It was a good weekend playing music with people and for people. It started out with a Children's choir rehearsal on Friday night, busking at Fae's Hideaway, a Ren Faire Pride Event Saturday and ended up playing with the children's choir for Spanish Mass at St. Patrick's Sunday morning.
I was glad to get the invite for the Pride Event. Nice people put together a DIY day of local vendors selling arts and crafts with many people wearing costumes or sword fighting and it was the perfect thing to have a tuba player playing grooves, harmonica and didgeridoo. .
Note that I also used my turtle shell shaker, the instrument that I am second most famous for playing.
I got to jam on a tune with a strolling musician (i think I heard his name as Dawson, but you know the ears, tuba and big Fender amps) on uke playing a bit of harp, tuba and percussion.
It was also the first time I opened for a harp player, Tris Day. As they say, check her out on thestreaming platforms.
Mass was good with the kids today. Great fun playing with Maria and Hugo who are the group leaders and we often have a great mix of kids singing, playing guitar, flute or Cajon drum. This photo grabbed off a video a couple of weeks ago.
I think I might have actually grown up to be everything I wanted to be,
Of course you have to eat and there was crawfish Saturday evening at the big Agular birthday party.
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."
I have about three shirts that my parents gave me for Christmas sometime in the late 70s. They are good shirts, durable and besides needing an occasional button or slight mending by my needle and thread capable wife they have served well and I still wear them often. Besides a few other shirt gifts I have received such as the big foot and tuba shirts that everyone feels are so appropriate I get my shirts at the thrift store. There's one particular snap button western shirt I own, bought used that lately I have seen two others like it.
Someone asked me yesterday the question, "when did you have it done?" I couldn't exactly say so I said, "before COVID," and they understood and it immediately cleared up all confusion. So this western shirt I got before COVID. I was standing on a French Quarter street corner. It was morning of a bright spring day full of possibility and I spotted a guy coming down the street pushing a wheeled clothing rack stocked thick with shirts. I stopped him, you can do that in the great southern cities. Try it in the northern towns and that person might fight you off.
The guy had taken thrift store snap button shirts and embroidered various designs on each shoulder. I was having modest success playing music and making cigar box guitars at the time so I was on the look out for stage costumes so this fit the bill. I bought one with crawfish on each shoulder.
I used to like crawfish. On trips to Louisiana it was old cheap food that didn't fill you up too much so you could drink plenty of old cheap beer. The salty, spicy taste also made you want to drink more old cheap beer so it was really a hand and glove kind of thing. They go together. Now days I don't drink beer and for the price crawfish sell for I usually spring for the lobster. I'll just wear my embroidered shirt when I eat it.
I don't know how many shirts with crawfish that street vendor had that day. I have never seen another one. I was walking across the parking lot of a big box building material store and I spotted a shirt of the same pattern on a skinny wizened up little guy. It looked in good condition. These are after all quality shirts. I didn't mention to him I had one just like it or take a photo because my wife has coached me not to talk to other guys about what they are wearing. Not that there is anything wrong with that it's just something that might not sit in the moment right, which is a moment in the parking lot of a big box building materials store.
The second shirt I saw like mine was in an online video released by New Orleans based folk singer Mark Rubin. I follow him on Facebook and he's a banjo/tuba/punk/bluegrass/Jewish dude. Pro tip: when you follow stuff like this on social media it wrecks the algorithm. When I saw his shirt I headed over to his band camp page and bought his latest release. I guess I should have left a comment, nice shirt.
Here's the shirt in action.
Once I was at a little BBQ festival and saw a band play. I'd say they played about 75% of the songs a band I was in planned to play at a different festival he next day. I told the singer about this and he said by way of explanation, "Them are good songs." I guess you could say, "Them are good shirts."
That morning in the French Quarter I also bought another shirt but it will be another blog post.
