I took the slower but less stressful route from East Texas to Austin the other day. I was pulling my utility trailer back to begin loading up stuff in preparation for moving back Behind the Pine Curtain. After two years of living apart, the Beautiful Mystery Companion and I — along with daughter Abbie and Rosie the Wonder Dog — will all live full-time under the same roof. It makes me smile to think about it.
This trailer and I endured a couple of life-threatening mishaps during the last move. First the hitch lock broke and the trailer popped off the ball, luckily without mishap since I was only...
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I spend a few days each week ensconced in the Briscoe Center for American History at UT, looking at microfilms of Texas country newspapers from the mid-1940s through the late 1980s for a book project. I think I’m chasing a pretty interesting character and hope eventually I can cadge a modest book contract out of this.
While perusing I often become sidetracked by a horrific tale of murder, or a gruesome car wreck, maybe a long-forgotten political scandal involving a county commissioner. In Texas, most political scandals involve either county commissioners or sheriffs, in my experience. These...
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Nightmarish tales of my ineptness abound when it comes to plumbing repairs. It apparently is a form of handyman dyslexia. When it comes to carpentry, woodworking, even rudimentary electrical repairs, I am— if not Mr. Fix-It — at least his loyal assistant. I can hang a ceiling fan, swap out an electrical breaker, build a coffee table, replace a windowpane or lay down ceramic tile. But if water is involved, my brain turns to mush.
Past disasters are the stuff of legend:
• I stripped the valve off an icemaker tube as the movers literally were bringing in possessions, thus requiring me to frantically...
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Our 14-year-old daughter was watching another police procedural show the other night. The Abster is hooked on “NCIS” and similar programs that invariably show a corpse cut open on a slab in an autopsy lab. At the moment, she plans to be a forensic psychologist so that she can solve the types of mysteries she watches on television. We are fine with whatever career she chooses, but I likely won’t be visiting her at work. I have no interest in seeing a dead person slit open from stem to sternum.
During the show, a whacky Target commercial came on with folks running around in brightly colored...
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For Lent I gave up two habits of which I am quite fond: nibbling on dark chocolate and nibbling on my fingernails. I never do both at the same time. That would be messy. I love dark chocolate so it seemed a meaningful item to give up for 40 days. I hope going that long without gnawing on my fingernails — admittedly a bad habit — will shed me permanently of this tic before I break any more teeth.
I have healthy but brittle teeth, about half now topped with crowns. The front ones have been patched several times. Years ago, I broke one dumbly and absentmindedly trying to pull out a watch stem...
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