U.S. Tico and The Man at Rockport Fulton Market Days...

 I've written about my old friend, Donald Setterbo, or as we called him in college Donnie "Mo-Honny" or as friends and family know him, "Papa Turtle" or as he is now known through the branding of his retirement business venture, U.S. Tico. I helped him this weekend in his booth at his hometown Rockport Fulton Market Days. 

I case you don't know "Tico" is a term for a native Costa Rician. Setterbo has been living in Quepos, Costa Rica for six years. He is U.S. Tico, a Tico at heart from the USA. Quepos is a tropical harbor town, surrounded by rain forest and famous for big game fishing. It's an easy place to fall in love with and identify yourself with the relaxed pace of living and the ecotourism that replaced the banana plantation economy. Do I need to mention that resident Americans and Europeans enjoy the cheap rents and cool breezes off the ocean?    

U.S. Tico got the idea for his brand one day while walking the harbor along Marina Pez Vela. He encountered a young Nicaraguan woman out to enjoy a stroll down the picturesque waterfront. The woman pushed a baby carriage and the chubby cheerful baby wore a hat that said, "No Soy Tico" or translated to English "I'm not Costa Rician." This set the wheels of creativity turning. Costa Rica is a beautiful, easy place to be. It also spends 6.9% of it's budget on education compared to a global average of 4.4%, is rated at a higher level of human development that other countries of similar income and scores as the worlds 23rd happiest place according to the World Happiness Report. Let's get together and talk sometime about why you don't want to be Tico.    

U.S. Tico goods are high quality. The prints and logos are created and drawn by humans, not AI machines. Hats and other items are embroidered.  At the Market Days U.S. Tico introduced his new line for Ticas, or for non Spanish speakers, the girls. 

Looking around the Market Days Fair grounds there were several hat booths. These are different. They  fit my big head. That's quality. 

Creativity runs in the Setterbo family. Click the link to check out his daughter Naedas's children's book, "Sloth Bunny Goes to School." U.S. Tico reviewed the book for me, "there's a lot of different levels..."

You can pick up Sloth Bunny on a hoodie. 

Of course in the short time span of one weekend's work U.S. Tico did not covert the whole USA to the Tico life. That's their loss, but he told his story, sold a few hats and talked to other local business owners interested in carrying the line in their shop. No one else is doing this. Why not make the sales pitch? Pura Vida is a Spanish term used in Costa Rica to describe the culture there. It means the pure life. Why not be Tico? Why not be Tica?    

Shop now, someone with that many nicknames is bound to have something going on.

U.S. Tico

 

U.S. Tico, the Man, Q, Catfish and Music How Else can you Live it Love it Wear it?...

It's numerology bouncing around my brain when U.S. Tico visits the Man. Thirty pops up on my calculator which is about the number of years since we last saw each other. When Q, not the anonymous Q but just regular old Q, shows up input 43 and that's how long since those two saw each other back on the old red brick streets of Nacogdoches. When we were all in college together the number on the dorm where we met, old Mays Hall was Dorm 11. Add seventeen because that's how many months, stuck down in Costa Rica because of Covid restrictions it took for U.S. Tico to grow his ideas. When we spent two days (do you multiply?) on Lake Sam Rayburn catfishing the number produced is 45 because that's how many catfish we caught and ate. To tie all this together is a variable number and this is the number of guitars owned by U.S Tico and the Man. No one knows that value but add one, the loneliest number and that's represents the keyboard that Q jammed on.     

The U.S Tico Fishing Team 2021, left to right Q, Tico, the Man. 

Just for the fishing record the lake, after the high water of spring and early summer is dropping fast but our honey hole Los Brazos is still producing. Two days, 45 cats and we left them biting. Fish ran a bit bigger than average for this spot and we could have caught many more. The fishing log shows four trips this summer and 150 fish caught at this place. Fish are hanging suspended 10-20 feet, easy to catch pitching to them on JPiggs stink punch bait, 

The Man and Q. That's the real Q to you. 

