times with great decorations, karaoke, hamburgers, hot dogs and lots of kids running around that accompanied all the moms and dads there to help them celebrate. 

So far the name of what I'm calling old #10, our 10th grandchild id unknown to the public. They do have a system of naming, four letters ending with a vowel so guess away and post your suggestions in the comments section of this blog. 

Technically the world cup should be concluded by the time the baby is due. Looks like this crew needs at least one more set of hands on the foosball to make it FAIR. 

Lot of incoming fun for the rest of the summer. Old #10 will be here just in time for the first knee board ride, the baby in the tuba photo and more so stay tuned.  

 

  

Rainy Day Finding Fun...

 Everyone has been craving a lake day since the great success and exhilaration of last week's tube trip (I want fried catfish!) but those pesky afternoon thunderstorms while bring much needed rain are cramping our style. This made us look around for land based fun so we visited Caddo Mounds and Mission Tejas State Park. 

This was the first time we had re visited the mounds, still sacred to the Caddo People and dating back 1,500 years since the reconstruction of the new visitors center and grass hut since a big storm wrecked the area a few years ago. I mentioned to the park ranger our visit to Poverty Point Mounds in Louisiana and he said I might have been your tour guide as I retired from there. The Poverty Point Mounds are much older and he told us that the Caddo mounds were sort of accidental as they kept building and having burials in the same spots and it elevated the terrain and the Poverty Point mounds, whose purpose is lost to prehistory were made by hunter gatherers for an unknown purpose.  

The Grass hut gives you and idea of how they lived. 

Good value for seniors and kids as we spent about $8 on admission but blew that savings in the gift shop as we bought a couple of books and kid fun items. 

Next stop, Mission Tejas just down the road had a ranger program called back yard bass. We occasionally visit here for hiking, to soak up the history of the Spanish Missions in Texas and I enjoy cane poling the small creek bass in the San Pedro. The ranger program the kids took part in was well done and you would have thought they were really catching fish. 

It was pretty close as to who the best casters were, the rangers or the kids. 

There is a pond in the park but it's pretty choked with weeds and if there was a swim area to cool off I'd probably come here for camping since the sites are recently redone but it's still a nice quiet place with a deep history. 

Ok, now the hard decisions, Mexican or Cajun tonight? 

It occurred to me as added the links about our previous trips to these spots is that I kind of keep doing the same old things over and over again. Maybe it's a quest to enjoy the spirituality of these places and the knowledge of long lost times. Might be something we need to know. 

   

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Summer Tube Season Lake Report...

I'll admit that I messed up. That's getting easier to do because at this stage of my life it daily occurs to me  that there are many times I messed up. The latest mess up occurred to kick off summer 2026 tubing season at the lake. I had a brand new tube, never used that had been purchased in the winter months at a charity auction to benefit a good cause. It was still stored in it's packing had the crew waiting  patiently to put it to good use. 

They all loaded on it including Milo, who just turned three. Following the big brothers is his main occupation. I started out slow to see how the towable performed but as you can see from the photo all were too close to the front and the tube immediately nose dived and dumped them. That was enough for Milo. He made no more attempts at water sports for the day and like many of my other failures in judgment and experience this will be a scarring memory.    

Apparently no one else noticed or got hurt physically or psychotically so they were good to go.  

I started both Ezra and Luca on the knee board from shallow water, almost on the bank and it was such a good start it had me contemplating if I could start like that instead of the belly start and crawl to kneeling which was a move Ezra soon mastered.    

I think both boys got their mother's knee boarding gene and will soon be showing some tricks. 

Water was 82 degrees which in the warm sun seemed better that the water aerobics pool has been lately.  

I might think about fishing sometime but right now being a tube boat driver seems like gainful employment.  

Outside the wake. 

After admitting all these failures and mess-ups all I really wanted to do was spend the summer at the lake with a girl.  

A tube boat driver requires an occupational stump watcher to sit up front. 

 

Trout Fishing in America...

From the title you may have thought this would be another fishing report but last night at the Live Oak Listening Room in Nacogdoches, Tx we saw a concert by the musical duo Trout Fishing in America. 

