Ratcliff Lake Camping...

The very best song ever written is "I Heard the Voice of a Pork Chop" by Jim Jackson. Ratcliff Lake is a pretty good campground to sit around the griddle and let the bacon do the  singing. We had Warren and Coraline for a visit and stayed two nights, the Zamora family stayed one night and the Morgan and Ali family joined us for one day. We weathered a thunderstorm Saturday night staying nice and dry in the camper but power to the park went out the next morning so with my dependence on an electric coffee maker showing we packed it up and came home on Sunday.     

We called this place Camp Catawba Worm because my tree at home was covered with worms and we turned those worms into a fish dinner. 

The campground was pretty full and maybe it was the Boy Scout troop but Ratcliff was a better choice than Sam Rayburn this weekend because of the Big Bass Splash with it's 6000 entry draw. Here's a photo of me winning the Anti Big Bass Splash Tournament. 

You can see the rain that filled the canoe on Saturday night. 

Luca, Ezra, Parker, Warren and Morgan trash the water to a froth off the pier. Barely visible is Cullen whose main mode of transport for the time being is a wagon since he broke his leg and is awaiting casting. He did as well as anyone else casting from this seated position. 

The Zamora mobile. 

I think we ended up with about 10 fat bream with most boat fishermen scoring on lures or Catawba worms. I was hoping the panfish would be in full spawning mode but with the little cool front we did not locate any big concentrations with most fish holding tight to the weeds. Seemed to be some fish in the backwater right in the brush that were hard to target, especially with the crew I had.   

See that stick out over there, that's called a sickout. If you have not said this do you even know anything about boating? 

Later this week we are off with the camper again to Festival International in Lafayette. Warren and Coraline will again accompany us and we get to see one of our favorite Balkan Bands out of New York City, Slavic Soul Party. We have collected the cds for years so this is a big deal.  

 

Soccer...

 I occasionally ponder some past life experience, not like a reincarnation thing but some experience passed and ask one of my kids, "How was that for you?" I have a good relationship with my kids so the answers can be brutally honest. That's ok I can take it. I was doing the best I could but I haven't asked anyone how it was playing organized sports yet. This weekend since Mary and Miguel had a commitment we took Ezra to his soccer game. 

I don't really know all the rules to soccer. That makes it easy to just sit there ad watch what looks like a melee out on the field. Ezra is the one that looks like he's thinking about kicking the ball. He claimed a 7-2 victory which I was told is comparable to a 49-7 football score. I did not see that many scores but there was a noticeable dominance in keeping the ball near the opposing goal but good sportsmanship was demonstrated all around by players, coaches and parents.  

Luca will be old enough to play in the fall. He was in charge of picking flowers this game. 

Era is number 5. 

The wagon the kids got us for Christmas is perfect for gear and baby hauling.

Soccer is pretty low key at least at this stage. Ezra has been playing a couple of years so there was a progress to not score keeping and no goalie but they have moved up to where they have those things, play positions and go by some rules. 

Maybe one day someone will ask Ezra did Pop Pop like soccer? and he will say, "I don't know he just sat there."

If I just sit maybe I won't have to come back again and prove anything. 

Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band...

Cathy handles that banking duties up in here. She makes sure all the bills are paid and occasionally sends me to the bank to get some cash (I've never operated an ATM) essentially operating as a bag man and I'm happy with this arrangement. When we go to a music festival like the recent Honk!Tx in Austin, Tx. I pick the bands to see. I pick good and Cathy is also happy with this. 

I picked the Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band as a must see. I did no research as is easy to do with google and all that but I thought it was a cool name. The music was cool also and just the right mix of Balkan, Klezmer, funk and thrash metal as they describe themselves and that Balkan thing is what Cathy (check out her collection sometime if you have the time) really likes.      

Actually as we found out later Emperor Norton was a real person. A San Francisco failed businessman Norton proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States in 1859 and later when Napoleon invaded Mexico "protector of Mexico." He was somewhat celebrated in the bay area and received special favors such as free train and ferry passage, meals, had a currency issued in his name which was honored at his favorite establishments and spent a good bit of time in libraries and at musical performances. On his death in 1880 up to 10,000 people lined the streets to pay respects. 

They don't make them like this anymore or at least since the invention of better mood stabilization medications and it's great that this band, though they are from Somerville, Massachusetts honors the great Emperor. I have never been able to make the backstory thing work as a band name and I respect the industry involved here.      