The U.S. Tico Fish Team. We still did not get a photo of anyone modeling a swimsuit but I think I feel a product idea coming on. 

Back in the old Nacogdoches days at Stephen F. Austin State University we spent afternoons lounging and listening in old Mays Hall to Bob Dylan songs. Now we jam on Dylan songs.  

Cathy joins in on our jams. Yes, girls can be on the U.S. Tico Fishing Team and in their guitar army.  

It was a great weekend. Tico is wandering Texas for a couple of more months. Q headed back to his home in Tyler. We will gather again, I just don't know when. I have numbers to add up and there may be answer produced by my ciphering. 

 

The Man Calls Tico...

 Back in the mid 1970s behind what some called the pine curtain, certainly a designation that was an indication of a different civilization running it's trains on it's own time there was a small University in a rural East Texas town. It was an old town and Davy Crockett had passed through there on his way to the Alamo. Maybe he should have stayed because it's likely something in the air or water was already present that created the vibe of the place.

 Hamburgers and illegal smiles were cheap. Although Crockett was reportedly a fiddle player all long haired guys had guitars for this revolution. They lived in dorms that could best be described as upscale institutional. Hippie girls sunbathed on the lawn outside these dorms which decades later would be paved over for townhouse style student accommodations and the ugly but necessary parking garages. Fifteen bucks got a keg of Schlitz Malt Liquor and enough ice to keep it cool while the word spread of a gathering miles outside of town called a woodsie. During this time U.S. Tico met the Man.

It was school so they had to study a bit and U. S. Tico did get a degree of some sort. It was kind of vague, like his ancestry which he claimed was Norwegian. Maybe U. S. Norwegitico, knowing what is known now. The Man, majoring in music did not finish a course of study but did finish a useful degree 30 years later. As to the music thing about 45 years later a respected conductor told The Man that, "I see you are coming from a different place." Indeed, what we know now. 

Again back to the old days though when Pabst's Blue Ribbon was $2.39 for a 12 pack at the gas station on North. and the old Hole in the Wall Bar on Wettermark hosted great Texas Outlaw Country bands and songwriting troubadours like Rusty Weir, Steve Fromholz and Ray Wylie Hubbard backed by Jerry Jeff Walker's Lost Gonzo Band on most weekends. Those Lost Gonzos could burst ear drums with their version of "Communication Breakdown." U. S. Tico and The Man played guitars also. Cover songs were pretty rudimentary at the time but some heartfelt blues was belted out at the woodsies to the tune of brutally fingered E chord progressions with improvised lyrics bemoaning all sadness, trials and tribulations of student life.   

Just like the price of beer always going up, students move on. The day U. S. Tico left he was traveling light. He presented The Man with a set of of maroon dinner plates, more square than they were round and their surfaces scared by the sawing of cheap steak knives against cheaper, tougher meats. A gift? Maybe. The Man would eat off them for most of the next decade.

In fact it was about 10 years before they saw each other again and took a fishing trip together. Big trout cruised between the sea grass beds of Copano Bay and reds tailed on the spoil banks of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. They cooked this delicious seafood sautéed in butter or blackened with Cajun spices and of course better beer than PBR or Bull. 

Like the late songwriter Billy Joe Shaver says "the years rolled by, like a mighty rush of eagles..." U. S. Tico and The Man might have met at a rugby club reunion one more time but after that it would be awhile.  

There would be wives, kids, careers, happy times, sad times, proud times, grandkids, music, better guitars, many concerts, New Orleans Jazz Fests, hobbies, distractions, the tossing out ceremony of the maroon plates and all the things that happen for men as they wind through the fishing trip of life. One day, it had been maybe 30 years since The Man had seen U. S. Tico, a cryptic message arrived.

"I'm in Costa Rica. It's like college, but you don't go to classes. I have lots of time and am working on something big but need help. I want to venture the adventure! Tell our stories! Talk about music! Play music! The free thoughts are flowing!"

