This Made Me Sad...

I was driving down the main drag of town today and I spotted this old boat, motor and trailer loaded up and headed somewhere. I made me kind of sad because I'll bet it never sees the water again. 

That looks to me like some kind of late 70s rig. Not a huge boat compared to some bass fishing rigs you see these days but it comes from a time when they were starting to make the hulls a little more streamlined because people wanted to cover more water and the 80 plus sized outboard let them do it faster and safer. The after market trim fin on the foot indicates this was probably a heavy piece of fiberglass that someone tried to squeeze just a little more performance out of. I put one of those on a motor myself once upon a time. 

This rig makes me think of the good old days of bass fishing with my dad. Topwaters, spinner baits and redfins tossed up against logpiles. Since you didn't have a depthfinder all water seemed deep till the motor drug the bottom. A limit of bass was 15 till they cut it down to 10 and then they only had to be 10" long for to be a keeper and you hung them over the side of the boat on a chain stringer. We broke a few of those chain stringers, separating the links due to the weight of the fish we hung on there till we got smart and started chunking them in an ice chest. 

It was the good old days. The largemouth bass was not yet a holy fish receiving livewell supplements to keep him peppy for the tournament weigh in and a better preventive  maintenance healthcare plan than 99.8% of the planet and you better be sure he's alive when you throw him back. There were not $500 classes to teach me how to use my new depth finder. I can remember when I thought $10 was way too much to spend on a fishing rod. Boats were bought with cash instead of a ten year loan. 

Now before I sound like a get off my lawn baby boomer I know things are different and sometimes the things I know are not even valid anymore. Even though that old boat was suspiciously headed out a highway where one of those cash for scrap metal places is located people do restore these things. You don't see it much around here but I see vintage boats when I travel. That one might just need a good pressure washing, some fiberglass work and new hardware. Being that thousands upon thousands of outboard motors have been built for generations there are plenty of parts and occasionally I see old ones found new in the box in a warehouse or barn so finding the correct period motor in good running condition is not out of the question. It will certainly be easier to work on that my modern model which requires a trained mechanic. 

Hopefully this will be the outcome because it just makes me sad to think a boat won't see the water again. That means there will be people who won't be out on the lake, kids that won't fish or ski and somebodies old Pop-Pop will just be left remembering how things were.  

       

 

Dreaming...

 When I go to sleep at night my brain, my subconscious, or my other other self, whatever you want to call it or whatever it is goes to places I used to be 40 or 50 years ago. Maybe it's because I am old but a couple of nights ago I dreamed I was walking down old Press Road in Southern Nacogdoches County, Tx. 

They may have some blacktop on the road these days but in my dream it was a dusty, red dirt trail through pine woods and dotted with old country houses. I was walking in the hot summer time and I soon arrived at the old rent house where several friends lived and trudged up the driveway. As I arrived it suddenly became apparent to me that I was naked. 

My friends sat in old wooden chairs in the yard (this was the days before we all had bag chairs from big box stores) and I don't really recall particular people that were there. The people in my dream were just composites, familiar to me so much that I was comfortable to to be naked to them. 

There was one feature of the yard that was not there in reality but in my dream I saw a faint woods trail, wide enough for cars leading from the pine and oak forest behind the house around the edge of the property and joining the driveway at the main road. As my naked self approached the people in the yard a car and some foot traffic appeared on this dim, little used path. 

The car was old ragged and rusted. The people and it seemed to be all women in the car and on foot were also ragged and a bit rusted like people in old depression era dustbowl photos. I was ashamed of my nakedness and I lay down in the dry leaves accumulated under a strip of trees between the road people and the people in the yard. I lay facedown and tried to cover my shinny hinny with the leaves. It was taking a pretty big pile of leaves. 

Eventually traffic on the road subsided and someone directed me to an outdoor shower set up at the edge of the road. Somehow I had a green fishing shirt that I wear to the lake and camping and I wrapped it around my waist as I walked to the shower. This is the most recent photo I could find of the green shirt. Apparently I wear it playing guitar also. 

I was ready for a shower because I was dirty from laying in the leaves and summer time in the hinterlands of Nacogdoches County is a great place to discover yourself covered in ticks. Right at that moment another woman came down the road. She was younger, fair skinned and wearing a long ragged dress. She pointed out a plant growing around the shower area. It was like a green onion but with a large bulb at the end and two foot long green shoots for leaves. The woman said, "when we shower, we scrub with these."

For some reason this tip flared my temper with impatience. I told her, "I know that!" 

I woke up from the dream and sat on the side of the bed. It was about four in the morning and I needed to urinate. My stomach told me I should have just had two pieces of left over pizza instead of four. After I took care of my businesses I sat on the bed and thought about the dream. This is not unusual, to wake and have my mind get busy in the middle of the night over what it's been doing when I have not been actively driving it. 

As I write this it occurs to me that there are several people that lived in the old house on Press Road might read about this dream and I wonder if they have dreams also.    

  

       

New Blog Character Nico Manuel Zamora...

 New blog character Nico Manuel Zamora arrived today right on schedule and to quote the pediatrician,  "he's perfect."  Parents are doing well and should discharge from the hospital tomorrow. 

Of course the brothers are very excited. 

They all wanted to hold him. 

Of course grandma wanted to hold him. 

And you can expect that baby in the tuba photo soon.

Mary is off work for three months. The boys start school Friday and Milo begins 3 year old pre-k. When Mary goes back to work that's when Pop-Pop's tutoring will begin. 

Summer Fishing Report...