I try to make good, catchy photos and from the feedback I get from friends I have been lucky enough to be interesting and amusing. When out on the lake and making photos of fishing fun my wife has often questioned that if what the world needs now is another photo of her holding a catfish she has just caught. I made this photo on a Chicago street in November 2018 and I haven't published it before but it might be what the world needs now.
I had a good civics teacher in high school and I attend a Catholic church every weekend. I might not be the most eloquent if I had to speak on the subjects but I believe in the rights allowed by the Constitution as well as the human dignity and right to life from birth to death. When I say as the sticker on a lamp post in the photo, "No One is Illegal," it's not just something I'm making up and despite the fact that failable humans are involved there is the weight of these two two proven institutions behind my thinking.
Not everyone thinks this way and last I looked this is still allowed but noting the online discourse in local news sources I can imagine what people would publicly comment about the public posting of this sticker from almost 9 years ago.
"Whoever put that up got off the short bus"
:"I bet they used profanity"
"Outside paid agitator"
"there were like only three people"
"Must have been bused over from the nursing home."
"Probably don't work"
As I stated earlier people should have the rights outlined by the Constitution which we increasingly see denied immigrants and citizens alike and all human beings should have dignity which is denied when comments like these are made about the folks we meet on the road of life.
Another photo I made on the same trip. Interesting that Pence is gone but it's kind of looking like he might have saved the country, at least temporarily. Wonder what he thinks now?
What do you think and who do you get it from? Is it what the world needs?
A late friend of mine, Jason Carriger (RIP) wrote a song called Yoga Pants. I've searched the internet and Jason left a pretty good YouTube and Soundcloud footprint but I can't find a performance of Yoga Pants. What caused me to think about my friend's song was the fact that the elastic they put in those old chicken skin long johns is just not what it used to be and though it may be illegal in some states I purchased women's yoga pants to wear for my own convenience and warmth .
A resolution I made and it was just before the New Year as I'm always always trying to get ahead of the game was that I was not going to be cold this winter. I also made a resolution that I was tired of those chicken skin underwear sliding half way down my butt. I could have been happy about that and said well the elastic is worn out and I'm just losing weight, they are not fitting correctly but when I pointed out the decreased load that was my ass my doc busted that bubble by saying, "probably just lost muscle mass."
In this time of my life what with decreasing hormones I probably can't do anything about the loss of muscle mass. An increase in red meat eating and a furious weight lifting regime will only make me have a heart attack. What I did was abandon loose fitting long underwares in favor of women's yoga pants.
Women's yoga pants are tight fitting and warm. I like them. I must add that I wear them under my outside pants. The are extra large size so when some one says, "pull up your big girl underpants" I actually can. Cathy has forbidden me to wear women's yoga pants as outside pants in public as she thinks I look pretty good in them and might get in some kind of trouble with unwanted attentions. I mentioned this time in my life and since it is that time any attentions is good attentions.
Of course since I bought a warm garment the January weather has been mild this year and I've only worn it once. I have high hopes for wearing yoga pants though February, March and of course there is that bitch, April.
Since there are machines that watch the internet for any dissent and I live in a state where who uses what bathroom is more of a concern than healthcare or education or songs about yoga pants they will probably be coming for me and my yoga pants anytime now.
It's the 21st century. Maybe I grew up and kept the imagination of a baby boomer child and thought that this was going to be a magical time. Now that we are here sometimes it seems we are going backwards away from the magic.
We should have a world where all are welcome, all are fed, all have healthcare, housing and education. A world where we don't hear echoes of 1930s Germany in the politics and the brown shirts on the streets, a world where cities are not bombed, children are not killed and countries are not invaded because they have what someone wants.
If you don't find these are good reasons to protest I think you may find yourself as part of a machine moving away from human dignity. You are still welcome to have your own beliefs . Don't forget that I have mine.
Just like I may not agree with you I may not agree with the degrees of every protester. It's a compromise that we all need to work on to make something better when we have that chance.
