It's All About Fred ...

Fred, Texas that is. A little East Texas town east of Huntsville.

A few years ago, 2003, I ran across a review of a book by Brad Whittington called Welcome To Fred. I decided it sounded interesting and went on Half.com and ordered it. It was an interesting book that was hard to put down.

This last Thursday I was in a small store in Red River, NM and found the sequel to Welcome To Fred which is called Living With Fred. I bought it and am reading it now. Turns out Whittington has written a trilogy for the Fred books:

• Welcome To Fred
• Living With Fred
• Escape From Fred

Review: Welcome To Fred

"I was indeed in Ma Barker's class, who turned out to be Mrs. Barker, a middle-aged white woman and not, as far as I could tell, the matriarch of a bloodthirsty outlaw gang. But you have to admit, being a fifth-grade teacher would have been a great cover."

Mark Cloud is a teen, and a preacher's kid (PK), working his way through his teenage years. He is trying to understand what God means in his life, if at all, and how he might know that God is in his life. It takes a homeless person touching life and the events after that to show Mark that God can and does work in our lives and it is never how we expect.

This little book was a great read and I was blown away by the message it sent.

Review: Living With Fred

"There are times in life when you wonder if you have screwed everything up--when you think that if some bored biographer decided to chronicle your existence, it would turn out to be a dismal account of one mistake after another."

Mark Cloud returns from a family vacation that ended in the first book (Welcome To Fred) to find that he is not the only one touched by God that summer. And that "walking the talk" is not only hard but confusing. This time with his life crossing paths with a WWII/bootlegger shows Mark that not all "Believers" walk the talk and as with Jesus they will persecute you because they do not understand or like you. This book has moments that are definitely funnier than the first book. So funny I was laughing out loud just relating to the scene.

Also the this book left me with questions of right and wrong and what should we do about it. It was a better read than the first.

Brad Whittington is a very good writer who can really develop characters and tell a great story. I cannot wait to get my hands on the third book.

Places In Your Hometown

Since I got this idea from Semicolon (San Angelo) then I might as well place a link to it so you can she what Sherry said. :) And yes Teresa and I had one of those leather notebooks too.

So here is a list of interesting places in my hometown/family's hometown:

San Angelo

1. Twin Buttes Dam
   
   An earth dam 8.2 miles long. It is the younger brother to the O.C. Fisher Dam on the other side of town. As a kid I thought it the coolest (and scariest) thing to cross in a car.











2. Fort Concho

One of the best preserved frontier forts along the Texas Forts Trail.


3. John Glenn Jr HS

The main building of this JHS is circular and the two gyms are also the same shape and have been featured in some geometry books. I am not sure but I think Glenn will no longer be a Jr. High and will be used for something else soon. The school had an interesting first ten years because it was a model campus and school for a weekly schedule instead of a daily schedule. Plus many of the classes were taught in a non-traditional way using work packets. Using the packets students could go at their own speed and complete class work ahead of time. For example several kids finished all the way through eight grade math and just being a seven grader.


4. Central High School

As mentioned at Semicolon this was one of the first open campuses using a college sorta layout. One note of history/rumor passed on to me from Verle and Judy Theriot is that Central was originally named Benjamin Franklin HS when it opened in the 1950's but the students did not like the name and voted to rename it but could not come up with a new name. So they temporarily named it Central High School. :)


5. Steak House(s)

Well Angelo does have a lot of independent steak houses. Zentner's, Zentner's Daughters, Western Skies, Twin Mountain, Lowake (near Angelo), ... just to name a few.


6. Cactus Hotel


A landmark in San Angelo. It has been restored and looks great. I have read that during the last great flood in Angelo that the flood waters reached the fifth floor of the Cactus. Hard to imagine. Have a look at the link above and some of the interior. It is incredible.






7. Texas Theater


"Cooled By Refrigeration"
Painted on the side of the theater.







8. El Paseo de Santa Angela

This area in San Angelo is near Fort Concho and has been developed into a community centered part of town. A really neat place to visit now. You are within walking distance of several sites including the old Santa Fe Railroad Depot and several places to eat.


9. Elmer Kelton's House

Not much to see really. Just a normal house on Oxford Street in San Angelo. But kinda cool to drive folks by there.


10. Angelo State University

Just to show there is some form of higher education in this part of West Texas. :)


11. Sherwood Courthouse

Really cool old Courthouse sitting in the middle of nowhere thanks to the railroad bypassing it.