The Man wished he still had those maroon plates. He wondered how much a keg of Bull was these days. It occurred to him that U. S. Tico was not Norwegian.  He picked up a guitar and strummed an E chord. It was a good venture to begin an adventure.                   

U.S. Tico and the Stephen F. Austin State University Rugby Reunion...

 U.S. Tico is in the USA. With numerous goals to accomplish and orders of business to take care of after 17 months of  pandemic assisted venturing the adventure in Costa Rica the first thing to see to besides family was a reunion of Stephen F. Austin State University Rugby Team Alumni at the Houston SaberCats game. It's sad to note that the SaberCats lost but I am sure they played the third half well.

There's U.S. Tico standing third from the right. Maybe we can put some names to these guys and The Man might actually know some of them but it's been a long time sice he played a third half with them.  

Rugby at SFASU is a Sport Club. Like other sport clubs such as bass fishing, judo, rock climbing and more it's a student run activity with most funding from donors. These clubs provide leadership opportunities and competition with other schools at the state and national level. Alumni donors offer one rugby scholarship each year. 

The Man never joined these guys to play rugby but as you can see from this group it's a friendly sport. After the game anyone not on the team has the chance to play the third half. It's a tradition to play the third half  around a keg of beer with everyone joining in the singing of bawdy songs, usually to the tune of well known nursery rhymes that must be finished flawlessly or you chug a beer. I note that now a days rugby songbooks can be downloaded and printed. That kind of takes some of the challenge away from your third half playbook.       

Of course there are other traditions such as the elephant walk as well as some that may not be named yet. There is also group of girls that follow the team called rugger huggers. See the girl in the top left of the above photo? That's a rugger hugger.

That's U.S. Tico on the far right standing. This photo from the Oct 3, 1978 issue of the Pine Log student newspaper celebrates the SFASU Rugby Team State Championship. 

Ok time to compare. Look at the SaberCat photos. Look at this one. Now chug your beer and name names. 

Here's another Pine Log clipping on a defeat of the Sam Houston Bearkats. It's always a good day when you beat Sam. Note the story below the game report, if you like SFASU Rugby donate here. 

I also note that there is now SFASU Women's Rugby. Research is underway to determine what they call team followers and if they need any. 

Don't Look in the Wrong Place...

 U.S. Tico and The Man were separated by time and distance. They were connected very closely by thoughts, ideas, experience and sheer number of hours spent sitting on the porch playing a guitar. Sometimes they play with friends or family but as is often the case the task of something you believe in can be solitary. Serenading can be a lonely business. It seems there is no one listening while you sit in a little room. Or perhaps they stop by the wrong room to listen? The Man only has to reach back into close family history to find a story that could almost be the one told by himself and U.S. Tico.

With a history that reached back to the 1870s string band music was popular and instrumentation evolved to include other members of the string family with the banjo fiddle combo that defined the genre it the early days. By the 1920s String band music was well on the way to becoming the modern country music we know about today that has incorporated rap beats to sing about pickup trucks, cell phones and drinking Guaro on Costa Rician beaches. Way before Central American beach vacations The Man's family roots were in Perry County Tennessee, Lick Creek specifically near the river where his grandmother's people the Ledbetters settled in the 1850s in close proximity to the Weems (pronounced Wims) family. 

The Man's connection to the Weems family is his great grandfather, Henry Clay Ledbetter had a brother, William Brownlow Ledbetter who married Martha Hale Lewis. Martha, who passed in 1908, the best way we can date all this, had a sister Mary Jane who married William Thomas Weems, reportedly an excellent fiddle player. Their sons formed the Weems Family String Band. In 1920s Perry County my family, the Ledbetters, would surely have known and seen the Weems play music. 

