Ten years ago on February 1, at a few minutes before 8, a sonic boom shook East Texas, followed by a series of rumbles. It was a cloudless, spring-like Saturday morning. I was walking out my door in Nacogdoches, headed to the newspaper office. I had heard on NPR that the shuttle Columbia. I looked up into the sky and saw the contrail splitting apart and thought, ‘‘Guess the shuttle just passed over.’’ I’ve seen the shuttle pass over before, and it’s a lovely sight, a quick flash of orange streaking across the sky from west to east. I figured I had missed seeing the shuttle by just seconds...
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About four months ago I wrote about Sam, a poodle mix who cleverly captured my Beautiful Mystery Companion’s heart by lying down in the middle of our neighborhood street and looking pitiful. She indeed took pity and brought him home. He since has largely lived in my shop at night and outside in the day — with nightly visits on the couch for an hour or so. We never let him out of our sight inside because of his bad habit of marking his territory. That is a poor habit for a dog when inside the house.
Recently, my BMC persuaded me to train Sam to be an inside dog. He would stay in his crate...
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I was giving blood the other day for my semi-annual physical. That’s a sure sign you’re on the far side of the 50, when it becomes a semi-annual physical, and having blood drawn becomes a regular ritual. That used to be something I dreaded, but now I’m used to getting stuck with needles.
Now the worst part is fasting, not being able to down a cup of coffee seconds after my feet touch the floor. I get to the lab soon as it opens at 7 a.m. so I can return home and savor that first cup of joe.
As I sat across from the young woman preparing to stick me, my fist clenched and the tourniquet...
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Gary, Texas — It is a gray day in Gary and throughout the Piney Woods, rain falling in sheets at times. I am traveling farm roads over swollen creeks, relying on my phone’s GPS to find the home of a couple I am set to interview, who live a few miles from this small town. My store-bought GPS, nicknamed Gretel because she leaves electronic bread crumbs for me to follow, denies Gary’s existence for unknown reasons. Luckily the app on my phone provides the route. I remember roughly how to get to Gary, but not to where this couple lives. Besides, I have relied on a GPS too long now to be adept...
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A longtime reader of these ramblings recently mailed me a newspaper clipping of a column I wrote nearly 20 years ago. He read it while working for Amtrak in Pennsylvania as a locomotive engineer on the Philadelphia to Harrisburg run. He stopped to grab lunch and bought a copy of the Harrisburg Patriot-News, which ran the column, originally written for the Nacogdoches paper. I was advocating that the United States get rid of the penny because it is a nuisance, cost more to produce than it’s worth, and doing so could help cut the deficit.
The reader, Joe McCarthy, and I have exchanged correspondence...
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