Back in the RGV

           

One of the Hill Folk                        A whimsical house in cottonwood bark

So we’ve been swimming, over to Mission West (an RV park just next to us) for their delicious burgers, Pickleballing, woodcarving and that was just the first three days. When I went to woodcarving I got a welcome like a Rock Star. At least that’s what it felt like. I guess they were surprised we escaped from up north and weren’t expecting us just yet. Good group! Unfortunately one of the group didn’t make it this year. One of the dangers of getting old. But he may make it next year. It’s kind of a morbid little joke down here that every time you hear a siren somebody says, “well there’s another trailer for sale”. But it’s an old population and there are lots of sirens. Still……….. It’s good to be back.
I am feeling good and it’s good to be back among friends and have things to do. Nina from woodcarving brought me a bunch of cottonwood bark for carving. Cool! She wanted to buy a piece that I was making last year and I wouldn’t sell it to her. I just don’t do that. But she kept after me and I finally finished it and just gave it to her. She asked what a wanted for it and I said two good pieces of bark. So she worried all summer about that bark and wasn’t finding any. Just before they left up north, a tornado touched down in a state park near Erie PA, where they’re from and knocked down a bunch of cottonwood trees. She got permission and gathered up a bunch and brought it down. So now she’s saying that God is/was looking out for me. I don’t know about that, but she gave me first pick and I have a bunch of good bark. And more than just a couple of pieces.
Now we’ve settled down to enjoy winter in the RGV. Actually winter may have arrived today and will be here until the weekend it looks like. Only 50 today and tomorrow with lows in the lower 40’s and then back to the 80’s for the weekend. Hopefully that will be it. But the rule of thumb is that ‘we’re not out of the woods’ as far as cold weather is concerned until January 15^th. After that winter is reliably over. Hope so! I know I shouldn’t complain when I consider what you folks go through for winter, but we come down here to avoid it! You can be sure that if winter lasts more than 3 days I’ll be complaining.
We went to entertainment a couple of nights ago at the rec hall to see the Link Family. They do gospel and bluegrass on tour from Branson I think. I like to hear the theme from Deliverance and Orange Blossom Express and a couple of others. They’re very good! Seen them 3 times now. Anyway we stood for “God Bless America and when we sat down I happened to see the guy in front of me sit down in kind of the old guy squat thing and I thought aawww crap……… That’s what I do. Ya’ kind of do a ¼ squat, stick your butt out, put your hands on your knees, look between your legs for the chair, and then groan and sit down and say aaaahhhhhh!!! Getting old ain’t for sissy’s !!!!!! Am I right, or am I right !!!!!!
Some of you may be worried about us going to Mexico because of all the stories you’ve heard recently. You can put your mind at ease. Not because we’re not going, but because we don’t think it’s as bad as you hear. We were going anyway and then yesterday we had a talk from a Border Patrol agent who said its OK to go to Progresso. That is where we go. Most all of the incidents in Texas are in El-Paso/Juarez. He said just use your head, we do, stay with others, we do, don’t go too far into town, we don’t, and don’t piss off the cartel…… huh? He didn’t really say that last part. I just was seeing if you were awake???? And here is a thought. The cartels don’t want the bad publicity, the merchants want our business, what is the motivation for keeping us away? I guess there are people on the other side of the border who just don’t like gringos. But would you rather go to Progresso where you have never experienced any trouble or inner city Detroit? Even Portland for that matter. I don’t know you pick the major inner city urban area. I’ll take Nuevo Progresso, Mexico. Besides we found a spot with good shrimp tacos and we need some 800 mg ibuprofen.
Damn it’s cold!!! I hate winter!!! Even if it is three days long.
Recently I was doing some genealogy and got to thinking of one of my fantasies. Wait, you don’t have to run kids off, I said genealogy. And remember it is my blog. Some of you know that my fathers side of the family has a remarkable Civil War history. My GG Grandfather Absalom and six of his sons volunteered from Ohio for service in the Northern Army. He and three sons did not return. Food rations during the war, even for the North were pretty slim. It was not uncommon for a soldier to receive about a ½ lb. of pork fat and a cup of dry beans, plus found, for a days rations. So my fantasy is to walk GG Grandpa through an upscale grocery store just to see the look on his face. Can you imagine? How much could a person from the hills of Ohio in 1860 even identify. Well, it’s just a thought. But it brings a smile to my face. And then I begin to think of all the other possibilities………..

Did you notice the date on this posting?  Cool!

Tea Party Bristol

Well, we are still in Hondo.  Not done yet, but soon.  Should be out’a here in a 2-3 days.  Fingers are crossed! 