The photos used here are courtesy of The Man's cousin Charles. Charles is the grandson of William Brownlow Ledbetter and grew up knowing brothers Dick and Frank Weems. In his words "they died poor and would have never guessed that a Google search of the Weems Family String Band would produce thousands of results. They played dances and fiddle contests up to their death." 

The Weems Family String Band cut two sides for Columbia Records in 1928. They were standards "Greenback Dollar" backed with "Davy". These records are quite collectable. Cousin Charles has a copy. 

Why did the Weems Family only cut only two sides? They had a career that spanned generations and decades. As this short film will explain the record company wanted more but looked for the band in Arkansas instead of Tennessee. Also cousin Charles has related that an invitation to the Grand Old Opry was missed because the wives wanted to attend the gig as well and there was not an automobile large enough available to transport all to Nashville.   

Have you heard the Weems Family String Band? Have you heard of U.S. Tico and The Man? Don't look in Arkansas.  

 

  

  

    

Slip Inside This House...

 The Man pulled his dark blue 1971 Dodge Demon off the dusty red dirt of old Martinsville Rd. into the driveway of the long brick ranch style duplex. A knock at the door was answered by U.S. Tico who said, "Slip inside this house." The Man entered. The universe shifted and changed by the actions taken and U.S. Tico drew down the old paper roller shade that hung over the front window and a pen an ink of Don Quixote tilting at windmills that had been sketched there by a previous tenant with plenty of time and better than average talent was reveled. 

Slipping inside this house is a mind set, an idea, a way to live that happens in so many ways and in so many places. The Man slipped inside U.S. Tico's house that long ago day to venture a friendship that would last decades with lances tilted to the "fierce and unequal combat" of life. Don Quixote slipped inside the house of adventure when he prepared to attack the windmills he believed to be giants. If you visit Costa Rica and step inside BenJammin's porch out of the tropical rain the afternoon will pass with song and fun before you know it. 

Slipping inside the house of travel never goes out of fashion. It was the writer Henry Miller who said, "One's destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things." 

Maybe that's the best way to think about this idea. Slip inside this house. Make friendships that grow. Look for art that has personal meanings. Listen to the joy of music made by friends. Travel and experience the world outside familiar settings. Find a way to slip inside this house, even if it is a long brick ranch style duplex. Venture the adventure and life will take it from there.   

Keep an Eye Out for U.S. Tico...

 I mentioned a few blogs back I was beginning to write for an old college friend's Shopify web site called U.S. Tico. Things are moving right along and I don't know exactly when the web site goes live but it's exciting to have a place where my blogging will reach a wider audience. 

I can divide my life in parts. There's that part where I spent a lot of time playing electric guitar and howling at the moon, there is a part I spent raising kids and having a family, there is that part I spent playing a tuba, there is the fishing part, there is the part where I was a musician at church, there is the part where I traveled around, there is the part where I was a better electric guitar player but still howled at the moon and of course there have been a couple of different careers during all this. Some of those parts overlapped. The characters in these parts are mostly the same. There may be parts I have not unpacked or found a label for or even begun yet. I'm thankful that people have expressed interest in these things, or maybe it was the things I thought about all these parts that made them say, "hey, I want to read about this." 

It's pretty wild that this blog, begun in August 2005 has had 161,458 visits. I have written 2682 individual posts. I don't know how many words this has taken but it's a bunch. When I meet a blog reader on the street they usually comment on the photos. That's good too and if Cathy is with me they say, "The girl from the blog!" 

So keep an eye out. I'll let you know about U.S. Tico. There will be shopping, music, adventure and other blogs. May be you will have a part. If you do, I'll be sure to write about it. 

   

  

Venture the Adventure While Holding a Baby...

U.S. Tico always says, "Venture the Adventure."  I say, "Yeah, but I'm holding a baby." Just do it. that's the whole idea. Pura Vida, with the meaning that you should be thankful for what you have and live a simple life is the way for Ticos but I lived it on one particular vacation to Mexico. 