Yesterday I played a mix of old folk tunes, patriotic songs and gospel standards for the Ice Out for Good rally. This was nationwide. Judging from local reaction most people did not know this. Tuba is a good instrument for protest. It's loud, it draws attention and around the country I was not the only one using this instrument.
It's not something that worries me, being the only one. What worries me is the loss of magic, the loss of rights, the loss of hope.
We do many things. I know it seems like an ever revolving good time camping, fishing and grandchildren escapade around here but there are actually things that we do to help people. We volunteer for St. Vincent de Paul which can be a full time job if you are carrying the on call phone and are often called to play music for funerals, weddings and Quinceaneras by our church family. Lately we have been handing out red cards.
All people in the USA have rights and protections under the Constitution. You may have seen a TV show where they said, "innocent until proven guilty." It's true and the red cards give examples of how you can exercise your rights. They are not legal advice and for this it's advised you check with a trusted legal provider.
In case you think this is some radical thing the Catholic Bishop of Tyler put of this letter and it's a document the Catholic Bishops of the United States are in agreement with as they support vulnerable migrant populations. As I am a member of the local Catholic Church I'm glad to see this.
So far we are on our second box of cards well on the way to distributing close to 500 in the community. We give handfuls to friends and they spread out from there.
If you need some red cards they can be ordered from a Union shop and you can also be supporting good jobs, wages and benefits or you can download a form and have your own printed in business card format
You can also see me for a handful of red cards.
All these things that we can do for our community, our church family or your friends might not seem like much but hopefully they will add up especially as everyone gets involved.
How Things I Saw Work or Some Will Hate This for Reasons I Don't Know...
Alterative energy production has always interested me. Wind power, sun power these things are free last I looked. I'm always looking at improving solar performance on our camper which has a factory set up that meets our current needs and with a trip planned this week I checked the battery levels and this is what the solar does with just the bit of western sun that shines in the garage each evening. I have not used the camper since late June and 13.6 means fully charged and ready to go.
These solar panels operate the lake camp in Canada where we recently visited certainty kept my phone charged and you can read more about that on this blog. Certainty not an economy set up but it's an island and this is all that is available.
I heard a piece on public radio about a new electric truck that Ford has in the works. Of course there will be some extensive retooling for the project and there are many unanswered questions but with prices predicted at $30,000 (see a theme here) I'm interested. Of course this truck probably won't pull a camper or a boat but it would be a handy daily driver to do the chores such as the furniture deliveries I did for St. Vincent de Paul this past Friday or haul all my cooking gear up to the Swim Club Blood Drive yesterday in a more economical manner saving my big truck for the big jobs it was made for.
I made this photo somewhere in the Texas panhandle on a trip a couple of months ago. You have heard the old saying "nothing between here and the north pole but a barbed wire fence" so I would guess that has has something to do with the fact I saw acres and acres of windmills. There is wind. I will admit that I saw what appeared to be out of commission windmills so these things are not forever but neither is my big truck. Things move along. I'm actually old enough to have known people who thought the tractor was the work of the devil.
I Got Paid Musicians Union Scale Plus That Antifa Bonus...
I tried to look up on the internet if Congressman John Lewis ever did anything bad. Like all of us he was a fallible human mortal but apparently he was not a convicted felon, never sexually assaulted anyone, never defrauded anyone and never incited a riot to take over the government. John Lewis was a champion of non-violently protesting to represent the downtrodden and oppressed that American society that the billionaires buying influence want to leave behind. For this he was often beaten and arrested but believed in "making good trouble" and that "if you see something that is not right, not fair, not just you have to speak up."
Speak up is what people did at the July 17th, 2025 Good Trouble Lives on Rally, held at around 2000 places across America. Here in Lufkin, Tx we gathered on the steps of the Ward R. Burk Federal Building and for a couple of hours a group of local people consisting of some of my oldest friends, friends from church and other concerned citizens with common interests in the welfare of all met and displayed signs to express our dissatisfaction with Trump and his policies that is taking away healthcare, education, environmental protections and endangering human rights in America, a place that used to champion these very principles.