Nothing against the park or people but we’re/I’m kind of bored.  Just not much to do here as compared to Bensten Grove.  No pools, no Pickleball, no Y-Wait cafe, no lots of stuff we have become accustomed to.  And most of all, none of our friends.  Kind of sedate here!  There is a carving group but as I recently wrote in an email, “So with not much to do at this park I’ve been doing quite a bit of carving. There is a carving group that meets on Thursday and I went right away. Turned out to be a group of about one, two now. There was a third named Fred Meyer, really, for one day. Now it’s just Bob and I. We have expanded the number of days we carve. We use his porch or the picnic table outside the clubhouse. Bob turns out to be a master carver and knife maker so I’m learning a lot of new stuff and of course I bought a knife. Really like it too!”  But the long and short of it is, we’re ready to ‘blow this popcorn palace!’

I have watched a considerable amount of college football.  Thanks you Direct TV on satellite. We have both East and West coast network feeds so there isn’t much in the way of football that I don’t get.  So the Oregon Ducks are really looking good and the Ohio State Buckeyes are doing OK.  The other OSU, Oregon State is the best 5 and 5 team in the country.  They have played a really tough schedule.  So there are my prejudices.  Unless you count those on the negative side.  Like the love affair of sports writers and coaches for the SEC, especially Auburn.  There the investigation of Cam Newton should have been completed weeks ago.  And I’m proud to say that the Pac 10 sends its bad boys (Jeremiah Masoli) away.  To Mississippi in the SEC.  Let’s hope college football doesn’t go the way of the NBA and now the NFL.  Don’t watch the NBA at all anymore and I’m rapidly losing interest in the NFL.  Nothing but thugery, exhibitionism, and hip-hop.

So!  How about Dancing with the Stars and Bristol Palin.  Of course she is not a very good dancer but ain’t it great that she keeps hanging on.  You’re entitled to disagree but don’t shoot your TV.  ‘The people’ spoke.  And Maks got it right when he said, "People vote and their voices count," he said. "I don't regret a second ... of being on this season. It's been an amazing journey."  And he was, of course, referring to some place in the old Soviet Union or eastern Europe where people didn’t use to get a vote.  Anyway I enjoyed the consternation and whining of the Hollywood left for the loss of Brandy.  As I said to Kat a couple of weeks ago, “if this is an indication of the strength of the Tea Party then Sarah Palin out to run for President as soon as possible”.  Let the people speak!

And then there is the issue of Janet Incompetano and 300 million people being subject to groping rather than narrow the field to guys named Mohammed or Muhammad and being subject to profiling.  But I guess I better not get too political.  I don’t want to lose my reader.  Of course it is my Blog and I could write what I want.  I’ll have to give that some thought.  Right after I watch some more Fox News. 

Texas and Audie Murphy

Just a moderate drive west across the Mississippi and through southern Arkansas brought us to Texarkana and then Atlanta State Park in Atlanta, Texas.  We volunteered just up the road a few winters ago so it’s almost like being home.  We stayed long enough to have a nice visit with Bob and Dee who met here and have stayed in touch with. Our visit included what has become the traditional catfish fry whenever were here.  Nice to see them, they are doing well and still catching a mess of fish.
Then it was down the road to Lake O’ the Pines and Brushy Creek campground another COE park.  It is near Jefferson TX, Jefferson is a quaint little town with lots of antique shops and history.  It somehow use to be a port city even though it’s way inland from the Gulf.  Something about the Red River being damned up (Ok I’m going to have to look).  Memory served!  Until 1872 the Red River was damned up by something called the Great Red River Raft, a log jam that raised the level of Caddo Lake, the only natural lake in Texas, to make riverboat traffic possible between St. Louis, Jefferson, and New Orleans via Caddo lake and the Red river.  Then in 1872 with the invention of nitroglycerin the Army Corps (corpse if you’re Barrack Hussein, couldn’t resist) of Engineers blew it up.  Don’t know why?  But they did!  It was true that the railroad had pretty much killed the need for any riverboat traffic by this time along the whole of the Mississippi and Ohio River system.  At any rate at its peak Jefferson was the 6th largest town in Texas with a population of 30,000.  Now it’s about 2000.  Legend has it that Jay Gould, a railroad magnate had the Great Red River Raft destroyed but there seems to be no basis for that happening.  However his private railroad car is on display in town.  Very fancy!  And Jefferson has a kind of New Orleansish flavor and flair to it.  We enjoyed it! Although we only had pie at the ‘Hamburger Store’.  Damn!

