NACOGDOCHES — We decided to head to the Oldest Town in Texas on a glorious day during Spring Break, to take in the beauty of the Ruby M. Mize Azalea Garden — 11 acres containing more than 7,000 azaleas, majestic camellias, Japanese maples and other plants and trees on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University. My Beautiful Mystery Companion and I are both alums of SFA, though we did not know each other at the time. I ended up returning in 1990 as managing editor, then editor and publisher of The Daily Sentinel and lived in Nac on this second stint for 13 years. It remains one of my favorite...
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I have learned that living an active life at age 70 (and counting) involves a series of workarounds. Here are some recent examples:
Our shiny new orange tractor’s fuel tank fills from the top of the engine cover. The tank on the older tractor it replaced was behind the seat, meaning I could stand on the bushhog at the rear and leverage a five-gallon can of diesel up against my leg to pour it into the tank.
I can’t do this with Orange Crush. I first tried climbing a stepladder next to it and lifting the can high enough to pour diesel into the tank. Five gallons of diesel weigh about...
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I skipped the gym a few days ago and went walking down the street across the county road from Three Geese Farm. My Beautiful Mystery Companion devised a 3-mile route not long after we moved out here nearly five years ago. When we first started walking this route;5, there were only three houses in this one-road rural subdivision. Four more have been built since, but there still is very little traffic. Canada geese were honking and flapping around on this breezy, warm morning. As always, buzzards circled overhead, biding their time. A couple of killdeers took turns hopping ahead of me, their distinctive...
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About three times a week, I head to the Judson Post Office to get the mail. I have been renting post office boxes for decades. The PO box habit began when I was a poor college student, often moving across town to save on rent or get a marginally nicer place. I did not want to deal with filling out change-of-address forms and risk missing magazine subscriptions, or deliveries from the Book of the Month Club, or the History Book Club.
This is an admittedly old-fashioned habit in this time of electronic mail and digital subscriptions. I use both extensively, but I also cling to the print magazine...
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HOCHATOWN, OKLAHOMA — The original Hochatown, named for a Choctaw family, is now submerged, flooded when the Mountain Fork River was dammed to form Broken Bow Lake. Like all land in America, it was first inhabited by Native Americans — in this case, members of the Choctaw tribe. Similar to Broken Bow, a few miles south, Hochatown grew in the early 20th century around the Choctaw Lumber and Coal Company (now Dierks Forests). Once the surrounding virgin forest was largely cleared, the lumber company relocated. The post office closed in 1963. The cemetery and church were relocated to higher ground;...
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I have been a longtime practitioner of short naps for decades. I usually set my phone timer for 35 minutes. Longer naps can leave me groggy and unable to sleep at night. My favorite spot, weather permitting, is the wicker sofa outside on our front porch. The sofa belongs to my Beautiful Mystery Companion. It is old and battered, not unlike its napping occupant. I have spray-painted it three times, depending on its location. It is now white with blue cushions.
A couple of years ago, the frame that holds up the sofa bottom fell apart. I fired up the tractor, put the sofa in the bucket, took it down...
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An old beer stein with a weathered wooden handle sits on the built-in bookshelf behind my desk. Grammy Bourque, my maternal grandmother, gave it to me more than 30 years ago when I traveled to New Hampshire to visit. I have no idea of that stein’s age, but I would guess it is nearly as old as I am. She and my grandfather, who died at 67 of a heart attack in 1972 while shoveling snow off the roof, kept a set in their basement bar, which also featured a pool table, and a small woodshop.
I imagine my grandfather — a quiet, talented man who built their small house in the country outside Hopkinton...
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The sun shifts during late autumn and winter. Its arc is lower in the sky than it is in summer. My writing desk sits perpendicular to the westernmost of six picture windows in the sunroom. Each window is 6 feet high and 5 feet wide. That is a lot of glass to clean. I am reminded of this when the sun hits the windows in late afternoon, highlighting every smudge and dust speck on their surfaces.
The windows, facing south, provide a lovely view of Pancho’s Pond and the woods beyond. I can spy our aged donkey rolling in the dirt, scratching his back, the longhorn steer calves, Waylon and Willie,...
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I bleed burnt orange most days. The University of Texas at Austin and I have a long, at times complicated, history. I earned a master’s degree from UT, my two oldest daughters graduated from UT as did my middle brother, Scott, and several of my still-close friends. I also worked there for a time. Hence, the complicated history.
But for the past few weeks, since the College Football Playoffs began, I have proudly been wearing red-and-white. Hoosier colors. Indiana University. Their football team, if you have been stuck in a cave since last summer, are national champions as of last Monday, when...
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I started building furniture as a hobby in 1998, concentrating on Mission-style pieces, first popularized by Gustav Stickley in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The name came from furniture he saw in Spanish California missions and emulated in his work — simple, clean lines in contrast to the overly ornate (in my view) furniture of the Victorian era. Stickley later popularized Craftsman furniture, which is considered more carefully proportioned. Both styles still hold broad appeal. Mission style is considered a subset of Craftsman furniture.
As with most hobbies, I went whole-hog for a few years,...
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