We talked and laughed, listened to Bob Marley tunes, I played the tuba with my grand kids accompanying on percussion while Charlie and Jovina sang and we all moved off the grass and federal building steps when the U.S. Marshalls asked.
This was the second local rally I had participated in. Last month we had the No Kings Rally at the county courthouse. I also played tuba there but in an effort not to wear out my welcome we plan on working up some guitar tunes for the next time. Several people around us allowed how they played or sang and it might be a good start for group.
Nothing says protest like climbing the no parking sign poles in front of the fed.
Good Trouble Lives On. Some get in bad trouble but it's pretty easy to tell the difference.
On June 14th, 2025 we participated in the No Kings Rally here in our home town of Lufkin, Tx. It's well known that Elon Musk poured up to 300 million into Trump's election (he also underestimated Trump's total lack of principles when he expected him to stay bought) questionable interpretations of the constitution, violations of civil rights and the fact that with enough money a criminal can buy a pardon we are in an era where the rich think they can have their way over the rest of us. The No Kings Rally, held in various cities nationwide was a protest against such things.
I was proud to be there and to also see many friends taking part. One of the Lufkin organizers, a friend and yes I know all the radicals, called me and expressed the fear that there would be disruptions and would I bring the tuba to play and overshadow any conflict. I said sure and put together a 15 song set of patriotic music, spirituals and old civil rights standards. I played a good hour and a half at least, time passes fast when you are having fun. This was just my kind of gig and there was maybe one guy there in opposition and he was a friend so no conflicts. As Woodie Guthrie said, "This machine kills fascists"
Carl Wallace had brought a tuba to play for the crowd.
"I believe that there is a place for all people in our democracy," he said. "Our constitution does not say that all men are created equal only if they can pay. We're going to take it away from the billionaires and put it back in the hands of the people.
"I'm out here today playing patriotic songs, old spirituals and civil rights tunes to inspire people."
That's my friend Julie back there photo bombing my live stream.
Cathy wore the Irish flag to show solidarity with immigrants who have faced discrimination, loss of due process and other barriers to better lives in our great country. We both trace our heritage to the Irish who came here to escape the kings of Europe and I hope all can follow the path I have been blessed with.
Some of these photos contributed by my friend Linda.
Thanks to everyone who complicated my playing yesterday. It's about all using your talents not your money.
I like looking at myself on social media and other people do also because I often get comments on our travel and fun. I am honored that people see photos of our trips and want to do it too. I have a secret though. I'm always looking for cheap fun and often times the things we do are the things that don't cost very much like visits to friends (they don't charge, usually!) and our recent stop over to see The Cadillac Ranch.
It is free to get in the Ranch but you can buy cans of spray paint if you don't bring your own to decorate the cars which have long lost the original official GM colors. We didn't buy paint but there is a little trailer out of which they sell all kinds of stickers that you can purchase which is the sort of thing we have been doing to decorate our water bottles, the truck and the camper with evidence that we hunt Bigfoot and like Smokey the Bear so we spent $5. Cathy also bought some kind of Texas trinket from a vendor outside the gate (apparently not official) made from paint chips that fall off the cars.
Occasionally the cars are painted for a theme. Back in 2012 they were painted Rainbow for Pride month and once they were painted black for Black Lives Matter and to protest police brutality since some people need a reminder that love good, brutality bad.
I wanted to stick one of my tuba eclipse stickers on a caddie but my legal expert advised me that it could be considered littering of a sort and directed me to a gate post where other stickers were stuck and I placed one there. My stickers can be seen in Lufkin, Lake Jackson, Chicago, New Orleans, Santa Fe and probably some other places where I put them that I have forgot. I may be making a new order for more so if you like paying for your fun contact me at cewallac@consolidated.net. These stickers are cheaper than the paint chip art selling at the Cadillac Ranch.