Cathy and I made it to the lake yesterday for a fishing trip. We've had some lake trips this summer and as per our summer water activity the past few years we have not been too mad at the catfish but instead spent our time tubing and swimming in relief of the hot weather. We swan yesterday but decided we did not want to get out of practice cooking fried fish. 

Though we headed out in the late afternoon fishing was slow for fillet sized fish was slow and we caught a bucket of these miniature blue cats. The Sam Rayburn Lake record for blue cat is 83 pounds. The biggest one we have personally caught was 32 pounds. These have some growing to do. I think I have found small catfish up to about 8" in the bellies of larger catfish. 

Seems our old favorite place that's usually a go to spot from August through January has dried up the past could of years. I think maybe other fishermen have discovered it because last trip one of the grandkids snagged some kind of bait bucket fish attractor and pulled it up. We let it back down but generally extra fishing pressure means small fish are the only ones left. 

We checked around the area to discover a new spot and nearby we clocked 52' depths which means with the lake being 8' low it's normally 60' deep in this spot and and fished the edges which were 25'deep finally producing enough fillet size fish for a fish dinner for two.  When the water comes up the tie ups to old stumps we used will be under water. 

Here's the what the world needs now is another picture of Cathy with a catfish picture. 

With a swim, a nice breeze and an Astros game on the bluetooth speaker it was a nice afternoon on the lake. Supper was even better with Fried catfish and farmers market okra and collard greens. 

 

Brass Against at The Great American Brass Band Festival...

Despite this photo of some of my instruments, the tuba, the resonator guitar and the washboard (I don't really play the washboard I just take it to backyard party jams where it attracts people that play nothing and think, "I can play this" and it makes my tunes more interesting)  I'm not a metal guy. I'm talking about the particular genre of heavy rock music, not instruments made of metal' It's music that I really can't define because I know so little but I can tell you I enjoyed the performance of Brass Against at the Great American Brass Band Festival in Danville, Ky. which we attended a few weeks ago very much.   

Brass Against covers music by heavy rock bands such as Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Black Sabbath, Soundgarden and Led Zeppelin in a brass band format fronted by a lead singer in a kilt. 

Of course with heavy rock music you need heavy instruments and my favorite dude in the band was tuba player Joe Exley. If you have heard tuba on records, TV and video game soundtracks it was probably Joe. 

There is actually a message to the music and the group chooses political songs to raise awareness of issues, encourage activism and change. According to quotes attributed to guitarist Brad Hammonds, they "wanted to do something besides simply expressing views on social media."

This band brings to mind the words of my grandchildren when they try to pick up something and are surprised when it is beyond their strength, "Heavy!" 

Brass music can open up the world for you. As I said I'm not familiar with many of the tunes they cover but check out he video of their mashup of The White Stripes and Curtis Mayfield. Anyone covering Curtis is cool in my book and Jack White is a favorite around here. It might just make you grab up a washboard.  

 

Looking at Photos or Why is My Mouth Always Hanging Open and Don't Pass Out in a Doghouse...

 I got all nostalgic the other day when I was writing about the last music festival we went to and I reviewed back through photos I had made at music festivals over the last year or so and there were some durn good photos. At the same time I reviewed over some photos made of me the last few days and the results, which don't happen to have anything to do with the photographers are not so good. 

It's official. I'm a squint eyed old man whose mouth is always hanging open. 

On top of that my grandchildren are growing up to be trombone players. 

I need several more trombones up in here. Maybe those plastic ones so I can let my old brain rest and not worry about them banging the slide. That's the downside to having a Pop-Pop as a gig mentor who occasionally sets his hair on fire and might or might not wear pants to the show. Makes it seem like anything goes. 

Maybe I could use that google AI thing and scan a photo of me with my eyes slitted and mouth hanging open and get an answer as to what kind of syndrome I have. Maybe I could scan a photo of me with my hair on fire and no pants. Sorry I brought all this up. Now you are scanning your own photos or maybe setting your own pants on fire. 

I once did kind of a quasi scientific study that proved that everyone I know that had passed out drunk in a doghouse ended up divorced. I haven't studied anything about hiding under a dock in a rain storm but they did make me quit holding on to the metal ladder when the lightening started. 

You can't really tell but yeah, mouth hanging open.  

Somehow I understand this album better than ever. 

  

Sooza Brass at The Great American Brass Band Festival...

 We saw many bands at The Great American Brass Band Festival on our recent trip and they were all great. One that stood out for me was Sooza Brass from Gainesville, Florida. 

I could plagiarize from the band's website to describe their music but using my own words I'd say they have some similar elements to a couple of dual sax and drum bands which I have seen and bought cds by called Moon Hooch and Big Blitz. Afterwards I met the band, a bunch of friendly nice young people who when I told them my impressions they said, "Yeah!" 

Seems a popular brass band style of dress is the Dickies zip up coverall type garment which is how my dad dressed to go fishing. Louie Meshoit, the Cajun fiddle player in the Lost Bayou Ramblers wears a pair on his gigs. Like Louie my dad chose the lighter browns and sky blues while the brass bands choose black or maybe dark blue. I happen to have one of these garments in dark blue but it's never occurred to me to wear it to a gig. I do like the look. It gives the band a post apocalyptical/tech/punk/Devo sort of vibe that they fine tune with their music to get the message across.

I did meet the tuba player, Bianca at the merch booth and bought a t shirt with a tuba on it. She had a nice tuba tone with a bit of grit to it and I ask how she got that sound. She said "plug ins" which is some kind of digital thing and makes me think she might be good at math since I'm still using tube amps, Big Muffs and envelope filters to chase sounds I hear in my head and they need no math.  

I suggest adding Sooza Brass to your playlist.