Ezra (6'9" tall) and Keith (5'5") have been making music together for 50 years. I probably first saw them at the old Crossroads bar in Doches in the 1980s. I took my kids to see them at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in the 1990s. In 2017 we had a big family outing to the Mucky Duck in Houston including grandchildren Warren and Coraline, who were with us last night as well, to see the band. The music appeals to everyone with styles ranging from blues, jazz, country and more with nursery rhymes and other kid adjacent themes mixed with much humor and the enduring inspirations of adult life that seemed to be reflecting a bit on getting older and not acting your age.  

For those wanting to go a bit deeper the band took their name from the book of the same name by Richard Brautigan, an abstract work critiquing mainstream American culture. 

I think this might have been the best show I have seen by them. I am not sure why I felt that way because they have always been a good band. Playing as a duo the sound of the band is very full and the Listening Room was a great place with another great video loop by Pat Casey running in the background. Possibly besides reflecting on some of the songwriting themes that touched me such as where's my cell phone, banjos on the moon and yes you are a pretty girl now where's your momma and imagining the confidence to musically explore 50 years together brought me to the fact that there were friends at the concert that I have known for 40 to 50 years and it was just amazing to all feel the same things.  

After the show the band were very gracious taking the time to sit on the edge of the stage to sell t shirts and cds while chatting up the crowd, signing autographs and posing for photos. Here's Warren and Rose with the guys. 

Keith shares important insights into the music business and life in general with my grandson Warren. The band repeatedly mentioned though the night how they were always looking everywhere to find songwriting inspiration. I know their music is an inspiration to me. 

 

 

Over a Half Million Blog Visits...

One of my biggest blog fans was my late father in Law Bill Cooney. He urged me to monetize the blog with ads so I could make money off of it. Bill was a retired school teacher and I was honored he thought the writing was that good and apparently other people think so too because this year my blog has surpassed a half million visits.   

When Bill suggested this I was all pure and everything and at the time the internet was a different place but now after 3257 posts and seeing online influencers make obscene amounts of money in a month I almost think, Why Not Me?

This blog app does offer placing ads and with the clicks of readers the traffic will pay money. My wife says don't do it, you don't need to. Maybe after I'm gone the kids will do it and the legacy money will pay my great grandchildren's college expenses. Of course I'm assuming that college as we know it will still exist and not be free. 

Maybe no one will click the ads, whatever they might be, because the online world has moved on past blogs to TicTok, Substack and other things I don't know about or even use. 

What do you think? Give me the clicks, man!  

 

 

You Don't Need a Time Machine...

 We like to tour old houses, plantations and other historical sites when on vacation. On this last trip to Charleston South Carolina we took a look at the McLeod Plantation on James Island. 

The plantation is a recognized as an important Gullah Culture site, important because the isolation of the imported people on the Sea Island region stretching from North Carolina in to Florida  kept much of their African culture intact. You can easily see this today as the traditional sweet grass baskets are still woven by hand and sold in roadside booths. I'm interested in this because my ancestors were and probably still are in North Carolina and may well have some tie to the Gullah culture which I hope to uncover some day. Hopefully that tie will not be too embarrassing. 

My grandkids Parker and Cullen with the house in the background. They are very well behaved tour takers and hopefully the will retain some of the history heard here. This house is from 1858 though the site is first recorded on maps in 1678. It's not furnished but you can look around inside. 

Barn on the property. There are many beautiful oak trees and what's left of an oak ally along the original driveway. Usually I take photos of the oak allys I visit but with a modern highway in the back ground I passed on this one.  

Can you spot the fingerprints of the brick maker? These bricks were made from the local clay, shaped by human hands and then dried and fired to harden them and you can also see prints like this at nearby Fort Sumter. They have figured that these were probably from a child and the clearness of raised fingerprint ridges may have indicated some illness.   

This big live oak is estimated to be 700 to 900 years old. 