The tuba player used a helicon which is often seen in Central and Eastern European music. Cathy recently remarked that I needed one of these and I take that as evidence that the bank account is in good shape and also as purchase approval. At this festival I could not help but feel good about this helicon, a guy with a green trumpet and a drummer with a purple bass drum and how happy they must have been the day day they walked into a music store somewhere and bought those distinctive instruments.    

An accordion player like cowbell, harmonica, banjo and tuba means more fun. There were many good bari sax players at this festival. A couple of concert seasons back I sat by a young bari player in Civic Band. I told him, "Hey you get in the right band you can really raise hell with one of those things." He looked at me incredulously and pointed at his instrument, "With this?"     

Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band. Get the music on bandcamp. 

 

Honk!Tx 2024...

Yes there were tubas. Lots of them as well as all other kind of instruments at the Austin Honk!Tx street band festival this past weekend.  It was our second year to attend and I love every minute. Though I do get plenty of opportunities to play music with good people all the time I do wish there was something like this in my home town with wacky dress up sensibilities which in many cases with these groups also combine with community purposes to make the world a better place. 

Here's the Honk!Tx Mission statement:

HONK!TX is a nonprofit, community-driven festival that brings street and brass bands from around the country to perform for free in the public spaces of Austin, Texas. Mobile and unamplified, HONK! bands transform everyday locations into spontaneous stages, dissolving the line between crowd and performers and inviting everyone to celebrate the joys of music and community. A range of genres will be represented: New Orleans second-line brass, European Klezmer and Balkan, Brazilian, West African and more. HONK! is a celebration of community, collaboration and creative expression. Join the revelry!

Above is pictured and you may guess their name, The Neon Brass Party from the clothing style. They come to the festival from Seattle, Wa. The traveling bands are put up in the homes of volunteers, preferably located on public transit or bike lanes. Food sponsors, Restaurants, Caterers and individuals feed everyone. 

9th Avenue Brass from Pensacola, Fl. One of my favorites. 

Bramaya West African Music and Dance from Austin.

Generally not real crowded for a free festival but I could not get real close to the Minor Mishap Marching Band. 

Black Sheep Ensemble from Atlanta.  

Greenbelt Honk! Situation from Greenbelt, Maryland. 

Cimarrona La Original from Santo Domingo Costa Rica. Great group, good drums and tuba. 

The Human Band from New Orleans. Not your typical New Orleans thing but a bit of Balkan and other stuff thrown in. 

I think a lot of Honk groups, many cities have Honk Festivals, meet in the park or other public space on a weekend afternoon, rehearse an hour and then perform an hour. I'd love to do something like that. Maybe I'm not too old to have this much energy I just wish I had the arranging skills to put it together. I'd certainty hold down the tuba line.  

 

Chicago Trip...

We made a trip to Chicago this past weekend to see Kathie, Peter, Wallace and Hamish. It was the final celebration of the long drawn out winter holiday known as Wallace Christmas. Our Chicago family were grounded by a big storm on the date they were heading to East Texas for a more seasonal timed celebration but late is better than never when it comes to celebration. There was also the added bonus to have Cathy's sister Margaret, Kevin Grayson and Addison in for Grayson's volleyball tournament.  

Here's the gang hanging out for a meal at Miller's Pub. It was a favorite hangout of people like Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Durante where they were in town. It was Good Friday and Lent so I had the fried haddock. No word on what Marilyn liked to eat there.  

Late Christmas presents flown in just for you! 

Sitting around in the PJ's just like Christmas morning. Being it was Easter weekend we even went to church

I drove to the airport for my gas guzzling flight in my hybrid but I rode around town in the Tulloch's EV and made use of public transit when I could.  

We saw several games at Grayson's volleyball tournament and it reminded me of the tournaments we used to go to in the old Taekwondo days. 

We took a few walks to the park for outside play and sitting on the play ground watching the grandkids I got some fishing tips from a guy that said he often fished the quarry pond there. They were pretty much like fishing tips you get anywhere, use a plastic worm, a rattletrap, a frog. Maybe next trip I'll brig some baits of my own. 

A nice visit and good to see the grandkids but winter still hangs on in Chicago. The trees are not quite leafing yet and temps at night dropped to the 30s. On arriving back home I soaked in the hot tube and sat on the back deck till I was dry. 

Everyone should travel and see distant family. It makes coming home sweeter.  

 

Evolution of things...

