AUSTIN — It has been 55 weeks since my last visit to River City. We received our second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine more than a month ago and thus feel safe to travel. I still took the usual precautions, wearing a mask in public, generous dollops of hand sanitizer, doing my best to keep my distance. That was impossible at Buc-ee’s in Temple on Sunday afternoon, where I stopped to refuel and relieve. That place looked like Miami Beach on Spring Break, except everybody was fully clothed (thank goodness) and mostly masked. I figured out later it was the last day of Spring Break, and folks were...
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Make the world go away
Get it off my shoulders
Say the things you used to say
And make the world go away
— Made famous by Eddy Arnold, written by Hank Cochran
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Eddy Arnold was known as the Tennessee Plowboy, back when the music industry loved to hang nicknames on singers. Arnold, born in 1918, grew up on a farm that his dad sharecropped until he died when Eddy was just 11. He had to drop out of school to help on the family farm. His dad had been a fiddle player, and his mom played guitar, so he naturally took to music and began playing at school functions and other events. Legend...
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I hugged my two oldest daughters this week for the first time in more than a year. It felt wonderful.
While we have seen each other a few times during this pandemic, it was always at a safe social distance, masked and outside. Since I received my second vaccine dose more than two weeks ago, it was time for a pair of hugs from Kasey, 41, and Meredith 39. Both daughters and their husbands received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in recent days.
First came a day trip to Houston, on a pleasant March Sunday with a cloudless sky and temperatures hovering around 70. It was a perfect afternoon...
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A dozen of us geezers gathered together on Zoom last Sunday. This group of friends and brothers who have known each other, in some cases, for more than six decades. The occasion was the 68th birthday of one member of the group, who set up the call. Man, that guy is getting old!
Just kidding. I’m not far behind him in years, though I’m not rushing it.
As one would expect, there was a lot of reminiscing during the 90 minutes we spent together. Some of us see each other fairly regularly, though obviously not during the pandemic. But a handful of the dozen on the Zoom call haven’t seen...
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Now, that was a real shot in the arm.
We received our second dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Thursday out at the Gregg County Fairgrounds as rain clouds began gathering. My Beautiful Mystery Companion’s appointment was a few hours earlier than mine, and she encountered more traffic getting into the site, but nothing serious. My appointment was late morning, and I was able to drive straight to the checkpoints, show my vaccine card, park and go inside. I was sitting in the holding area in less than 10 minutes.
As it was for the first dose, the entire operation came off with precision and ease....
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DOUGLASSVILLE, TX. — We drove to the farm for a final time on a wintry afternoon in mid-February. It is being sold in coming days. The farm, in Cass County about 20 miles north of Linden, belonged to my late father-in-law, H.K. Teel.
This was Papa Teel’s retreat, 40 heavily wooded acres, a huge garden spot across the road at the place owned by his late brother, Brad. I called those guys the Secondhand Lions, after the movie. They were a hoot together, constantly fussing at each other like an old married couple. But they grew massive crops of mouth-watering vegetables and fruits: tomatoes,...
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As I embarked on a new adventure this month, writing a weekly Capital Highlights column for Texas Press Association that goes out to newspapers statewide, it brought back memories of some of the memorable folks I worked with over the past five decades, most of it spent working at community newspapers.
I started on the lowest rung of the ladder in 1968, as a paperboy for the Longview Daily News, the afternoon edition of the local paper. I peddled papers door-to-door throughout downtown and to the car dealerships on Cotton Street and Spur 63. The circulation manager was Charlie Hart, a kindly...
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Sam the Dog had a good final day on this planet on Feb. 1. Our 12-year-old poodle/cocker spaniel managed to slip out the back door and make his escape in the mayhem of me trying to corral Mollie the Granddog and her sometimes surly cousin, Rosie, after they all had gone outside to do their business.
Our yard is fenced, but Sam rarely failed to find an escape hatch under the deck, despite our best efforts to keep him confined. He could slip through tiny openings, with his stocky body and stubby legs. I went looking for him. He always came back and rarely roamed more than a few houses up our cul-de-sac....
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I called my brother Scott the other day on his birthday. He just turned 63, a few years behind me on that long road to geezerdom. We got to talking about how at this stage of our lives, we can’t remember if something occurred two years ago, four years ago or nine years ago. Spending the last 11 months in lockdown did not help memory matters. I stay busy working from home, writing, researching and reading, but the weeks fly by. Certain events, such as when I talked to someone or completed a task, become cloudy when I try to recall when they happened.
I recently saw online a current photo of someone...
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INAUGURATION DAY, 2021 — Just two weeks after insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol and attempted to stage a coup, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was sworn in as our 46th president. Democracy has prevailed. The United States continued a tradition of peaceful transition of power that has occurred in this country every four years since 1789 — 232 years. The snow flurries that swirled around as the dignitaries filed into this socially distanced event gave way to sunshine as Biden took office. My eyes filled with tears again and again.
Four years ago, when his predecessor was sworn in, I was attending...
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