Sonora (in the Area)

1. Caverns of Sonora


2. Sutton County Courthouse


3. Eaton Hill

Now a wildlife refuge but once belong to the Eaton family of Sonora who ran the water works. My Dad tells stories of roaming around on the hill with his friend Dan Eaton.


4. Sonora Cemetery

My family is laughing if they read this. I love cemeteries and love dragging people to them ... but to be fair the Sonora Cemetery has at least one point of interest. The "No Name Grave" which is strongly believed to be the resting place of Will (Bill) Carver (top left) a member of the Wild Bunch as in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Carver was a native to Sutton County and he was reported in the local newspaper to have been killed in Sonora in 1901.


5. Fort McKavett


6. Fort Terrett


7. Cedar Hill (Llano River)


8. Wildlife out any road from town


9. Bumper Gates

Found an interesting blog - Semicolon

The blog Semicolon was only semi-interesting to me and I put a link up on the sidebar because of it. The interest was in literature and Texas.

But today I found that the author Sherri Early is from San Angelo and is about my age I think... in her forties.

Even more interesting is a post she had about what thirteen things you would show someone if you visited your hometown again now. She made her list and hit almost everyone I would show for Angelo.

Anyway on my next post I will do this meme as she calls it for San Angelo and Sonora just for fun.

Audrey's Fourth Birthday!

Yesterday was Audrey Nolen's Fourth Birthday and we had the honors of her and her family's company (including her grandmother, Judy, from Bryan) in the evening for dessert. So in honor of Audrey's BD then here are two pictures from her first birthday. :)

Under The Rainbows

Due to the landscape and Los Alamos' location next to the Jemez Mountains we get a lot of 180 degree double rainbows here. At least most bows are like these even if there are not alot of them.
Photos by Gwen.










Three generations of Pallissards (Mark, Andrew, and Bob left to right). Andrew, our nephew, just graduated from Estes Park High School and is planning on attending the University of Colorado to study physics and astronomy.











I was wondering why my power nap turned into a dream where I could not catch my breath very well. :)

On a different note, I just happen to catch a scene in the movie "There's Something About Mary" where Matt Dillon meets Mary's dog. It is bust a gut funny. I have not seen any of the rest of the movie but that scene was worth it.

Reminder: Anthrax ....

"Anthrax is a naturally occurring disease that takes a toll on livestock and wildlife when pastures become dry after prolonged wet periods, said Dr. Bob Hillman, Texas’ state veterinarian and head of the Austin-based animal health commission."

Anthrax Story from SAST

We have a cousin who had a job to drive around Ranch pastures, down toward Del Rio, Texas, looking for dead livestock to burn for this very reason.

Sewer Camera Heads Off A Terrible Accident

"Utilities crews sent the alligator-shaped camera down the sewer line and saw on their monitor something they never expected: a natural gas line completely bisecting the sewer. If a root cutter had sliced into that line, sparks from the blades could have triggered an explosion."

This was at the lighted intersection just a couple blocks down from us at Diamond and Orange/Sandia.

Read More from the LA Monitor.

New: Freeline Skates - Cool!

Check it out here

Colorado Pictures

What a bunch of Crock(s)!

Here is Elizabeth's new little crocks. She loves them and wears them all the time. What I like about them is that they are like sandals but have closed toes on them.



Emily doing her all climbing in Estes Park. Isn't Cool.













Elizabeth and her new friend Ellie (Carmen's daughter)












Adamses and Schmidts in Colorado












Sisters







Tell me again Grandpa how much you love me. :)








Grandma is silly








It all goes hand in hand.











Gotta Love Me!

Where Are They Now: Gary Morris

Wokeup this morning with the song "West Texas Highways" on my mind. Decided to lookup Gary Morris and see what he was up to these days. I love hearing this gentleman sing.

Found this: GaryMorris.com

Spooky how he looks like Kenny Rogers now. Wow.

Interesting quote:

Les Miserables was a giant step for me and yet it ended my country music career. The string of hits ended, and in fact, country radio has never played a new record of mine to this day

- Gary Morris, the first American to play Jean Valjean in Les Miserables.