 Usually morning time is a muck around on computer time for me. I once had a patient for home health, an old retired guy I had once worked with in a pervious career so I knew him. To get a bit of a feel for how he lived his life and what he needed health wise I asked what time he got up in the mornings. He said 4:30am which he considered respectable for an old retired guy without much to do. I don't get up that early but mucking around on the computer is just something to kill a little time till I feel it's a respectable enough hour to start bothering the neighbors with the sounds of tuba. 

While I was awaiting the hour of the tuba my computer told me that on this date in 2021 I had made a recording at one of my playing in the park solo concerts. I was playing the 1936 King bell front horn which even though I have a slightly more modern 50 year old horn now I still like the sound of it. The songs I played that day, some I have not played lately and some have changed presentation and style altogether. These little recordings do show an evolution of ideas and song selection. 

I noticed, one of those computer use things that probably the rest of the world knows that if you made a document in Google docs it is saved there for you till needed again. I found something called "mudbelly set list." Mudbelly that's me. It's my blues name and I picked it up during a sliding down a mud bank into the creek sometime back around 1990, give or take a year or two. I made the set list to have something to pick tunes from I might play. It's a few years old now and some of the songs don't ring a bell and there's others that do but are not a bell I have rang lately. Like I say, evolution and all that. The music moves on. 

I have some new tunes but there are a few I need to add back in. 

The gigs come, they go. I'll be able to have something when I need it. 

So the gigs are slow and the blog writing is also. Stay tuned though as camping and travel picks up this week. Evolution you know...

         

Tackle Box Reorganization...

As a retired guy I mostly piddle around each day in a viscous unrelenting cycle of tuba playing, grand kids and fishing. I guess I am easily amused because when I finish the cycle, I start it over again and I have found that I usually find something new each cycle so maybe these are deep subjects with many meanings, shadings and analogies of life that hopefully I have enough time left to get to the bottom of. I took the time this past week to rearrange all the tackle boxes. 

I rarely buy a new lures so it's not like the collection of fishing lures are growing but I do restock the easily consumable and hangable things like hooks, weights, panfish jig heads and plastic lures. I had come to a system of stackable flat boxes that I kept in the boat compartments and switched out into a little tool bag satchel that I stocked with the appropriate gear then carried in the canoe, to the beach or wherever the trip took me. I used two old big tackle boxes to reduce the flat boxes by 4 or 5 so this is a more compact assortment than before. Many of the lures pictured here I bought as a teen or young adult, were my dad's or in the case of the big silver box gifted me from a life time collection by friends Suzi and Charley when they went through some recent downsizing.         

This is the box that gets the most use, the catfish or just general bait fishing gear. There's hooks, weights and slip corks. 

My dad's old tackle box. I cleaned this out by sorting the various lures into other specialized boxes and filled this with the content of the three flat boxes that held most of my saltwater tackle. There's one box left that is saltwater plastic tails so this reduces from about four boxes that I usually carried in a big boy scout backpack to two boxes. Sometimes I only saltwater fish once or twice a year but with the recent generator purchase for the RPod camper we hope to make use of the free camping on Texas beaches this summer.    

Top box here are Rapalas (some of my dad's favorite lures) and small crank baits. Bottom box is the saltwater jig tails. 

Yellow box is a Charlie Brewer Slider kit of bass sized lures. I like the slider worms and probably catch more bass on the panfish sizes than I do on these. On top of that is the rattle trap box. A rattle trap is a good bait, fresh or salt. It's an idiot bait. Any idiot throw it out and reel it in is gonna catch fish. 

Here's a couple of boxes of plastic worms the bottom one I found floating in the lake. The day I found it I posted on the Sam Rayburn Fishing report page my location if the owner was looking but no takers. Top box is old Hellbenders and deep diving crank baits. I don't know how many times as a kid I caught a big bass out the back of the boat on a Hellbender while the old man was trying to crappie fish.  

Cranks, top waters and spinner baits. Some probably a good 40 years old from the dawn of the golden age of mass produced lures.  

The old box Suzi and Charlie gave me. I combined these lures, sone from the collections of their parents with my dad's stuff from his box to make a general bass fishing box of cranks, old Devil's Horse top waters, chuggers and idiot baits. If some modern bass fisherman invites me I'll take this and maybe throw in a flat box of the plastic worms. . 

I labeled the boxes and so far if I have used a lure I return it to the right box. I guess all this will work time I cycle around and start piddling again. In my dad's old box there were at least 10 deep diving magnum Redfins that we used to catch the hybrids out of Rayburn on in the early 80s and I have a stash of them somewhere. It's a cycle that may never be finished.