The summer of 1991 had been very eventful. In July my youngest daughter was born. There had been house remodeling, family adjustments for the three older children and school was soon to start. As a consolation prize for the new baby taking away some of their summer fun thunder we promised the kids that there would be a vacation to Disney World as soon as mom and baby were ready to travel and before school started. Reservations were booked. Only problem with all these goings on, you must remember this was pre-internet when you could just google up this information, the trip was booked after the start date of school. Hasty adjustments were made, Disney World was canceled and it seemed that even though the baby was three weeks old, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico was a good idea.    

Puerto Vallarta is located on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Long a place where Hollywood celebrities could cavort while escaping prying paparazzi at the time it was not on the general American tourist's radar and was a preferred vacation destination for Mexico's domestic tourist. It was a great place, sunny skies, clear, calm water with a deceptive wave break right at the beach that would strip a bikini from the unguarded swimmer in an instant while beach vendors selling cheap silver and fat lazy green iguanas watched.      

"Night of the Iguana", starting Richard Burton and Ava Garner was filmed in 1964 at Mismaloya, a beach south of Puerto Vallarta. Our trip, with a three week old baby had none of the drama associated with the John Huston directed film about the human wrecks descending on an isolated resort. Instead there were jungle trips, donkey rides, good food, plenty of beach time and souvenirs to purchase from wandering sellers willing to negotiate what was perceived as the lowest possible price for their wares.        

Since much is made of the movie filmed there and the Hollywood connection to isolated relaxation it seemed like a good idea to book a boat cruise to Mismaloya Beach and Los Arcos Marine Park. The tour promised coastal sight seeing in the vicinity of the movie set, beach time, a jungle trail, waterfalls, snorkeling, and a roasted chicken lunch. Seems like an easy trip for a baby.   

It's not hard to imagine Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor living in a hillside home with the beach right below. 

Waterfalls and jungle trails capture the iguana movie mood. 

I must admit that it has only been in recent years on a trip to the Cayman Islands that I became comfortable breathing through a snorkel. I have a bit of claustrophobia and things such as reclining in the upper berth of an Amtrak sleeping compartment or trying to breath through a pipe activate it. I was perfectly happy to let my wife, Cathy, snorkel while I held the baby.     

Los Arcos became a protected area in 1984 to preserve the habit, fish and birdlife that is abundant in the waters around these granite islands carved down to arches by time and the elements.  

I should mention at this point that the roasted chicken lunch, with side dishes of beans, rice and tortillas had been washed down with cheap tequila, and Modelo beer. The boat crew was a gregarious bunch and seemed to lead the charge when it came to the cheap tequila. Maybe that's why it looked like a good idea to drive the boat through the arch. I have heard U.S. Tico was here in 1982. I am not sure if the boat Captain had heard about Venture the Adventure yet or not.      

These are all photos that I made that day. I don't have photos of the boat ramming the arch, running aground and shattering the rail. It was the pre-digital age so no cell phones to capture all action and post to Instagram. In the chaos I was too busy holding on to the baby. I could imagine the headlines. "Man drowns but saves baby." To Venture the Adventure you must survive it. I think that's a U.S. Tico rule. 

As you can see the boat did not sink, I did not drown, calm returned and I still had the baby. She's 29 years old. We made it back to port with the tour boat engine dying as we bumped up against a docked ocean liner. With the boat damaged and the cheap tequila gone the crew was not as entertaining on the return trip as they were earlier. As I think back on this experience and have learned more about the delicate ecosystem of Los Arcos I would think that compounded with the boat damage there might have been some consequences for the crew to the boat grounding on the protected reef.    

Pura Vida. Venture the Adventure. Even if you choose Costa Rica over Mexico and have to hold a baby. 

 

It's Not Your Mother's Football...

 Me, along with Cathy and Matt made the drive to see our nephew Chase play with the Shreveport Rugby Club against Cy-Fair. We had a good time, a great visit with Chase and the team won.

