Sunday, November 22 – Tuesday, December 8, 2009
This is certainly a different journal entry. Jim and I have walked a very thorny path for the last 2 ½ weeks.
We went to Lubbock on Sunday expecting to enjoy the normal family Thanksgiving celebration. Instead, we found ourselves involved in a family crisis of great magnitude.
It’s just too personal to even relate, but we know that with God’s help each of us will come through stronger and better than ever.
God never promised us a life of roses; but He did promise that he would never forsake us.
“Lord, help us to remember that nothing is going to happen today that we and You can't handle together.” anon (and our daily quote for those days)
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
A Last Little Visit in Liberal & Artesia (2009)
Sunday, November 15 – Saturday, November 21, 2009
Sunday, November 15
We started a cold, rainy morning by whipping up one of Barbara’s chicken salad recipes to take over to Bill and Doris Van Wyhe after church. Then, after getting cleaned up and dressed, we headed off to First Baptist Church of Liberal for Sunday school and the morning service.
We have always loved the Sunday school class at this church. We are a mixture of backgrounds and church affiliations and each person in the group brings very special insights to scriptures and lessons and how they apply to us as individuals.
Don Witzke, our esteemed teacher, was out of town this weekend, but the class moved right ahead with one of the members filling in.
After Sunday school, we moved downstairs to the sanctuary and visited with those folks that we remembered (and who remembered us) and then settled in for a great sermon by David Bagwell. David is a wonderful preacher and pastor and we have missed hearing him. He has tendered his resignation to the church effective January, 2010, and is searching for a new community and church…we wish him every success as he and his family go to their next place of ministry.
Before returning home, we stopped by Bill and Doris’s house to drop off the food and let Bill know that we were planning to leave tomorrow morning and probably wouldn’t see him again until the next time we visited Liberal.
We had lunch with Leah and Ryan, rested for awhile, and then went off visiting since Leah and Ryan were meeting with a pastor of a church they are considering attending. Our favorite photo of the kids from this trip is below.
The Georges were born and raised in India, but were teaching in Botswana when we first began corresponding and trying to get them to the United States to teach in Liberal. I won’t say much about the process, but I felt when it was over that I could teach college level courses on hiring teachers while dealing with the INS and the Kansas State Department of Education. And, I would go through it all over again to have teachers and a family like the Georges.
From the Georges, we drove south of town to the home of Danny and Charlene Plett. We have both written about the Pletts and their boys, Chance and Spencer, another wonderful family that we have been blessed to know and work with.
We spent the evening visiting, eating, getting caught up on the boys and their activities, and watching it SNOW! Our first winter storm was blowing in and we began to wonder whether we would be able to get out of town tomorrow. The white spots on the photo are snowflakes...
One of Danny’s passions is rebuilding and restoring old cars. He has been working for a couple of years on a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle, and before we left tonight, he took us out to his shop to show us what he had accomplished. Danny is a great mechanic and has done a beautiful job with this particular restoration.
The painting on the wall in the picture of Danny and Charlene is one that Barbara painted years ago and gave to Charlene when we retired.
The picture on the lower left is one we took of Danny and Charlene in the new car; the one on the lower right is a picture that Danny sent us…shows the car a little better.
When we had said most of what we had to say, we said our goodbyes and returned to the house to visit with Leah and Ryan until we all decided we’d better head for bed if we were to get up early tomorrow.
Monday, November 16
Happy Birthday today to son-in-law Ryan McQuitty in Liberal, Kansas, and sister-in-law Billee Little in Mineola, Texas!!!
Everyone was up and around early this morning. Leah had to go to school, Ryan to Halliburton for another shift, and we had a long day of travel ahead of us.
After taking a picture of the kids and sending them off to work, we got cleaned up and started loading the car for our trip. We assured ourselves that we had everything in place, dropped the garage door opener on the kitchen bar, and left the house, stopping at the post office to mail a package and at a local gas station to fill up the Vibe’s tank.
The rest of the day was just drive, drive, and drive some more. It’s 435 miles from downtown Liberal to our pad in Artesia, and today they were all there. We did stop in Amarillo to check out a different calling plan at Sprint (didn’t find what we needed at the time) and at Joe’s Boots in Clovis (did find what I wanted this time); also, we made the traditional stop at Pat’s in Portales for malts. Pat’s, not much more than a shack on a corner, has been in the same location since I went to school at ENMU beginning in 1962, and still prepares the richest, thickest malts anyone could ever want.
We ran by Cal and Carol’s house in Roswell just long enough to say, “Hi,” and to pick up an early birthday present for Barbara and then went out to Happy Jack’s to get another load of used books. By the time we finished there, it was dark, so we just headed straight for home, arriving a little after 5:30.
We had Big V opened up and everything put away by 6:30, then went over to see Jean and get caught up on the latest information. It didn’t take much sitting and talking for us to realize how tired we were, so we said goodnight to Jean and returned to Big V to crash for the night.
Tuesday, November 17
Birthday greetings go out today to granddaughter Randi who turned the big 15 in San Antonio and niece Brandi in Cleburne, Texas!!!
We didn’t accomplish much of anything today…just piddled around Big V and started making plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas travels…we did venture out during the afternoon to go to Walmart and get things to restock the pantry and refrigerator.
I went out for about an hour before sundown and collected another big bucket of pecans. The cold night temperatures and the wind that they had here while we were gone brought down quite a few and I would like to gather and sack as many as possible before we leave here next week.
Barbara fixed a new dessert recipe, tonight, Sopapilla Pie. It was a recipe that Ernie and Billee sent to us…hardly any calories in it since it used only a stick of butter, a cup and a half of sugar, and three packages of cream cheese. I’m sure it won’t be found in the recipe section of Cardiologists Monthly, but we enjoyed it very much!
Wednesday, November 18
Neither of us slept well last night; Barbara was up at 2:00 a.m. and I followed around 4:00. We spent the time checking email and playing computer games (not much else to do around here before sunrise) and then we went back to bed and slept until 9:00.
Since we were so far off schedule, it took us the rest of the morning to take care of the daily chores around Big V and then get cleaned up and dressed to meet the family at Chaos for our weekly “lunch bunch.”
We stopped at Walmart on the way home from Chaos to look for a couple of things (and to make it an official day). As we were leaving, Barbara spotted Connie and Teresa, her two nieces who live in Loco Hills, coming into the parking lot. We ended up standing in the lot and talking with them for about 45 minutes…it was a good thing the weather was nice. That whole bit was strange since we had just commented to Cal and Carol the other day that we haven’t seen the girls since we got back to Artesia a couple of months ago.
When we got back to the place, I went out to harvest pecans until dark and Barbara started making preparations for supper. Around 5:30 Barbara called Jean to see if she wanted to share the meal with us and that’s when we found that Jean was still at the doctor’s office due to high blood pressure (she went in at 2:30 for something else!). It was already dark, so we offered to come to the office and wait until she was finished and I would drive her home while Barbara finished preparing the meal.
All turned out well and we got back home and fed. I stayed with Jean for a while and watched through the third quarter of the Spurs/Mavericks basketball game before returning to Big V and calling it a night.
Thursday, November 19
We received word this morning that Doris’s battle with cancer had finished and now she’s with the Lord. The funeral will be held on Monday, the 23rd, so prayers for the family would certainly be appreciated.
Since time seems to be moving on and we’re leaving here on Monday, Barbara decided to spend the morning cleaning out and straightening the underneath bins while I whipped us up a French toast brunch.
The rest of the day for both of us was spent doing odd preparation chores for relocating for the winter months.
Around 3:30 I decided to get serious about the upcoming move and went to the small barn to get Jerry’s air compressor so I could check and air up our tires. This is no small matter, since we have 15 tires to deal with when we travel like this – 6 on Big V, 4 on the Vibe, and 4 plus a spare on the trailer. The rear duals on Big V are usually a problem, but all went well today and I didn’t even have skinned knuckles when it was over.
The rest of the evening was typical…Barbara fixed soft tacos and we went over to Jean’s house to share the meal with her…watched a little football and then returned to Big V to work on the journal and watch a DVD. I’ve started reading Flags of Our Fathers (should be required reading for every high school student) and somewhere along the line in my reading it reminded me that I hadn’t finished watching all the episodes of Victory at Sea, a set I bought last year. So, I got out the DVD’s and watched the episode dealing with the Battle of Iwo Jima and the placement of the American Flag at the peak of Mount Suribachi.
Friday, November 20
Another early morning for Barbara while I snoozed until the alarm went off at 6:00. Fridays are my morning to join the men of 1st Methodist (Jerry and Nancy’s church) for the weekly prayer breakfast. It’s a time I enjoy greatly. Barbara says that she accomplished absolutely nothing during the time I was gone.
When I returned, we both got busy with more chores to get everything ready to move back to our lake home in East Texas. After a bit, we (mostly Barbara) had gone through every cabinet in the living room and kitchen and rearranged (or threw away) the contents.
A trip to town to drop off some mail and donate 64 books to the Artesia Public Library finished the morning’s work. We then returned to Big V and had lunch.
I spent the afternoon gathering pecans while Barbara stayed inside and played Susie Homemaker.
Tonight we went on a “real” date, something very unusual for us. We already had tickets for the community theater production of Nunsensations: The Nunsense Vegas Revue for Saturday night, but decided we’d attend tonight just to have something to do and to support Becky (who played Sister Harriet Ann, one of the Las Vegas nuns) and Jerry (double bass player in the pit orchestra).
Dressed and fresh, we went out for dinner at Kwan Den (a very good Chinese restaurant) and then headed for the Ocotillo Theater for an evening of fun and entertainment. Nunsensations was a real hoot of a show; definitely not a production for high school kids, but still funny and (mostly) clean. Becky did a great job of presenting her character and Jerry was a lot of fun to watch and hear a he thumped away on the bull fiddle in the orchestra.
Saturday, November 21
We began the morning (a little later than usual) with a trip to the laundromat to get caught up on our washing; then, when we returned to Big V, (after a mandatory stop at Walmart) we sorted through clothes one more time and packed our “summer” wardrobes to leave in the barn for the next three months.
Nancy and Jerry had invited us to dinner at their place tonight and had requested that I bake some bread, so I got the trusty bread maker cranked up and then went out to the trees to gather more pecans while the weather was halfway decent while Barbara continued to sort out Big V’s interior…sort of like a spring cleaning in November!
Barbara: Stopping to check my email, I found that Whitney and Jim had sent Halloween photos of Little Jimmy, who for the occasion dressed as a shark…definitely the cutest shark we’ve ever seen! Of course that meant I had to make a collage so I could add Jimmy’s photos to our journal.
For those who don’t know, these weekly journals that we share on our blog site are published by Jim every 6 months. Then we have them bound to give to the kids to keep for our grandkids.
These journals are a part of our legacy and history of our retirement life through travel, visits, thoughts, and memories.
Finally, we decided that if we were going to be half-way decent company tonight, we’d better grab a short nap which we readily were prepared for!
Before we knew it, the clock warned us that we needed to start preparations for our night out with the clan.
By 5:45, with two loaves of homemade bread in tow, (one of which was jalapeno…sorry we couldn’t share with you guys, Amanda and Zeke!) we arrived at Jerry’s and Nancy’s where we found that Jean beat us there. Shortly thereafter, Susie, James, and their friends Ronda and Neil, all from Hobbs arrived and we all sat down at a beautifully decorated table for a fine feast of pork roast, sweet potatoes, English peas, applesauce jell-o, and bread. This dinner, besides being our last here for a while with our NM family, was a celebration of my and Jim’s entry into the Medicare years which will occur after we have left Artesia. What a send off!
Time waits on no man so the saying goes…and this definitely was true as before we knew it, Jerry had to head to the theatre and Jim and I needed to make a quick run to Wal-Mart for flowers to be presented after the performance to our diva, Becky, and a Big Hunk candy bar for my bull fiddle Big Hunk of a brother (well…I never really had one; so years ago I adopted him…notice I didn’t say he adopted me!)
I am so glad that Jim and I chose to see this production twice because tonight, I could spend even more time watching Becky and Jerry. Since we’ve seen Becky act before, I knew what she could do and wasn’t surprised at her poise and talent. However, any time I’ve been to “see” Jerry, I’ve really only been able to hear…not see him. For this show, though, the orchestra was not down in the pit so I could actually observe a different side of Jerry that is so often hidden in his everyday life. With intensity, precision, and an oneness with the bull fiddle, Jerry contributed greatly to the success of the performances and he received his share of attention with an occasional interaction with the nuns.
At the beginning of Nunsensations, the nuns have a Holy Roller game where 3 people are chosen from the audience to participate. Jim was chosen tonight and was the grand prize winner of a car! As Sister Amnesia pointed out to him though, the nuns were from a rather poor convent so all they could afford was the key…he would have to go find his own car to match.