Then it was on to Livingston and the Escapees park to pick up our mail.  Didn’t stay much longer than that.   
After a couple of months of just not feeling right and two stops at VA hospitals in Ohio and Indiana we decided we needed to stop in San Antonio at Audie Murphy, South Texas VA hospital and get me checked out again.  So we did and I am.  I won’t go into it, but suffice to say they are working me over.  They have it all at Audie Murphy including a real competent and pleasant staff.  Nurses Vicky and Cheerie (sp?) deserve particular mention.  Both very competent and nice people. 
After a couple of weeks in San Antonio we moved out to Hondo and an Escapees park. Got here just in time for a really neat Veterans Day celebration.  The high school band from D’Hanis, airplane fly-by, lunch and the whole works.  Very nice!

Now all we need is to get my medical done and be on our way to the Valley for the winter.  Won’t be long I hope!

Still Along the Mississippi

Out of Memphis we didn’t go far to Tunica, MS, and Holiday Casino.  Once more on the river.  There are several casinos in Tunica and we did more than one and had a couple of buffets.  Our usual, play about 5 bucks in the nickel or penny slots and have an early meal and get home before dark.  Ah what an adventurous life.  Holiday had a pretty nice RV park, a place to walk along the levee, and lots of crickets in the grass for Jade to catch.  I think maybe she kind of lost her taste for them though.  Maybe she just over did it?  Not sure?  Anyway it was an OK place for a few nights. 
Mississippi is pretty nice.  Haley Barber has done a great job it seems.  The Governor.  He really broke into the picture right after Katrina in comparison to Ray Nagan and Mary Landreu from Louisiana.  I guess making them look like idiots was easy but he really has done good things in Mississippi from what we see.  Clean highways, state parks and rest areas for sure.  I think I just saw that he was thinking of running for President in 2012 .  Just a heads up!  It’s early, but it wouldn’t bother me.  Our last stop on the river was at Greensville, MS, and Warfield park.  A nice little spot right on the main channel to watch the barges go by.  I’m going to miss ‘That Ol’ Man River’.   Sometime will have to do some more of it.  And I still have not been to Vicksburg. 

  Right on the River          Just a rock though it looked ominous         And some flowers Kat liked

Memphis

   Me & Karen                                                                                                      

Memphis has become a regular stop when we’re anywhere in the area.  We always stop and see Kat’s cousin Eddie and now we see our friends and fellow Winter Texans Karen and Bill.  So we did both.  Eddie, Lynda and Granny are all well.  Kat, Lynda and Granny went shopping while I watched football and played Pickleball with Bill and Karen.  They play at a nice facility in Germantown and I was made to feel very welcome by the folks who play there.  Would that I had been able to play a little better.  Haven’t played for a while and it showed.  Still it was fun.
As usual we stayed at the Ag (Agriculture) Center.  Kind of a state farm with a Farmers Market, lots of things growing, the Ducks Unlimited center, lots of nice bike trails, and places to walk.  And close to what we need to be close to. 
No trip to Memphis is complete without barbecue.  And we didn’t slack off a bit.  Kat and I went to ‘Corky’s’  which is supposedly world famous.  We went to ‘Neely’s’ with Bill and Karen and then we went to ‘The Commissary’ with Eddie and Lynda.  This trip ‘The Commissary’ won hands down. 
Along with our trip to Neely’s with Bill and Karen they took us down to ‘Mud Island’ and the River Walk along the Mississippi.  Neat place!  As I recall the River walk is an exact scale model of the Lower Mississippi River flowing from its confluence with the Ohio River at  Cairo, Illinois 954 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico. There are twenty cities mapped along the walk and four watershed walls that show the drainage of the upper river.  Water flows along the whole contoured length and empties into an acre size Gulf of Mexico.  It was designed using Corps of Engineers survey and navigational charts and somehow water depth is maintained to be reflective of the current water depth in the river.  The whole thing is 2000 feet long at 30 inches to the mile.  And you can play in it.  Man could Bruce, Doug, and I have had fun in that.  (If you remember my last post?) What a setup huh?
         

Free at last, free at last

Our last real commitment for this trip was the final stop in Decatur, IN to get the last work done on the rig.  I am happy to report we have a new awning and the reefer works great.  They decided to change out the awning and not stretch it and we got two parts for the reefer.  We are fixed and outa’ here.  And Fleetwood did a great job.  On time and excellent work.  A pleasant experience. 
So we are on down the road driving through miles and miles of corn and soy beans.  We stopped in Rantoule, IL and went through the Chanute AFB museum.  Kind of neat but it pales in comparison to Wright Patterson.  The best part about Rantoule was the RV park.  It was an older trailer park that had been part of the Air Force base.  It had decent roads and some curbing which was the really neat part.  And now you’re thinking what in the hell is he talking about?  So to the point.  I was returning from the shower after nearly drowning in a thunder storm on the way over and watching the water run down the street.  So I’m thinking about the way we use to play in the water going down the gutters as kids after a rainstorm.  I must have been really enjoying the thought because when I got back to the RV Kat said what were you so happy about walking down the street?  So I explained one of the more simple and most enjoyable summer activities we use to pursue as kids. Bruce and Doug and I would race our little stick boats for probably a hundred yards or more until they disappeared down the sewer and then run back get a new ‘boat’ and start again.  We built gravel and dirt dams to store water along the curbs and then let it out with care and practice to prolong the fun.  What a kick!  Who needed Game Boys or Xbox? 

