The Sound Of Music...

 

Man we had some good music back in our day!

I was born in 1960 and spent my formative years in some tumultuous times. Viet Nam raged in the jungles of South East Asia. Drugs and Hippies were everywhere. And Love was free. We had hot rods. We had the best looking girls. We had the world by the tail and didn't even know it. Yes sir...We had it all!

Most of all we had the music that defined a generation better than any before or since. Rock and Roll was everywhere and the bands of our day were undeniably the best to grace the stage in history! We sang a variety of songs that spanned the spectrum. Elvis made his comeback in '68 and Three Dog Night played on my record player at home. (Some of you may be scratching your head wondering what the heck a record player was. LOL) Wolfman Jack hosted a late evening program on TV that was just awesome! The Midnight Special shined it's light on all of us! The sound track to American Grafitti was a top seller. Zeplin was a household word and nothing to do with balloons. A Brittish fella named Elton John was taking the music world by storm like the Beatles had just a few years prior. He was Crocodile Rockin' and singing about Benny And The Jets and a Rocket Man somewhere in outter space. The Bee Gees were up and coming.

There were so many groups and songs that we would never be able to listen to them all...but we tried. Radio stations like the blow torch XERF AM just across the southern border from Del Rio, Texas, blasted the sweet sounds  and utilized the unmistakable raspy voice of the man we mentioned earlier, Robert Weston Smith, better known as The Wolfman. KSHE in St. Louis kept the party going.

I sometimes wish I could go back in time to my youth for many reasons, but the music of the era was no small factor!

I Was A Young Man Once

 

Ecclesiastes 9:11 states that "time and chance happens to all men." So true.

In the early hours of this morning I was lying awake listening to the storm roll through. My mind drifted and I soon found myself thinking about my youth and what might have happened to it. 

I recalled playing in the back yard with my brother, way back in the 1960's, before America lost it's way. Back when a kid could still be a kid and parents didn't have to worry about the pedo living next door. We played army. We played mumbly peg with a pocket knife given to us by our grandfather. We simply "played" without concern. We rode bicycles through mud puddles and neighbor's yards. No one complained. They actually kept an eye on us for our parents. There were other kids living around us. We made our own "motorcycle gang" complete with loud cycles created by placing a playing card in the spokes of our bicycles. We terrorized...no one. Just had fun riding from daylight until dark when it was time to go home.

A few short years and we were into cars. Hotrods. Almost every car from back then is a "classic" today and what we wouldn't give to have them back! We had a 69 Chevelle and a 71 Camaro. My brother inherited a 66 El Camino when dad passed in our early teen years. What a glorious collection we had our hands on without knowing it! 

Later came college and work and the toys went the way of the world. I still drove the Camaro but I hustled pool instead of going to class to afford gas for it. I was pretty good, too, but that's a whole other Jerry Springer. Not going to class soon caught up with me and I dropped out of the Junior College I was attending and went to work in the oil field. Unfortunately that didn't work out well since the oil field in East Texas soon dried up and work was hard to come by. So back to college I went. This time in a foreign land called "Arkansas." Just over four years later I had my degree in hand and returned home triumphant! Well...Sort of. I now had to find a job that would support me, only now I had student loans to pay. It would take me 30 years to pay them off, but I did it myself. No government assistance program to step in and pay them.

Many jobs later, now married with children, I look back on my life and wonder where my youth disappeared to. Don't get me wrong. I have a great life and a great family. I'm just no longer the young man I used to be. My body has begun to betray me on so many levels. One bout with cancer. One heart attack. Arthritis in so many joints I can't count them all on both hands and one foot! Yet I keep putting one foot in front of the other. Got to keep moving or lay down and die I suppose. I do enjoy remeniscing about those younger days. Those days when I once was a young man. Time and chance folks. Time and chance happen to all of us.  

I hope for all who read this that you have opportunity to sit quietly and remember your youth fondly. If you are still young...don't waste the time and opportunity you have. Have fun. Live like you mean it! Time and chance will come along soon enough.

Take care. And as my old friend Robert always says...let freedom ring!

 

Not A Poltergeist

 

I think my bedroom is haunted. Something sinister lurks in the shadows of the room. In the dark of the night something happens from time to time...OK it happens most nights. It usually happens between 3 and seven and it happens more than one time a night most nights. I will be sleeping peacefully, floating along in my REM bliss and BAM!! It's as if something reaches up from inside me and yanks on my bladder for all it's worth! I believe it is a Pottygeist! A mythological creature who's sense of timing is incredibly annoying and definitely mischievous. 