An interesting story told by our tour guide is that in the years following the end of the civil war despite the efforts of Jim Crow to keep the people oppressed without free labor the economy of the Charleston area declined. By the 1930s it was clear tourist were going to be an important income stream. Note the bell in the tree. 

Where tours of the 1930s were given by McLeod descendants they told the story of how the bell was rang so that the slaves returned from the fields and lunched under the tree while the McLeods dined on the porch as one big family group. Nothing was farther from the truth. Growing the crops of the plantation, cotton, Indigo and rice was brutal work. Later someone climbed the tree and from an inscription on the bell it was easily dated to the 1920s. It had not been rang while enslaved people lived on the plantation. The story was just a way to advance the untruths of the mythic, noble south. As the tour guide said you won't need a time machine to still find those attitudes around Charleston today. 

These slave houses are in their original location and were built when there was an influx of French planters and the slaves that came to American at the start of the Haitian Revolution in 1791. The descendants of the McCleod slaves were still living here in 1990 when the last living McLeod passed away. They were afraid to move because they mistakenly thought that occupancy guaranteed some monetary inheritance or burial rights on the property.       

It did not. One out of four imported people came through the docks at Charleston. 90% of African Americans can trace one ancestor to Charleston. As Faulkner said, "History is never dead, it's not even past."  

 

    

 

Seven Days on the Road and We Made it Home Last Night...

This has been the season of the great spring break celebration. First we camped at Beaver's Bend with our grandchildren Warren and Coraline and the Zamora family and this week we completed a tour that included a flight to see the Tulloch family in Chicago and a flight to see the Wallace family in South Carolina. It was nice that everyone had different spring breaks because if it was all at once the grandkids would have ganged up and been busy with each other but here we were able to spend time with each family not to mention the cooler late winter climate of Chicago, the costal spring of Charleston where we met the Wallaces as well as a good dose of government shutdown TSA screening line delays in Houston.   

The Tullochs downtown in Maggie Daly Park. 

With the Wallace family in Charleston.

It was a seven day, three flight trip with lots of good eating. Since Katie and Peter live so close to Chinatown the Asian food is great. 

In Charleston the southern seafood cooking is top notch. They have a saying, "eat till you are tired and wake up hungry." I had shrimp and grits for breakfast three days in a row. 

Some people had a dip in the Atlantic Ocean.

Some people were busy babysitting a friend's big lizard. 

We all had fun and the TSA lines were much easier in Chicago and Charleston for what ever reason.  This vacation was so good I'm ready for another. We don't have a big camper trip scheduled till mid May but a campsite by the water somewhere is calling me. 

 

 

 

Camping at Broken Bow, Ok...

We made a spring break trip to Beavers Bend State Park in Ok. It was our second trip to this area and we really covered some ground this time with camping, kid activities in town, hiking, cooking, a bit of fishing and more. It was a multi-family trip, really all one big family as we took grandkids Warren and Coraline, Great Grandma Geneva, the Zamora family and the Smith family. 

The Zamoras' and Smiths' had planned on tent camping but with rain in the forecast and thundershowers through the night ended up splitting a rental place (very nice) and we camped along the river.    

Geneva will soon be 86 and traveled to Broken Bow pulling her own camper. 

Our campers at the dam. This was where we saw the most fishermen and the only place I saw someone catch a trout. Last trip I caught one trout be this time I really saw few fishermen at the community holes when they have periodic stockings. This makes me think trout had not been stocked lately.  

 

The Smith Family. 

We had a couple of good hikes over steep rocky terrain. I report no chest pains and Mary checked my pulse once and it was only 120 so not too bad. 

Last trip I saw some folks catching a mixed bag of fish on earth worms and I brought some but the coons ate them. 

One day I may look back on these hikes with the grandkids like I look back on that 2019 climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty. Glad I did it then cause isn't happening today. 

I took a bunch of scenery photos so ya'll will think I spent the whole summer camping. 

Did I mention the groceries? Thanks to Travis for all the cooking he did. 

We don't have another big trip planned till May but hopefully with the rains our lake comes up and we squeeze in a few local camping trips to fill our days.