And then with our new found freedom we stayed at another Corps park in IL.  We spent so much time in Indiana and Illinois this summer that I think we qualify for their potlucks this winter in Bentsen Grove.  You may recall that the different states have potlucks where we winter.  Kat and I are a little bored with our Oregon Potluck.  It’s two chairs, a TV tray, and us.  Lots of folks from the Midwest and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind. 
Then it was on to cotton country and along the Mississippi starting at Lady Luck casino in Caruthersville MO.   The casino wasn’t anything real special but it did have an OK RV park and we had a peak at the Mississippi and barge traffic.  Where we come from the casinos are on Indian reservations, along the Mississippi there on, or maybe just over the water.  And for those reading this from maybe more urban America, that’s American Indians.  Just in case!  I mean I know the state of our educational system.  Not that I want to insult my readers, either one of them.  OK!  So very coincidentally I am reading Mark Twain’s “LIfe On the Mississippi” along this part of the trip.  Really!  Kat bought me a Sony ‘Reader’ some time ago and I have read a few things even though I still have a number of paperbacks on hand.  “Life on the Mississippi” just happened to be a free download and I thought, ‘why not’.  The Reader is OK but maybe not quite as neat as I thought it might be.  I’ve always mentally compared them to an Etch A’ Sketch on steroids.  But there is no back light and that maybe is good or bad but it could be easier to read in some lighting.  The ability to select font size is good, but there is only one page button and there should be more.  It is a snap to download books online at the ‘Reader Store’ and the prices are reasonable for most stuff, but you can’t get everything.  With the growth in different electronic readers though there is more and more stuff available almost on a daily basis it seems.     
 

Amish Country and a Rally or two

OK! I’ve been negligent in keeping up on the Blog.  That’s hard to argue and is established.  Once you get in that fix it’s just keeps getting harder and harder to correct.  As I see it, I have a couple of options.  I can buckle down and promise myself to write all of the things I was going to write, or I can just kind of lump the last month all together and get’er done.  The first option is what got me where I am.  Been there, done that, so to speak.  Besides, you already figured from the title of this post that I had picked option number two.  Sooo……………

Back to Indiana and Amish country.

The Gypsy Journal Rally was in Elkhart.  Really, we just went because it was between where we were and where we were going.  That is, it was between Ohio and the Escapade in Goshen, IN, just down the road from Elkhart, IN.  So we signed up.  It was good, and smaller than the others, but by this time we had seen most of what we wanted to see in a Rally and we still had the Escapade to go.  But, before that we had a few days in Shipshewana, IN.  Shipshe, as some say, might be the heart of Amish Country.  Certainly it is by buggy count and the amount of horse crap on the side of the road.  But the food is good and the flea market was big and the Amishnish (my word) make it a little different than the flea markets in the Rio Grande Valley and Yuma.  What was really different was the stuff in the big True Value hardware store.  All kinds of stuff for use that required no electricity.  Cider presses, stoves, big pots and cast iron cookware.  I wish I could remember more. But it was unique. 

So then it was the Escapade in Goshen.  This was a first for us and we had looked forward to it for a while.  Escapees is a first class RV institution.  We go to their RV parks, use the mail service, subscribe to the magazine and newsletter.  Neither Kat or I are real ‘joiners’ but if you wanted to pick an outfit that emphasized belonging it would be the Escapees.  And certainly by lifestyle, we are SKIPS.  So to the National Escapade we went.  We got a real primo site there.  There we are. Jade liked it!  And the real neat thing was the craft hall.  I spent most of my time in the craft hall with the woodcarvers and Kat got started in beading.  Kat asked if I was getting all the highlights of the rallies in my Blog.  I said, highlights?  She said yeah, highlights!!  Like I was being a little negative or something.  OK, sorry!  Maybe I was. I think she gets it right when she says they were all good.  The Fleetwood Rally was first and informative and we were pumped.  The Grand National Rally was the place to spend your money on stuff. Vendors of all kinds, shapes, and sizes.  The Gypsy Journal was smaller and probably had a greater proportion of folks like us than any of the others. Real fulltime gypsies.  And if you wanted to learn something, the Escapade was the place to be.  But there is a ‘but’!  We wouldn’t do them all at once again.  That was just a little too much and where my negativity was creeping in.