After another great performance, their last, everyone hooked up again over at Nancy and Jerry’s for chocolate cake and ice cream where we shared one last “family” get-together…this time even Sister Harriet aka Becky could join us!
During our post-show dessert, Jerry and Nancy and Jean presented us with early birthday and Christmas gifts. Jean gave us a Walmart gift card (she knows that no day is official until we’ve been to Walmart), and Jerry and Nancy gave us each a pair of knitted footies to wear in Big V during the cold winter days and nights. They also gave us a DVD with four complete Benji movies to help us recall our babysitting days with their Benji…I will be just like having movies of a family member!
What an awesome night to conclude our last 2009 visit with the Terpening/Francis clan!
Thanks for the memories! – Bob Hope (and us, with grateful hearts)
From our last weekend of the year 2009 in Artesia,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
Sunday, November 15
We started a cold, rainy morning by whipping up one of Barbara’s chicken salad recipes to take over to Bill and Doris Van Wyhe after church. Then, after getting cleaned up and dressed, we headed off to First Baptist Church of Liberal for Sunday school and the morning service.
We have always loved the Sunday school class at this church. We are a mixture of backgrounds and church affiliations and each person in the group brings very special insights to scriptures and lessons and how they apply to us as individuals.
Don Witzke, our esteemed teacher, was out of town this weekend, but the class moved right ahead with one of the members filling in.
After Sunday school, we moved downstairs to the sanctuary and visited with those folks that we remembered (and who remembered us) and then settled in for a great sermon by David Bagwell. David is a wonderful preacher and pastor and we have missed hearing him. He has tendered his resignation to the church effective January, 2010, and is searching for a new community and church…we wish him every success as he and his family go to their next place of ministry.
Before returning home, we stopped by Bill and Doris’s house to drop off the food and let Bill know that we were planning to leave tomorrow morning and probably wouldn’t see him again until the next time we visited Liberal.
We had lunch with Leah and Ryan, rested for awhile, and then went off visiting since Leah and Ryan were meeting with a pastor of a church they are considering attending. Our favorite photo of the kids from this trip is below.
Our first stop was at the home of Mr. & Mrs. George and Livesy.
From the Georges, we drove south of town to the home of Danny and Charlene Plett. We have both written about the Pletts and their boys, Chance and Spencer, another wonderful family that we have been blessed to know and work with.
One of Danny’s passions is rebuilding and restoring old cars. He has been working for a couple of years on a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle, and before we left tonight, he took us out to his shop to show us what he had accomplished. Danny is a great mechanic and has done a beautiful job with this particular restoration.
The painting on the wall in the picture of Danny and Charlene is one that Barbara painted years ago and gave to Charlene when we retired.
When we had said most of what we had to say, we said our goodbyes and returned to the house to visit with Leah and Ryan until we all decided we’d better head for bed if we were to get up early tomorrow.
Monday, November 16
Happy Birthday today to son-in-law Ryan McQuitty in Liberal, Kansas, and sister-in-law Billee Little in Mineola, Texas!!!
Everyone was up and around early this morning. Leah had to go to school, Ryan to Halliburton for another shift, and we had a long day of travel ahead of us.
The rest of the day was just drive, drive, and drive some more. It’s 435 miles from downtown Liberal to our pad in Artesia, and today they were all there. We did stop in Amarillo to check out a different calling plan at Sprint (didn’t find what we needed at the time) and at Joe’s Boots in Clovis (did find what I wanted this time); also, we made the traditional stop at Pat’s in Portales for malts. Pat’s, not much more than a shack on a corner, has been in the same location since I went to school at ENMU beginning in 1962, and still prepares the richest, thickest malts anyone could ever want.
We ran by Cal and Carol’s house in Roswell just long enough to say, “Hi,” and to pick up an early birthday present for Barbara and then went out to Happy Jack’s to get another load of used books. By the time we finished there, it was dark, so we just headed straight for home, arriving a little after 5:30.
We had Big V opened up and everything put away by 6:30, then went over to see Jean and get caught up on the latest information. It didn’t take much sitting and talking for us to realize how tired we were, so we said goodnight to Jean and returned to Big V to crash for the night.
Tuesday, November 17
Birthday greetings go out today to granddaughter Randi who turned the big 15 in San Antonio and niece Brandi in Cleburne, Texas!!!
We didn’t accomplish much of anything today…just piddled around Big V and started making plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas travels…we did venture out during the afternoon to go to Walmart and get things to restock the pantry and refrigerator.
I went out for about an hour before sundown and collected another big bucket of pecans. The cold night temperatures and the wind that they had here while we were gone brought down quite a few and I would like to gather and sack as many as possible before we leave here next week.
Barbara fixed a new dessert recipe, tonight, Sopapilla Pie. It was a recipe that Ernie and Billee sent to us…hardly any calories in it since it used only a stick of butter, a cup and a half of sugar, and three packages of cream cheese. I’m sure it won’t be found in the recipe section of Cardiologists Monthly, but we enjoyed it very much!
Wednesday, November 18
Neither of us slept well last night; Barbara was up at 2:00 a.m. and I followed around 4:00. We spent the time checking email and playing computer games (not much else to do around here before sunrise) and then we went back to bed and slept until 9:00.
Since we were so far off schedule, it took us the rest of the morning to take care of the daily chores around Big V and then get cleaned up and dressed to meet the family at Chaos for our weekly “lunch bunch.”
We stopped at Walmart on the way home from Chaos to look for a couple of things (and to make it an official day). As we were leaving, Barbara spotted Connie and Teresa, her two nieces who live in Loco Hills, coming into the parking lot. We ended up standing in the lot and talking with them for about 45 minutes…it was a good thing the weather was nice. That whole bit was strange since we had just commented to Cal and Carol the other day that we haven’t seen the girls since we got back to Artesia a couple of months ago.
When we got back to the place, I went out to harvest pecans until dark and Barbara started making preparations for supper. Around 5:30 Barbara called Jean to see if she wanted to share the meal with us and that’s when we found that Jean was still at the doctor’s office due to high blood pressure (she went in at 2:30 for something else!). It was already dark, so we offered to come to the office and wait until she was finished and I would drive her home while Barbara finished preparing the meal.
All turned out well and we got back home and fed. I stayed with Jean for a while and watched through the third quarter of the Spurs/Mavericks basketball game before returning to Big V and calling it a night.
Thursday, November 19
We received word this morning that Doris’s battle with cancer had finished and now she’s with the Lord. The funeral will be held on Monday, the 23rd, so prayers for the family would certainly be appreciated.
Since time seems to be moving on and we’re leaving here on Monday, Barbara decided to spend the morning cleaning out and straightening the underneath bins while I whipped us up a French toast brunch.
The rest of the day for both of us was spent doing odd preparation chores for relocating for the winter months.
Around 3:30 I decided to get serious about the upcoming move and went to the small barn to get Jerry’s air compressor so I could check and air up our tires. This is no small matter, since we have 15 tires to deal with when we travel like this – 6 on Big V, 4 on the Vibe, and 4 plus a spare on the trailer. The rear duals on Big V are usually a problem, but all went well today and I didn’t even have skinned knuckles when it was over.
The rest of the evening was typical…Barbara fixed soft tacos and we went over to Jean’s house to share the meal with her…watched a little football and then returned to Big V to work on the journal and watch a DVD. I’ve started reading Flags of Our Fathers (should be required reading for every high school student) and somewhere along the line in my reading it reminded me that I hadn’t finished watching all the episodes of Victory at Sea, a set I bought last year. So, I got out the DVD’s and watched the episode dealing with the Battle of Iwo Jima and the placement of the American Flag at the peak of Mount Suribachi.
Friday, November 20
Another early morning for Barbara while I snoozed until the alarm went off at 6:00. Fridays are my morning to join the men of 1st Methodist (Jerry and Nancy’s church) for the weekly prayer breakfast. It’s a time I enjoy greatly. Barbara says that she accomplished absolutely nothing during the time I was gone.
When I returned, we both got busy with more chores to get everything ready to move back to our lake home in East Texas. After a bit, we (mostly Barbara) had gone through every cabinet in the living room and kitchen and rearranged (or threw away) the contents.
A trip to town to drop off some mail and donate 64 books to the Artesia Public Library finished the morning’s work. We then returned to Big V and had lunch.
I spent the afternoon gathering pecans while Barbara stayed inside and played Susie Homemaker.
Tonight we went on a “real” date, something very unusual for us. We already had tickets for the community theater production of Nunsensations: The Nunsense Vegas Revue for Saturday night, but decided we’d attend tonight just to have something to do and to support Becky (who played Sister Harriet Ann, one of the Las Vegas nuns) and Jerry (double bass player in the pit orchestra).
Dressed and fresh, we went out for dinner at Kwan Den (a very good Chinese restaurant) and then headed for the Ocotillo Theater for an evening of fun and entertainment. Nunsensations was a real hoot of a show; definitely not a production for high school kids, but still funny and (mostly) clean. Becky did a great job of presenting her character and Jerry was a lot of fun to watch and hear a he thumped away on the bull fiddle in the orchestra.
Saturday, November 21
We began the morning (a little later than usual) with a trip to the laundromat to get caught up on our washing; then, when we returned to Big V, (after a mandatory stop at Walmart) we sorted through clothes one more time and packed our “summer” wardrobes to leave in the barn for the next three months.
Nancy and Jerry had invited us to dinner at their place tonight and had requested that I bake some bread, so I got the trusty bread maker cranked up and then went out to the trees to gather more pecans while the weather was halfway decent while Barbara continued to sort out Big V’s interior…sort of like a spring cleaning in November!
Barbara: Stopping to check my email, I found that Whitney and Jim had sent Halloween photos of Little Jimmy, who for the occasion dressed as a shark…definitely the cutest shark we’ve ever seen! Of course that meant I had to make a collage so I could add Jimmy’s photos to our journal.
These journals are a part of our legacy and history of our retirement life through travel, visits, thoughts, and memories.
Finally, we decided that if we were going to be half-way decent company tonight, we’d better grab a short nap which we readily were prepared for!
Before we knew it, the clock warned us that we needed to start preparations for our night out with the clan.
I am so glad that Jim and I chose to see this production twice because tonight, I could spend even more time watching Becky and Jerry. Since we’ve seen Becky act before, I knew what she could do and wasn’t surprised at her poise and talent. However, any time I’ve been to “see” Jerry, I’ve really only been able to hear…not see him. For this show, though, the orchestra was not down in the pit so I could actually observe a different side of Jerry that is so often hidden in his everyday life. With intensity, precision, and an oneness with the bull fiddle, Jerry contributed greatly to the success of the performances and he received his share of attention with an occasional interaction with the nuns.
After another great performance, their last, everyone hooked up again over at Nancy and Jerry’s for chocolate cake and ice cream where we shared one last “family” get-together…this time even Sister Harriet aka Becky could join us!
During our post-show dessert, Jerry and Nancy and Jean presented us with early birthday and Christmas gifts. Jean gave us a Walmart gift card (she knows that no day is official until we’ve been to Walmart), and Jerry and Nancy gave us each a pair of knitted footies to wear in Big V during the cold winter days and nights. They also gave us a DVD with four complete Benji movies to help us recall our babysitting days with their Benji…I will be just like having movies of a family member!
What an awesome night to conclude our last 2009 visit with the Terpening/Francis clan!
Thanks for the memories! – Bob Hope (and us, with grateful hearts)
From our last weekend of the year 2009 in Artesia,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
A Little Return to the Past
Sunday, November 8 – Saturday, November 14, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
We woke up this morning to the sight of fog rushing across the southeastern New Mexico plains…not “creeping in on little cat feet,” as Carl Sandburg’s poem suggests, but rolling in quickly and reducing visibility to less than a quarter mile. This kind of fog in our area is unusual, so we grabbed the camera and went outside to document the occasion, taking two shots facing the east, where the early morning sun should have been clearly visible. When the sun finally started breaking through, I took a shot from the east facing Big V and showing the fog-shrouded area behind us.
While I was taking pictures, Barbara was busy getting our Sunday dinner prepared…roast and all the trimmings (potatoes, carrots, onions, and green beans), cooked in a crock pot. Boy…she sure does know how to fix a feast!
With the meal well underway, we got dressed and went to town to attend the morning service at First Baptist Church and then returned to take everything over to Jean’s house to share the meal with her.
The afternoon was a typical lazy Sunday afternoon…we didn’t accomplish anything of note (mainly because we didn’t plan to), but did work in a couple of games of washers before the sun went down. I won’t say who won both games, but Barbara wasn’t as happy as I was when they were over.
