Happy Anniversary, 32 years...

Happy anniversary Cathy! This makes 32 years. It's been a good 32 years and I think back on all the funny things that surround this date in history and I have to laugh.

If you don't know and many people, especially more recent friends don't know our two oldest kids Rose and Katie and often think the two youngest, Morgan and Mary are the only ones. Don't try to do the math on the kids ages. Cathy had three when we married. A few months before her passing my mom confessed that my dad had asked, "What's he thinking?"

We were married at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Lufkin. We did the Pre Canna classes and when we went to meet with the priest he had forgotten our appointment. The priest that greeted us, Father Linehan, who later became a great friend said we would have to come back later. Cathy exclaimed, "But we got a baby sitter!" I thought Father Mo's head was going to spin around. 

That priest that married us is no longer a priest. The old church, a new one was built, is now the parish hall. 

The day after our wedding we had already left for a honeymoon trip. Our friends Nancy and Bryan had stayed at our house overnight and before their drive back to their home in New Orleans they pulled the car around back to the the water faucet for a radiator fill. It had rained the evening before and if you know my yard the grass may look pretty good but the soil, depending on moisture may swallow small riding mowers in mud or be hard enough to allow Death Valley California style desert drag racing. On this day it was not that hard and they left incredible ruts getting unstuck. Later my parents visited with the kids to feed the old dog who suffered the indignity of staying there alone and Rose, who was all of 7 years old placed her hands on her hips and standing over the ruts said, "I can't believe they got so drunk they tried to drive around the house." I did not get that drunk but my mom certainly asked me about it. 

And finally there is the question of the missing wedding album. Some of the kids think that it's terrible we can't find it, not that the photos were all that great anyway. I think the few pictures that exist were made by friends and capture the moment better than the official photog did. Event photos have come a long way in 32 years and I noted the Quinceanera we played music for the other day had two very professional people working it to capture the memories. When I took the photo for this blog out of the frame to scan I found it to be a print from a long discarded printer on better that average printer paper. The picture below is probably by my best man and old college buddy Quince. 

I don't know where that wedding album is. It's not we have gone anywhere. We have been in this same old house 32 years. Hopefully we still have time left to laugh and look for it.       

   

 

Let's Go Ahead and Start the Summer...

We made a catfish trip on Friday. First time out with the boat in a few weeks as we have been busy with a new grandchild, older grandkids and lots of rain in this area that has caused our favorite bat ramps to close. We launched at Cassels Boykin for this excursion. 

Cathy tried out a new fishing hat and gives it an A+. She caught 6 catfish to my two keepers. Bout time my streak ran out. I have had a hot hand lately. We also had a lot of small throw backs. The spot where we had good luck last time which was about a month ago at 8' deep was 15' deep this trip. There was some 8' water way back up in the woods and we tried to fish there but with a lot of hang-ups due to the flooded timber made a good bait presentation difficult. If you can't get the bait to him, he's not going to bite it. That's fishing in a nutshell. 

We tried a deep spot but we could not find our favorite stump to tie to. It must be submerged and where we tied was 47'. There were fish there suspended about 15 reel cranks off the bottom but this was where all the throw backs came from. 

Cathy took a dive in the lake. Water temps showed to be 83 degrees and we are both confirmed warm water swimmers so I was surprised she went for this. She was back in the boat so quick I don't think her hair got wet.  

We had lately taken a swim in the pool of a sun baked courtyard of a local mid century hotel and the pool water was nice and warm. This afternoon we have a Ratcliff canoe trip planned with a host of grandkids. Should be warm. 

 

Requests for Pictures and a New Hobby...

Got a Facebook request for a close up of Margaret and Grayson, this might be the best I got from their visit. There is also a picture of Kevin and Grayson, but no one asked for that.

Cathy thought the sack top and skirt combo she is wearing made her butt look big. All that changed when she took off the long brown skirt and just wore the sack top as a dress. Made her look skinny.










Geneva requested this picture, made of Wallace and Cooney cousins in the porch swing at the land. Seems she has one made when all these kids were little sitting in same swing and wanted a remake now that they are grown.












