Enjoy the Fall Colors...

There is a lot of people who think I went to Europe, played a gig on tuba and caught a catfish and that was just what I did today. I'm not quite that energetic but you may have seen some old blog posts, or I decided that what the world needed now was another picture of Cathy holding a catfish and I probably did play a tuba gig even if it was only to my neighbors donkey who has an electric wire strung along the fence to keep her from rushing the stage. 

Even if life was not as interesting as all those things I did get out a couple of times last week and enjoy the fall East Texas colors. You should also. I made all these photos within an hours drive of my house and I think they are pretty. I hope you enjoy them too.  

 

Big As A Skint Mule...

Man, if you have google you should know, correct?? Well maybe not know what is correct or right but I did google the southern phrase big as a skint mule and got exactly one hit. 

Big as a skint mule, I can't recall where I heard it but it is a phrase that in this family we use to refer to when a sleeping child is on the couch or has maybe slipped off to dream land in the comfortable place that they have come to rest in and they seem to look, all stretched out vs. curled in a bed and seem bigger than they are.  I have never skint a mule. I can only imagine that once the job of work of getting the hide off was complete that the skint mule would look bigger than it really is.

 I don't know if people really skin mules. There is a job called muleskinner but it refers to the occupation of wagon driver which given the debate over fossil fuels might see some room for growth in the coming decades. If there is a job of skinning mules I doubt that it pays what it's worth or that any pay increases keep up with the cost of living. 

In addition to when they are napping a child can also look as big as a skint mule when he throws himself on the ground in a I am not even to the terrible twos yet tantrum because his brother touched the cat toy Pop Pop made from a broken fishing rod, a string and a strip of fabric.   

Maybe the tears here were not over the toy. It's possible he found out that there are not any fine liberal arts colleges offering degrees in  mule skinning or skinning mules. I think both those jobs would just be the kind of thing you just roll up your sleeves and get on with best you can. 

There, now when you google big as a skint mule you will get two hits and one of them will be this blog. 

   

 

The Meatsweats and Mule Armstrong...

I always have admired the musician George Clinton. We got to see him perform in New Orleans a few years ago In addition to righteous funky music he created this whole mythology around the group Parliment/Funkadelic involving costumes, characters and the mothership. Well we modeled this a bit by playing a gig this weekend at Travis Kitchen's Annual Fall Jamfest to bebefit Thanksgiving Dinner for M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital. We Called ourselves the Meatsweats   

You know what the meatsweats are. You've had them. Just spend a Saturday evening at an East Texas wedding reception or quinceanera  eating too many carnitas and the good tacos. The next day you may find yourself sweating for no good reason. That's the meatsweats. Here on stage at the jamfest is left to right Meatbelly Meatsweat, Captain Meatsweat, Mule Armstrong and Necklips Meatsweat. 

Thanks to the great sound team with Jenny (I think) and Spanky who made it no great stretch to take this street performing collective of freaks and plug them into mics and have it all sound good.  

Here is our publicity promo. Who would not like to come to a Meet the Meatsweats event?

Here's Mule applying make up to the Captain. 

Meatbelly and Necklips. 

Necklips Meatsweat. 

There were many bands that played each with their own mythology including a very good KISS tribute band "Lovegunner." 

Black Masquerade. 

Joe Cuellar with Marshall and Rayburn Hance. 

James Alton Hutchison

That's the master of ceremony "Death" with a young man who's name I forgot. 

Steve Costner Band. 

The Stonewall Rockers. Thanks to Travis for the invite to sit in with them and the Brazos River Rats. 

Me on Harp with the rockers. 

I play my turtle shell percussion with the Rockers. 

Here's Jongy. Let's make him a blog character. We need more sax. 

Cathy with Batman Hance. 

KISS and the Meatsweats party! 

In addition to all this there was a charity auction that me and Mule won nice items in and a catfish dinner for everyone. Thanks again to Travis for a smooth well run event. 

Street Busking...

We hit the Lufkin Streets last night as a 5 piece billing ourselves as Mule Armstrong and the Meat Sweats. Members were Mary and Miguel Meat Sweat, Necklips, Mudbelly, and special guest Banjo Bill. We quickly recruited new members with Don Miguel Meat Sweat joining us on goat hooves percussion and Dave, a Seminary Student currently assigned to St. Patrick's on guitar. 

We normally like to be in the food truck area but we set up outside Manhattan Restaurant for this evening since there was another group down in our favorite spot. Here's Cathy, Bill and Mary. If you are looking for us on these evenings you are going to have to get out of your car and find us. No telling where we will set up.

Miguel on uke and banjolele. Back behind him on that very corner is where my Great Grandfather Quiller Nerren often sat after his retirement from grave digging for Gipson's Funeral Home and held court in the late 1940s. There was a bank located there in those days on what is the corner of Lufkin Avenue and 1st Street. and Quiller knew all who passed. I don't know how Quiller got to town to this spot as his golden years progressed. He lived not terribly far out of town, just across Timberline Drive on Lufkin Avenue across from the HillCrest/Glendale/Oddfellows Cemetery.  It was nice that he lived so close to work. 

Don Miguel was shakin' em on down laying down a strong percussion beat. 

Bill plays uke. 

Here's Necklips. 

Some of the tunes we played Cathy has been singing with her dad since she was 3 years old. 

We played two hours with a break in between for an Old Souls Food Truck fill up. 

Dave the Seminarian. He's studying to be a Catholic Priest at a school in New Orleans. He's assigned to St. Patrick's and is due to return to New Orleans for more study next week. He will be back to our parish around Christmas. 

Help me out on this. Here is a photo of the poke man players gathered around the Old Pines Theater. Seems like there was a science fiction novel where people that were playing some kind of game and entered such a trance state that the rest of the world just let them pass by in the work place, church services, meetings and public gatherings and on the street with kindness and patience because they knew that they could not be helped.  Anybody that spent the late 1970s in their dorm room with a stack of scifi paperbacks remember the name of that book? We are there now. It has came to pass.  

We kind of thought with all the people downtown playing this game that some would stop and listen to our music. They did not but best I can tell some rare poke mans were spotted all around us. 

We did make money. Enough for a round of small smoothies at Standpipe. I've made less so we call this great success. 

  

Country Evening...

I had the best day at work yesterday that I have seen in some time. Cathy had no patients either so she stayed home that evening on call. Course the on call kept us from going anywhere but we kept ourselves amused with the spring day and cooking steaks.

Should have taken a picture of these boys when they started. I think planted during Holy Week. They have doubled in size this past week. Some kind of water from the bottom tomato grower that Cathy bought and planted. Works good. I have a few pepper plants slipped in there somewhere. You say tomato, I say tomato, we all say tomato before long. There will be more pictures of this progress.

Here is my neighbor, I mean my neighbor's mule. I call her Jenny. Cathy is feeding a handful of vetch she could not reach. Looks like we have made a friend for life and a possible re-occurring blog character. We need a replacement since the big white dog has not made an appearance in quite sometime now. He usually had a way of appearing when out of town company visited, but failed to show last time.

Morgan showed up about dark and picked up his drums. He said he had a friend that bought one of those pointy guitars. I said wear safety glasses during the jam. You can Google a picture of a pointy guitar if you like.