The Pottygeist has no sense of fairness. It attacks the young and old alike. Usually with the same possibility. A few days ago I was slumbering nicely around 5 a.m. when the Pottygeist grabbed my bladder and squeezed mercilessly! "YIKES!" I exclaimed in my head. I quickly scurried out from beneath the covers and headed for the bathroom, making it by the skin of my teeth. After what seemed like an eternity I returned to the bed. Unfortunately I managed to somehow dislodge the TV remote from the nightstand sending it crashing into a plastic bowl which contained a plastic water bottle. Those two together make a lot of noise in the tranquility of the early morning! The noise woke my wife up. Uhoh... I just simply said, "Oops!" What else could I say? 

I went back to sleep. My wife was now awake and an hour early at that! It's OK...The doghouse is well lit and modestly comfortable.  

Darned Pottygeists!

It's Good To Be The Texan!

 

I am a proud Texan by birth and the grace of God! Being a Texan means something. It means you don't have to endure long extremely cold winters. Ours are usually a month, MAYBE two, long and it begins to warm up to the 50's and 60's and all is right in the world as we know it! I, being a hater of the cold, am particularly happy with this arrangment. Some will argue that the summers in Texas are offsetting to the short, mild winter. I say NAY! I'd much rather have a hundred degree day than a 10 degree day! That is why God created air conditioning! 

Another blessing of being a Texan is the wide open spaces and beautiful country side. I grew up in East Texas where God spends His vacations. The land and people are the best ever there! Pine trees populate the roadside everywhere you look. Awesome. Just awesome. The people are friendly and will help out wherever there is a need! 

No, we don't all have oil wells in our back yards or horses in our pastures. This is just a myth, a rumor started by the uneducated Yankees. You do, however, usually find a dog or two in our yards, maybe a cat for the mice and snakes. But what you WILL find, without doubt, is a sense of neighborliness. 

I love my Texas. I wouldn't live anywhere else. God bless Texas!!

Pepto...This Is How Ya Do It!

 

So...Remember how I told youguys in the last post that the guys and I were meeting for lunch today at the Mexican food restaurant? Well that happened, but this post is about the rest of the story (with apologies to Paul Harvey). I had the fajita beef and chicken nachos. Pop quiz...What always goes with nachos? Yep...jalopenos. I like jalopenos. Lots of them. 

Fast forward to this evening about 7:30. I was visited by the ghost of jalopenos past. Worst case of heartburn I have had in quite awhile! It's now 10 o'clock and it isn't going away. I made a quick trip to the local Dollar General for a bottle of soothing pink liquid fire quincher.  Before I even left the DG parking lot I downed a dose! (No sense waiting around!) It should be noted that I do not take my Pepto in the manner of the average person. I don't fool around with those little plastic cups like they bring you your meds in the hospital in. No sir. I turned that bottle up and swigged my dose that way! 

I first learned this method as a kid when I saw my dad do it like that. I figured that what was good for him would work for me! Unfortunately, here we are three hours later and the molten volcanic lava that is flowing from my throat to my gastric area has not subsided!

Any suggestions would be appreciated. By the way, I have already poured a 20 ounce Dr Pepper over the flames to no avail. To quote that raven in the old Edgar Allen Poe story, "Never more!" Never again will I eat that many peppers! I should have known better! At my age I should have known better! But I love my jalopenos! I guess I also love my pain free nights. Torn between two loves...  What's a man to do?

It's Tuesday!!

 

It's Tuesday! That means one thing...it's the day to meet the guys from church for lunch at 11 o'clock! It started as a simple "Hey lets meet for lunch one day." Now it has evolved into a ritual. Each Tuesday about 6 or 7 of us get together for a meal and some breeze shooting at a designated location.We decide on Sunday morning where the site will be and then spread the word. There is usually no need to worry if someone might not like the kind of food served at the site because we all like ANY kind of food!

Today will be Mexican food! Mariochi's in Greenville, TX. Most weeks we meet at The Rib Crib in Greenville but like to switch it up from time to time. We are on a first name basis with the servers at Rib Crib and they even know our orders when they see us come in the front door. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Some days we meet at Chili's or a hole-in-the-wall called Glenda's. Glenda's has great home style food at a decent price!

If you are in Greenville sometime on a Tuesday at 11 o'clock, stop by and say howdy or maybe join us!

"Pardon Me Mr President"

In the last few weeks leading up to the final exit of Joe Biden we saw him handing out pardons like candy. It started with his criminal offspring Hunter Biden. After that it was a flurry of pardons and sentence commutations with a spattering of get out of jail free cards mixed in. Today, on the last half day of his Presidency, Joe preemptively pardoned a large group of his family members. Preemptively. That's a nice word for "before they could get arrested for being the crooks they are."

Now the question that looms large over their collective heads is this: If you are not guilty of anything, why do you need a pardon? Let's recall for a second the fact that Sleepy Joe had set up several business accounts in the names of family members. Remember that? Therefore it is no big jump to connect these family members with bribes from foreign countries and other entities made to "The Big Guy". Does the term "money laundering" ring a bell? 

What is Joe and crew afraid of? Why do they need pardons? Keep your eyes open and your ear to the ground folks. We have not heard the end of this stuff.