Once when I was car shopping I stopped on the Ford lot (I like Ford) and they had a row of Mitsubishi autos. They were small cars in bright colors claiming good gas mileage and they were cheap. I was almost persuaded. Then one of the kids said, "but dad, you are so big you will tear this up just sitting in in." That objective view was just what I needed vs. the emotions I was feeling and I did not buy that car. Later I found a good deal on a used Ford Hybrid and it served me well for 10 years and many miles.
Yesterday I saw a Suzuki car pass me on the road. It was brightly colored, small, probably cheap and gets good gas mileage. I don't really know anything about Suzuki but I I know they make motorcycles and I saw a Suzuki outboard motor on a junk pile somewhere the other day. There is a Suzuki violin teaching method and Suzuki musical instruments but I think that might be a different company than the internal combustion engine maker.
As I watched this car pass I thought about the news of tariffs on imported products including cars and a New York Times article I saw claiming tariffs would the price on a new car by $6400. I'm not sure that Suzuki would be such a good deal with that price increase and I would certainly shop outboards after that junkpile sighting.
The past month or so saw me getting my mechanic of 35 years to check my two cars, late models I bought used and like to tell myself were good deals, one domestic, one imported, for preventative maintenance. With just a bit of work all is good and they are up for the miles I plan to put on them this summer.
They get good mileage for what they are, especially pulling a camper or boat, they were cheap enough and the colors are acceptably good.
Good luck with that Suzuki and those tariffs as well.
I am pondering recent events where our country seems to be swinging in favor of Russia by negotiating a peace in Ukraine that grants them what they want. My whole life time America has stood against Communism and I think we should still. I looked back on photos I made in New York City in Spring of 2019 at a Ukrainian Festival and wondered how the people in them have been affected by the war.
In thinking about the war I thought about a story a WW2 vet I had as a nursing home patient. He was 98 years old at the time, an old Sgt. from Pine Bluff, Arkansas and his duty was something to do with supplies and feeding the troops. He was a member of the 69th Infantry Division, the unit that made first made contact with Russian troops at the Elbe River on April 25, 1945. Coincidentally those were Ukrainian troops.
The old Sgt. told me how the Russians were invited to the mess tent. He said, "they were a different kind of soldier, rural peasants, uneducated, crude, wild and you could tell that life was cheap to them." They lined them up for chow and when a serving of food was put on their plates they went to a seat and began hungrily devouring it. The American food line was much like the buffets and steam tables you seen in our restaurants of today. The war would be over in a matter of days and supplies for Americans were plentiful. It had to be explained to the Russians who were used to little or nothing in the way of comforts that you go through the line and get a meat and three sides, don't forget bread and coffee. They had never seen such bounty and had been used to the single serving meal.
Someone told me the other day, "those of us doing like we are supposed to are going to be alright." It's my understanding that Russian soldiers in WW2 did as they were supposed to to defeat the Nazis suffering 26 million civilian and military causalities. It was a war of attrition and it seems like Russian tactics have not changed much today as the war in Ukraine continues. The count varies according to your source with the high end being a possible 839,000 total Russian causalities.
Like my Sgt. friend told me, life for the Russians is cheap. I find it strange that our country which values the Sanctity of Life sides with one where life has little value. Lots of things to unpack from this. Men who ate in that American mess tent have probably lost great grand children in the Ukrainian war and to continue with more Sanctity of Life issues think how all our unborn descendants will be affected by future climate change.
I'd say these are forces we should oppose but like they told me, "those of us doing like we are supposed to are going to be alright."
"...I know I've seen that face before," Big Jim was thinking to himself
"Maybe down in Mexico or a picture up on somebody's shelf..."Bob Dylan from "Lilly Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
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