Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work.
— Charles Kingsley
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My tools have returned home. The woodshop soon will be operational. It is a small space, what was once a single-car garage. But it is adequate for my purposes, even if it requires wheeling tools about — depending on what I’m building. But there’s a good cross breeze. My old shop fan keeps the air stirring. The main concern is not making too much noise and alienating our neighbors. I might have to plane rough-cut...
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In December 1940, boxer Jack Dempsey — then one of the most famous athletes in America — came to Casper, Wyoming to referee a wrestling match. It was a fundraiser for a local veterans group called the Forty and Eight. The Manassa Mauler (named after his Colorado hometown, no doubt by some ink-stained sportswriter) had retired earlier that year at age 45 with a record of 60-7-8. Fifty of those wins were by knockout.
Some argue that Dempsey was the greatest boxer of all time. Those of us who saw Muhammad Ali at his peak fantasize about a match between these boxers of different generations....
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Years ago I vowed to never hold another garage sale, after a particularly time-consuming and low-profit sale. The amount of time and effort calculated out to less than minimum wage. Goodwill and other worthy charities have been the recipients of my excess stuff since that unhappy episode.
However, I learned long ago that “never” is a relative term. Thus I acquiesced to my Beautiful Mystery Companion’s request that we hold a garage sale once we moved under one roof and combined possessions — after a year of marriage spent living 260 miles apart. She forthrightly and accurately argued...
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Younger people have a hard time realizing that it wasn’t that long ago the World Wide Web was a novelty, accessed with painfully slow dial-up modems. Widespread use of the medium now taken for granted arrived within the past two decades. At the outset, access required one to be tethered to a computer, but no more, of course. We can check email, Facebook and use Google to settle bar bets on our phone, sometimes by using voice commands.
Teenagers take all this for granted, of course, in much the same way some folks of my generation believed that color television was an inalienable right and that...
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I have hauled my collection of 1,500 or so books five times and nearly 3,000 miles in two years. That means it is time for an oil change, I suppose. Actually, what I hope it means is that this time I am putting these volumes up on the shelves for a very long time. So I am unpacking and placing them with even greater detail than my OCD mind generally employs. I decided to literally unbox all books, place them on the office floor and then try to categorize them in a way that makes sense to my little brain.
My Beautiful Mystery Companion wanted to know if I intended to use the Dewey Decimal System....
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I come from a long line of short painters. A few of my kin can actually paint pictures. My dad made a living as a commercial and fine artist, and my middle brother has followed suit. I cannot paint a picture that anyone would recognize. Fact is, I can’t draw flies. But I sure know how to paint a house. That is a good thing, since my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I just bought a rambling abode that will likely require something to be painted every weekend for the rest of my active life.
Man, I miss Jaìme. For more than a decade my compadre shouldered the painting load at the various houses...
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Rosie the Wonder Dog and I were walking one of Longview’s trails the other day, taking in the smells of an East Texas spring — honeysuckle blooms, mimosa-tree blossoms, that earthy dampness after a late-night thunderstorm. As happens, Rosie needed to answer the call of nature, and gave me The Signal. That means she quits being an obedient pooch on a leash heeling nicely to my left knee and starts jerking sideways. As in, “I have got to go potty, Big Human Guy. Let’s get off the trail.”
I wonder if anyone has calculated how many hours pet owners spend in the course of a year patiently...
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I ventured out this week to get new nose pads on my eyeglasses. The type used on these spectacles break off every few months. Without the soft rubber pad the glasses put an ugly indentation in my nose, which hurts. So off I went to one of the few business establishments left in America that perform a service for free. Most eyeglass stores make minor repairs gratis — such as nose pads or straightening up earpieces after I have rolled over on the glasses while napping.
A few eyeglass stores have started charging, but there are plenty out there who don’t, no doubt reasoning that I am more likely...
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A baker’s dozen of dogs sit in a loose circle, about 100 feet in circumference, in the dusty floor of an arena at the Gregg County fairgrounds. The dogs are tethered by leashes to their owners. Both the dogs and owners vary widely in size and shape. There are four German Shepherds, a poodle, one of those bug-eyed carpet dogs whose breed I can’t place, a few Labrador mixes.
And Rosie. That’s our rescue dog of unknown lineage. Rosie is a cinnamon-colored 14-pound dust mop, with a feathery tail and bounce to her gait. She draws admiring glances and frequent compliments when we walk along...
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In the 18 months I lived in Austin, while my BMC and family lived in Longview, I made the trip back Behind the Pine Curtain about 75 times by my reckoning. Lately I have traveled this route a couple of times a week hauling stuff back in the trailer. At 260 miles per roundtrip, that tallies to 39,000 miles. Sheesh. No wonder I’m tired.
Roughly 90 percent of those trips involved the shortest, simplest route, which is Highway 31 from Longview to Waco, then I-35 to Austin. The exceptions were on holidays when I figured the interstate could turn into a parking lot, or if I was pulling the trailer...
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