Rugby is not totally unfamiliar with me. Back in the late 70s when I was a student at Stephen F. Austin State University many of my friends from the dorm including U.S. Tico and another jr. high friend from the old neighborhood, Joe Jones played on the SFASU team. They once won a a state title in 1978 and still have occasional team reunions. 

I always tried to go to the Saturday SFASU games if I was not marching with the Lumberjack Band at a football game and was interested in playing but if you don't make it on the field in during the 1st or 2nd half you can always come play the third half which involves lots of beer, the singing of bawdy limericks, various stages of undress and girls that follow the team around calling themselves rugger huggers. 

While I was sitting at the game it occurred to me that all those rugger huggers I knew back then are now pushing 70 (as I am also) and since we all are beginning to rack up some serious years of sobriety we skipped playing the third half for a quiet dinner on an outside patio and some good conversation. 

Here's the best photo I got with my cell phone of Chase in action during the scrum. That's him about the middle of the pile, the red and black of Shreveport and the shortest shorts. Shorts have to be short because if the are not short they are long. I think when me and Chase met we both had on short shorts It's a thing with us and hopefully one day you will meet someone you can have a thing with too.

We arrived about 10 minutes or so into the game and missed Chase getting a yellow card for punching a guy. Chase, if you see us running late hold those punches till later. 

Shreveport won and I think they had 50 points. I forget how many the other had but a high scoring game is always exciting. I caught Cathy at home later at the computer looking up rugby shirts with slogans. I can tell by the way she's acting that I will probably have to play a third half to hear the bawdy songs.  

Just remember that when you solo a verse to the song, if you mess it up they pour a beer in a shoe and you have to chug it from the shoe. As a bartender once told me, "you'll be surprised what they will drink out of." 

  

    

 

Slow Fishing But We Managed a Few...

The American White Pelican nests as far north as Alaska and the Northwest Territories of Canada. Some go south in winter to Costa Rico like my friend U.S. Tico but a big bunch of them can usually be found on the lakes of East Texas through the winter. They eat about four pounds of fish a day and I usually see them moving and feeding on deep open waters for shad and minnows. Yesterday we spotted this group of birds and laid up in the warm sun on a little nub of an exposed sandbar instead of fishing and it proved what we found out. The fish were not biting, at least not at that moment in time.     

Our old friend Jongy was with us on this trip. He's going to catch one sooner or later if we keep taking him out because he did get a bite but his luck is not much worse than Cathy's total of one fish. The last trip Cathy invited people to the fish fry before we left for the lake and like most people who work well under pressure was able to back all that up with some fat blue cats landed in the boat. No pressure on this trip she claimed.  

Matt took the most fish this time out. We caught zero fishing deep which was where they had been last trip and found the catfish about 4' deep under slip corks. The lake was up after the rain but there are reports that it will go down again. There's work being done on the dam rip rap. When flows on the Neches River slow going into B.A. Steinhagen Lake the water from Sam Rayburn Lake which goes down the Angelina River to join the Neches out of Rayburn will be released for the work to continue.   

Note in these photos that after all the rain water color is about like how I like my coffee. 

I took big fish honors. Two big fillets off this fish worth $8 a pound. The smallest 8 fish probably worth $40 at the grocery headed, skint and sold bone in. 

Despite the slow action the total was 11 fish and they were decent size. That's 56 fish for the month of January. Things will probably slow in February because of non fishing plans but March is a solid slip cork meat in the boat month. 

 

I Like Warm Weather...

 I don't like the weather to be cold and it snowed here last week and then stuck to the ground for several days. That does not happen very often in these parts and actually the ice sheets on the roof, which brought to mind the fact that wooly mammoths froze with green salad still in their mouths, slid to the ground in my flower beds and stayed frozen in the shade for almost a week. In those flower beds I had a wandering Jew house plant (a name invented by someone else) that took root in the fertile soil. In our usually warm clime and the 40 days and nights that pass for winter here it sleeps undisturbed in piles of thick homemade mulch until warm weather comes and it's time to wander to other beds and pots. I look forward to such wandering action myself. 