Tonight I watched the first half of the Cowboys and Eagles game with Jean while Barbara stayed in Big V to watch her new favorite, Extreme Home Makeover. However, I was so worn out from doing nothing all day that I returned to Big V around 8:00 and Barbara and I called it a day.
Monday, November 9
We managed to stay busy with household chores this morning. After a little straightening around Big V, we went to town and did a week’s worth of laundry. It wasn’t a job we were crazy about doing, but it sure did feel good to get everything back and put away.
I took care of our weekly plumbing chore (dumping the black water tank and hauling the contents off in the honey wagon to pour into the septic tank) while Barbara got cleaned up and dressed to go to lunch. Susie and James are going on a trip this week, so she came to Artesia to work today instead of Wednesday. We had our weekly “lunch bunch” at Chaos a couple of days early and then everyone returned to their work (or, in our case, to Big V to read and take a nap).
This evening I spent about an hour gathering pecans from under one of the trees and then we settled in for a night of TV, with Barbara watching her shows and me going to Jean’s house to watch the Steelers at the Broncos; it turned out to be one of the few games in which the team I was cheering for won…maybe my luck is turning.
Tuesday, November 10
Happy Birthday to James Francis in Hobbs, New Mexico!!!
After waiting out another very foggy morning, we got into the Vibe and headed north to Roswell for a short visit with Carol and Cal. Carol had emailed last night asking if Barbara wanted to join her for a little shopping trip.
While the girls did their shopping thing for a couple of hours, Cal and I stayed at the house and talked. Cal has about a million stories to tell from his growing up days in Artesia, his time in the Navy, and his experiences as a roofer and roofing superintendent for over 40 years.
Barbara: Carol and I began our shopping trek at Sam’s, a place that I always find so interesting since Jim and I don’t have a membership there. It was fun to walk the aisles with Carol and drool over all the food selections available. We even had a sample of some products…yum!
Next, was cheap gas there at Sam’s before heading across the street to Cado’s and Dollar Tree where we just enjoyed having someone else to browse with as we checked out all the “bargains.”
Jim: When Barbara and Carol got back, we unloaded Carol’s purchases and brought them in and then sat down and built some sandwiches for a light lunch. We visited some more while eating and then Barbara and I had to hit the road and get back to Artesia. Unfortunately, we had to leave before brother Jerry was finished sleeping (since he works nights at NMMI, his days and nights are completely reversed from ours), so we’ll just have to schedule a visit with Jane and him another time.
Tonight we just piddled around Big V…baseball season is over, there weren’t any football games, and I didn’t feel like watching any NBA games, so we just made like homebodies.
Wednesday, November 11
Today is Veterans Day, a day set aside to recognize the service of all men and women who served honorably in the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Coast Guard, and during times of war, the Merchant Marines. Each veteran, at the time entry to his or her branch of military service, essentially signed a blank check to the citizens of the United States of America with the entry on the amount line reading, “Up To and Including My Life.” Each also swore to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America…they didn’t pick and choose which amendments which best fit their race, gender, or religion; instead, they promised to give their all to guarantee that the full Constitution would continue to provide guidance for freedom and the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for the folks at home.
Whether they were officers or enlisted, whether they were on fulltime active duty or in the Reserves or National Guard, whether they served one hitch or made a career of military service, or whether they served only stateside or in one or more other countries around the world, those men and women served as the protectors of the United States of America and all its citizens; many served under conditions so harsh and grueling that by any standards they would be considered “cruel and unusual punishment” if anyone other than our military personnel were subjected to them. Still, they served and overcame with honor, and all of us are forever in their debt.
All Americans should do more than just observe this day; instead, they should offer up their grateful thanks to God and military veterans (and our current military personnel) for preserving our unique way of life. Thank you to all of our veterans!
We decided this morning that we would drive to Liberal tomorrow to visit Leah, Ryan, and friends up there. With that in mind, this became a major housecleaning day so we could prepare to close Big V up while we are gone. Along with housecleaning, it was also time to do some serious cleaning of the Vibe and get it prepared for travel…lots of activity for both of us.
Thursday, November 12
Barbara: Why is it that when you have something you want or need to do, the call of the pillow seems stronger and getting out of bed is such a chore? This is the way it was this morning. We fully intended to be on the road by 6:00, but our feet didn’t even touch the floor until 6:30! Go figure.
By 8:00 though, we were rolling down the highway with Liberal, KS, in our sights. As the miles passed, we eventually wound up in Farwell, TX, where my Daddy was Methodist pastor for many years. As usual, Jim asked if I wanted to stop by the cemetery where Mom and Dad are buried. This time I felt the need so that’s where we headed.
As I reminisced while we passed several locations, Jim said, “You know, we really need to document this area for the grandkids.” What a wonderful idea! So…we decided to take time right now to visit the places where my kids spent so much of their time in the summer and on holidays.
Each grandchild fondly remembers going to the post office in the mornings to pick up the mail with Paw-Paw; then whipping into the adjacent parking lot of the local restaurant to have their morning “coffee” as Paw-Paw visited with the men of the town.
In fact, Leah (my youngest) and Missy Jo (Carol’s youngest who is now with the Lord) used to imagine that when they were older, they were going to live in Farwell and own the restaurant. It absolutely broke their hearts when they found out when Daddy died that the restaurant was closed. Maybe that’s when they hatched their plan to re-open it…I just don’t remember. Anyway, it was a very special memory for all the Daddy’s grandkids who each shared time with him there.
The Methodist Church is on 5th Street which is also the street that the Baptist Church is on. So…just as a side note, I want to share this tidbit of info. Our pastor today in Artesia, Rick Sullivan, was a young man entering the ministry at First Baptist Texico-Farwell when Daddy was in the waning years of his as a Methodist preacher. Therefore, they knew each other…small world, wouldn’t you say?
A trip down 5th Street brought us to the parsonage where Mom and Dad lived during the years they served in Texico-Farwell. Then a loop by the high school brought us to the little duplex where Mom and Dad lived after he retired. Just a little history here for the grandkids…Paw-Paw and Grandma left Farwell and moved to Jal, NM and then later Crane. When Daddy retired from the ministry, he told Mom that she had followed him for many, many years. Now he would follow her…where did she want to live? Mom said Farwell seemed like home so they moved into a duplex right across from the high school. They lived there until they moved down to the valley and became a couple of snow birds.
Our final stop was at the Methodist Church where we met the present day pastor, Randall Partin. When he found out our mission, take pics of the sanctuary, he was agreeable. And…when he discovered that my Dad was W. T. Perry, he smiled and said, “I have heard of him. He was here at Farwell many years.” That a complete stranger said that warmed my heart. Though Daddy has been gone from this earth for 12 years, he’s still remembered in a place he and Mom considered home.
What a walk down memory lane this was! Thanks, Jim, for thinking of it.
Jim: We left Farwell and continued our journey to Liberal, stopping only at Amarillo for gas and Dumas for a late McLunch before arriving at Ryan and Leah’s house around 5:00.
After unloading the car and moving everything into the house, we visited with Leah a bit (Ryan was out on a job with his Halliburton crew).
Leah had an Odyssey of the Mind team practice tonight, so we used the time to go visit Bill Van Wyhe, our friend whose wife has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. In truth, the primary purpose of the trip this weekend was to see Bill and his family, since the doctors have stopped all treatment for Doris except to try to keep her comfortable.
We were able to talk to Bill for several minutes until a couple of carloads of family members arrived. We shared hugs and promised to keep in touch while we are in town.
From Bill’s house, we drove over to our friends, Shawn and Luz Riggs’ house to see if they were home. Shawn and Morgan (their son who is now a senior) were there, but Luz was still at school. While we waited for Luz to return, Shawn and Morgan got us caught up on their latest news and then Luz filled us in on even more when she returned to the house. Luz heads up AVID, a very successful intervention program at LHS and Shawn teaches and does AVID at South Middle School.
We then returned to the house on Roosevelt and spent the rest of the evening visiting with Leah until our tired minds and bodies ordered us to bed.
Friday, November 13
I got up early this morning and went up to the high school to visit with folks for a couple of hours. It was Friday the Thirteenth, but I knew that any Friday that didn’t include a pep rally couldn’t be all bad, and since all sports were between seasons, pep rallies were out of the question.
Keith Adams (the principal who succeeded me at LHS) gave me the grand tour of the new construction area (four new business classrooms) and the refurbished stadium (artificial turf with markings for both soccer and football, new 8-lane asphalt track, new seats, new concession stand, and lots of paint). It is a beautiful facility.
I also got to visit in several classrooms and see some of the teachers who are still around from the “old” days.
Shortly before 10:00, I returned to the house to get Barbara and we started the next portion of the day. Job One was to find MonDel Anthony and schedule a haircutting appointment. We were both getting shaggy, and MonDel is the only person we trust to get us back in shape.
Luckily, MonDel was able to work us in immediately and in within an hour, we were presentable and had had a great visit. Of course, the visit wouldn’t have been complete without documentation, so we took out the trusty camera and got a couple of shots of MonDel working his magic.
We ran a couple errands downtown and then stopped to visit another friend from our USD 480 days, Ed Poley. Ed was the director of Southwest Kansas Vocational-Technical School which, when we were in Liberal, was a function of the school district. Shortly after we retired, SWKVTS was transferred to the jurisdiction of Seward County Community College.
Ed retired after the last school year and is now a part-time elementary counselor at Tyrone, Oklahoma. He also received some grant money to begin a counseling service for veterans and first responders, and was given office space by a local businessman to begin and build his new project, Whirlwind Career Counseling and Guidance Center.
From Ed’s place, we drove across town to West Middle School, where Barbara taught for 13 years and where Leah is now a special education para-professional. We both have friends who still teach there, and always enjoy visiting. In fact, one of my former band members, Melody (Tatum) Green, is now teaching at WMS, so we made a special visit there to interrupt her class and see how she was doing. (She’s now the resident teacher in Barbara’s old classroom…ahhhhhh…the memories!)
Barbara: Melody was also a student teacher under Sally Odom my last year at WMS.
How weird it seemed to me to not only find Leah working at WMS but also a former student, Nicole, who was subbing that day. These girls were strong students (not just academically, but strong-headed, too!) So…I know that when they finish their degrees, they will be awesome teachers!
The bottom left pic is one of Terri Patterson and me. Terri taught 7th LA while I was at West, but she says now she’s doing the ESL routine. She’s quite a versatile educator!
We would have liked to have taken some other photos, but time and opportunity just didn’t mesh.
One awesome moment though occurred while we were in the hallway by the office. Coming from the cafeteria with his lunch bunch was Gary Riffe! I knew Gary had retired, but we lucked out and visited school on a day that he was subbing for a math class. Gary and Sherri have enjoyed some traveling and are now back in Turpin, Oklahoma, so he fills in some for math classes at WMS.
From West, Jim and I went over to the high school to see some other former students who are now teaching at the high school. It boggles my mind to realize just how old I must be since I taught these young adults when they were either in the 7th or 8th grade!
First I had to go to the library to see Charlene, Phyllis and Tyna. Phyllis for years was a nail technician and I paid her weekly visits! Now, though, she is a library para with Tyna. How Charlene could luck out with such a fine crew to keep her in line, is beyond our comprehension!
Charlene and I were together at WMS for 13 years before she moved up to the high school. Also, I taught both of her boys (young men, now) and coached both at different times on Odyssey of the Mind teams. There are very strong ties between our families! So…this seemed to be the perfect place for the photo of her family that she sent to us this week.
Ted and I outside of his classroom... Ted is also an English teacher and is the brother of Margaret. (I also taught their other brother, George! They are great kids!)
The bottom right photo is Michael, who I taught and coached in Odyssey of the Mind. Michael is teaching honors science while he continues to work on his degree in teaching. Michael is the son of the counselor, Shirley, who I worked with at WMS.
It’s certainly a small world! (The right top photo is of me with the library crew…Phyllis, Tyna, me, Charlene).
Jim: The upper left photo is me with Mark Davis, a math teacher who came on board when I was assistant principal.
The photo below that shows Keith (present principal), me (former principal), and bookkeeper Debbie Gray (our REAL boss).
The lower left picture is of me with Chris Perkins, a really good friend who started teaching at LHS when I did in 1989, and the two remaining photos are of us with Mr. and Mrs. George, who we assisted in their transition from teaching in Botswana to teaching in Liberal, Kansas, USA…quite a story there!
All in all, it was a fun and educational day for us. As Barbara intimated, seeing old friends and fellow teachers is a good thing, but seeing former students who are now teaching is a form of confirmation that we did help positively impact lives along the way. Not only that, we can feel confident that this new generation of teachers will have an even greater impact on their students and they move forward in a much more technically enhanced curriculum than we ever dreamed about.
