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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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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