Pecan Grove San Gabriel (Click on the link to the left to see a photo from the ranch.)
SOUTH OF THE SAN GABRIEL RIVER — It is a glorious spring morning for a ride through the pastures, two dogs flanking the pickup as my acquaintance drives slowly down the dry ruts to show me the place that her father bought in the mid-1940s, just under 200 acres as I recall. The wind seems to blow constantly this time of year in Central Texas. Wildfires are a constant danger as the drought continues. There is plenty of grass left on this farm, because she sold off all but nine of her cows after the brutal...
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I was feeling faintly flush with cash, having received a bit of lagniappe, so I decided to saunter down to the bookstore and browse the bargain bin. I needed a break from either working on my own stuff or reading heavy history — preferably a novel for under $10 in either trade paperback or hardcover. I have quit buying small paperbacks because the type is too small, I tire of trying to hold them open, and the paper quality is crummy. I have become a book snob in my near-dotage. Besides, shelf space is at a premium until I get busy in the shop, and building a bookcase is way down the to-do list....
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It is spring break week in East Texas. Mother Nature decided to cooperate with glorious weather — crisp mornings, warm afternoons, brilliant skies, redbud trees blooming in front yards, azalea blossoms beginning to make an appearance. I’m grateful my Beautiful Mystery Companion and daughter Abbie received a respite from school, the former as a professor, the latter as a high-school freshman. We have no grand plans but will get away for a few days as a family.
For me, this week has been a time to reflect on how life has turned out, at least to this point. It seems minutes ago that we were...
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I’ve been hauling a lot of stuff around the last few weeks. My brothers and I cleared out a storage unit that held boxes of photo albums and the last of our late parents’ possessions. We at last tackled the emotional task of dividing up those items. That meant I also had to move the stuff I had stored in the same unit to a smaller space.
I am not being imprecise by calling it stuff. Much of it defies more specific categorization. It is stuff I am loath to part with because it might come in handy some day, but don’t have space for at the house. A couple of old doors that someday I plan...
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Let us pause now and give thanks. A blaze in the 54-year-old pit at Louie Mueller Barbecue in downtown Taylor was contained before it could do any serious damage to this venerable institution — except to the pit, which was destroyed. According to the Taylor Daily Press, the cause was “the byproducts of cooking in the pit that just overheated and took off.”
In other words, spontaneous combustion.
The fire erupted the first time at 4:45 a.m. last Saturday. Firefighters put out the blaze with little difficulty. But it flared up again the next morning, while Taylor firefighters were busy...
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We had put off this task for nearly two years, sorting and dividing the last of our late parents’ possessions. My mother died nearly two years ago, my father two years before her. In 2007 we had taken on the difficult job of dismantling our parents lives. We sold most of their possessions, moved them into assisted living, and stored what needed to be saved — photo albums, much of my dad’s artwork, some furniture in a storage unit. The artwork he created, originals and prints, went into storage as well, save for some pieces for the apartment and later nursing care facilities in which they...
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In nearly 31 years of writing a column every week, I have written my share of stinkers and a few of which I am fond. Most land somewhere in-between. I can say straight up that my favorite column was published five years ago, a few weeks after I moved back to my hometown of Longview. You’ll understand why in a moment.
The piece was titled “Unpacking a Passel of Books.” It was about how I enjoy unpacking boxes of my books after moving. Doing so is a way to reacquaint myself with old friends who have stuck with me through life’s winding roads —1,500 or so volumes collected over a lifetime...
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Five former newspaper guys met for lunch on a rainy winter day in a nearly deserted Italian restaurant. At one point or another all had worked together. One had been another’s boss, or succeeded this one as publisher, hired that one as editor. We go back nearly a quarter-century working for the same company that owned newspapers in East Texas until three years ago.
We vary in age from 80 to 57. That’s me on the low end. I’m the baby of the group, a rare designation these days. I once was invariably the youngest hotshot in the newsroom, back when I started out in this business. As Willie...
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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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