After all the visiting at school, we had a bite of lunch at a new Mexican food restaurant that had been recommended by students and teachers and then went by KFC to get a bucket of chicken to take to Bill and Doris and their family.
We then returned to Leah and Ryan’s house to rest for a few hours before going over to join Keith and Jill Adams and their family for a delightful evening of fellowship and food. Keith grilled chicken and pork chops as Jill prepared all the trimmings and we sat down to a table laden with delicious goodies. We’ve previously told the story about how we “discovered” Keith and Jill as I was searching for assistant principals after I was named the LHS principal in 2003. What is so nice for us is that we have maintained a very good friendship and camaraderie, even though we are out of the business. Levi, Makiah, and Kaylie were just youngsters when they moved to Liberal, but now Levi and Makiah are both in high school and Kaylie is a third grader and has become very fluent in both English and Spanish. All three kids joined in the conversations as we had a wonderful time visiting and catching up.
Saturday, November 14
There’s not a whole lot to be said about today other than it was probably just a typical Saturday.
We made a trip or two to Walmart to buy some groceries and then came back and did some cooking. I whipped up my recipe of spaghetti sauce for tonight’s meal and Barbara made a couple of desserts to have at the house and to share with Bill’s family.
Bill and I go back together to 1980 when I took the band director job at Perryton, Texas. Bill worked at Brier and Hale Music Store in Liberal and since that was the closest music store to Perryton, those are the folks with whom I dealt; when I moved to Liberal as the band director, I saw him on almost a daily basis.
Barbara taught both of Bill and Doris’s sons, Adam and Nick, at WMS, and I had Adam in band at WMS and LHS. Nick came to the high school while I was principal, and I also worked with Eva, one of their daughters.
Bill is tremendous with the technical part of sound and lighting and was a real god-send to Barbara when she was teaching the media classes at WMS. One of my last acts before retiring from LHS was to hire Bill to handle all the sound and lighting for the LHS auditorium, work with the media classes, and run our in-house television station. I was very proud of that accomplishment as he has meant much to LHS staff and students.
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The big order of the day was football, so in between cooking and cleaning chores, we kept our eyes glued to the TV sets upstairs and downstairs. Ryan, Leah, and I are huge Texas fans, so their game with Baylor was our “game of the day.”
Later, I watched the Texas Tech game upstairs while Barbara, Leah, and Ryan played a board game and kept an ear turned to the game to hear how it was going.
I did find out later that Artesia won their football game tonight, handily defeating Albuquerque St. Pius in the first round of the playoff series…next stop-Aztec, where the fifth-seeded Bulldogs will meet fourth-seeded Aztec High School next
And that’s pretty much it from us for this week…lots of travel and visiting.
From Liberal, Kansas,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
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Sunday, November 8, 2009
We woke up this morning to the sight of fog rushing across the southeastern New Mexico plains…not “creeping in on little cat feet,” as Carl Sandburg’s poem suggests, but rolling in quickly and reducing visibility to less than a quarter mile. This kind of fog in our area is unusual, so we grabbed the camera and went outside to document the occasion, taking two shots facing the east, where the early morning sun should have been clearly visible. When the sun finally started breaking through, I took a shot from the east facing Big V and showing the fog-shrouded area behind us.
While I was taking pictures, Barbara was busy getting our Sunday dinner prepared…roast and all the trimmings (potatoes, carrots, onions, and green beans), cooked in a crock pot. Boy…she sure does know how to fix a feast!
With the meal well underway, we got dressed and went to town to attend the morning service at First Baptist Church and then returned to take everything over to Jean’s house to share the meal with her.
The afternoon was a typical lazy Sunday afternoon…we didn’t accomplish anything of note (mainly because we didn’t plan to), but did work in a couple of games of washers before the sun went down. I won’t say who won both games, but Barbara wasn’t as happy as I was when they were over.
Tonight I watched the first half of the Cowboys and Eagles game with Jean while Barbara stayed in Big V to watch her new favorite, Extreme Home Makeover. However, I was so worn out from doing nothing all day that I returned to Big V around 8:00 and Barbara and I called it a day.
Monday, November 9
We managed to stay busy with household chores this morning. After a little straightening around Big V, we went to town and did a week’s worth of laundry. It wasn’t a job we were crazy about doing, but it sure did feel good to get everything back and put away.
I took care of our weekly plumbing chore (dumping the black water tank and hauling the contents off in the honey wagon to pour into the septic tank) while Barbara got cleaned up and dressed to go to lunch. Susie and James are going on a trip this week, so she came to Artesia to work today instead of Wednesday. We had our weekly “lunch bunch” at Chaos a couple of days early and then everyone returned to their work (or, in our case, to Big V to read and take a nap).
This evening I spent about an hour gathering pecans from under one of the trees and then we settled in for a night of TV, with Barbara watching her shows and me going to Jean’s house to watch the Steelers at the Broncos; it turned out to be one of the few games in which the team I was cheering for won…maybe my luck is turning.
Tuesday, November 10
Happy Birthday to James Francis in Hobbs, New Mexico!!!
After waiting out another very foggy morning, we got into the Vibe and headed north to Roswell for a short visit with Carol and Cal. Carol had emailed last night asking if Barbara wanted to join her for a little shopping trip.
While the girls did their shopping thing for a couple of hours, Cal and I stayed at the house and talked. Cal has about a million stories to tell from his growing up days in Artesia, his time in the Navy, and his experiences as a roofer and roofing superintendent for over 40 years.
Barbara: Carol and I began our shopping trek at Sam’s, a place that I always find so interesting since Jim and I don’t have a membership there. It was fun to walk the aisles with Carol and drool over all the food selections available. We even had a sample of some products…yum!
Next, was cheap gas there at Sam’s before heading across the street to Cado’s and Dollar Tree where we just enjoyed having someone else to browse with as we checked out all the “bargains.”
Jim: When Barbara and Carol got back, we unloaded Carol’s purchases and brought them in and then sat down and built some sandwiches for a light lunch. We visited some more while eating and then Barbara and I had to hit the road and get back to Artesia. Unfortunately, we had to leave before brother Jerry was finished sleeping (since he works nights at NMMI, his days and nights are completely reversed from ours), so we’ll just have to schedule a visit with Jane and him another time.
Tonight we just piddled around Big V…baseball season is over, there weren’t any football games, and I didn’t feel like watching any NBA games, so we just made like homebodies.
Wednesday, November 11
Today is Veterans Day, a day set aside to recognize the service of all men and women who served honorably in the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Coast Guard, and during times of war, the Merchant Marines. Each veteran, at the time entry to his or her branch of military service, essentially signed a blank check to the citizens of the United States of America with the entry on the amount line reading, “Up To and Including My Life.” Each also swore to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America…they didn’t pick and choose which amendments which best fit their race, gender, or religion; instead, they promised to give their all to guarantee that the full Constitution would continue to provide guidance for freedom and the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for the folks at home.
Whether they were officers or enlisted, whether they were on fulltime active duty or in the Reserves or National Guard, whether they served one hitch or made a career of military service, or whether they served only stateside or in one or more other countries around the world, those men and women served as the protectors of the United States of America and all its citizens; many served under conditions so harsh and grueling that by any standards they would be considered “cruel and unusual punishment” if anyone other than our military personnel were subjected to them. Still, they served and overcame with honor, and all of us are forever in their debt.
All Americans should do more than just observe this day; instead, they should offer up their grateful thanks to God and military veterans (and our current military personnel) for preserving our unique way of life. Thank you to all of our veterans!
We decided this morning that we would drive to Liberal tomorrow to visit Leah, Ryan, and friends up there. With that in mind, this became a major housecleaning day so we could prepare to close Big V up while we are gone. Along with housecleaning, it was also time to do some serious cleaning of the Vibe and get it prepared for travel…lots of activity for both of us.
Thursday, November 12
Barbara: Why is it that when you have something you want or need to do, the call of the pillow seems stronger and getting out of bed is such a chore? This is the way it was this morning. We fully intended to be on the road by 6:00, but our feet didn’t even touch the floor until 6:30! Go figure.
By 8:00 though, we were rolling down the highway with Liberal, KS, in our sights. As the miles passed, we eventually wound up in Farwell, TX, where my Daddy was Methodist pastor for many years. As usual, Jim asked if I wanted to stop by the cemetery where Mom and Dad are buried. This time I felt the need so that’s where we headed.
Each grandchild fondly remembers going to the post office in the mornings to pick up the mail with Paw-Paw; then whipping into the adjacent parking lot of the local restaurant to have their morning “coffee” as Paw-Paw visited with the men of the town. In fact, Leah (my youngest) and Missy Jo (Carol’s youngest who is now with the Lord) used to imagine that when they were older, they were going to live in Farwell and own the restaurant. It absolutely broke their hearts when they found out when Daddy died that the restaurant was closed. Maybe that’s when they hatched their plan to re-open it…I just don’t remember. Anyway, it was a very special memory for all the Daddy’s grandkids who each shared time with him there.
The Methodist Church is on 5th Street which is also the street that the Baptist Church is on. So…just as a side note, I want to share this tidbit of info. Our pastor today in Artesia, Rick Sullivan, was a young man entering the ministry at First Baptist Texico-Farwell when Daddy was in the waning years of his as a Methodist preacher. Therefore, they knew each other…small world, wouldn’t you say?
A trip down 5th Street brought us to the parsonage where Mom and Dad lived during the years they served in Texico-Farwell. Then a loop by the high school brought us to the little duplex where Mom and Dad lived after he retired. Just a little history here for the grandkids…Paw-Paw and Grandma left Farwell and moved to Jal, NM and then later Crane. When Daddy retired from the ministry, he told Mom that she had followed him for many, many years. Now he would follow her…where did she want to live? Mom said Farwell seemed like home so they moved into a duplex right across from the high school. They lived there until they moved down to the valley and became a couple of snow birds.
What a walk down memory lane this was! Thanks, Jim, for thinking of it.
Jim: We left Farwell and continued our journey to Liberal, stopping only at Amarillo for gas and Dumas for a late McLunch before arriving at Ryan and Leah’s house around 5:00.
After unloading the car and moving everything into the house, we visited with Leah a bit (Ryan was out on a job with his Halliburton crew).
Leah had an Odyssey of the Mind team practice tonight, so we used the time to go visit Bill Van Wyhe, our friend whose wife has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. In truth, the primary purpose of the trip this weekend was to see Bill and his family, since the doctors have stopped all treatment for Doris except to try to keep her comfortable.
We were able to talk to Bill for several minutes until a couple of carloads of family members arrived. We shared hugs and promised to keep in touch while we are in town.
From Bill’s house, we drove over to our friends, Shawn and Luz Riggs’ house to see if they were home. Shawn and Morgan (their son who is now a senior) were there, but Luz was still at school. While we waited for Luz to return, Shawn and Morgan got us caught up on their latest news and then Luz filled us in on even more when she returned to the house. Luz heads up AVID, a very successful intervention program at LHS and Shawn teaches and does AVID at South Middle School.
We then returned to the house on Roosevelt and spent the rest of the evening visiting with Leah until our tired minds and bodies ordered us to bed.
Friday, November 13
I got up early this morning and went up to the high school to visit with folks for a couple of hours. It was Friday the Thirteenth, but I knew that any Friday that didn’t include a pep rally couldn’t be all bad, and since all sports were between seasons, pep rallies were out of the question.
Keith Adams (the principal who succeeded me at LHS) gave me the grand tour of the new construction area (four new business classrooms) and the refurbished stadium (artificial turf with markings for both soccer and football, new 8-lane asphalt track, new seats, new concession stand, and lots of paint). It is a beautiful facility.
I also got to visit in several classrooms and see some of the teachers who are still around from the “old” days.
Shortly before 10:00, I returned to the house to get Barbara and we started the next portion of the day. Job One was to find MonDel Anthony and schedule a haircutting appointment. We were both getting shaggy, and MonDel is the only person we trust to get us back in shape.
Ed retired after the last school year and is now a part-time elementary counselor at Tyrone, Oklahoma. He also received some grant money to begin a counseling service for veterans and first responders, and was given office space by a local businessman to begin and build his new project, Whirlwind Career Counseling and Guidance Center.
From Ed’s place, we drove across town to West Middle School, where Barbara taught for 13 years and where Leah is now a special education para-professional. We both have friends who still teach there, and always enjoy visiting. In fact, one of my former band members, Melody (Tatum) Green, is now teaching at WMS, so we made a special visit there to interrupt her class and see how she was doing. (She’s now the resident teacher in Barbara’s old classroom…ahhhhhh…the memories!)
How weird it seemed to me to not only find Leah working at WMS but also a former student, Nicole, who was subbing that day. These girls were strong students (not just academically, but strong-headed, too!) So…I know that when they finish their degrees, they will be awesome teachers!