 I had put some thought into cold weather this year. Not the thought that true northerners put into winter like how they are going to push snow piles out of the way to get the door open or the car out of the drive way or who they are going to call if the roof collapses from the weight of snow and ice. I just bought a thrift store set of insulated bib overalls. I had brief dreams of catfishing over deep holes stacked with large blue cat so warm on the bottom of the lake that they are as comfortable as U.S. Tico on BenJammin's porch down south in Costa Rica. I might have worn those coveralls once. I certainly did not need them on the short trek back and forth from the firewood pile last week. 

My preferred dress, given the coming of spring and summer is no shirt and no shoes. A headband, do rag or a hat is handy to mop sweat and give assist to thinning hair that does not give enough sun protection to a delicate scalp. Service won't be necessary. In fact in the early days of writing this blog and posting photos of my self online people often asked if I ever wore a shirt. These days I am kind of like that once handsome friend who often got away with murder until he aged and was not so handsome and started getting punched in the nose quite regularly. I might punch myself in the nose if I saw a picture of me online without a shirt but then there is that threshold you cross where you just don't care and when it's warm summertime I don't care. 

One time when I did care I put some thought into what I was going to wear one summer. There were some pastel checked cotton shorts in a light color that all the other guys were wearing and they looked like they might be comfortable and stylish for summer. When one of my kids saw me wearing those shorts she said "That light color is not going to work for you because you get so sweaty and dirty." 

Now this had not really occurred to me because sweaty and dirty is my optimal operating mode. I really don't think I ever got those shorts dirty because one day as I performed the bending, scooting twisting, crab walk side step that is necessary for a large man to seat himself in a small car the backside of those pastel checked cotton shorts were torn asunder like the temple veil signifying that my body would never inhabit such the sanctuary of such a garment again. 

Now I give my thoughts to the coming warm summer, short shorts and swimming. I know there will still be cold days before then but I have firewood and I will use it. I might even try those blue cats. 

 

Oh How I Wish You Were Here...

It was a busy weekend. There was a couple of parties but there was work also. A crew gathered up to paint the old Zamora Corporation house in preparation for selling. It jogged some memories of my  friend G.W. and in connection with that the English psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd. 

Here's a photo of the painters.   

Back in the early 1980s I was getting to know G.W. and he showed me a business card. This was way before websites, facebook, influencers and such and it was generally thought that a business card gave you the look of a professional and just about guaranteed success. I have some cards from my cigar box making days. U.S. Tico left a box of business cards here and I guess there has been modest to good success that it is kind of hard to decide what part of that to attach to the business card. 

G.W.'s business card said "P.F. Paint Company." He was in the business of painting. Always having been a work for the hour/take the weekend off kind of guy it was not something I would do but I kind of admired but did not feel jealous of a fellow that had his own business. I asked G.W. what "P.F." stood for. He looked at me like I had two heads. He stared like I had put my under ware on the outside of my pants, which kind of like business cards it's not something people stare at anymore. 

With this look G.W. replied, "It stands for Pink Floyd." 

I note that due to English copyright laws that allow material that sits unused for a period of years to become public domain the band Pink Floyd recently released live recordings from the late 60s/early 70s period. I read drummer Nick Mason's book "Inside Out"  where Nick allowed as when sound mastering technology progressed the band was able to clean up murky old recordings or make use of musical ideas developed in earlier periods. It was essentially a way for the band to keep making money developing material from previous work. I don't know the worth of the Pink Floyd catalogue but I would say if the business plan they are using keeps being successful that none of their great great grandchildren are going to have to paint houses.            

Here's Miguel with an official P.F. Paint Company t shirt. I don't suppose G.W. owes the band anything for the development of paint company idea. 

If you like this blog and want more like it Venmo me what it's worth to ya. It's just so I don't have to paint houses.

@Carl-Wallace-23