And for my new hobby, making pictures of guys passed out at parties. That might seem weird, but not really, after all this is the Older you will get...This guy slept right through a cunga line, a didgeridoo sonata, a shaving and a blueing.

Mary Returns From Italy...

Mary spent Spring Break with an English class tour of Rome, Florence and Venice. There was also a slight stop over in Paris, but they never left the airport. She had a great time, saw lots of stuff, 230 odd pictures will keep the blog busy when things get slow for me. That's a thing I wish for, slow for me.

Here's a Rome street.
I'll show how dumb I am, without her, I won't be able to tell what any of this is. I'll just have to make stuff up.
Eurotrash babe with the Coliseum in the background. I do know the Coliseum is what some people did in the days before big screens.

More Las Vegas...

As you may know I usually vacation in spots where music is a main thing going on. I guess a lot of music goes on in LV, after all Elvis made a big comeback here, the Rat Pack is the height of cool as evidenced by several tribute shows available and numerous pop stars now appear here having made the successful transition from hard working touring band to money sucking corporation.

Couple of shows of interest, the percussion groups Stomp and Blue Man Group would have been good to see, but we have seen Stomp before and Morgan and Mary as high school drummers have had a chance to put on a similar show with the spring percussion concert each year.

Shows like these start at $100 a ticket. Taking a family there you end up spending more than the plane and hotel price. I am used to those Austin/New Orleans shows for $5-$25 a ticket and you stand up jiving and thrashing the whole time. And if you pass out from the jiving and thrashing you are kind of held in place till the crowd thins out. That way you don't miss any of the show getting medical attention. And no one has any second thoughts or asks questions when you mention you don't remember anything from the show.

Besides for $100 a ticket I would expect there would be some expectations that people's manners would be good. Remember $100 is the starting price. Folks paying in excess of this would not consider it good value to have a fat man pounding their back all through the show.

A taxi driver mentioned to me that on Fremont St. there were sometimes free shows going on outdoor stages. He said it was often old seventies rock bands and I thought well maybe we could see the Eagles or something but it turned out better than that.

Here is a free show I saw with old chitlin circuit blues man Bobby Rush. A funk/soul/R&B revue Bobby still has the moves and the chops of a man much younger than his 70 odd years. The band was smoking and flanking Bobby you see a long time staple of his show, the big booty dancers. Their costumes were really fabulous. A special construction of two compartments in posterior of their skirts allows for the insertion of a weasel in each compartment, which happens to be positioned exactly over each buttock. These young ladies then turn around (I know this violates a show business rule) on Bobby's cue of course, with their back to the audience and the weasels wiggle and jump for all they are worth. It's a prize for the poor to find I guarantee.

As for music in the casinos there is the occasional cover band blasting from a lounge off the gaming floor and sometimes piped in music which I would assume is the latest pop hits. Then there is the big water spew show at the Beligio Hotel. Done to music of course and free to the public I had seen this set to a nice impressionistic piano piece. This year the water was matched to the Black Eyed Peas hit "My Humps"












Hot babes are big business in LV. This was the side of a truck going down the street. I don't know if there are babes inside but that's the MGM Grand in the background.







More old Vegas.

Road Trip Shots...

As you may know Mary is back from Disney World, a band trip thing, 150 stinking teenagers crawling charter buses like lizards. Maybe we can get her used to being home this weekend, she has been gone the last three weekends somewhere or other.

This looks like a shot from a bad 80s TV show. See the sponsor on the car. Come July when she gets the licence they will send me a decal like that.

Disney was always a scary guy to me. The movies were good, nothing against that. I know someone who works there and I have had a view of behind the scenes so to speak. Seems the employees love it so don't get me wrong, they are not required to be cult members or anything. I was told that "they"walk around the park and a vacationing family gets tapped on the shoulder and they get to stay in old Walt's apartment for a night. First off I don't know who "they" is and I don't want to know and second it seems a little spooky to sleep in Walt's apartment to me.

Surf babe shot.

Just a site administration note, I am not getting email notification of your comments anymore, so if you write something and I don't reply bear with me. The loss of this feature is inconvenient in the new blog set up, I will try to get it back. It was the fastest way for me to know when someone posted a porn link on an old post.