The bottom left pic is one of Terri Patterson and me. Terri taught 7th LA while I was at West, but she says now she’s doing the ESL routine. She’s quite a versatile educator!
We would have liked to have taken some other photos, but time and opportunity just didn’t mesh.
One awesome moment though occurred while we were in the hallway by the office. Coming from the cafeteria with his lunch bunch was Gary Riffe! I knew Gary had retired, but we lucked out and visited school on a day that he was subbing for a math class. Gary and Sherri have enjoyed some traveling and are now back in Turpin, Oklahoma, so he fills in some for math classes at WMS.
From West, Jim and I went over to the high school to see some other former students who are now teaching at the high school. It boggles my mind to realize just how old I must be since I taught these young adults when they were either in the 7th or 8th grade!
First I had to go to the library to see Charlene, Phyllis and Tyna. Phyllis for years was a nail technician and I paid her weekly visits! Now, though, she is a library para with Tyna. How Charlene could luck out with such a fine crew to keep her in line, is beyond our comprehension!
Charlene and I were together at WMS for 13 years before she moved up to the high school. Also, I taught both of her boys (young men, now) and coached both at different times on Odyssey of the Mind teams. There are very strong ties between our families! So…this seemed to be the perfect place for the photo of her family that she sent to us this week.The photo collage below summaries some of our visits at the high school though I did include another one of Leah and I.
Leah and me (at WMS) in top left photo…
Margaret with Jim and me…she now teaches English. Margaret was in my journalism classes.
Five of my former students who were 8th graders the year I retired were in one classroom Jim and I visited…so I had to capture that moment.
The bottom left is Sean, who I taught in 7th grade language arts. His students told me he was an awesome teacher!
Ted and I outside of his classroom... Ted is also an English teacher and is the brother of Margaret. (I also taught their other brother, George! They are great kids!)
The bottom right photo is Michael, who I taught and coached in Odyssey of the Mind. Michael is teaching honors science while he continues to work on his degree in teaching. Michael is the son of the counselor, Shirley, who I worked with at WMS.
It’s certainly a small world! (The right top photo is of me with the library crew…Phyllis, Tyna, me, Charlene).
The photo below that shows Keith (present principal), me (former principal), and bookkeeper Debbie Gray (our REAL boss).
The lower left picture is of me with Chris Perkins, a really good friend who started teaching at LHS when I did in 1989, and the two remaining photos are of us with Mr. and Mrs. George, who we assisted in their transition from teaching in Botswana to teaching in Liberal, Kansas, USA…quite a story there!
All in all, it was a fun and educational day for us. As Barbara intimated, seeing old friends and fellow teachers is a good thing, but seeing former students who are now teaching is a form of confirmation that we did help positively impact lives along the way. Not only that, we can feel confident that this new generation of teachers will have an even greater impact on their students and they move forward in a much more technically enhanced curriculum than we ever dreamed about.
After all the visiting at school, we had a bite of lunch at a new Mexican food restaurant that had been recommended by students and teachers and then went by KFC to get a bucket of chicken to take to Bill and Doris and their family.
We then returned to Leah and Ryan’s house to rest for a few hours before going over to join Keith and Jill Adams and their family for a delightful evening of fellowship and food. Keith grilled chicken and pork chops as Jill prepared all the trimmings and we sat down to a table laden with delicious goodies. We’ve previously told the story about how we “discovered” Keith and Jill as I was searching for assistant principals after I was named the LHS principal in 2003. What is so nice for us is that we have maintained a very good friendship and camaraderie, even though we are out of the business. Levi, Makiah, and Kaylie were just youngsters when they moved to Liberal, but now Levi and Makiah are both in high school and Kaylie is a third grader and has become very fluent in both English and Spanish. All three kids joined in the conversations as we had a wonderful time visiting and catching up.
There’s not a whole lot to be said about today other than it was probably just a typical Saturday.
We made a trip or two to Walmart to buy some groceries and then came back and did some cooking. I whipped up my recipe of spaghetti sauce for tonight’s meal and Barbara made a couple of desserts to have at the house and to share with Bill’s family.
Bill and I go back together to 1980 when I took the band director job at Perryton, Texas. Bill worked at Brier and Hale Music Store in Liberal and since that was the closest music store to Perryton, those are the folks with whom I dealt; when I moved to Liberal as the band director, I saw him on almost a daily basis.
Barbara taught both of Bill and Doris’s sons, Adam and Nick, at WMS, and I had Adam in band at WMS and LHS. Nick came to the high school while I was principal, and I also worked with Eva, one of their daughters.
Bill is tremendous with the technical part of sound and lighting and was a real god-send to Barbara when she was teaching the media classes at WMS. One of my last acts before retiring from LHS was to hire Bill to handle all the sound and lighting for the LHS auditorium, work with the media classes, and run our in-house television station. I was very proud of that accomplishment as he has meant much to LHS staff and students.
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Later, I watched the Texas Tech game upstairs while Barbara, Leah, and Ryan played a board game and kept an ear turned to the game to hear how it was going.
I did find out later that Artesia won their football game tonight, handily defeating Albuquerque St. Pius in the first round of the playoff series…next stop-Aztec, where the fifth-seeded Bulldogs will meet fourth-seeded Aztec High School next
And that’s pretty much it from us for this week…lots of travel and visiting.
From Liberal, Kansas,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
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Just a Little Bit of Nothing
Sunday, November 1 – Saturday, November 7, 2009
We turned our clocks back last night and set the alarm, just to make sure our body clocks didn’t get too far out of whack with the time change, but it really didn’t matter…we still woke up with the sun except that it was an hour earlier than usual.
My first activity was to get Benji and take him for his morning walk. By the time I opened the door and stepped inside, Benji was ready to go; but first, I made sure his food was in the bowl and on the floor where he could get at it…didn’t want to repeat yesterday’s mistake!
Our walk was brisk, but uneventful and after a stop at Big V so Benji could have a short visit with “Aunt Barbara” and replenish his water tank, we finished the walk around the perimeter roads and got him back home.
With the extra time we had before going to church, we lazed around; Barbara made some editorial changes and then proofed and posted last week’s journal/blog; then, we got caught up on our morning email and e-magazine/paper readings.
It was an absolutely gorgeous morning, so I began making plans for finishing up the work I started yesterday in Jean’s yard. Job one was to restring the weed-eater, haul extension cords to the small barn, and trim around four of the trees and the outbuildings. With mild weather and no wind, it was an easy task and gave me hope that raking out the remaining two trees and mowing the yard could be an achievable task this afternoon.
Church was wonderful again this morning…great music and a timely sermon…it feels like the church that I grew up in.
This afternoon we goofed off for a while and then I went over to Jean’s house and finished raking out from under the last two pecan trees. I thought I’d be able to do the mowing, but the late afternoon sun drops like a brick with the new time change, so I gave it up for a lost cause.
Tonight Barbara and I went to KFC and got orders to take back to Jean’s house where we ate and watched the @$%^ Yankees take another game from the Phillies.
While she hasn’t had her birthday yet this year, Barbara reached her “Medicare years” today. Now all we have to do is send her medical bills to the White House…ain’t life wonderful!!!
Monday, November 2
Birthday greetings go out today to 3-year old Jonah Duke in Knox City, Texas, and to Cousin Danny Wright (who is much older than 3) in Tallahassee, Florida!!!
We got up early this morning to make sure we heard Becky and some of the musical cast on the interview show on KSVP. The community theater is doing Nun-Sensation in a couple of weeks and the radio station is spotlighting some of the cast members.
When the show was over, I went over to Jerry and Nancy’s to get Benji and go on our morning walk. Then, it was time to get busy with the pre-pecan harvest. I had raked several stacks of pecans, hulls, and assorted weeds and grasses last night…this morning it was time to sort through the stacks and separate the good stuff from the bad.
Barbara spent much of her day cooking (three wonderful meals) and washing dishes, but did take some time out during the late morning and afternoon to sit outside on our “porch” and do some reading. It was an absolutely gorgeous day…bright sunshine, clear skies, and mild temperatures…a perfect day to be outside doing something or nothing.
I finished the last of the mowing, but was too tired to go through the three remaining stacks of trash. Instead, I took a warm shower, rested a bit, and then washed the car, which was still filthy from our ride through the wet caliche roads in the Sacramento Mountains last week.
With that done, we took Benji for his afternoon walk. Barbara decided that we should have brought the camera since the billy goat next door had returned so I made a quick detour to get it. The photo on the left shows Benji and me in the alley with Jerry and Nancy’s home in the background.
The neighbor next to us has a little billy goat, so we got his picture to add to the collection of flora and fauna around our “Little” house on the prairie.
We, like everyone else, are still adjusting to the early cloak of darkness. I decided to walk down to the mailbox about 5:00 and called Barbara to tell her to go check out the moon as it was already appearing.
Tuesday, November 3
The weather forecast for the next couple of days was so nice that we decided early this morning to get away from home for a bit and ride up to the mountains to check out the fall foliage and go to the evening service at the J Bar J Country Church in Ruidoso.
We left Artesia at 8:00, stopped at Daylight Donuts in Roswell for coffee and a couple of apple fritters, and then made a leisurely ride to Ruidoso, stopping frequently to look at the changing colors of the trees as we entered the Hondo Valley at Riverside.
Since we spent last fall back in Virginia and Georgia, the rich colors of red, orange, yellow were still vivid in our minds. Therefore, we felt it was important to document a New Mexico fall which is very different! The poplar trees just go from green to yellow…a very vibrant, neon yellow which our inexpensive camera doesn’t capture all that well.
The one thing that she really misses about our retirement way of life is the easy access to doing the laundry.
So… this trip she said she wanted to bring the clothes, towels, robes, etc. and get caught up while she had the luxury of just walking down the hall. In fact, as soon as we arrived, she asked Teresa, the hotel clerk, if we could have a room close to the washer and dryers!
The service at J Bar J tonight was a little different; both of us came away feeling that the preacher was maybe a little distracted by something, but the message was good, even if the delivery was a little off. And, the music, as always, was wonderful. The congregation is mostly on the “senior” side (we’re among the younger couples there), but they do know those old songs and sing them with lots of feeling!
Since we had to leave for church before the towels and robes were completely dry, we got to finish them after church…don’t tell us that we don’t know how to enjoy a day off!
Wednesday, November 4
Since we were on a “vacation” of sorts, we took our time getting up and around this morning and enjoyed a good breakfast at the hotel before packing the car and driving back down the mountain.
For the benefit of our friends from back east who have not experienced the wide-open spaces that we have in southeastern New Mexico, we stopped at a high point west of Roswell to take a panoramic collage of the area. Pictures don’t do the country justice, but they do show that we can see forever from here (and in all directions). The mountain in one of the shots is Capitan Mountain.
Tonight we went over to visit with Jean for a bit. Barbara was feeling a little under the weather, so she returned to Big V while I stayed with Jean to watch game six (and, it turned out, the final game) of the World Series. Needless to say, the @#$% Yankees won again, earning their 27th world championship.
Thursday, November 5
What a slow day this turned out to be!
We can’t recount much, since we didn’t do much other than go to Walmart and the cleaners this morning. After we got home and put everything away, I went out and cleaned out the rest of the piles of pecans…now have a bag and a half of pecans gathered and the real harvest hasn’t even started.
Barbara occupied her time by reading and fixing meals, and this afternoon I took Benji out for his afternoon constitutional.
We visited Jean for a few minutes this evening and then returned to Big V to while away the evening as I sorted through what seemed like a kazillion picture files on my laptop to try to make some sense and order out of them.
We received a set of Halloween pictures from Paul, Stephanie, and Wesley this week. Barbara wrote Paul and asked if it was all right for us to post them in the journal/blog since we comment about them all the time. Paul said it was fine with them, so here they are.
Happy 70th Birthday to brother-in-law Cal Crenshaw in Roswell, New Mexico!
We were both up late last night reading, so waking up was hard to do (say, is there a song in there somewhere?!)
I went to the Methodist Men’s breakfast and then stopped at Walmart for a battery that we hoped would stop the screaming from our carbon monoxide alarm. Then, we both settled in to working at our computers. Barbara is fighting with hers to load a workable photo album program and I tried to set up and print some photos. Neither of us had much luck…don’t have a clue about what’s wrong with Barbara’s computer, and I needed a fresh color cartridge for the printer. Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed!
We took Little Red out this afternoon to ride around the property and look for ant beds that needed killing before the cold weather sets in and all the little critters hunker down for the winter. Armed with a jug of Amdro, we found several active beds and scattered the “candy” all around while the ants fought over which ones could carry the most down to the nest.
While we were stopped at one of the nests, I noticed a devil’s head (AKA horse crippler) close by; so, while Barbara scouted around for more ants, I drove back to the barn, got a spade, and returned to start digging out the devil’s head.