Elmer Kelton: Sandhills Boy (Memoirs)

Last week I finished reading Elmer Kelton's memoirs Sandhills Boy: The Winding Trail of a Texas Writer. If you are an Elmer Kelton fan the this book is a must. It is a good read and engaging.

From reading this it is easy to see where Mr. Kelton gets a lot of his material and stories in his novels. Mr. Kelton seems as sentimental in life as in his fiction which I can appreciate since sentimental is my middle name.

Here are a few quotes I found funny and interesting:

Once while we were on horseback in what we called the Beef Pasture, Ralph Scoot spurred after a badger. Roping a badger is only a little less difficult than roping a coyote, but made a catch. That turned out to be the easy part. Getting his rope back was far harder, for badgers are notoriously ill tempered. The little animal abruptly went on the offense, going up the rope toward Ralph and his startled horse. For a while it was all he and the horse could do to stay out of its way. In such a situation it is usually best to let the badger keep the rope.
......

We had one person who could have been in the model for the Sad Sack comic strip in Stars and Stripes. He seemed unable to get anything right the first half dozen times. In firing a machine gun at the target sleeve, he froze to the trigger while the weapon kept blazing away. The sergeant tried to get his attention by shouting and beating on his helmet with a wrench. The firing did not cease until the ammunition box was empty.

“Why didn’t you stop when I to you to?” the sergeant demanded.

“I couldn’t hear you,” the soldier said. “Someone kept hitting me on the head.”
......

Shortly I was on a train bound for Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio to be discharged. There we were given indoctrination to prepare us for return to civilian life. .... Among other things, we were counseled on various occupations we might find compatible with our military service. For instance, a long list of potential jobs was offered for a clerk-typist. A great many possibilities were listed for someone who had worked in the motor pool.

My classification, however, was rifleman, infantry. The list was times short. One item was walrus hunter.

In later years when I struggled with my writing career, I sometimes wondered if I had missed my true calling.

......

To those misguided souls who claim the Holocaust never happened, I can only wish they had been to those places with me. After all these years I occasionally awaken from a nightmare, seeing again what I saw then.
......

We were being prepared to go to the Pacific for invasion of the Japanese homeland. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an abrupt end to those plans, to our great relief.
......

He soon discovered the truth of the old adage that you can’t go home again. He was a stranger in his homeland. Most of his relatives were gone except the younger generation, who did not know him. Most of his boyhood friends were either aging or dead. He found himself more alone than before and began writing letters to his American friends, expressing a hope that he could return to Texas when his health improved. It never did. He died, as lonely as ever, in a homeland that no longer was home, a querencia that lived only in his heart.

......

But he never went back, not even for a visit. I guess it would have been to painful. ... Dad’s instincts were right. In many cases it is better not to go back.

The Sacketts

Recently I got the urge to reread the Sackett series by Louis L'Amour. I decided to read them in the recommended order.

Listed below are all the Sackett stories and the recommended order in which to read them.

1. Sacketts Land (Checked 6/10/06)


2. To the Far Blue Mountains(Checked 6/12/07)


3. The Warriors Path (Checked 6/15/07)


4. Jubal Sackett (Checked 6/20/07)


5. Ride the River (Checked 8/25/07)
   


6. The Daybreakers(Checked 9/01/07)


7. The Courting of Griselda (short story in End of the Drive)(Checked 9/22/07)
   


8. Lando (Checked 12/09/07)


9. Sackett (Checked 12/29/07)


10. Booty for a Badman (short story in War Party)(Checked 12/30/07)
    


11. Mojave Crossing (Checked 12/31/07)


12. The Sackett Brand (Checked 01/05/08)


13. The Skyliners (Checked 01/06/08)


14. The Lonely Men (Checked 01/07/08)


15. Mustang Man (Checked 01/11/08)
    


16. Galloway (Checked 01/15/08)


17. Treasure Mountain (Checked 01/20/08)
    


18. Ride the Dark Trail (Checked 01/21/08)
    


19. Lonely on the Mountain (Checked 01/18/08)

Fair Blows The Wind

The Man From The Broken Hills (Checked 01/23/08)

Milo Talon

Rivers West
Bordon Chantry
North to the Rails
Over on the Dry Side
The Fergusson Rifle
Son of a Wanted Man
Bendigo Shafter
Dark Canyon

Back Online!

Well thanks to Gwen's tenacity we are back online using an ethernet card. Turns out it is a good bit faster than the USB connection to our modem anyway.