Reflections and possibly useful tips on air travel after returning from another trip to Germany — my third in four years. This year also brought trips to Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Boston. I think that’s all the air travel for this year. I don’t particularly enjoy flying. It is more a matter of endurance, especially when traveling overseas.
My earliest memory is of playing with a toy truck in the aisle of a plane headed from Boston to Dallas so we could visit our paternal grandparents, who lived in Longview. I was 3 and remember looking up at the grownups watching me and smiling....
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UNTERNEUKIRCHEN, BAVARIA — My time here has ended after almost two weeks visiting my daughter Mere and son-in-law Matt and taking a few adventures. Here are a few vignettes to wrap up this trip.
Matt and I made a day trip by train to Regensburg, a city of 150,000 in eastern Bavaria that sits at the confluence of the Danube, Naab, and Regen rivers. The city served as a wealthy medieval trade center and has been dubbed the “Manhattan of the Middle Ages.” It was considered Europe's center for almost 150 years, into the 17th century.
Regensburg escaped major damage during World War II and has a well-preserved...
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PRAGUE, CZECHIA — The Campo del Cielo meteorite weighs 83 kg (183 lbs) and was acquired from Argentina eight years ago. It sits on a pedestal in the Hall of Minerals in the main hall of the National Museum in Prague, an imposing building on the upper end of Wenceslas Square downtown, overlooking the site of countless protests and violent scenes. The main building was built in 1891, a youngster by European standards. It was renovated beginning 15 years ago and fully reopened to visitors in 2020.
The Hall of Minerals is one of four permanent exhibitions, alongside the Miracles of Evolution,...
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PRAGUE, CZECHIA — I embarked on a four-day solo trip to the historic capital of the Czech Republic, traveling by train from Garching, the closest station to the Bavarian village of Unterneukirchen, where daughter Mere and son-in-law Matt have lived for three years. The trip took about six hours. Luckily, I only had to change trains once. With more transfers, I could have mistakenly ended up in Budapest. I have always wanted to visit that city, but my hotel reservation was in Prague.
I figure traveling by myself in a foreign country, with its different language, protocols, and customs, is good...
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München, Germany — The polka band inside the Augustiner Festhalle at Munich’s Oktoberfest is playing Sweet Caroline. Daughter Mere, son-in-law Matt and I are seated outside at a picnic table, finishing up an early lunch of roasted chicken, potato salad with cucumber, thinly sliced and savory radishes and a half-liter mug of Augustiner Bräu — a widely acclaimed lager from a brewery that began operating in 1328. Some beer aficionados aver that Augustiner Bräu is the best in the world. I don’t know about that, but it is the best I have ever tasted. That is one reason I am back for the second...
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I miss the sound of a newspaper press.
When I first heard a press slowly cranking up, in late 1968 or early 1969, it sounded like a lumbering beast coming awake, yawning and creaking, then slowly gaining speed until it became a roar not unlike that of a 747 aircraft. The press was in the old newsroom of the Longview News-Journal. I was a 13-year-old paperboy delivering the afternoon edition throughout downtown Longview.
The press was almost certainly a Goss Headliner, a rotary letterpress from which the pungent smell of ink wafted. Next door to the pressroom, a small contingent of cigar-chomping...
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I bought a new recliner last week. It’s the first one I’ve owned in more than 25 years. My Beautiful Mystery Companion finds this purchase hilarious, mainly because I’ve railed against owning a recliner for as long as she’s known me — more than 18 years. I won’t delve into the domestic details that sparked my decades-long antipathy toward recliners. Buy me a beer sometime, and I’ll tell you in person. (I’m easy that way.)
The recliner is finished in cream-colored corduroy fabric, soft and comfy, with a nifty switch that lifts the footrest. No wooden handles to yank to go airborne....
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Snake Farm - It just sounds nasty
Snake Farm - Well, it pretty much is
Snake Farm – It’s a reptile house
Snake Farm ... Uuuggghhhhh
— Ray Wylie Hubbard
Earlier this summer, while my Beautiful Mystery Companion was out of town, I went to collect eggs from our hens. I peered into their nest boxes and saw nothing, which was unusual. The girls are reliable layers. I didn’t think much of it, but I noticed that a trash can lid on the coop’s floor was a bit askew. We keep diatomaceous earth powder in the lid to reduce insects. The lid was perched on a brick paver to keep the shavings out....
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PIER 39, FISHERMAN’S WHARF, SAN FRANCISCO — A sea lion, which I have arbitrarily named Matilda, waits patiently off the port side of the fishing boat that has returned after taking out tourists for a day casting for California halibut. About a half dozen fat, flat white halibut are laid out on the cutting table, now docked at famed Pier 39 at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. A fellow wearing mirrored shades and a ballcap, hands covered with disposable gloves, addresses a fish, quickly sawing a generous filet off its side
Matilda never takes her eyes off the fellow with the knife. (Disclosure:...
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ALCATRAZ ISLAND, SAN FRANCISCO — That is a dateline I have long yearned to write, to satisfy my lifelong fascination with this desolate island in the San Francisco Bay, a little more than a mile offshore. As a kid, I devoured books and movies about Alcatraz, a rocky island developed in the mid-19th century as a fort, then a military prison, and finally a federal prison for the worst of the worst — Al Capone, aka Scarface; Bumpy Johnson (played brilliantly by Longview native Forest Whitaker in the recent series Godfather of Harlem); George “Machine Gun” Kelly; and Alvin “Creepy” Karpis,...
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