We’ve written about devil’s heads before, but the condensed version is that they are small cacti that have “heads” that grow just above the surface of the ground. They are covered with thick interlacing thorns that can puncture even truck tires. The roots extend 8-10 inches below the surface and the only way to destroy the plant is to dig it out of the hard-packed ground.
By the time we finished crisscrossing the four acres, we dug out 14 devil’s heads and killed a half dozen ant beds…not bad for an hour’s work.
I went to the Bulldogs football game tonight while Barbara stayed home and listened to it on the radio. Artesia played Roswell Goddard for the district championship and, unfortunately, couldn’t muster the necessary defense to prevent a 47-35 loss. Still, the Bulldogs will enter the state playoffs next week as the second-place team from the district.
Nancy’s medical office drew out for seats in one of the four new sky boxes, so we got to sit in comfort at the top of the home side and enjoy complimentary food and soft drinks while we watched the game. On a personal note, after spending a lifetime outside with the bands or supervising games, I find it difficult to sit through a game…old habits die hard.
For retirees, it’s sometimes difficult to tell when the “regular” week ends and the weekend begins, but today just had a feel of Saturday about it from the time we woke up.
We took our time getting around, but were soon busy taking care of minor chores around the place…Barbara fixed breakfast, we both did some straightening and cleaning around Big V, and I went out and did some basic maintenance chores at the small barn…certainly nothing extremely noteworthy, but stuff that needed to be done.
The afternoon was a continuation of the morning, with even less activity…reading, watching football, and napping; but, we did get in a game of washers for the first time in about a month.
Barbara went out to the movies tonight with Nancy and Becky while I watched the OU/Nebraska football game, alternating between the TV in Big V and the one at Jean’s house.
Barbara: After Nancy called and asked me to go see The Christmas Carol, I realized that the last movie I remember going to at the Landsun Theatre was my senior year here in Artesia. The movie, Gone With the Wind, was showing and Mom and Dad had said I couldn't go since it had a cuss word in it and the story line was to risque'. Well...being rather headstrong, I went without them knowing it. In light of the movies our kids and grandkids watch now, the line, "Frankly, my darling, I don't give a damn." seems rather tame doesn't it?
Anyway, Becky, Nancy, and I enjoyed a very different version of this old Christmas tale written by Dickens. We agreed on the way home that this movie is definitely not for little ones!
Jim: We often close our weekly epistles from Artesia with, “From our “Little” house on the prairie,” but we don’t believe we’ve ever given a good “picture” of the neighborhood that we share with Jean, Jerry, and Nancy.
The beautiful weather this week gave us several great opportunities to take pictures of the area and we put them together in this collage to give our constant readers a view of where we live when we are in Artesia.
The larger photo in the upper right shows the layout…Jean’s house on the left, the large barn with Big V parked beside it, and Jerry and Nancy’s house on the right. Below that shot and moving from right to left is the view of the barn and Big V from Jean’s house, the view of Jean’s house from Big V, the view of Jerry and Nancy’s house from Big V, Big V and the south side of the barn as seen from Jerry and Nancy’s road, and finally, in the top left, the front of Jerry and Nancy’s house.
From our “Little” house on the prairie,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
Another Little Week of Visiting
Sunday, October 25 – Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sunday, October 25
There is a saying that goes something like this, “If you want God to laugh, make plans.” If that is true, God was laughing heartily at our expense today.
For several days we have been making plans for today, almost to the minute of when something would happen.
As we wrote previously, we heard from our friends in Ruidoso, Barradine and Harold, who would be passing through Artesia this morning on their way to Galveston. We invited them to come by our place for breakfast before continuing their journey…we could eat at 9:00 and still have plenty of time to get to church and then go to Roswell for a 1:00 pm lunch with Jerry and Jane, another plan that we had put into play when we looked at options for the weekend.
God started laughing and the plan started changing when Jerry called early this morning to say he was under the weather…a number of cadets at NMMI have been in the infirmary with the flu, and he thought he might be coming down with it also; so, he and Jane called to say that they wouldn’t be able to get together with us today.
While we were disappointed in this turn of events, it was something that could easily be worked around in the greater scheme of today’s other plans, so we went to work getting ready for church and getting breakfast made so Harold and Barradine wouldn’t have to delay their long journey for the day.
God must have been at least chuckling at us as Harold and Barradine were delayed between Ruidoso and Artesia and didn’t get here until 10:00. By then, we knew that we wouldn’t be attending church this morning, but we still were able to work in a really nice visit while enjoying our breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, grits, and (for Harold, Barradine, and me) coffee. After breakfast, I joined Harold for a walk around Jean’s property and gave him the cook’s tour. Meanwhile, Barbara and Barradine were getting caught up on their conversation.
After seeing our visitors off, we finished doing the dishes, straightened up in Big V, and then headed off for another part of our plans for the day, a trip to Roswell to trade in and get books at Happy Jack’s Used Book Store and to have a short visit with Cal and Carol before going up the mountain to Ruidoso for the night.
Around 3:30 we finally hit the road toward Ruidoso. Finally, our plan was coming together and we had a nice ride. The colors are starting to change up in the mountains…nothing yet like the fall colors that we experienced last year in Virginia and northern Georgia, but still a pretty sight for travelers along the Highway 70 corridor.
We decided we wanted potato and chicken bowls for our evening meal, so before checking in at the hotel, we went to KFC and picked up our order. As we pulled in to the parking lot at the east end of the Holiday Inn Express, we were surprised at spot three deer that were grazing right beside the driveway. I parked the car and while Barbara went in to register, I grabbed the camera, got as close to the deer as possible, and got a shot of two of them…the first of many photos that we would take over the next 24 hours.
Monday, October 26
After a v-e-r-y leisurely start to the new day (we slept in until 7:30, got the car packed, and had a nice breakfast at the hotel), we started our adventures for the day.
The primary reason for the trip was to drive to the Cloudcroft area and search out points of interest from our much younger days. Barbara and her family spent a lot of time in the area around Sacramento when she was growing up in Hobbs and has wanted for at least the past two years to go up there and look around. We had planned once to do that on a motorcycle day trip, but it never happened, so we decided this was the time to go.
We left the Ruidoso area and took U.S. 70 to NM 244, a narrow two-lane highway that meanders through the mountains to the east side of Cloudcroft. It became quickly evident that winter was approaching; the beautiful summer flowers were all dead and brown…the only colors were the greens of the evergreen trees and an occasional yellowing aspen.
There was also a tinge of white in the tops of some of the evergreens, a sign of the light snow that had fallen during the night at the higher elevations. As we got closer to Cloudcroft (and reached even higher elevations) the snow and ice became much heavier in the trees and we just had to make a couple of stops to take pictures of the pre-winter wonderland.
When we reached Cloudcroft, we decided to stop at a convenience store for gas, a snack, and a much-needed comfort break before leaving the main roads and taking the mountain roads that would lead us to Sacramento.
Barbara: Once we left Cloudcroft and began heading into the Sacramento Mountains, Jim and I began trading once again stories of our youth and though Jim didn’t spend much time here in the mountains he did have one experience which we’ll get to in a little bit.
First, I told him about the summer we were at Sacramento and this “hot” college kid that all the girls were crazy about had to bring a truck down the mountain to have the brakes fixed. However, Strick did not make it safely down as the brakes gave out and he and the truck plunged down the mountain before he got to Weed (that’s a wide spot in the road…not really a town). Since we were driving up that same mountain, it was easy to see how Strick could have lost control…he was hurt, but not badly which was a relief to all of us teen-age girls who adored him!
Then, the girls’ restroom didn’t have doors, curtains, or anything on the stalls or showers…well! There was no way I was going to expose my triple size body to these skinny girls who kept making fun of me! There was no shower for Barbara that entire week, and I snuck off from activities to go to the bathroom. I was a miserable, stinky mess! (It’s kind of embarrassing now to think what I must have smelled like!)
Then, the icing on the cake was when we went horseback riding. Our tour guy gave this long lecture about how you never let go of the reins, no matter what happens. Well, you guessed it…my horse took off galloping and the reins came out of my hands. Boy! That guy griped at me all the way back to camp and all the girls were having a great laugh at my expense. Ahhh…the cruelty of youth!
Jim: Believe it or don’t, I had almost no sense of adventure when I was much younger. I never wanted to go to church youth camp (although I could have) and while I was pretty active with my scout troop, I went to summer camp only one time. I have no idea what possessed me to go to Camp Wehinahpay that summer, and I certainly don’t have any fond memories of it. I remember sleeping in a tent with a bunch of guys, going to the rifle range for target practice with .22 rifles (and not being able to hit a thing) and an overnight hike across the rim trail (on a clear night we could see the lights of El Paso, nearly 100 miles away).
My favorite memory of the whole experience was returning home in time to put on my Little League baseball uniform and join the team that Daddy coached for a game that night…really impressive memories, huh.
I’ve never returned to that part of the Sacramentos until today. In fact, I couldn’t have told anyone how to get there, but when I learned that Wehinahpay (we used to call it “We have to pay?”), was on our route today, I decided that I needed to have my picture taken by the sign and express an emotion from over fifty years ago.
Barbara: For the last 3 years it has been my dream to find the little cabin in the Sacramentos that Daddy built with the help of Mother and us girls. It was such a wonderful experience and I can still remember the pride we felt when we spent our first night there once the cabin was completed.
My fondest memory (wonder what this says about me?) of that cabin is holding Carol down and cutting off one or maybe more of her long fingernails (I bit mine and Mom and Dad were always holding Carol’s beautiful nails up to me!). To say that I got in trouble for this is putting it mildly, but it was worth it! (Sorry, Carol)
Anyway, with Carol’s help while we were in Roswell yesterday, I got the general idea of where the cabin used to be…Mom and Dad sold it years ago. But, even with these instructions, I didn’t recognize it when we passed it the first time! Our cabin was white and didn’t have siding…and it wasn’t that big! But, after traveling as Jim says “half-way to Alamogordo the hard way,” we turned around. This time when we got near the cabin, I recognized it and knew that though it had grown and been beautified in some ways, here was the cabin we girls adored in our teen years. What fun we had tramping up the mountain side, cutting our initials in trees, jumping over the creek when it wasn’t overflowing! It was a good life!
Next was the journey over to the Sacramento Methodist Assembly where I spent every summer going to church camp as well as family camps with Mom and Dad and my sisters. This is where I received my first taste of real freedom and independence. It also was where I received my first kiss when I was 15. (That’s for the grandkids! Bet they aren’t that old when they kiss for the first time!) But, then, those were the “old” days.
All I can say for the camp is that it was much smaller than I remembered and though many of the buildings have changed, many were the same.
Finally, it was time to go down the mountain after a day of wandering though the cobwebs of my mind.
When we got back to Artesia, we found out from Jean that we had received .38 inches of rain last night. Maybe we can get someone to pay us to go away if that trend continues.
Tuesday, October 27
Happy Birthday to Cousin Paula Wright in Graceville, Florida!
God must have been chuckling again this morning as we made our plans for the day. I had planned to do the weekly black water dump and then get out and clear the last patch of Jean’s yard that hadn’t been raked and mowed and we thought that a little outdoor time with Benji might be in order. It all seemed so possible and fun on a clear morning with only a slight southeast breeze.
As I got ready to step outside to get the “honey wagon” from the barn, the southeast breeze turned quickly to a stiff southwest wind, far greater than what had been predicted for the day.
The dump project had to be completed, no matter what the weather, but all other outdoor plans were gone with the wind, so to speak, as we just hunkered down for the remainder of the day to ride out the noisy wind.
Jerry and Nancy invited us to supper with them, Jean, and Susie tonight. Around 1:30 Nancy called from work and asked if we’d mind going over to their house to turn down the crock pot. We jumped at the chance to do something other than listen to the wind howl and drove around to their place.
Benji was waiting for us and let us hook on his leash for a short walk after the crock pot was taken care of, but just a few minutes in the wind changed his mind and he scurried back to the door to be let in.
We were on pins and needles for a large part of the afternoon and evening as we waited to hear from Jimmy Clint. Daughter-in-law Cathey emailed us around 4 to say that Jimmy was back at the hospital with elevated blood pressure and heart rate. We didn’t know whether to just take off and drive to Lubbock or wait until we heard further from the kids that we needed to be there.
Finally, Jimmy was able to contact us and wrote to say that there was no need for us to travel, but that didn’t take away the feeling of uneasiness that we shared. So…we decided to at least keep our minds busy by going on over to Jerry and Nancy’s.
At a little after 6:00 we went over to Jerry and Nancy’s house for a fun-filled evening of food and fellowship and a rousing game of Chickenfoot (which was won very handily by Jean). Becky wasn’t able to join us tonight as she was at a rehearsal of the upcoming community theater production, Nun-Sensation.
Wednesday, October 28
We started the morning exchanging emails with Jimmy Clint. He said that his condition was becoming stabilized and promised to let us know if he thought we should come to Lubbock.
We decided that we’d better be prepared to travel, just in case, so we gathered up the laundry and made a trip into town to support our local laundromat. While the washers were churning away, I went to the cleaners to pick up some slacks that we had dropped off last week. I also drove by the local library to ask if they accepted donations of used paperback books, but they weren’t open yet, so I returned to the laundromat until everything was washed, dried, and folded or hung up.
When all was completed at the laundromat, we drove back to the library (it was the first time we’d been in it since our senior year of high school back in 1962---it still looks and smells like a library, but there has been some expansion of the building over the years) and then drove back to the cleaners to drop off Barbara’s winter coat before heading back to Big V.
As we left the library, the wind started howling again, even stronger than yesterday making Barbara wonder if she should have kept her dirty winter coat. But, it was too late for that decision now. As soon as we got to Big V and put everything away, we made the decision to close the bedroom and kitchen slideouts to eliminate some of the wind noise and cut down on the dust that creeps in when everything is opened up. It made for closer quarters than usual, but did cut down on the noise.
The weather rarely ever impacts our Wednesday lunch bunch at Chaos, so we once again gathered today at 12:30 for an hour of good food and conversation. Susie told us that she had heard from James, who has been elk hunting on the other side of the state this week; James and his group had decided to dodge some oncoming bad weather and have cut their trip short by a day. This meant that instead of staying over for another night, Susie will drive back to Hobbs tonight after work.
On the way home from Chaos, Barbara and I stopped at WalMart and got the ingredients for our crock pot recipe for lasagna before heading home to put it all together and get it cooked for supper tonight. Of course, WalMart didn’t have the Italian sausage I like to use, but I did a passable job of seasoning a pound of hamburger meat and cooking up a pretty good sauce for Barbara to use.
After a short nap, we went over to Jean’s house to take down her light fixture covers in the kitchen and sun room, wash them, and get them put back up.
Tonight we just relaxed, ate the lasagna, watched game one of the World Series, and worked at our computers…nothing exciting. Barbara had been up most of the night last night worrying about Jimmy so she bailed about 8 and fell promptly asleep leaving me to watch the Phillies whip up on the Yankees. Go, Phillies…I’ve never been a Yankee fan so I’m more against them than for the Phillies.
Before going to bed, Barbara did talk to Jimmy and found out that he has a small touch of pneumonia from laying down so much. Plus, they have given him medicine to try to dilate his arteries, hoping that this will raise his heart rate and lower his blood pressure. It is really hard for her to respect his wishes of us staying put for now.
Thursday, October 29
While Barbara worked on her part of this week’s journal and put in photos, I cleaned up the kitchen before making another mess by fixing a late breakfast. It’s very cold and windy this morning so don’t know that we’ll get much of anything accomplished.
Sure enough, at the end of the day we couldn’t say that we had done much of anything except make a quick trip to WalMart for some groceries and supplies…b-o-r-i-n-g!
Our good news for the day is that Jimmy Clint was released from the hospital and is back at home…our thanks go out to al for your prayers and messages of concern and support.
Friday, October 30
Since the day was going to be yucky, windy, and cold, we decided that we had to find something to do! So…after Jim returned from the Methodist Men’s breakfast at the hospital, we grabbed the camera, some water, and a couple of diet cokes for a road trip.
First stop was the rest area just outside Maljamar…Jim just can’t seem to make it past this area without marking the territory as his! Once back on the road, we found ourselves in Lovington at Good Samaritan Home where Jim planned to see his former mother-in-law Marie. However, he quickly returned as the nurse told him it would be better if he came around 1:00 or so.
With that change in plans, I quickly called Susie in Hobbs to see what was on her agenda. We’d just mosey over there for a while until it was time for Jim’s visit with Marie. Thankfully, Susie was home (she was trying to clean house after the trips she and James had been on) and we made arrangements to meet for lunch.
When we got closer to Hobbs, Jim broke out into laughter and about broke his neck looking back at something. I had no clue what was going on, but I soon found out.
As we piddled away the time, I was delighted to find that Hobbs has a Cado’s though I didn’t find anything I wanted to purchase today.
Finally it was time to meet James and Susie at Quizno’s, a sandwich shop. We arrived earlier than they did so I had the camera ready and waiting to capture their entrance! As most of you know quite well, no one is safe from the camera when either Jim or I are around!
Jim and I learned that Quizno’s is a real hot spot at lunch time here in Hobbs as every table was occupied, leaving me to grab a tall, round table with bar stools while the others went to order.
Though we had just seen Susie over in Artesia when she spent the night with Jean, this was the first time we’d gotten to visit with James since our return to New Mexico. James is an accountant and normally he is too busy for a leisurely lunch so we felt quite fortunate that we got to spend some time with him. Much too soon, it was time for James to return to work and for us to wander back over to Lovington.
Jim: I don’t get to see Grandma very often, especially since we now split our time among Artesia, Lake Fork, and the rest of the world, but it is always good to see her when I can.
Today I got to spend over a half hour with her and we had a long talk and lots of laughs along the way.
With this being Halloween weekend, the folks there were having their big celebration this afternoon, so part of our laughter was about the interesting costumes and makeup that we saw all around us…they were really going all out for the season.
I asked Grandma if I could take a picture of her to share with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and she readily agreed. When I had taken the first shot, a close-up of her, she asked if I also took a picture showing the Tootsie-Pop/pipe cleaner spider that was sitting on her tray. I told her I didn’t, but that would be the next picture. Later, I prevailed on a staff member to take a shot of us together.
It was a really nice visit, but soon it was time for Grandma to get to her party and for us to begin the journey home, so we said our goodbyes and I headed back out to the car.
The trip back to Artesia was uneventful except for the wind and dirt (which isn’t all that uneventful in this part of the country).
When we got home, Barbara started supper (leftover lasagna). I took some over to Jean for her evening meal and then Barbara and I ate together before she settled in to watch a couple of her special Friday night programs and I went back to Jean’s house to watch the Celtics dominate the Bulls in a NBA game, and the USF Bulls upset West Virginia in NCAA football action.
The hometown Bulldogs traveled to Roswell tonight and guaranteed themselves a spot in the playoffs by defeating the RHS Coyotes 48-7. Jerry, Nancy, and I didn’t make the trip because they were scheduled for an early trip to Knox City, Texas, tomorrow morning to visit Amanda, Zeke, Daniel, and Jonah for a Jonah’s 3rd birthday.
Saturday, October 31
Happy Halloween Everyone!!!
After a slow start this morning (we weren’t in much of a hurry in the first place, but we place the blame on the cold early morning temperatures) we made up our minds to take advantage of a beautiful, windless day to take care of some yard work around the place.
A couple of days ago, Nancy asked if we’d be interested in mowing off part of their lot while they were out of town this weekend. Barbara was all over that, but the weather has been so bad that outside work was just out of the question.
I went out about 10:00 this morning to get the mower out of the barn and ready to roll, then turned over the controls to Barbara and she rode off into the prairie to do battle with weeds, wild grasses, and the dust she would stir up.
While Barbara was mowing, I grabbed a rake and started clearing out under the pecan trees in the lot just south of jean’s house. My goal was to rake grass and pecans into little piles. When that was done (under four of the six trees), I plopped down beside each pile to separate the grass from the pecans and hulls, and then put the hulls in one bucket and the pecans in another.
Barbara finished her part of the work well before I did mine, though in my defense, I did take some time out to get Benji and take him for a walk.
Around five o’clock, as I was hauling away the last of the grass and trash, Barbara went over to Jerry and Nancy’s house to check on Benji and feed him. When she came back by while taking Benji on a short walk, she asked me if I hadn’t fed him this morning. I said that I had…I had carefully shredded the chicken and put it on top of his bowl of crunchies before taking him for a walk. What I evidently hadn’t done was set the bowl down on the floor so Benji could eat the food. Oh well, just another in a series of “senior moments.” I guess I’ll tell Nancy I was just trying to teach Benji how to jump, not that she’s going to believe me.
We haven’t seen much of Becky lately; whenever she’s not working at school, she’s in rehearsal for the community theater musical. We decided that we would get together with her tonight and do something, but Barbara was feeling bad, so Jean took Becky and me to eat at Piccolino, our local authentic (and very good) Italian restaurant.
Everyone was worn out from the day’s activities, so when we finished eating, we returned to Jean’s place and said our goodbyes and good night’s, and I returned to Big V to work on the journal and watch Texas put a heavy thump on Oklahoma State.
“The heaviest load to carry is a grudge.” - Sign at Cloudcroft, New Mexico, United Methodist Church
From Artesia,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
Sunday, October 25
There is a saying that goes something like this, “If you want God to laugh, make plans.” If that is true, God was laughing heartily at our expense today.
For several days we have been making plans for today, almost to the minute of when something would happen.
As we wrote previously, we heard from our friends in Ruidoso, Barradine and Harold, who would be passing through Artesia this morning on their way to Galveston. We invited them to come by our place for breakfast before continuing their journey…we could eat at 9:00 and still have plenty of time to get to church and then go to Roswell for a 1:00 pm lunch with Jerry and Jane, another plan that we had put into play when we looked at options for the weekend.
God started laughing and the plan started changing when Jerry called early this morning to say he was under the weather…a number of cadets at NMMI have been in the infirmary with the flu, and he thought he might be coming down with it also; so, he and Jane called to say that they wouldn’t be able to get together with us today.
While we were disappointed in this turn of events, it was something that could easily be worked around in the greater scheme of today’s other plans, so we went to work getting ready for church and getting breakfast made so Harold and Barradine wouldn’t have to delay their long journey for the day.
God must have been at least chuckling at us as Harold and Barradine were delayed between Ruidoso and Artesia and didn’t get here until 10:00. By then, we knew that we wouldn’t be attending church this morning, but we still were able to work in a really nice visit while enjoying our breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, grits, and (for Harold, Barradine, and me) coffee. After breakfast, I joined Harold for a walk around Jean’s property and gave him the cook’s tour. Meanwhile, Barbara and Barradine were getting caught up on their conversation.
Around 3:30 we finally hit the road toward Ruidoso. Finally, our plan was coming together and we had a nice ride. The colors are starting to change up in the mountains…nothing yet like the fall colors that we experienced last year in Virginia and northern Georgia, but still a pretty sight for travelers along the Highway 70 corridor.
We decided we wanted potato and chicken bowls for our evening meal, so before checking in at the hotel, we went to KFC and picked up our order. As we pulled in to the parking lot at the east end of the Holiday Inn Express, we were surprised at spot three deer that were grazing right beside the driveway. I parked the car and while Barbara went in to register, I grabbed the camera, got as close to the deer as possible, and got a shot of two of them…the first of many photos that we would take over the next 24 hours.
After a v-e-r-y leisurely start to the new day (we slept in until 7:30, got the car packed, and had a nice breakfast at the hotel), we started our adventures for the day.
The primary reason for the trip was to drive to the Cloudcroft area and search out points of interest from our much younger days. Barbara and her family spent a lot of time in the area around Sacramento when she was growing up in Hobbs and has wanted for at least the past two years to go up there and look around. We had planned once to do that on a motorcycle day trip, but it never happened, so we decided this was the time to go.
We left the Ruidoso area and took U.S. 70 to NM 244, a narrow two-lane highway that meanders through the mountains to the east side of Cloudcroft. It became quickly evident that winter was approaching; the beautiful summer flowers were all dead and brown…the only colors were the greens of the evergreen trees and an occasional yellowing aspen.
There was also a tinge of white in the tops of some of the evergreens, a sign of the light snow that had fallen during the night at the higher elevations. As we got closer to Cloudcroft (and reached even higher elevations) the snow and ice became much heavier in the trees and we just had to make a couple of stops to take pictures of the pre-winter wonderland.
Barbara: Once we left Cloudcroft and began heading into the Sacramento Mountains, Jim and I began trading once again stories of our youth and though Jim didn’t spend much time here in the mountains he did have one experience which we’ll get to in a little bit.
First, I told him about the summer we were at Sacramento and this “hot” college kid that all the girls were crazy about had to bring a truck down the mountain to have the brakes fixed. However, Strick did not make it safely down as the brakes gave out and he and the truck plunged down the mountain before he got to Weed (that’s a wide spot in the road…not really a town). Since we were driving up that same mountain, it was easy to see how Strick could have lost control…he was hurt, but not badly which was a relief to all of us teen-age girls who adored him!
After leaving Weed, we approached the cut off for Girl Scout camp, Camp Mary White. We had to stop there so I could have a thumb down photo taken by the sign! What a nightmare that week that I spent there was! I must have been in the 3rd or 4th grade and Mom and Dad sent me there for a “glorious” experience. Somehow it didn’t work out that way. One reason it was so horrible was that I was placed in a cabin with all these cute, skinny girls who were everything I wasn’t!
Then, the girls’ restroom didn’t have doors, curtains, or anything on the stalls or showers…well! There was no way I was going to expose my triple size body to these skinny girls who kept making fun of me! There was no shower for Barbara that entire week, and I snuck off from activities to go to the bathroom. I was a miserable, stinky mess! (It’s kind of embarrassing now to think what I must have smelled like!)
Then, the icing on the cake was when we went horseback riding. Our tour guy gave this long lecture about how you never let go of the reins, no matter what happens. Well, you guessed it…my horse took off galloping and the reins came out of my hands. Boy! That guy griped at me all the way back to camp and all the girls were having a great laugh at my expense. Ahhh…the cruelty of youth!
Jim: Believe it or don’t, I had almost no sense of adventure when I was much younger. I never wanted to go to church youth camp (although I could have) and while I was pretty active with my scout troop, I went to summer camp only one time. I have no idea what possessed me to go to Camp Wehinahpay that summer, and I certainly don’t have any fond memories of it. I remember sleeping in a tent with a bunch of guys, going to the rifle range for target practice with .22 rifles (and not being able to hit a thing) and an overnight hike across the rim trail (on a clear night we could see the lights of El Paso, nearly 100 miles away).
My favorite memory of the whole experience was returning home in time to put on my Little League baseball uniform and join the team that Daddy coached for a game that night…really impressive memories, huh.
I’ve never returned to that part of the Sacramentos until today. In fact, I couldn’t have told anyone how to get there, but when I learned that Wehinahpay (we used to call it “We have to pay?”), was on our route today, I decided that I needed to have my picture taken by the sign and express an emotion from over fifty years ago.
Barbara: For the last 3 years it has been my dream to find the little cabin in the Sacramentos that Daddy built with the help of Mother and us girls. It was such a wonderful experience and I can still remember the pride we felt when we spent our first night there once the cabin was completed.
My fondest memory (wonder what this says about me?) of that cabin is holding Carol down and cutting off one or maybe more of her long fingernails (I bit mine and Mom and Dad were always holding Carol’s beautiful nails up to me!). To say that I got in trouble for this is putting it mildly, but it was worth it! (Sorry, Carol)
Anyway, with Carol’s help while we were in Roswell yesterday, I got the general idea of where the cabin used to be…Mom and Dad sold it years ago. But, even with these instructions, I didn’t recognize it when we passed it the first time! Our cabin was white and didn’t have siding…and it wasn’t that big! But, after traveling as Jim says “half-way to Alamogordo the hard way,” we turned around. This time when we got near the cabin, I recognized it and knew that though it had grown and been beautified in some ways, here was the cabin we girls adored in our teen years. What fun we had tramping up the mountain side, cutting our initials in trees, jumping over the creek when it wasn’t overflowing! It was a good life!
Tuesday, October 27
Happy Birthday to Cousin Paula Wright in Graceville, Florida!
God must have been chuckling again this morning as we made our plans for the day. I had planned to do the weekly black water dump and then get out and clear the last patch of Jean’s yard that hadn’t been raked and mowed and we thought that a little outdoor time with Benji might be in order. It all seemed so possible and fun on a clear morning with only a slight southeast breeze.
As I got ready to step outside to get the “honey wagon” from the barn, the southeast breeze turned quickly to a stiff southwest wind, far greater than what had been predicted for the day.
The dump project had to be completed, no matter what the weather, but all other outdoor plans were gone with the wind, so to speak, as we just hunkered down for the remainder of the day to ride out the noisy wind.
Jerry and Nancy invited us to supper with them, Jean, and Susie tonight. Around 1:30 Nancy called from work and asked if we’d mind going over to their house to turn down the crock pot. We jumped at the chance to do something other than listen to the wind howl and drove around to their place.
Benji was waiting for us and let us hook on his leash for a short walk after the crock pot was taken care of, but just a few minutes in the wind changed his mind and he scurried back to the door to be let in.
We were on pins and needles for a large part of the afternoon and evening as we waited to hear from Jimmy Clint. Daughter-in-law Cathey emailed us around 4 to say that Jimmy was back at the hospital with elevated blood pressure and heart rate. We didn’t know whether to just take off and drive to Lubbock or wait until we heard further from the kids that we needed to be there.
Finally, Jimmy was able to contact us and wrote to say that there was no need for us to travel, but that didn’t take away the feeling of uneasiness that we shared. So…we decided to at least keep our minds busy by going on over to Jerry and Nancy’s.
At a little after 6:00 we went over to Jerry and Nancy’s house for a fun-filled evening of food and fellowship and a rousing game of Chickenfoot (which was won very handily by Jean). Becky wasn’t able to join us tonight as she was at a rehearsal of the upcoming community theater production, Nun-Sensation.
Wednesday, October 28
We started the morning exchanging emails with Jimmy Clint. He said that his condition was becoming stabilized and promised to let us know if he thought we should come to Lubbock.
We decided that we’d better be prepared to travel, just in case, so we gathered up the laundry and made a trip into town to support our local laundromat. While the washers were churning away, I went to the cleaners to pick up some slacks that we had dropped off last week. I also drove by the local library to ask if they accepted donations of used paperback books, but they weren’t open yet, so I returned to the laundromat until everything was washed, dried, and folded or hung up.
When all was completed at the laundromat, we drove back to the library (it was the first time we’d been in it since our senior year of high school back in 1962---it still looks and smells like a library, but there has been some expansion of the building over the years) and then drove back to the cleaners to drop off Barbara’s winter coat before heading back to Big V.
As we left the library, the wind started howling again, even stronger than yesterday making Barbara wonder if she should have kept her dirty winter coat. But, it was too late for that decision now. As soon as we got to Big V and put everything away, we made the decision to close the bedroom and kitchen slideouts to eliminate some of the wind noise and cut down on the dust that creeps in when everything is opened up. It made for closer quarters than usual, but did cut down on the noise.
The weather rarely ever impacts our Wednesday lunch bunch at Chaos, so we once again gathered today at 12:30 for an hour of good food and conversation. Susie told us that she had heard from James, who has been elk hunting on the other side of the state this week; James and his group had decided to dodge some oncoming bad weather and have cut their trip short by a day. This meant that instead of staying over for another night, Susie will drive back to Hobbs tonight after work.
On the way home from Chaos, Barbara and I stopped at WalMart and got the ingredients for our crock pot recipe for lasagna before heading home to put it all together and get it cooked for supper tonight. Of course, WalMart didn’t have the Italian sausage I like to use, but I did a passable job of seasoning a pound of hamburger meat and cooking up a pretty good sauce for Barbara to use.
After a short nap, we went over to Jean’s house to take down her light fixture covers in the kitchen and sun room, wash them, and get them put back up.
Tonight we just relaxed, ate the lasagna, watched game one of the World Series, and worked at our computers…nothing exciting. Barbara had been up most of the night last night worrying about Jimmy so she bailed about 8 and fell promptly asleep leaving me to watch the Phillies whip up on the Yankees. Go, Phillies…I’ve never been a Yankee fan so I’m more against them than for the Phillies.
Before going to bed, Barbara did talk to Jimmy and found out that he has a small touch of pneumonia from laying down so much. Plus, they have given him medicine to try to dilate his arteries, hoping that this will raise his heart rate and lower his blood pressure. It is really hard for her to respect his wishes of us staying put for now.
Thursday, October 29
While Barbara worked on her part of this week’s journal and put in photos, I cleaned up the kitchen before making another mess by fixing a late breakfast. It’s very cold and windy this morning so don’t know that we’ll get much of anything accomplished.
Sure enough, at the end of the day we couldn’t say that we had done much of anything except make a quick trip to WalMart for some groceries and supplies…b-o-r-i-n-g!
Our good news for the day is that Jimmy Clint was released from the hospital and is back at home…our thanks go out to al for your prayers and messages of concern and support.
Friday, October 30
Since the day was going to be yucky, windy, and cold, we decided that we had to find something to do! So…after Jim returned from the Methodist Men’s breakfast at the hospital, we grabbed the camera, some water, and a couple of diet cokes for a road trip.
First stop was the rest area just outside Maljamar…Jim just can’t seem to make it past this area without marking the territory as his! Once back on the road, we found ourselves in Lovington at Good Samaritan Home where Jim planned to see his former mother-in-law Marie. However, he quickly returned as the nurse told him it would be better if he came around 1:00 or so.
With that change in plans, I quickly called Susie in Hobbs to see what was on her agenda. We’d just mosey over there for a while until it was time for Jim’s visit with Marie. Thankfully, Susie was home (she was trying to clean house after the trips she and James had been on) and we made arrangements to meet for lunch.
When we got closer to Hobbs, Jim broke out into laughter and about broke his neck looking back at something. I had no clue what was going on, but I soon found out.
There’s no doubt that one Sunday or Monday we will have to come worship with the Cowboy Junction! What a sense of humor those folks must have!
As we piddled away the time, I was delighted to find that Hobbs has a Cado’s though I didn’t find anything I wanted to purchase today.
Finally it was time to meet James and Susie at Quizno’s, a sandwich shop. We arrived earlier than they did so I had the camera ready and waiting to capture their entrance! As most of you know quite well, no one is safe from the camera when either Jim or I are around!Though we had just seen Susie over in Artesia when she spent the night with Jean, this was the first time we’d gotten to visit with James since our return to New Mexico. James is an accountant and normally he is too busy for a leisurely lunch so we felt quite fortunate that we got to spend some time with him. Much too soon, it was time for James to return to work and for us to wander back over to Lovington.
Today I got to spend over a half hour with her and we had a long talk and lots of laughs along the way.
With this being Halloween weekend, the folks there were having their big celebration this afternoon, so part of our laughter was about the interesting costumes and makeup that we saw all around us…they were really going all out for the season.
I asked Grandma if I could take a picture of her to share with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and she readily agreed. When I had taken the first shot, a close-up of her, she asked if I also took a picture showing the Tootsie-Pop/pipe cleaner spider that was sitting on her tray. I told her I didn’t, but that would be the next picture. Later, I prevailed on a staff member to take a shot of us together.
The trip back to Artesia was uneventful except for the wind and dirt (which isn’t all that uneventful in this part of the country).
When we got home, Barbara started supper (leftover lasagna). I took some over to Jean for her evening meal and then Barbara and I ate together before she settled in to watch a couple of her special Friday night programs and I went back to Jean’s house to watch the Celtics dominate the Bulls in a NBA game, and the USF Bulls upset West Virginia in NCAA football action.
The hometown Bulldogs traveled to Roswell tonight and guaranteed themselves a spot in the playoffs by defeating the RHS Coyotes 48-7. Jerry, Nancy, and I didn’t make the trip because they were scheduled for an early trip to Knox City, Texas, tomorrow morning to visit Amanda, Zeke, Daniel, and Jonah for a Jonah’s 3rd birthday.
Saturday, October 31
Happy Halloween Everyone!!!
After a slow start this morning (we weren’t in much of a hurry in the first place, but we place the blame on the cold early morning temperatures) we made up our minds to take advantage of a beautiful, windless day to take care of some yard work around the place.
A couple of days ago, Nancy asked if we’d be interested in mowing off part of their lot while they were out of town this weekend. Barbara was all over that, but the weather has been so bad that outside work was just out of the question.
I went out about 10:00 this morning to get the mower out of the barn and ready to roll, then turned over the controls to Barbara and she rode off into the prairie to do battle with weeds, wild grasses, and the dust she would stir up.
Barbara finished her part of the work well before I did mine, though in my defense, I did take some time out to get Benji and take him for a walk.
Around five o’clock, as I was hauling away the last of the grass and trash, Barbara went over to Jerry and Nancy’s house to check on Benji and feed him. When she came back by while taking Benji on a short walk, she asked me if I hadn’t fed him this morning. I said that I had…I had carefully shredded the chicken and put it on top of his bowl of crunchies before taking him for a walk. What I evidently hadn’t done was set the bowl down on the floor so Benji could eat the food. Oh well, just another in a series of “senior moments.” I guess I’ll tell Nancy I was just trying to teach Benji how to jump, not that she’s going to believe me.
Everyone was worn out from the day’s activities, so when we finished eating, we returned to Jean’s place and said our goodbyes and good night’s, and I returned to Big V to work on the journal and watch Texas put a heavy thump on Oklahoma State.
“The heaviest load to carry is a grudge.” - Sign at Cloudcroft, New Mexico, United Methodist Church
From Artesia,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
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